The full moon hovered low in the sky above the fence Joni Powell used to scramble over as a child, headed into the woods on weekend afternoons to become Galadriel, Lady of Light, roaming Lothlórien. Her great-aunt Polly would watch from the kitchen window, smiling, and didn’t worry if she was a little late to return.
Aunt Polly sat behind her now in the backyard, bundled up in her watching chair, gazing into the moon as she always did on nights like this. It was a ritual that went back as far as Joni’s memory, to years that long preceded her moving with her aunt to look after her when her health began to falter. Aunt Polly was Wiccan, after all, and her bond with the moon reached back to when she herself had been as young as Joni Galadriel.
She, too, was watching the moon, but through the eyepiece of the new Celestron NexStar Michael had bought her in celebration of her completed thesis. She’d gotten the hang of it, and was patiently tuning in on a particular spot on its face.
“Here,” she said, stepping back. She motioned for Michael to take a look. He bent into the eyepiece.
“What am I looking at?”
“Aristarchus,” she replied, “in Oceanus Procellarum – the Ocean of Storms.”
“A crater,” he said.
“Yup. Aristarchus, named for the Greek astronomer,” she continued, “and a very interesting crater. At 450 million years old, it’s just a baby. Lots of feldspar and ilmenite, which is rich in oxygen. That makes it one of the most likely spots for a permanent settlement in the future, because we can make air and water out of the rocks.
“It was one of the first craters examined with ultraviolet photography, in 1911, by Robert Wood. But the really interesting part is this: it’s the most visually dynamic spot on the moon. Because of the composition of the minerals in the soil, it frequently changes appearance - which used to freak out moonwatchers like my aunt, until we understood what was causing it.”
Michael pulled back from the telescope, looked over at Aunt Polly, whose blissful expression was unchanged. She was happiest when sitting out here on nights like this.
“She can see the moon change?”
“Lots of Wiccans can, all over the world.”
“So, she’s a moon witch?”
“All witches are moon witches.”
“I mean, like, there’s garden witches and forest witches, candle witches, crystal witches, so I figured-”
“All witches are moon witches.”
She stared up at the moon through Galadriel-esque, sky-blue eyes, which in turn illuminated her honey-blonde, Galadriel-esque hair, which was bunned up at the moment. Sable, her aunt’s cat, rubbed against her leg.
“It’s creepy,” she said after a moment. “The newest crater up there was formed when Russia’s Luna 25 crashed. She spotted it.”
“Why is that creepy?”
“It’s only 12 meters across,” Joni replied.
Her moving in had been prompted by her great-aunt's dementia diagnosis, and it would have been easy to write off her claim that she had seen the Luna 25 impact site with her naked eyes as delusion; but even though Joni couldn’t explain it, she wasn’t so sure. Aunt Polly spoke less and less in recent months, so when she did speak, Joni paid closer attention; and she seemed incredibly certain, when it came to the moon, even if it seemed irrational.
“These things still aren’t powerful enough to see Apollo 11, right?” Michael asked.
“No,” she said, “no Earth-based telescope has resolution that powerful through the atmosphere. But space-based telescopes can.
“What we can do,” she continued, “is zero in on the sites themselves, even if we can’t pick out the hardware. Apollo 16, for example, landed not too far northwest of Aristarchus. I have the coordinates...” She pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and began redirecting the telescope.
“Aaaaagh! Aaaaaaaagh!”
Both Joni and Michael jumped, so loud and suddenly had her aunt cried out. They turned to see her struggling to rise out of her chair, running to her side.
“Aunt Polly! What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong!”
Michael steadied the old woman; when he tried to ease her back into the chair, she resisted, her eyes fixed on the moon, a finger pointed skyward.
“The moon!” she cried out. “The moon has moved!”
They awoke exhausted the next morning, a Sunday. He had preceded her, slipping out of bed and starting coffee. They would keep things quiet and let Aunt Polly sleep.
Though he still had his apartment, a convenient three blocks from the university’s college of engineering, he had practically moved in with Joni at the stately, turn-of-the-century home that her great-aunt had inherited from her parents, decades before Joni had been born. It was far too large for three people, let alone one, but there was no question of Aunt Polly ever leaving.
The kitchen had been modernized, but much of the house remained as it had always been: high ceilings, down-to-the-floor windows in the living room and parlor, a covered porch with greater square footage than most starter homes. Elegant staircase. Two fireplaces. Two bedroom balconies.
And they stepped out into the sitting room above the backyard to have their coffee.
Neither had gotten enough sleep, but they wanted to be awake before Aunt Polly.
It had taken nearly an hour to calm the old woman, and another hour to get her to sleep. She seemed certain, and in turn panicked, that the moon had moved. Joni assured her several times that such a thing was impossible, but soon gave up.
“Should we call somebody?” he asked.
She paused before answering. “I don’t know what to make of this,” she finally replied. “I’ve never seen her that upset. I mean, never, over anything. I know what they told us about the progression of the dementia, but this was just... really scary.”
“We could take her in tomorrow,” he suggested. “At least have her doctor look her over.”
She nodded. “This is uncharted territory,” she agreed. “If this is going to keep happening, we need to understand it and prepare for it.”
“Aunt Polly is awake,” her digital assistant informed her from the kitchen counter, as she’d requested. They both rose.
“I’ll go get her dressed,” Joni said.
“I’ll fix her tea and turn on the morning show,” he said.
Joni paused before heading upstairs.
“When I was very small,” she told him, “she used to call me her Little Moonbeam.”
Her aunt had nothing to say as Joni gently removed her nightgown and replaced it with a house dress.
“How’s that?” she asked as they faced the bedroom mirror. No reply.
“Aunt Polly,” she ventured, “do you remember last night? You seemed very upset, and it has me worried.”
Her aunt did not reply. Joni guided her into the hall and toward the stairs.
“You seemed very concerned about the moon,” she tried again, “and we want to understand what happened that was so upsetting to you.”
Her aunt paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at her.
“I know what I saw,” she said firmly. And she proceeded to the den ahead of her.
Michael was already there with a cup of hot tea. The TV was on, but he was watching a news broadcast. Whatever was being said sounded urgent, and Michael was staring hard at the television, still as a corpse.
“Michael? What is it?”
He turned slowly and looked at them both.
“You’re not gonna believe this...”
Yelena Volkova has seen it from Chernihiv.
Laney Walsh had seen it from Inverness.
Kheri Egwu had seen it from outside Kampala.
Witches, seers, and other magicals the world over had seen it; the moon they’d watched all their lives, as millions had watched over the centuries, was stepping back.
Lions hunted, owls scanned the shadowed ground for prey in its glow. Coral colonies spawned in the Great Barrier Reef at its cues. The ocean’s waters moved, spreading their heat at its instruction. Countless marine species mated and thrived at the encouragement of the tides it called.
Over hundreds of millions of years, the moon had composed and conducted the rhythms of life across the planet.
It would have no successor.
Nathan Hughes, professor of astronomy and Joni’s graduate advisor, ascended the podium in an auditorium packed to the rafters with faculty, university officials, select invited students, and government officials, both state and federal. The atmosphere was charged and somber.
“If I could have your attention,” Hughes said into a boomy microphone, “we have a lot to get through. Several people will be speaking, and we’ll take questions when appropriate, but this will all go more quickly if there are no interruptions.
“Two days ago, the US government, in coordination with several nations in Europe and Asia, revealed that telemetry gathered by NASA and other sources around the world have indicated a rapid increase in the mean distance between the Earth and the moon. As you’ve no doubt heard, that distance has increased by more than a thousand meters, and the increase occurred in a period of less than two weeks.” Everyone in the auditorium had indeed already heard this news, but there was an anxious stirring, nonetheless.
“Now, that might not sound like much, and the moon has been receding from the Earth steadily for millions of years - but at a rate of about an inch and a half per year. That means the moon has jumped, in two weeks, to where we would have expected it to be in the year 28,350 AD.
“What you haven’t heard on the news directly, but undoubtedly have been hearing via humors, websites and social media, is that the cause of the moon’s sudden shift is a black hole that has entered our solar system and is crossing the orbital plane. With us today is Madison Porter, deputy administrator of NASA, and we’ll hear from her shortly with the technical details.
“The news has also not yet reported that NASA discovered this black hole more than a year ago via the James Webb telescope, and has kept its existence classified, in coordination with other nations, as the implications of this event have been processed by the world’s governments. However, the change in the moon’s position has reached a point where it is detectable by the public, and can no longer be kept a secret. Students in our own department are able, for instance, to bounce lasers off the reflectors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo missions and accurately gauge the distance, making this monumental shift clear.
“In Dr. Porter’s technical presentation to follow, you’ll see that the black hole is following a parabolic trajectory that will take it closer to the sun, causing it to slingshot back out of the solar system. Though its intense gravitational field has been felt by every planet currently on our side of the sun, ours is the only planet with which it has shared close proximity, though it wreaked havoc on the asteroid belt. Several smaller asteroids are now traveling in its wake.
“Though the Earth is feeling the gravitational influence of the black hole, it is not close enough, nor will it be, to significantly disrupt our own orbit. The moon, however, is another story: though it one-fourth the diameter of the Earth in size, it has only one one-hundredth of the Earth’s mass. The black hole is disrupting the moon’s orbit severely, and the disruption will grow even greater in the coming weeks.
“I will turn things over to Dr. Porter in a moment, and then we’ll hear from Gen. Thomas Ferrell. But before we move on, I’ll pause for questions.”
A hundred hands shot up. Hughes chose one at random.
“If the moon continues to move away, what will that do to the Earth?”
“Dr. Porter will offer more specifics, but in general, it’s what you’ve been seeing on the Internet,” he answered. “Tidal activity in the oceans will be greatly reduced, up to 75 percent; this will lead to the extinction of thousands of marine species, and alter the ocean’s currents, causing temperature extremes of hot and cold that make our current climate challenges seem like a spring weekend in the Poconos.
“A serious reduction in moonlight will severely impact nocturnal species, bringing more extinctions. Rodents, on the other hand, will thrive.
“But worst of all, the decline in the influence of the moon’s gravity would seriously shift the axis of the Earth, changing our current pattern of seasons radically; either the current axial tilt of 23 degrees will be greatly reduced, diminishing the existing seasons to almost nothing, or it will be doubled, wreaking environmental havoc. We would almost certainly face a new ice age within a few generations.”
This set off a murmur throughout the auditorium. Michael, standing with Joni near the back, took her hand and squeezed it.
“I remind you that you were all specifically invited here today because this information is out there now, it can’t be contained, and we are all in a position to reinforce fact over fiction, in this community and within our greater sphere of influence in social media and elsewhere,” Hughes said. “All of this is very difficult to hear, and panic is already taking hold everywhere. Needless to say, the Internet is melting down, and that will only get worse. Let’s all do what we can to keep the train on the tracks as best we can until we know more about what the future holds.
“I'll take another question...”
“There used to be this show my dad watched,” Michael said after sipping from a bottle of Guinness, “when I was a kid. It was science fiction. British, I think. There was a city on the moon, and the moon got blown out of orbit, and it went flying off through space with all the people in this moon city. Trapped. Forced to just float through the galaxy, no way to get back to Earth.”
“Nothing can blow the moon out of orbit,” Joni responded. “Any blast powerful enough to do that would destroy the moon in the process.”
“I know. But my dad liked the show.”
“Did you watch it?”
“I was five. It scared the hell out of me.”
She sipped white wine. Aunt Polly was out in her chair, staring at a moon that was neatly halved, stroking Sable in her lap.
High upon the ridge, more than half a mile away, a wolf howled at the moon. It was a familiar sound; as a little girl, it had frightened her, but Aunt Polly had explained that wolves felt the same way about the moon that she did.
“One of the guys in the lab told us something interesting today,” he said to her, just to change the subject. “You’re the astronomer, you’ll appreciate this.
“Earth’s rotation is slowing, it turns out, about one second every 50,000 years. And the moon, as we know, was moving away from Earth at a rate of 1.5 inches a year. So there comes a point at which Earth and the moon will achieve geosynchronicity – the protracted length of a day on Earth will exactly match the moon’s period of rotation around it, 47 of our days. At which point, the moon will no longer exert any tidal force, and it will reverse direction. Then, after an equal period, it will be close enough to Earth to be shredded by gravity.”
“And when will all this happen?”
“The geosynchronicity is due in about 50 billion years.”
“You understand the sun will have already shut down 45 billion years before that.”
“Bummer.”
They fell silent.
They had taken Aunt Polly to her doctor, who gave her a full examination and declared that she was no better and no worse than she’d been when examined two months earlier. After the meeting with Dr. Hughes and the NASA administrator at the university, they’d shared the details of just how right she had been about the moon. How she had known remained a mystery to Joni.
She had stopped speaking altogether. For her, there was only the moon, and Sable in her lap.
A thousand meters became a thousand miles, then ten thousand, and so on - and the moon became noticeably smaller in the sky. Where it had once been the size of a quarter, it was now the size of a dime.
The environmental changes foretold by the scientists had begun. Tides were diminishing; temperatures were shifting in regions around the globe. No data was yet available on the impact of pressures placed on marine life, nor nocturnal predators on land.
Full once again, the moon shone down on the shore of Lake Wamala, west of Kampala, situated discreetly between a string of Christian churches. Kheri Egwu donned the kifwebe mask of wood and feathers she had made herself, and began to dance – a moon dance she had learned in her youth, one that would bring protection for her family’s generation to follow.
At that moment in Scotland, Laney Walsh and eight friends gathered in a glen just north of Culloden Moor, disrobing in the moonlight. Music issued from a cell phone, and the nine young women moonbathed, until sleep called them and they camped beneath the stars.
And in a clearing in the woods of Mizhrichynskyi, Yelena Volkova set out her many crystals beneath the blue light of the moon, letting them soak up its energies. While they still could.
Many times, she had performed this ritual. There were wolves in a reserve adjoining the park, and she often heard them howl at the full moon. Tonight, she heard nothing.
They all shared in the experience of billions, who watched the familiar silver orb, elemental of the eons, predecessor of all life, drift further and further into the darkness. They felt the growing distance in their deepest reaches, the melancholy of lost love, of irreconcilable estrangement, of final denouement. Humanity watched its beloved, constant companion recede, and ached.
Months passed, and a permanent winter descended on the United States. Aunt Polly insisted on maintaining her moonwatch, bundling up every night, regardless of the moon’s phase. Michael rigged three heaters to provide her with a tolerable space.
There was no longer any question in the public’s mind about the departure of the moon, even though neither NASA nor the White House had stated definitively that the moon would be lost. The black hole had long since passed the Earth, tumbling toward perihelion, but still gave the moon a vicious tug every time its orbit swung toward it.
It was scarcely larger than Jupiter in the sky.
Joni had long since been told the truth by Professor Hughes. Many weeks had passed since the President had declared martial law, as most world leaders had done. The economy was in tatters as the oceans cooled; cold regions got colder, hot regions got hotter, and bush wars were raging in Africa, with similar conflicts in Southeast Asia and India. Suicide became the leading cause of death, worldwide. Joni hadn’t heard a wolf howl in months.
She was just finishing unloading the dishwasher when she noticed Sable pawing the back door. She moved to let the cat in, but Sable bolted out into the yard.
“Aunt Polly!”
The old woman was slouched in her moonwatching chair, unconscious, unresponsive to her niece’s voice.
Michael gathered her up and secured her into the SUV.
“Your aunt will not live much longer,” the doctor told them, “but from what I read in her file, this has been coming for a while. You must have been expecting this. It’s not surprising in a woman in her age, suffering dementia as long as she has.”
Joni looked at Michael, then back at the doctor.
“How long does she have?”
The doctor smiled sadly.
“How long do any of us have?”
“We have to leave,” he told her later in Aunt Polly’s hospital room. The old woman slept, but he kept his voice low anyway.
“I know,” she agreed, “but where?”
“I know a place, up north,” he said, “remote, and not many people know it’s there. We’ve been stockpiling for a while now, and I found a trailer we can hitch to the SUV. We’ll be cold, but there will be clean air and water and the protection of seclusion.”
“What about Aunt Polly?”
He gave her a meaningful look.
“It’s not the dementia,” Joni said firmly. “It’s the moon.”
Aunt Polly was sleeping. Even so, he lowered his voice.
“I understand,” he nodded, “and I think I know something we can do about that.”
Aunt Polly was home the next day, and slept through the next two. Michael had corralled a couple of friends from the engineering school for a mystery project, one he wouldn’t tell her about. The campus wasn’t abandoned, but classes had ceased, and no one much cared that he and his guys raided the mechanical engineering shops as they pleased. They’d hauled everything out to the football field of the empty high school near Aunt Polly’s home, building something on the football field. Joni was curious, but she couldn’t leave Aunt Polly and Michael wouldn’t tell her what they were doing.
Another day passed, and after a dinner of soup and crackers, Aunt Polly rose from the table, went into the living room, then returned with her coat and blanket.
“Aunt Polly, no,” Joni said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Her aunt ignored her and donned the coat, then exited through the back door, Sable at her side.
Michael retrieved jackets for both of them and came back into the kitchen carrying an old-fashioned walkie-talkie.
Joni situated her aunt in the moonwatching chair as Michael turned on the heaters.
Aunt Polly scanned the heavens, searching for the moon. Joni found it quickly, but it may as well have been just another one of the planets.
Aunt Polly began to weep. She sagged in the chair.
Joni checked her pulse. It was weak.
“Guys,” Michael spoke into the walkie-talkie, “now.”
Blocks away, a generator came to life, and a spray of light from the football field flared to the east. A few minutes passed, as Joni stared and Michael smiled.
Above the trees, a glowing curve slowly ascended, rising into the night sky with agonizing leisure. Clearing the treetops, it was plainly a sphere, brightly illuminated from within. It continued to float into the night, higher and higher, and Joni gently turned Aunt Polly’s face in its direction.
The image of the moon’s face was crude, clearly the effort of an amateur artist, but recognizable. It even included Aristarchus, in more-or-less the right place. The cables were hundreds of feet long, the light in the balloon as powerful as they could have made it without burning the thing to bits. Minutes passed as it continued to climb higher and higher, until it was visible for miles.
As Aunt Polly watched, her eyes wide with wonder, the moon returned to her – and her tears became something else.
Joni’s own tears flowed just as freely.
Both the Internet and cell phone services were spotty at best now, but they would later learn that videos of the new moon rapidly went viral, circling the Earth, bringing tears to millions.
Joni held Michael’s arm tightly.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
An abrupt sound came from Aunt Polly, and they both knelt next to her as she slumped. Sable jumped onto the arm of the moonwatching chair.
Joni held her aunt as she fought to breathe. She suddenly looked up at her as if just now recognizing her.
“My Little Moonbeam!” she said brightly, and her voice carried more joy than Joni had ever heard before.
Her eyes closed, for the last time.
And somewhere out on the ridge, a wolf howled.
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