MOONSTROKE

The moon was a brilliant disc of silver-white cut out of the cool velvet night. Thirty-seven stars were arranged in the random scattering of Creation, the remaining billion hid behind the moon and added to her brilliance. The landscape below fell away in black cliffs, silver rocks jutting out into space, sharp ridges clinging to the mountainside until they fell outwards in a tumble of foothills, spreading gently out into the dusty grey plains. The earth lay on its
back gazing up at the sky in awe of the forces that had crushed it to this end. Every detail was drenched in silver, as if the source of this eerie light would claim the landscape as its own, transforming empty lakes to craters and leaving the plains blasted and pitted with meteorite-hollows. All sound sank away in that moment, yet an ominous thunder filled my mind. It felt as if the air became thinner and thinner, until it was almost of no substance at all.
I could reach up and touch the emptiness of Space.

The little town nestled in amongst the dramatic landscapes, with twinkling streetlights and front-lit clock-towers the dark squares that were houses with people and stoves cooking late dinners
and televisions with comfortable couch pillows and little lapdogs scratching at the travelling itch - all of that, somehow, was below us, in another world. Civilisation did not belong up here. It was too beautiful on the mountain peak, too elemental. As we took in the immensity of the heavens above us, the town faded into insignificance.

There was just my pilot friend and I, two humans about to become part of a dark sky over a strange land, in a time separate from the years behind. There was only moonlight, air and the majestic form of sleeping mountains. The air churned in invisible currents as it explored the silver landscape. I had mounted a
streamer, silver now, on a branch that stretched out far into space. Flying gently and straight in the wind the streamer told a deceptive tale. The air was far from smooth that night. “Shall we go?” My whispered question shattered the silence. Neither of us spoke again. Preparing to fly a paraglider at night left me with a strange feeling. Although every element of my glider was visible in the moonlight, they lacked clarity, yet had gained a weird property; a dreamlike intangibility that made me reach out and touch each separate part just to be sure they were real. By the time I was standing ready I could feel my entire glider, sensing its presence rather than seeing its form. When I walked to the edge of the slope I was wearing my wing. The weirdness of the night demanded that I trust my own abilities completely - I had to believe that I could fly, meet the magic of the night with confidence.

We launched our spirits into the challenge of the night sky and our gliders and bodies followed. The wind swallowed the silence of our passage. We passed outwards, over dark rock, dark cliff, dark ravine. And then, with no warning, the air became a raging beast, buckling and twisting our majestic glide into a joust against an unseen foe. My senses sharpened. Wild currents lofted me up high, then tipped me into troughs of curling treachery. The power bucked me viciously and relentlessly through confusing swirls of the dark unknown. Intuition guided me. I was flying on feeling alone, for my eyes only showed an ethereal landscape lit with lunar light. Ahead of me, I saw my friend rising suddenly into the face of the moon, a black outline of the night leaping from the darkness into the only light. For a moment it seemed that the rest of the darkness would be drawn with him across the light to swallow it completely, plunging me into blackness. But then the night reclaimed my friend as he plummeted in a down-draught. Seconds later, I was where he had been, falling from the face of the moon and into the night. As suddenly as it had begun, the turbulence vanished. We were propelled out from the mountains into the valley. The transformation was breathtaking; the air was smooth, the wind calm, my glider was a curve of beautiful silver-white overhead, intriguing patterns crossed her surface where the seams in the fabric changed the moonlight to moondark. I breathed in deep draughts of relief. Clean, clear, invisible air filled my mind. I looked up once again, and realised with fascination that I did not have any lines connecting my glider to my body. Nothing was visible against the brilliance of my wing and the deepness of the night beyond. Yet she responded perfectly with just the thought of a turn, the gentle touch of my hand on the control line and my glider high above in the sky eased into the new direction. I loved my glider for that. We were immersed in unbroken silence. 

The silence stretched out to the far horizons and seemed to bind the visible world into a tighter fabric, for there were no sounds to fill out the gaps. I flew, moonstruck, over a world that was simple and new and strange, and I wanted to be in that vast, quiet world forever. And yet there was a sound, a gentle musical sussuration as if water droplets were chasing each other over a tight drumskin. My glider cut smoothly out through the starlight, as silent as the landscape below. My gaze dropped to my body, which was levitating with infinite ease over the tumbling foothills. I was bathed in moonlight, but where was the sound coming from? It was impossible to make out the details of anything in the light. Although everything was clear, there was some dimension that was warped, mutable as in a dream. The light of the moon fell upon my body and as it touched me the light burst in puffs of silver dust. There the light became sound and tinkled softly over me as it was drawn away in the gentle rush of passing air. I carved through the night thick with magic.

I looked out toward the landing field, dark uncertainty on the edge of the little town. The sound of the moonlight faded and was gone. Soon the smell of grass was floating up to meet me and I banked a final turn, swinging my feet out to absorb the impact that would define the final moment of my flight. But where my feet should have contacted the earth with a solid thump! there was nothing. Something was wrong. I pushed my feet further down, through the dark surface of the grass and deep into the soil beneath. The grass seemed to shimmer and shift in the darkness, as if unsettled. Then the world began to swirl around me and I could make out the reflection of the stars in the grass. Stars! I must be landing in a lake, I thought as the wind rippled the surface of reality again. I was struggling to hold onto my grasp of who I was and what I was seeing. I could not feel my harness anymore, I felt light and soft, lying rather than standing and yet I could see the stars in the lake with perfect clarity. I reached out my hand just to be sure and could see its blackness against the pinpoints of light.

The surface of reality rippled again, huge chunks of the sky were blocked by a blackness that buckled and twisted across the lake. I put my hand down to steady myself and contacted something solid. I clung onto the object. Relief washed over me, and my confusion faded. I felt wood in my hand. I could feel its texture and its smooth, clean corners. I ignored the fact that the sky was being battered apart by what looked like a massive flapping curtain. The wood was certainty, the wood was solid and as long as I could hold onto it I would have a reference point in this strange world. I would be okay. I ran my hand over the wooden object that was looking more and more like a table in the dim light. The curtain of dark flapped gently in the night breeze that swirled in through an opening. An opening that was looking more and more like my bedroom door.

I rose from the softly piled blankets of my bed and padded across my carpet to the curtain and the breeze. Stepping outside I was bathed in quiet radiance. The moon was a brilliant disc of silver-white cut out of the cool velvet night. Thirty-seven stars were arranged in the random scattering of Creation, the remaining billion hid behind the moon and added to her brilliance. Beneath the sheets, I could make out Kim’s sleeping form. Her hand was stretched out in a subconscious display of dependency.
Come back, it said, I need you with me, I want you beside me in my world.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” I wrote, “but I can’t come back. I have stepped out into the magic of the night. I must leave you now, alone. Goodbye, and thanks for our time together.”
I propped the note up against the flowerpot on the bedside table, sure that she would find it in the morning. Some would call it cowardice, to run away from a situation that has become un-nourishing. I didn’t care, my passion to follow the dream was powerful and all-consuming. It was simply time to go, I had lived through my dark night of the soul. I packed a travel-bag full of clothes, raided the pantry for a few essential supplies, hoisted my paraglider into the car, and was gone. The last and sweetest seduction of my city-life slipped away, purring in contented sleep amongst the rumpled sheets of a soft bed in a safe room below the thick roof of a tidy house in a quiet, suburban street. 

The moon had set. Above the car, there were stars everywhere.

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from the novel BEYOND THE INVISIBLE.

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