SilverMoonLight

SilverMoonLight (Chapter 1 - 11)

For Sarah,

who always believed in Emma and Calum

You mustn't doubt

when you lose something,

a person

or a joy

or a happiness;

it will all come again, and more gloriously.

What must fall away will fall away,

what belongs to us will stay,

for everything is ordered according to rules

far greater than our understanding,

and with which we only appear to be in conflict.

You must live within yourself

and consider the whole of your life,

all of its million possibilities, its broadness and future,

in light of which there is nothing past nor lost.

A letter written by Rainer Maria Rilke to Friedrich Westhoff,

Rome, 29. April 1904

The water all around me seems to be getting darker and darker. I try to fight my way through, to get to the surface, but I can't seem to move even an inch, regardless of how hard I thrash my arms and kick my legs. In the distance, I see a tiny pin prick of light and try desperately to swim towards it. But I only sink deeper, and the light becomes smaller and smaller until, eventually, it completely extinguishes. Then I feel the pressure on my chest. My lungs are threatening to burst. I gasp for air, no longer able to move my arms. Something grabs at me. I struggle in vain to break free ...

Chapter One

I couldn't remember the last time I had woken up in the middle of the night. I never usually woke during the night at all, at least not since I was five or six years old. Bleary-eyed, I squinted into the half darkness and waited for the familiar objects in my room to take shape. The water glass on my nightstand shimmered like silver. I reached out for it. The water tasted stale and was ice cold, but I took a few sips anyway. The wind rustled the white curtains by the open window. It parted them for a brief moment, and through the narrow crack I could see a huge yellow moon, hanging there as if it were pinned in the sky. I loved the nights when there was a full moon, particularly their cold scent. I snuggled down beneath my thick blanket and listened to the comforting sounds coming from the living room. It was only once I had almost fallen asleep again that I noticed it. The silence. All at once, I was wide awake. But as hard as I tried, I couldn't hear a thing: no rustling sounds as my mother Brenda moved around on the sofa, no clink as she put her wine glass back down on the table. And certainly not the comforting murmur of the television. Nothing. It was silent, too silent, deathly silent. I reached for my dressing gown and pulled it on. On tiptoe, I crept over the cold floor of our apartment and turned on the lights. »Mom?« I called, already with the vague premonition that I wouldn't get an answer. I grabbed my cell phone. No messages. I dialed her number and let it ring and ring for an eternity, but she didn't pick up. Walking slowly back to my room, I pulled off my dressing gown and lay down in my still-warm bed. I reached for the book on my nightstand and tried in vain to concentrate on the sentences. An uneasy feeling had taken hold of me, that I couldn't shake it off. Something woke me. A loud noise, too loud, forced its way into my head: the persistent clang of the doorbell. My book crashed to the floor as I pulled the blanket over my head in irritation. Mom would get it. It continued to ring, more insistently now, unrelenting. I waited. Then, realizing that the lamp next to my bed was still burning, I suddenly remembered. A sense of foreboding seeped into my mind as I ran to the door and flung it open.