full moon

When I still think of her, I think of the full moon: bright and beautiful and impossible to ignore. And I think of all the times she arranged to have her most important gatherings, from grand balls to informal salons, coincide with that moon, and how effortless she made being in perfect control seem on those days. Those were the days she cemented alliances, and those were the days she destroyed her enemies with a single carefully timed word. Those were the nights she seemed unstoppable.

It was an autumn evening, the last time she was able to make the city dance to her rhythm and no one else's. The gusty wind that day even had the leaves dancing for her, making the whole city alight with red and gold, carpeting the streets on the way to the palace. And then by nightfall, the clouds raced through the sky, adding even more drama to a fantastically golden moon. I thought that night--even me, who had long since resolved to leave as soon as I found the strength--that this was it. Here, tonight, she would win, and the last of her enemies would fail, and we could finally live in that utopia she always dreamed of.

I was on the balcony enjoying the breeze in my hair and the spectacle of that perfect moon when the illusion broke. I didn't know the woman who found me, but she wore the green sash that marked her as one of the enemy. "Where is she?" she asked. "Aren't you her . . ." she seemed to struggle for the right word to describe me, much as I often did. She waved her hand irritably. Whatever name I went by, I was unimportant. "I have a message."

There was something odd in her tone. "I don't know where she is," I said, carefully, "but if it's urgent--"

"It is."

"--then I can deliver a message to her."

She seemed to steel herself, and then she delivered the news. That there was a coup planned, and nearly complete--that the following day the rivals of the Princess would have her and her supporters arrested. Here, immediately following her display of such impossible majesty and power, she would be cut down.

What can you say to that? It felt almost impossible to believe, but I believed it regardless. I forgot, I suppose, that the full moon inevitably wanes.