Tonya R. Moore - Speculative Fiction Writer

Fern emerged from the desert under the cover of a million stars. The scorching surface of the Tenere clung stubbornly to her boots and the peppery scent of the indigo people was forever fused into her skin. Fern didn’t mind. She'd been a wanderer who'd stumbled into nomads. They'd been kind to her and had given her a home. Though she was tempted to turn tail and run back to the Tuareg, she kept going. A friend had extracted this promise from her--that Fern should go back out into the world and find the thing that she'd been running from.

She boarded a plane in Tunisia, feeling pitifully lost as the craft took to the skies. Her feet hadn't left the ground in three years and she could feel her whole body dangling, all the way up in the air. She concentrated on that, thinking how much it was like being born. The thought of birth brought back thoughts of other people being born. Her friend, Tanelher Bailah had lain dying as she gave birth to her son. There was another thought--another tragic birth. She refused to think of that place. There was too much pain and regret waiting there.

The cab turned away from the main road, entering an eerily silent neighborhood full of well-manicured lawns and unfortunate trees that had been mercilessly shoved into a tight, military formation. Tucked way behind this collective of architectural farces, was a tiny house beside the sea. It was Fern's, the house she'd filled up with wind chimes and whale song after the silence had become too much to bear.

Someone had taken care of her yard. There were roses blooming by the wrought iron gate and the grass had been trimmed recently. She wondered idly at that. Who would even bother? As she entered the living room, Fern was greeted by an assortment of sounds. There were small, delicate glass creations and large, resonant cylinders of metal that tolled like the bells of an ancient church. She smiled, caught in an unexpected rush of genuine pleasure. She'd missed the wind chime songs.

It was nightfall before Fern ventured outside the house once again. It was a humble little shoreline layered by grainy pebbles, barely any sand. She stood at the water’s edge gazing out into the quiet horizon. There was a moment years before, when she'd knelt by this same shoreline, watching her daughter’s ashes float away into endless blue. She'd been utterly consumed by grief and loneliness.

A warm zephyr blew off the ocean, pressing gently against her cheek. Her daughter was out there and everywhere, roaming the ocean. It was where she'd been conceived. It was where she belonged. Fern smiled thinking of Tanelher Bailah, who had understood Fern’s need to roam the earth. She'd tried to tell her, that she was still alive… that Fern hadn’t died with her daughter.

“Once you've lived in the desert, you're always thirsty,” she'd said. "Thirsty for water, for knowledge. Thirsty for love."

She took the pathway from the beach to the back of her house, thinking of a man she'd loved once. Did he know? She wondered. Did he know that he'd fathered her child?



Isaac had been an artist once. At twenty-one he'd been one of the more popular bohemian expressionists that the art world seemed to crave so much. A prodigy, he had a gift for bringing out the divine aspect of seemingly ordinary subjects. When he was twenty five, no canvas that he touched wanted to come alive anymore. He'd found himself back in the town that he'd grown up. While wandering the Salvador Dali museum, he'd stopped by one special painting. Dream caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Awakening.

“A personal favorite of mine,” the woman had said from behind him.

He'd taken one look at her. I want to paint you. His heart had said. “I want to paint you,” he'd said.

She'd been taken aback by his words, so much that she nervously stepped away. “No.” she said. Simply.

For a moment it had seemed like she'd walk away but then she'd stood silently beside him, gazing intently at the Dream caused by the Flight of a bee... That day had stretched out into weeks and months.

Fern picked up her coffee mug, eying the steaming contents fondly. It had been so long. The sadness that had dogged her for so long hadn't gone but it had trickled down into a tiny, loving spot in her heart. She drifted through the room of wind chimes and the back door, down the beaten pathway to the water. The golden rays of the summer sun rained down on her shoulders. She called Chloe.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Was all the woman said about Fern’s disappearance. She didn’t bother to ask. “The last manuscript was accepted by Durant,” and there was more. “After you left, an old friend had come looking for you.”

She didn’t say what Fern knew she must have figured out. She only faxed over an address for a downtown clubhouse. “Maybe you should pay him a visit. He came looking for you, Fern.”

It was the next day, but Fern still hadn’t gotten over the shock. he'd come looking… she'd never expected--it was an affair, nothing more. I left when I started loving him too much. Isn't that the way it works? But the thought still struck at something deep inside. He'd come looking for her. I’ll see him one more time, she thought. Tonight.



Isaac saw her the moment she crossed the threshold. He drank in every detail, her short, wild hair. She wore well-worn leather boots and striped skirt of Indian silk. her rumpled shirt clung to her bronzed flesh in odd places, as if she didn’t quite know how to be fashionable or care. She was dark, soft and goddess-like in the muted blue light. She didn’t seem to belong in this moment, like some divine being that had fallen into the human world and didn’t quite know how to get back to her own. Even though he realized that she was different--a stranger to him now, his hands that had gone unused for much too long began to ache for a canvas and brushes. His fingertips began longing for clay and stone. In another lifetime he'd have said what was in his heart. I want to paint you. He would have said. Instead, he stood before her wordlessly, touched by the surprise with which she greeted him.

Fern saw him coming and faltered and froze. He was so dark and larger than life. She turned away abruptly, but not before the faint scent of potent maleness, sandalwood and spice drifted toward her, driving a sudden rush of heat to her womb.

“Wait,” he entreated.

Fern turned around studying the hard contours of his face. She thought of her African and Asian ancestors. He was like a warrior prince. The next two hours were an odd blur of memory and barely spoken words. Once again, this completely magnetic spirit was eclipsing her own. Although it seemed such an ordinary, even mundane thing, she couldn’t recall sitting over coffee with anyone but him before. The long moments of silence seemed much too precious to be broken. She wondered if he understood that she was a little frightened of finding him again. Her hands shook a little.

Isaac felt as if he'd brought a piece of Anchorage back to St. Petersburg with him-the cold magic that had brought them both here. He was afraid to move, to speak… afraid to breathe, lest she'd vanish again. He saw her hands trembling, felt her leaving even as she sat there and without thinking he took her hands within his own.


“Why did you leave?”

Fern steadied her breath and looked at her hands, which he held firmly cradled within his own. They were not hands to flaunt. They were not graceful or well manicured. They were ordinary hands that wouldn’t impress anyone. No one cares about such things in the Tenere. She drew her hands away.

“Fern?”

She didn’t answer. Looking down at her hands, she marveled at how they still felt the weight of his touch. She remembered suddenly looking down at her hands, once before, thinking that there were bound to be more beautiful hands in the world. she'd never be polished and sophisticated, never fit into his world. Even though she'd lived her life in the strangest ways, she knew she was painfully ordinary. How could someone like Isaac bring himself to love something ordinary? she'd always assumed she'd spend her days alone. When she began to want too much, she left.

“Look at me,” she murmured. “I’m so painfully ordinary and you're so gifted at turning ordinary things into beautiful things. I might have been afraid that you’d have to make me into something beautiful to be able to love me.”

He said nothing for a very long time, just stared at her in something akin to disbelief.

Fern stood abruptly. There was never doubt in her heart that she loved Isaac, never the absence and here he was. “Walk with me?”

Resentment flared in his eyes for a moment but he smiled and said yes. They walked in silence. He didn’t ask where she was going.

Isaac made coffee as Fern roamed about his house. On her way up the stairs, she stopped to study a charcoal sketch on the wall. It was of his brother. The framed paper was yellowed with age. She entered the doorway to his studio. The entire second floor that used strewn with paints and half-finished canvases had been transformed. The room was immaculate. At the center was a large bed and to one small corner a worktable, was an unfinished sculpture. She moved over to the half-carved horse that struggled to be born out of stone. It was a most beautiful thing. She moved to the old fashioned window overlooking the bay. It was a lonely space that seemed as if it had been abandoned for years. What had happened to his art?

Isaac stood at the foot of the stairs waiting for Fern to come down. He'd heard her footsteps form the kitchen, pictured her circling the room. He idly wondered what she'd discovered. He watched her expression as she emerged from the second floor. He tensely waited for her to ask the question that everyone else had asked. Why did you stop painting? Those words never failed to infuriate him, partly because he didn’t have an answer.

The question never came. She took the mug that he offered and smiled slightly. “So, who are you now?”

“I run a restaurant, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She gave him an oddly searching look. “That's your place? Your talent translated there as well.” Moving to sip her coffee, she stopped and sniffed the brew. A vague frown of puzzlement passed over her face. “Scottish brandy?”

“Yes.”

“Very nice.”

“Will you stay?”

She thought of her house. “Maybe,” she said. “For a little while.”

Somewhere between morning and later that night, Fern lay halfway between waking and dreaming. She touched the skin of that man she loved and suddenly became desperate. She wanted to keep this night. It was still a little unbelievable that this amazing human being had loved her… still wanted her. She thought about leaving, imagined herself asleep on a slow bus, somewhere between St. Petersburg and the North Pole.

She slipped out of bed and roamed about his silent house once more. There was a fishbowl on the floor in a corner of his kitchen. She remembered the first time she'd seen that empty bowl. He once bought a beautiful blue fish at a flea market once, he'd told her. It had died of loneliness, he’d supposed. She smiled, remembering. He’d kept the bowl for years, in honor of the fish. She wanted to love Isaac. What was she running from? Tanelher Bailah was right. The past was dead… not Fern. I don’t want to die of loneliness, she thought suddenly. She went back up the room that was so full of him.


Isaac watched as she paused at the threshold, amazed at how the light burned her hair to a dark gold. How it flew out in wild disarray into the light, streaming form the window. His hands began that old aching once again. He wanted to paint her. He wanted to keep her. Isaac reached out and held her hand within his own. For the very first time since they had met again, she really smiled and he was blinded by the brilliance. He didn’t know how he'd ever lived without the subtle scent of lavender and jasmine clinging to human skin.

Nothing, he thought, could be more extraordinary.