The Moon Keeps His Other Name

How it begins

Ronan's shadow moved toward the moon while every other shadow moved away.

Alya stopped drawing.

Below the observatory terrace, clouds filled the valley. The guide stood beside the stone rail, waiting for her to finish the measurement she had promised would take ten minutes.

It had taken forty.

“Your name,” she said.

He turned.

“Which one did they give you?”

The question might have been a joke in another place. Here, beneath the observatory's enormous black dome, it seemed almost practical.

“Ronan Keane.”

“For tonight, yes.”

Alya looked at his shadow again.

She had been hired to verify the observatory's eclipse records before a new patron funded its restoration. The institution claimed a thousand years of precise prediction. Its visitors paid for blessings timed to moments nobody in the valley had ever been allowed to question.

Ronan had carried her equipment up the mountain without comment. He had asked whether she wanted the easier path before choosing it. Nothing about him suggested a person interested in creating a dramatic impression.

Now his shadow reached the rail and began climbing it.

“Does that hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

His expression altered.

“Nobody usually asks that first.”

Alya set the drawing board down.

Inside the dome, a bell announced the final viewing. People in warm coats began gathering beneath the arch. The patron would expect an assessment by morning. Her employer would expect the assessment to make the restoration possible.

She touched the pencil to the page.

Across the paper, the name she had written beneath her guide's measurements changed.

Ronan became another word.

Then another.

He looked away before she could read it.

“I can take you down,” he said.

“Is that what you want?”

The shadow stopped moving.

For a moment the only sound was wind against the instrument case.

Alya closed the board.

“Then perhaps,” she said, “we begin with the parts of this place that have never been put on a chart.”