The Moon Pool

I never boarded my plane. I never arrived back in Scotland.

It is my habit to wake up early in the morning, in fact when the night is still thick and dark, and the very word morning is an irony. On a particular night the obscure stillness of an Appalachian valley was broken by a simple howl. It seemed to come from far away, to the extent that I almost fancied it to be the product of my dream-filled sleep; but the sound had brought me to alertness – I knew it was real. I lay for what felt like a further hour, hardly daring to breathe, straining my ears to catch a repetition of the sound, or a faint echo. I heard nothing more, and eventually drifted back into a half-dream in which I was pushing face-first through a soft, wet forest.

When I described the howl to our hosts the next morning, they declared that it must have been a coyote. I knew it was no such thing. I knew it was you. I knew you had called me. I knew I must and would answer the call, but as yet I could not say how that would be.

Days later, our hosts were driving us back to the airport – we must have been within twenty minutes of our destination – when suddenly I became insistent that we change our route.

“Turn off here! Turn off here!”

Everyone in the car protested about flight times and check-ins, but I would not be denied. With a manic persistence I deflected each objection and kept insisting.

“You have plenty of time – we left early. Turn off here. Do it!”

Nothing would have stopped me. If my wish had not been met I would have opened the car door and hurled myself onto the highway, rather than go past this exit. Maybe it was just to quiet me or humour me, but we did indeed turn off, and I gave instructions to a sullen but amazed driver, telling him the precise directions to take at every intersection. We drove until we found ourselves in the middle of a pleasant town, a bright, new place.

“Stop the car!” I shouted suddenly, wrenching at the door handle. The car pulled up sharply askew to the sidewalk and, to amazed shouts, I sprang out and ran before anyone could react. I left hosts, family, and luggage; I left my passport, my purse, my life. I ran and ran, and ran on until my lungs hurt. I ran wildly, finding myself at last in a kind of mall. I kept on running until I found you.

I stopped a few paces away. It was you, it had to be. I could see your strength and your beauty, and was awed by the elegance of your clothes. I could almost smell your musk from where I stood. You looked up, you looked directly at me. I found myself seized and held by your gaze – soft brown illuminated by feral gold. In my head the memory of the howl re-echoed.

“I heard your call. I came,” I said.

“So I see,” you replied, and your voice was soft and musical.

You looked around for a second, as if sensing disturbed ripples in the pool of town life – my companions would have been searching for me by now, and may even have called the police. You held out your hand and I took it, to find myself in a strong, gentle grip. You pulled me urgently, quickly to an out-of-the-way café, settled me in a discreet corner, and ordered one mochacino and one green tea. I had not even mentioned to you what my favourite beverage was, but the waitress brought it straight to me, at your direction, and set it down in front of me, the whipped cream already melting on top of the steamed milk.

You sat next to me, and we talked for hours, drank tea after tea, coffee after coffee. We talked about music, about history and philosophy, about current affairs, we told jokes, we told stories, we recited poems we remembered from our childhoods, we even sang softly to one another. You were my junior by some ten years, but you seemed somehow wiser, older. You told me of your life adventures and I marvelled – such experience, such joy, such sorrow. I told you a few of my own, anecdotes from my narrow little world, and you reacted to them with sheer delight, as though I were Sheherazade and they were jewelled tales of the Arabian Nights.

Eventually I said, “I love you.”

“I know,” you replied.

“I think I was born loving you.”

“I know that too. It’s why I called you. It’s why you heard, and it’s why you came.”

For a while thereafter we sat in silence, and you held my hand in your strong, gentle hand. I felt your perfectly-manicured nails grazing my skin, and a frisson of danger ran through me. But this, I knew, was your nature, and I was not afraid. Though I knew I would always be in awe of you I would never be afraid.

You took me to your car and drove me home. Home. Home to me now is wherever you are. Your apartment welcomed me as if with open arms, took me in; it held you aroma, the heady scent of your body along with your perfumes and soaps, your clean laundry and sheets, your favourite food. As the door shut behind me pursuit by friends and family became irrelevant – forget them. Home. I was home.

Here at home I sat at your feet. Here I learned of your desires and needs, willingly serviced them. I became your cook and housekeeper, your welcomer and hostess, your home-maker; but also your prize and your decoration. Here I accepted your love, given in return for mine. Here I lived in your arms, slept in the comfort of your bed, matched my heartbeat to yours, felt your breasts against mine. Here I felt the caress of your breath on my face as I whispered to you and you whispered to me. Here it seemed as though our hearts became married, deeply married.

My life changed. You opened a door in my mind, and I stepped through into a room – a whole new country – which I did not know existed. At the same time you let me see into your own soul. We found, or at least I now saw, what it had been that called to me from the dark hills. Our needs, mutual, matched. Our longings, opposite poles attracting. Our bodies, the last two pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle. Our beings, singing a two-part harmony.

Then came the helplessness and pain. I walked through that door into a place where my whole life was heightened. Every encumbrance flew away – cares, self, thought – and there was only you as a sun for me to orbit. The deeper the restraints bit, the more it hurt, the less I could move, the more you whipped me – the freer I became. This new world of ours had its own vocabulary, its own glamour, a whole different language which no one outside it would ever understand. How could anyone know the joy with which I accepted the marks of ownership, and wore them with a feeling that went right though humility to the place where it almost became pride again?

Then came the pleasure. Pain having taken me out of my own habitual dimension, the climaxes of pleasure you at first withheld and then gave to me rocked my new dimension seismically. Tears were forced from me, perspiration, female ejaculation, all my fluids – I became a waterfall, a cascade, my whole body seemed to melt when you allowed me to come, made me come. Sometimes pain and pleasure flowed, merged, alloyed, faded into and out of each other; sometimes I hovered above it all, out of my body, watching this thing below, which I recognised as myself, writhe in exquisite agony, or in agonising pleasure.

Then came the comfort, the warm showers, the caring, healing, nurturing. Words of love and gentleness, words not spoken but held in facial expression, tears and laughter, sighing and singing, eyes locked with eyes, stroking, walks hand-in-hand, joyful shopping, hands curling around cups of coffee, things that the world might consider normality…

…One thing you always knew – though I would have hurled myself from a cliff top at your command, it was always a matter of love. Love was our driving force. Love was our whole reason.

There was one thing which you did not share with me – the secret of where you went at full moon. You would leave the apartment before midnight and return a little before dawn. I did not ask you where you went, and you did not tell me. Sometimes I would feign sleep, or actually be awake, when you returned, and on those occasions I would notice something about you – an air of elation maybe, or your hair moist, and once when you slipped into bed in the dark I saw that golden glow in your eyes.

On a few occasions I had made a point of finding out the direction in which you ventured out. One lunar month, as the time of fullness grew near, I resolved to break your secret. On the night that the moon was perfect, I allowed you a couple of minutes start and then followed where I knew you must have gone. Although it was dark, I was able to see that you had struck out for the woods which bordered our apartment block and which stretched towards the hills and open countryside beyond. The woods were old, not a plantation but a natural piece of the American forest going back centuries. You were following a small but well defined track, little more than a footpath suitable for Indian-file walking, and I headed for it as you disappeared into the tree-line. I had hoped that the moon would illuminate my path – how stupid of me – but by the time I too had penetrated the trees it was little more than an occasional glimmer through the dense canopy. All was dark, and though the track was relatively straight, the slightest kink threw me into undergrowth and ditches. My progress was slow, and noisy. I decided to turn back, but at the moment I made that decision I walked into a patch of complete darkness. I stood there, blind.

I do not know how long I stood there, but as I did so my memory called up the still Appalachian night, and the echo of the howl I had heard. Something now made me hold my breath and listen for the like here. I heard nothing, but still the memory reverberated round my head, until my thoughts were invaded by a slight sound in the woods. Someone or something was coming my way. The impression was of human bulk, but the sounds were soft, as if an animal was stalking me – sometimes I thought I heard breathing, at other times there was silence; sometimes I wanted to reach out my hand to steady myself on a tree trunk, and at other times I was afraid of what my fingers might touch. Suddenly I realised that I could see two golden eyes looking at me, and I heard a low growl. I was welded to the spot, but only for a split second. I recognised the eyes, and something in the timbre of the growl was familiar too.

A hand was slipped gently into mine, a warm kiss was placed on my cheek, and your voice said, “You called me, I heard you. Come with me.” I wondered if you had read the thoughts in my head. You were and are so wonderful that I would not put that power past you. You led me, walking much more silently than I could, further on through the darkness, on and on for what could have been minutes or hours, until suddenly the moon burst through the canopy, heralding that we had come to a clearing.

And indeed it seemed that there were two moons, because there was another floating like a silver dollar on the surface of a still pool. We stopped, and stood motionless. For my part I assumed – or I knew – that we were in a place of deepest enchantment.

You took off your clothes. I did the same. We sat side-by-side at the pool’s edge, disturbing the tranquillity of the reflected moon with our toes, and saying nothing.

At some point in the night, as if in obedience to a signal I could not hear, you stood, set your feet apart and your hands upon your hips, threw back your head – and howled! For an instant, as I looked at your silhouette against the sky-moon, I fancied your shape had changed into an awesome one. But the fact that I instantly recognised the howl as being the one I had heard faintly a whole state away settled my mind, and I recognised once again your figure and profile. As the echoes of your howl died away, you sat down, and allowed me to lean against you, drifting away in my own thoughts. I do not remember the journey back to the apartment.

Since then, you have taken me with you each time you have gone out to greet the full moon. On occasions we have made love at the pool side. Sometimes that has been as gentle as the ripples on the water. At other times something totally savage and feral has come over you, and you have hurt me and not stopped until I was senseless, biting deep into me, tearing at me with your nails, marking my soul, making me scream until I was hoarse, damn near breaking bones. Afterwards you have bathed me with water from the moon pool, which is soothing and healing.

And so my life goes, and so it will go for ever. I never continued to the airport, never boarded the homeward plane in ignorance of your very existence. I am not in Scotland. There is no story about a call from the dark hills, a changed life, and a pool in the woods. I have not just laid down my pen.