Once, the nighttime sky, save the moon, was endless, starless dark. But watch:
Evening in the tiny, low-roofed cottage of clay and wattles, the fire pops and cracks. The girl, six years old, lays in the straw bed in the corner, in shadow. Her father planes rough shingles, tosses shavings to the flames, and hums softly. Her mother lifts the pan of melted wax and pours slowly around new wicks in old jars, some small light for the darkened world.
The girl gasps, and calls, “Mother? Mother?!” The woman settles the pan on the stone hearth, rises, approaches, settles next to the small, shaking child.
“What is it, dearest?”
The feeling is too big for her body, too big for words. The girl has realized just this moment that she is going to die. She isn’t sick, or in danger. But she understands now, amidst warmth and quiet and love, that one day her life will end. She tries to express this in a torrent of stutters and sniffles and raw-throated six-year-old fear.
Her mother is tired this night. Not at her best, she says, “My heart, there’s no point worrying about the future. Why, you could be playing with your friends tomorrow, running, and a moth could fly into your open mouth and choke you, and you would die. It’s silly to fear such things.” She pats the girl’s head, smooths the blanket, and returns to candlemaking.
The girl, already scared of death, is now terrified of running. Of opening her mouth. Of moths. She’s heard her parents pray to their god, but she’s never noticed an answer. Besides, what would such a mighty being have to do with her small self? She decides to aim lower, to what she has seen. She whispers to the ceiling, eyes closed.
“God of Moths, please don’t kill me.” She mumbles it over and over beneath the covers until she falls asleep.
The next morning, she goes outside to gather firewood, stepping cautiously, her mouth a tight line. At the corner of the cottage, near the pond, stands a man, or the shape of a man, his outline hazy, shifting, blurred. The figure approaches, and in the pink glow of sunrise she sees it is a cloud of moths, flitting in formation. Hundreds? Thousands? It bows to her, speaks in fluttering tones. “You have nothing to fear from me, daughter. Go in peace.”
The God of Moths appeased, she feels better over breakfast. But as she rises and goes about her chores, the fear returns with a thousand new faces. She’s never noticed how many ways there are to die.
Slipping on a slick river stone, drowning. “Goddess of Small Stones, please don’t kill me.”
Their cow’s heavy hoof flying backwards during milking, denting her skull. “God of Cows, have mercy.”
Gathering the wrong mushrooms, throat cinching shut. “Goddess of Mushrooms, please…”
Falling, trapped and airless in the bog, in the nearby caves. “Goddess of Quicksand, God of Cracks and Crevices—”
Each day fills up with her prayers. Each dawn she is greeted by these neglected deities—a placid bovine brow, a dark gash in the air—who are delighted to finally be remembered and reverenced. They promise her safety. But still, each night she stares at the ceiling, determined to anticipate every possible danger. Goddess of Spiders. God of Snot and Coughs. Please.
Please.
Years pass, fears imagined and catalogued, small gods revered, until one spring morning walking with the Goddess of Oleander, the God of Ticks, she stares past them at another sunrise painting the pond purple and red, smells the honeysuckle-rich air, and realizes she has never once been afraid of dying.
She has been afraid of missing this life.
She throws her arms around the chitinous, many-legged body as the God of Ticks clacks and chuckles, “Daughter, what is this?”
She dances through the rest of her day, falls asleep without struggle.
In the days that follow, her prayers change, become braver, no longer pleas, but invitations. Welcome, God of Moths. Welcome, Goddess of Sparks. Welcome.
Now she registers not fears, but daily wonders, large and small. Welcome, God of Fireflies, Goddess of First Kisses. Welcome, welcome.
She delves inside herself, is gracious to what lives there. Welcome, Goddess of Anger, God of Apathy. Welcome.
She finds herself almost unable to contain the goodness around her. Welcome, God of Buttered Bread, of Steaming Tea; Goddess of Shoe Leather. Welcome.
More years pass. Welcome, Goddess of Wrinkles, God of Gray Hair and Stooped Back. Welcome.
And welcome, at last, Grandmother Death, well beyond a God, who one dark night, strides past the pond to greet this gray-haired woman, bent down, freeing a ladybug from a spiderweb while apologizing to the spider. She rises, says, “Greetings, Grandmother. Is it time?”
Grandmother Death, prepared to say yes, pauses, taken aback as she now recognizes her equal, that rarest of things, the glory of a human fully alive. Death grins as the woman’s advocates appear and gather behind her—stack of small stones, waving oleanders, dazzle of fireflies—once-forgotten Gods and Goddesses who petition that one who holds such love, such regard, should never be snuffed out. Death bows her cloaked head to the woman, says, “Greetings, Goddess of Reverence.”
Death points up to the unbroken inkstain above, says, “Will you pinhole the shadowbox of night, be the eyes in the darkness? Will you illuminate what might go unseen, unloved?”
“I will, Grandmother.”
She turns to her peers, in wonder and gratitude, as she begins to dissipate, rising points of light, sparks in an updraft, thousands, millions, countless, spreading upward, outward. Now piercing the darkness. Now casting compassionate eyes upon all the unrevered glories below.
The moths follow her flight as far as they can. She sees them.
She always sees them.
She remembers their names, and says, welcome.
* * *
Ⓒ Daniel Roop
