Night Light Tales by I.M. Gerhi

Author:I.M. Gerhi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction & Literature
Publisher: GPB Janse van Vuuren
Published: 2025-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Tearing Up Chocolate

There was a moon. It hung low over the hills. The moon had no right to be that low. It was dangerous.

The full moon had a flame sharp edge which could cut smoke and night and dreams into slivers.

Tonight, Claretta Muldoon came to dance amongst the chocolate hills. Tonight, because the moon was low.

She would start her dance in the flat gullies between the hills, but the aim was to get on top.

Claretta pulled the ribbons from her hair and tied them around the gatepost. She left her shoes at the foot of the post and draped her coat over the gate.

Wearing a white cheesecloth slip, she walked over the crisp grass. The blades tickled her bare feet, and she felt a chuckle creeping up from the pit of her stomach.

Wrapping her hands around her breasts, she took deep breaths. This was not a time for chuckling. Not if she was going to dance to her death.

The stars twinkled a punctuated tune. Softly, just audible enough so that when Claretta moved quietly, she could hear it. The starlight twinkle was the first part of the dance.

To this rhythm, her feet moved in a complicated step pattern. Slow at first. Then picking up speed, ever so slightly, with every turn.

The dance took her around the hills. Running the gullies between as a green floor, she did not look at the hills. She could not show that she meant to mount one.

Not until she and the hill and the moon were aligned to meet.

Claretta wasn’t alone.

The Wadders lived amongst the hills. And on moonlit nights they were also the local guard. But if she danced well, the Wadders would be caught up in the moment and would not notice her going.

The big trick was to keep enough of her own mind about her so that she would still know where she was going herself.

The twinkling of the stars was intoxicating. Once the sound got past your ears and into your soul, your senses went out of control. Or so Claretta had been told. Nobody who had danced under moonlight could ever tell again.

When the moon cut, there wasn’t anything else left to tell. Most times only the clothes at the gate were buried. Nothing of the body remained.

The Wadders sat low in the grass, in clumps at the foot of the hills.

Only part of Claretta was aware of them. She could not give them too much attention because they would give her the same in return.

If you turn angry on a Wadder, they turn angry on you. If you are sweet, so are they. Except when it came to mounting the chocolate hills. In this regard the Wadders were all the same. They resisted.

There was only one way to catch their resistance off guard. You had to dance them out of phase.

If you could get them off guard, there was the briefest of spaces where you could dare to pass between them and climb a hill and touch the moon.

Claretta was here to try tonight.

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