The Moon Child

Chapter 1

Maria was an outcast from the barrio, and the wild forest was her home. Like an outlawed angel, she was feared and shunned in Malana. Many folks in the barrio believed she was not human, but an enchanted being who became flesh. She had no father and no mother and was found in the forest one moonlit night under a balete tree.

She was a small girl, barely five feet, with a slender and lithe little figure. Her dark luminous eyes were pools of moonlight, her creamy skin like golden brown chocolate, and her jet-black hair was a shiny silky cape, waist-long, and scented with coconut milk.

By dawn you could see her running over the hills and meadows with her windswept hair. At dusk she would be sitting on the riverbank, a bluebird perched on her shoulder, gazing far, far away into the twilight skies.

So many stories were told about her. Frightening stories. An evil witch with great magical powers, that's what she was, they said. She would appear in the barrio at midnight, luring young men to follow her back into the hidden forest groves. There, she laid with them, made love to them, her sweating naked body gleaming in the moonlight. Then, at the height of her frenzied rapture, she transformed herself. With the dark magic of her moonpower, she turned into a huge, ferocious wildcat. She slew her lovers, ate their hearts and livers, and left their bones and carcasses to rot under the scorching sun.

The women of Malana openly hated her.

"Maria is a curse to our barrio," they said. "She causes our men to sin with lust."

The men of Malana secretly desired her.

"Come to us, Maria," they said, "and be alone no more. We would sacrifice anything just to spend one night in your arms and to share your dreams."

The men lusted for the rich, smooth texture of her skin, her supple curvaceous body, her dark almond eyes filled with moonlight and love's sweetest, darkest secrets.

"We curse you, Maria," the women said.

"We love you, Maria," the men said.

The vile curses of the women could not harm her, nor could the sweetened words of the men entrap her. She remained untouched by the mud stains of malice and lust.

"I am free," Maria said. "To live my life as the wind. To sleep with the moon, and rise with the sun. I am free."

But her freedom came with a price. And, as the seasons passed, her loneliness deepened like a drowning sea that ebbed and flowed upon the shores of her soul.

She sat by the riverbank, gazing into the changing color of the skies, and listened to the melancholy love songs the river sang to her.

Tears filled her eyes. "Do not sing of love," she said. "I am afraid of it."

Wearing a white kimono blouse and a tube-shaped red skirt, Maria climbed a beautiful green hill, jasmine growing white and fragrant on its smoothly rising slope. She reached the hilltop; it was grassy, tabular and flat as a cake. A fire tree grew there. Exploding with bright red flowers like a chandelier of flaming kisses burning on its boughs and branches.

Maria sat beneath the fire tree. Bluebirds swooped through the branches with cheerful voices. Their silky, turquoise blue feathers spangled with sunlight. She clapped her hands and they descended, perching on her arms and shoulders. Smiling, she fed them with the red flowers of the fire tree. The bluebirds burst into a happy song, and Maria's laughter was like sparkling stardust.

But something suddenly frightened the bluebirds and they flew away. Someone had come, trespassed through the hill, and was approaching her.

"Maria!" A deep voice called, and a man appeared. "Maria. Don't run away." But she was already hiding behind the fire tree. "My name is Arturo." She was peeping at him with shy and suspicious eyes, a trembling, frightened doe ready to flee. "I don't mean any harm. I only want to give you a gift."

He was tall and broad of shoulder. He wore dark trousers and a loose unbuttoned shirt revealing a muscular chest with skin like dark leather. He had the manly bearing of power and authority, and a bolo hung from his waist.