“What is this place, Luna?”
Luna jumps. She did not expect to see her sister here. “I . . . um . . . I think it is the place of Those Who Came Before.”
“Bee-for?” says Soleil.
Luna keeps forgetting she knows things her sister does not. “I mean, Those Who Are Not Here.”
“This place is for them,” says Soleil. “Our place is home with Mother and Father.”
Luna sighs. Her sister is fond of reciting the rules, although she does not know that word either. Here, there are no ‘rules’. There is only The Way Things Are.
“Let us just see what there is to see.” Luna glances at her sister sideways to see if she will agree.
Soleil looks skeptically at the rusting shelves and moss-covered floor. “All right. We can look.”
She doesn’t know Luna often slips away and comes to this place. She would not understand. Nor would anyone else in the village. The Way Things Are may not be called rules, but Luna learned that is exactly what they are. And then some.
Her sister followed her here and Luna had to pretend she came across the place by accident. ‘Pretend’ is a word she learned in this place from the box with buttons in neat rows and a bright light on one side.
‘One’ is another word she learned from the box. Once she discovered it could talk, she learned many things. Most especially how to read.
In Luna’s world, the sun comes up and the sky shimmers with light. The sun goes down and stars twinkle in the dark. Up and down, and up and down it goes. The box told her of the ‘moon’ that used to float among the stars. It is also the meaning of her name.
In Luna’s world, rain falls and snow melts. Crops grow tall and leaves turn brown. People are born and people die. They sing, and dance, and eat, and sleep. There is no tomorrow or yesterday. There is no today or tonight. There is no before or after. There is only Now.
A few months ago, the box taught Luna about a great and horrifying mystery — numbers.
They terrified her so much, she ran away from the place and vowed never to return.
Numbers are the reason Those Who Are Not Here left.
No, not left — destroyed themselves.
The few who survived created The Way Things Are and passed them down as armor against another apocalypse. In the Now, there are no numbers because if you cannot count, there is no less or more. If there are no numbers, you cannot try to hold time at bay. You cannot count high enough to be enough. This is the greatest lesson Luna learned from the box.
But she cannot stop herself from coming back and . . . ‘wanting’. . . ‘more’.
“Luna, what is that?” Soleil points to a sparkly thing on the ground.
Luna picks it up. It is round and fits in palm of her hand. She sucks in a breath. “I think this is a . . . a watch!”
“Watch?” says Soleil. “Watch is what you do when the pot is on the fire.”
Luna gulps. “Yes, of course it is.”
“Do you feel well?” Soleil scrunches up her eyebrows and stares at her sister. “You are saying strange things.”
Luna barks out a laugh. “I am just being silly.”
Soleil shakes her head. “Let us go home. I am hungry.”
“You are always hungry.”
“All- waay-z? There you go again.”
“Sorry,” says Luna. “It is definitely time to go home.”
“Tie-mmm?”
Luna links her arm through her sister’s as she drops the watch on the ground. They skip home, talking and laughing about nothing. Soleil forgets about the place and the strange words her sister said. If it is not in the Now, it does not exist.
The watch lies on the floor of the building — a ‘library’ — that belonged to Those Who Came Before.
The force of the fall rattles through the gears and when Luna comes back, she will hear it tick, tick, ticking as she watches the hands slowly move around, and around, and around. . .