The Man who Owned the Moon
by Celia Bell
There once lived, in a city by the sea, an old man who owned the moon and kept it in little glass jar on the top shelf of his closet. Every night he fetched the moon down from the closet and set it on his windowsill before going to bed, and every morning at dawn he dusted off the glass jar and, with the aid of a three–legged step stool, returned the moon to its place on the closet's top shelf.
It had never occurred to the old man that there was anything at all strange in keeping the moon at the back of a closet. He did not show the moon to visitors, but then he had few, and had never been of a boastful disposition. The moon was no heirloom in his family: he had bought it from a traveling salesman who had whistled old songs and claimed also to sell water from the fountain of youth, and a mirror that would show the face of one's true love, and dreams of flying. The moon, dusty in its glass jar, had been cheap, and the old man, then young and foolish, had given his last few pennies for it. He had been a sailor before he came to the city by the sea, and sometimes, alone at night in the midst of the wide dark ocean, he would take the moon from his worn traveling bag and set it beside him in its jar to light the ship's wake silver and turn the billowing waves the muted color of jade.
Now every night the moon's light spilled from the old man's window and gilded the cobblestone street. Every night the sky above was dark, save for the faint patterns of stars and clouds that moved and turned inexorably above the city. The moon waxed and waned, and its light shadowed the face of the old man as he dreamt of the girl that he'd left in his foolish youth to become a sailor, and it crept down the length of the street and through other windows, where it fell upon those sleeping within, who dreamed of stepping over rooftops to join the stars' dance, or wandering through a forest of singing trees, or wading deep into the ocean after a glimmering white fish that stared through blind eyes and whispered the secrets of past lives.
Over the years, the street where the old man lived, with its crumbling, vine–laden stone houses and uneven cobblestones, began to be known as a place of strange happenings. One day a neighbor's child opened her mouth and began singing in a voice that called down all the birds from the streets, and for every song that they sang back to her she could tell a story of where each had been, the secrets of crow and cardinal and dove. Another neighbor, a simple housewife, was surprised one day when a fresh loaf of bread burst open to reveal a scaled creature which hissed and blew smoke and which escaped through the window when she batted at it with a broom. Shadows, at night, had a way of moving in the corner of the eye when they ought to have stayed still; it was very strange, but then the city by the sea had always been a place that attracted strangeness. One young fisherman, out before dawn, had caught a tiny golden fish that told him three riddles and then turned into a bird or moth and flown away: the young man would tell people, before he left the city to find his fortune and the answers to the fish’s three riddles, that he had seen, before he pulled up the net that caught the fish, a silver light on the city horizon, like a shooting star.
The night skies were often dark now, but the stars seemed brighter, as though determined to outshine the missing moon. And every day, before he went out to fetch his newspaper and rescue his milk from the friendly stray cat that slipped in nightly at his door, and which he would not turn away, he dusted off the moon's glass jar and replaced it in his closet. Perhaps, at those times, his thoughts turned once or twice to the traveling salesman who had promised to sell the water of youth, but if so, he did not dwell on it. He was happy enough to throw bread to the birds in the street, and to listen to the little girl who could sing their songs and tell where each one of them had traveled before it came to the city by the sea. And every night, before he went to bed, he placed the jar back by his windowsill. And one morning, he did not rise with the sun, and the stray cat, disturbed by the change in routine, knocked the moon from its place on the windowsill, and the jar fell and rolled behind a bookshelf as the cat kneaded the old man's bedspread with its claws and mewed for its morning bowl of milk.
The old man's funeral was a quiet one, attended by the woman whose bread dough had once produced a dragon, and the girl who sang to birds, and the others who lived on the narrow cobblestone street, and had known him. His nieces and nephews, who were not from the city, had also come a far distance, and after the funeral was over they returned to his house, and tidied his things, and threw out what they could not keep or sell. One niece, sweeping behind a bookshelf, found an old, cracked, dusty glass jar, and, not seeing what possible use it could be serving in that place, she sighed and placed it in the street with the old man's empty milk bottles.
Later that night, when all the street was sleeping, a slim silhouette with a traveling salesman's pack on its back detached itself from the other shadows in an alley, and, whistling, padded across to the front of the old man's house, where the stray cat came and twined about its ankles. The traveling salesman bent down to stroke it, and then, as if on impulse, he plucked the dusty glass jar from the curb and polished it on his sleeve until the moon's light shone brightly again. The cat mewed. With a smile, the salesman tucked the moon into his pack, and then he turned and went whistling into the night. The cat hesitated, and then, with a sound like sigh, padded swiftly after him.
