No moonlight on the moon

Content Advisory: brief, non-graphic mention of off-page suicide

Mama moved us to the moon when I was ten.

I don't know if she was trying to follow Daddy to heaven’s doorstep or if she was desperate to escape the soil that fed on his flesh.

I do know she spent every dollar in our pocket to buy our way here.

Colony 343, a lunar purgatory carved into a labyrinth of caves near the edge of Cressida Canyon.

“Willa?”

I'm pulling on my moonsuit when Mama comes around the corner from her studio, clad in coveralls splattered with grey and black. Her curls are tied up with a limp brown scarf.

“You’re going up?”

I shrug.

“Alone?”

She’s clutching her paintbrush in both hands, trying to hide the tremors that we both pretend don’t exist.

“What are you working on today?” I deflect and peek around the door.

“Oh, just a piece for the Chairwoman.”

It’s another bleak moonscape, dark, dusty and dull, the weight of the universe blotting out the earthglow and the starlight. It’s all her hands can manage these days. The breath and color that used to live in her canvases has faded from her repertoire in the years since our arrival.

No one commissions anything from Mama anymore. Odd, that the Chairwoman suddenly would.

I’m the one who keeps us fed with my apprenticeship in the greenhouse.

A few programs send apprentices off-Moon for once-in-a-lifetime, all-expenses-paid extended training missions. Horticulture is one of the few that sends apprentices to Earth. Of the five off-Moon horticulture opportunities, it is the most coveted, most competitive assignment.

Now that I’m 18, it’s my ticket home. I don't plan on making the return trip–technically a crime, if I'm caught.

Training assignments are today. I’m top of the class; it should be a shoe-in, but the wait has stretched my anxiety to its limit. I thought maybe a moonwalk, with today’s Full Earth view, might help calm my nerves in the final few hours.

Mama knows how important this is to me. She's always been supportive, though lately I see a new sadness lurking in her lingering gazes.

“I'm just going up for a bit,” I say, picking up my helmet. “My shift starts at four.”

Mama should chastise me, at least remind me of the surface’s many cosmic dangers, but she doesn’t.

“Okay Bug.” She nods absentmindedly and drifts back to her work while I let myself out.

It’s my first moonwalk without Zach and Mira.

I met Mira on the journey here. Her dad is an Important Engineer, assigned indefinitely to the colony. We were the only children on board, trauma-bonded by our violent escape from the atmosphere.

Zach was the Chairwoman's son, born and raised in the colony. He was small, with underdeveloped lungs that never caught up to him. There weren't many kids in the colony, so he was waiting eagerly to greet us with his mother at the shuttle landing site.

“Hi, I'm Zach,” he formally shook our hands. “Have you ever seen a volcano erupt in real life?”

He was only put out momentarily when he learned that most Earth folk had never witnessed volcanic explosions in person, and quickly followed up with a landslide of other questions.

“Did you ever ride in a hot air balloon?”

“What does snow taste like?”

“What’s the biggest bug you've ever seen?”

I drift along the canyon, careful not to get too close to the edge, and pass by the Rhino.

Without clouds to inspire our imaginations, we ascribed life to boulders instead. The Rhino, lounging lazily on his side, was our favourite spot.

The three of us sat back against his flank every Full Earth day to escape the underground drudgery in which we were trapped.

The reality that none of us would ever set foot on Earth again–or at all–had settled over us like a shroud during the earliest tremors of our celestial adolescence.

“Frost sparkling on the shingles in the mornings.” I said.

“Hot apple cider in a thermos.” Mira said.

“Daddy’s favourite month for sports–football, baseball, and hockey all at the same time.” I said.

And from there, so hungry to know the planet of his ancestors, Zach spouted off another million questions about October that we did our best to answer.

On his final Full Earth day, we snuck him out of bed and carried him, Mira under one arm and me under the other, out to the Rhino.

Our last gift to him was summer.

“Pistachio ice cream at the beach, melting faster than you can eat it.” Mira said.

“Cannonballs off the dock into water so cold that it steals your breath.” I said.

“Sand in your shoes on the walk back to the cottage.” Mira said.

“Sneaking into movie matinees.” I said.

“Extra buttery theatre popcorn that you inhale before the previews end.” Mira said.

“Carnival tickets spilling out of your pockets.” I said.

“Cotton candy sticking to your fingers.” Mira said.

We chirped at him until his wheezing became rattling, and we paused to watch a hurricane swirl over the Atlantic.

Today is clear; only a few wisps of white drift above the European Republic.

I’ve forgotten how big Earth is. How beautiful. How far. I drink my fill of the ocean blues and forest greens, trying not to dwell on whether Harriet has selected me for the coveted apprenticeship, and what I'll do if she hasn't.

I kick at a pockmarked moon rock. It bounces away gently, a puff of dust coughing in its wake.

Daddy and I used to collect rocks together.

Chunks of sandstone that rippled with the terracotta rainbow.

River rock worn round by the ceaseless weeping of glaciers.

Precious heart-shaped pebbles pulled from our spruce-lined driveway.

Glittering crystals that we found in summer souvenir shops.

I kept them on my windowsill, and when I laid in bed, gazing up, all I could see were my rocks sitting proud against the sky that never stood still.

The rosy quartz loved the sunrise, catching the rays of dawn in its belly.

The moody amethyst rippled in the shadows of whorling indigo thunderheads.

The honey-faced amber soaked up every golden moment of late summer afternoons.

My favourite, the obsidian, came to life at night, its shimmering veins of green and gold called to the surface by the moonlight.

I wasn't allowed to bring my rocks on the shuttle.

There’s no moonlight on the moon anyway.

The timer I set chirps in my ear, so I grudgingly turn my back on the brilliant view of home and return to bunker 4949.

Forty-nine was Daddy’s badge number.

“Seven sevens,” he said, ruffling my hair. “That’s as lucky as it gets, Bug.”

If only. We buried him a week later.

I squeeze my eyes through the hissing of the airlock and strip off my moonsuit. I chuck my scuffed standard-issue moonboots next to Mama’s identical, pristine pair beside the door.

As a kid, I had pink and purple sneakers, splattered with sparkles, with flashing lights around the heels. They were almost as fabulous as my rocks.

I change into my coveralls and head out into the colony. I find the lift and head up four floors to the massive greenhouse that supplements our shipments from Earth.

I step into the warm, lush air, so close to home but never quite the same. Never quite right.

On that last day with Zach, the echoes of our summers grew weary as we listened to his weak rasp through our earpieces.

“Going to bed with the smoke from a campfire in your hair,” Mira whispered.

“Blades of freshly mowed grass on your bare feet after a backyard soccer match,” I croaked.

“Sweet tea in a glass pitcher covered in lemons on the front porch.” Mira sighed.

“Crickets singing lullabies. Trees whispering the wind’s secrets. Sunshine kissing your shoulders,” I cried.

We were the closest to Earth Zach would ever get.

“Give Duke a big sloppy kiss for me when you go home.” Zach wheezed to me as we hauled him back to his bunker.

We didn't have the heart to tell him that dogs didn't live long enough for Duke to still be around. I wish we had, and that we’d told him about the Rainbow Bridge while we were at it.

Because two weeks later, his lungs finally failed him.

A month after that, Mira stole into her mother’s medicine cabinet.

I line up at the edge of the vegetable quadrant with the other apprentices to receive my instructions. I bounce on my toes, anxious for the announcement.

Harriet stalks down the line, handing out our daily checklists. I scan her stern face for any sign of news but she gives nothing away.

At the end of the line she stops. Sighs. Turns.

“Vincent,” she barks. Vince steps forward eagerly, though with a side-eyed glance at me. “Mission Earth. T-minus 22 days.”

His jaw drops. My heart cracks in two.

“The second assignment.” Harriet’s eyes find mine, and there's an apology flickering there.

“Willa. Mission Mars. T-minus 49 days.”

My heart crumbles to dust. My legs crumple from the ground up.

I'm in bed when I come to. Mama’s wan face leans over me.

“I'm so sorry Bug,” she whispers. “I had to make sure you'd come back to me.”