Keepers of the Moon

Nova 2020 C.E. (1)

Rain was falling fast, people hurried into the crowded shops, while cars splashed through the large puddles on the dirty asphalt street. The wind moaned between the high buildings and windows were hastily closed by the people left warm inside their home. The smell of ozone penetrated my nose and replaced the nasty smell of petroleum and coal. The smell of the city.

My heart was pounding in the rhythm of the storm, while Abi had her fists twisted into my drenched shirt. I tried to stay under the cover of the hovering buildings, but it was no use as the wind turned around every corner and people hushed me away whenever I got too close to their shop. A terrible feeling of dread had come over me. I didn’t understand where it came from, I just knew it was there. Mere was late, she told me that there was something that she’d found out and that she wanted to tell me something. Though she still hadn’t arrived, right here on the corner of Memorial Street. She was never later, this was unusual.

The storm had come swiftly, drifting in over the waters in the fjord. The pounding heat of the summer sun now superseded by the heavy rain and icy winds. Abi was shivering in my arms and I was starting to become angrier and angrier that we were still standing here, while Mere was just taking her sweet time. Though something in her letter had made me feel uneasy. A feeling of terrible purpose that had been growing for quite some time. We all knew that there was something happening. Less and less people came to the Safe World. Our own little secret, where we could be ourselves. Where we wouldn’t have to hide.

But some of us went missing.

Ella was the first who didn’t show up after a rainy day. It was odd. She was always there with us, never missed a day. She needed the company and the safety the group provided. So when she didn’t come we all knew that something had happened to her. It wasn’t too bad at first, we all knew that our lives were expendable according to the people in Nova. We just assumed she had met her fate just like so many other girls our age. But then Merle went missing, then Sami, then Nomi and then Ilona. It was happening in just a few days, it was odd. Ilse had gone around to check if other girls had gone missing outside of our community, but people never gave a straight answer. Now Ilse wasn’t even getting answers anymore they were just avoiding her.

They were avoiding us.    

Mere had gone out too, to search for answers. Her relationship with Ilse was always strained and they barely spoke to each other. She was convinced that Ilse kept something from us, that she was lying to us. I didn’t want to think about all this. It was hard enough to survive out here, my past was not something that needed to be found out. My parents were most likely dead or also people living on the street. I didn’t need to know their names or my own heritage. They left me alone and if it hadn’t been for Brannach I’d never even survived my first years. As far as I considered that old, wicked bat was the only family I ever had.

We were still waiting on the corner of the streets when I spotted Mere running toward us. My anger washed away instantly, even from a distance I could feel her fear and see her tearstained face. She skidded to a stop and put her arms on my shoulders while trying to regain her breath.

‘It’s not good… Oh Indigo! This is bad...’ She turned around and looked over her shoulder into the emptying street. Like a scared sheep fleeing from a wolf.

‘We are screwed, we are so screwed!’

‘Would you just calm down! You’re not making any sense!’ I could hear my own fear reflected in my voice. Something was very wrong.

‘Ilse knows! Ilse knows who we are.’ She finally regained some control over her body and pushed me into a dark and deserted ally. Her dark curls were all over the place and raindrops clung to it, which made her hair look like it was filled with glitter. Abi was still buried in my shirt, but I could feel that she had picked up my own tension. Thunder rolled across the sky and the rain intensified, we ducked under a ledge near a dumpster. The heavy rainfall masked the otherwise penetrant odour.

‘Calm down, tell me what you know.’

After casting another look into the ally to make sure we were really alone she finally revealed what she had found out in a hushed voice.

‘Don’t ask me how I know this, just trust me on this. We are the Missing. We are all from Caledonia, we have been taken from our homes! And now whoever took us, is trying to finish us off! Don’t you get it? We are a liability, if the world finds out the Missing are right here, in Nova all hell would break loose! But we need to come forward! Otherwise we’ll all be dead by the end of this week!’

I could barely grasp at the ramifications of her words. I just stared at her, my mind empty. I knew I didn’t understand what she was saying.

‘What do you mean? We are the Missing?’

It didn’t make any sense. Why would we be the Missing? They were all assumed dead, besides why would someone first take hundreds of babies, only to drop them on the streets of Nova?

‘Listen. We are all from Caledonia, they marked us!’ She pulled away her drenched shirt to reveal the little roundish scar on her collarbone. Within the community we all shared that scar, it was what united us in the first place.

‘It makes sense, we’re all about the same age, only girls. The mark on our shoulders, it’s all there. Someone took us from our homes, took us away from Caledonia. And for some reason they want us gone after all these years. They are picking us off one by one. First Ella, then Merle, Sami, Ilona, Nomi. It’s only a matter of time before they get to all of us.’ Her voice was now barely a whisper and her eyes were showing too much whites. Her fear also fuelled mine, because I somehow knew her words to be true. I felt it in my bones. There was more to us, than just the scar. We all shared the same fate, the same past.

‘Then why drop us of in Nova? I mean, why not just kill us in the first place? What did they want with us anyway?’ My voice was too high, my heartbeat too loud, the storm still raging. I was cold to the bone, yet I barely felt it. My stomach had turned upside down.

‘I don’t know. My guess is they were looking for something, they didn’t find it then dropped us in a place where no one would notice us yet we still could be followed. And now they have found what they were looking for and we are no longer needed. So they get rid of us.’

There were tears in her voice, she fully understood what this meant.

We were all in mortal danger.

‘Do you think Ilse knows this? Does she know that we are being hunted?’

Mere shook her dark, wet curls dancing frantically around her face. It was such a lovely gesture at such a horrible time.

‘I don’t know. She knows who we are, that’s for sure. But that we are being hunted? I really don’t know.’

‘Then we should tell her, we need to warn the others.’ Mere just nodded, while thunder raced across the sky. I hugged her tight and smelled the rain on her skin. I felt her racing heart against my chest and Abi gave a little squeal as she was pinned between our two bodies. When we finally let go neither of us had calmed down. We knew we had to go, but standing here was easier. Confronting Ilse with the truth and admitting said truth to ourselves, that was the hard part. And while I knew it to be true, I still had a hard time fully understanding what had just happened. But at least I wasn’t alone, Mere was here. That was good.

With my body full of apprehension and dread we started walking toward our hideout. From here it would take us at least fifteen minutes to get there, but Mere insisted that we took several detours, so that if people were following us, we would confuse them. But the streets were deserted and it seemed like a stupid idea. Though to calm her down, I followed her word and her step. Her hand was warm inside mine, it seemed to take away some of the tension. It felt almost safe.