Chapter Thirteen (part d)

The new-moon was still there, waiting high overhead. And all at once Jennifer knew that the moon wasn't at all what she'd thought it to be. It was something else entirely; it was a hole, an opening, a way to fall into.

She didn't have time to think much more, before she knew it she felt herself falling. But she was falling straight up instead of down, as if gravity had suddenly released her for some unknown reason of its own, and the new-moon clearing was soon left far behind. Jennifer glanced down as she fell up and away, and she saw Rachael and Jamie looking around for new-moon stones on the ground far below. She wanted to call, but they seemed so impossibly far away she knew they would never hear.

And still she kept falling, faster and faster, and the soft silver light of the new-moon hole got closer and closer and bigger and fatter and Jennifer knew she was falling right at it. What would she find on the other side? No time to decide, she was falling right into that hole of a moon and soon she'd be gone. ' Gone where? She couldn't even begin to imagine. Somewhere else entirely, gone, gone, completely gone, gone all the way...

"Oh!" she cried.

But it seemed far too far to fall through the moon; she knew she couldn't bear to fall that far. All at once Jennifer felt very afraid, afraid to fall away from the rest of the world and leave it behind. She tried to hold back but she just couldn't do it. The feeling of falling was appallingly real and she knew it was certainly true. So at the very last moment before she fell through she came face to face with her fear and embraced it. She gave up resisting the feeling of falling and decided to dive through instead. She raised both her arms up over her head and threw herself forward and let herself go ...

She dove straight into the hole of the moon without a single care about where she might go or what she might be. And for one single moment she lost herself entirely and there wasn't a trace of her mind or her face or a single place she could call her own. No sight, no touch, no taste, no sound, not even a thought to wrap herself around; just a profound emptiness that accepted her form and dissolve it completely. She knew she was nothing, she knew she was nowhere, and then all at once she was everywhere too.

She was no longer separate from anything else. She was this flower, that tree, the wind in the grass and the grass in the wind, she looked right out of all of these places and everywhere else simultaneously. She was high in the sky and down low on the ground, she was Jamie and Rachael and each of the creatures in the new moon clearing. She was there inside the new-moon stones too, peeking out at herself peeking down at herself peeking up at herself again. It was all so happy, all things together, the whole world beside her, inside her, outside her, with everything one and the same, without a name...

And then suddenly the flock of crows flew away from the sun. Daylight returned and the new moon disappeared. All at once Jennifer found herself back inside again where she'd always been, looking out from the one single place behind her own face and standing right there in the new-moon clearing. Everyone around her looked profoundly happy as if they had each just found something very valuable. Everyone held a new-moon stone in their hand, everyone except Jennifer.

"Oh no!" she cried in dismay. "I completely forgot to pick one up!"