The Sun and the Moon

Chapter One

Cadence

Nature can’t be tamed. Neither can a Connelly woman.

My mother’s reason she would never marry, couldn’t hold down a normal job, and didn’t volunteer for the PTA. She was a wild thing, untamable, elusive—a wolf in the wilderness, not simply a woman. She wanted me to be just like her, and I wanted to be anything else. After years traversing the rugged landscape of North America, living among the untamed wilderness that has been claimed by man’s hands, by land deeds, by acts of conservation, and, in many cases, by human greed, I have seen firsthand how the wilder the thing is, the harder it fights to remain free, even in the face of captivity.

If I am as wild as she always claimed, as wild as her, she really has only herself to blame for how things have turned out.

I crouch down, placing my hand on the edge of the rock in front of me. My eyes scan the plateau, looking for the creature. A flurry of white and gray, majestic and mysterious. It hasn’t shown itself again, and I don’t know if that’s because Devin is a heavy mouth breather or because it’s moved on already. I pinch my lips with the pointer finger and thumb of my other hand, signaling for Devin to shut his. He clamps them closed and then flips me off. He’s holding the camera with the long scope, and despite the photographic evidence I’ve been able to capture on my iPhone, he remains skeptical.

I am happy to prove him—and our supervisor, Nika—wrong.

There’s fifty bucks and a day off on the line, after all.

Acadia National Park is home to a vast ecosystem of wildlife, protected within the boundaries of the park as best we can. The main predator to the natural world is human, tourists being some of the most destructive. The rangers created sighting competitions as a way to keep up morale throughout the year and keep eyes focused on the changes in the park that need our attention. I’ve never won, but this could be my chance.

The first snowy owl in October.

Even though it’s September.

Which is why, of course, no one believes me. I cite climate change for bringing us a snowstorm that kissed Sargent Mountain with a dusting of white and might have urged the bird this direction early. Predicting the patterns of nature gets harder every year.

My mother would say it’s fate that I saw the owl. A sign. A prompt for me to trust my intuition, lean on that still-small voice inside.

But I don’t believe in fate anymore, and I never rely on my intuition.

So. Climate change it is.

“You can tell me if you’re lying,” Devin says.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” I wouldn’t lie about this. I wouldn’t lie about anything.

“Look, it’s just convenient that you saw it on your own, is all,” Devin says, fiddling with the long-range lens. “And you have an old-ass phone with a shit camera, so the pics are ragged.” We’re tucked into the tree line with a good view of the rocky summit where I spotted the owl yesterday while doing a trail inspection.

My supervisor, Nika, is encouraging me to start leading tours, giving instructional talks, literally anything more public-facing, because there’s room for growth. But I didn’t get into this job to be close to people.

The opposite, really.

I came here to get away from people.

“And your jabbering will undoubtedly scare it away,” I tell him in a low whisper. Devin is what one might call a work friend. Someone I get beers with sometimes, who once invited me to a barbeque, and who tried to set me up with his sister before he knew me well.

Untamable as I am, dating isn’t my strong suit.

You are a restless, wild thing. I shake the words away, just like I do every thought that gallops through my brain in my mother’s deep, mellifluous voice.

Madame Moira, the enigmatic neighborhood psychic.

My mother.

My mind conjures an image of her rambling, supposedly haunted two-story Craftsman. Named Kismet—by her—because all living things should have names and because it’s a place of business, not just a home. The neon sign on the wraparound porch advertises readings for $99.99 an hour; the formal living room’s walls are lined with bult-ins and packed with crystals, incantations, tarot decks, anything mildly metaphysical that she can sell to unsuspecting souls who walk through the front door.

Her home—my home, once—is magnetic and mythical in a way that feels fairy tale–made. Her life once cast a shadow over every part of mine. Now she’s mostly been reduced to memories that pop out in Technicolor when my vigilance drops.

I force my focus back to the cobalt-blue sky. Cloudless today and windy. The gray of the rocks contrasts against it in a beautifully stark sort of way.

“And it was just one?” Devin asks, still with that unmistakably skeptical tone.

September is the end of the snowy owl breeding season, which is another reason spotting one here this time of year is such a surprise. It’s not migration time, really, which makes this bird’s behavior odd.

Wild.

Or maybe just lonely.

The thought pings a soft spot between my ribs, and I almost wince. Too close to home, a place I try to avoid in theory and in actuality. I haven’t been back to Kismet since Moira tried to convince me to take it over. Four years, the summer right after I finished my internship with the National Park Service and was offered a job at Crater Lake. She dismissed my achievement, claiming that Kismet was where I truly belonged.

“Just one,” I reply.

Now Devin’s eyes are scanning the ridge. We really can’t get much closer, which is why we’ve come up here at peak daylight. Snowy owls are diurnal, which means they hunt mostly during the day—though, of course, not always. This one may well be hunting, and we’ll have to wait to spot it until it returns to roost.

“Patience,” I say, my brow hooking upward. “Or you could just leave the camera if you’re bored.” He scowls, tightening his grip on the Canon. It’s the park’s, but he acts like he owns it. And, granted, he did come to this job by way of a photojournalism major, but how hard could it really be to point and click?

“All good,” he says, resting back in the camp chair he brought with him. He reaches over to unzip his pack, pulling out a bag of trail mix. “Hungry?”

With a shake of my head, I look back out.

Late September in Acadia looks like the beginning of an oil painting. Those first strokes of gold, red, umber sweep across the treetops, adding interest to the rolling green that leads out to the azure water of Somes Sound to the east and the ocean beyond.

That vast beyond is what drew me to Acadia. It’s an island, the farthest north of all our country’s national parks, easy to get lost in despite its small size.

College in Chicago wasn’t far enough away from the all-seeing eye of Mount Moira. Even though I paid for it myself with student loans and grants and a scholarship or two, even though I didn’t ask for anything—not even help with the semi-cross-country move—and even though I promised I’d call often, and did, for a while at least.

According to her, I was finding myself.

I had always been a searcher, but I would be back when I was ready to face my destiny. In her mind, that meant one day taking over at Kismet, learning to read the cards and the future for the people who came into the shop seeking guidance.

Chicago wasn’t far enough away. Crater Lake wasn’t, either.

No matter how far I got, I could still feel her eyes on my path. Probing, prodding, piercing—pushing me in the direction she wanted me to go regardless of my adamant refusal. It was only when I went no contact that I started to feel like I could live without looking over my shoulder.

Or, okay, not looking over my shoulder every day, at least.

Moira had her truth. A narrative for her life that centered on her intuitive ability and came at the expense of everything else.

Especially me.

Distance was the only solution.

I hear a buzzing sound coming from Devin’s direction.

“You need to get that?” I ask as the buzzing continues. He must get cell signal up here. He tugs his phone out and I see the word Ma illuminated.

Devin’s whole family lives in Bar Harbor. They’re the kind of close-knit that makes my stomach twist up into knots. In each other’s business, at one another’s houses all the time.

Close. Real. A pack.

I’ve always felt more like a coyote forced out by her mange.

Only instead of mange, its emotional unavailability.

“Ma, I’m sort of on a stakeout right now,” he says in a stage whisper that will definitely scare the more timid wildlife into hiding. I motion for him to cut the call—with the universal kill signal—but he stands in a huff and hands over the camera before tromping away down the hillside. His voice fades down the trail, and I’m left with the sound of nothing but the subtle shift of evergreen needles overhead as a breeze drifts over the mountaintop.

I rest the camera on my knees, tightening my hair into a low pony. The black curls cascade over my shoulder, and I swipe them back, feeling their weight hit the space between my shoulders. I raise the camera to my eyes, peering through the viewfinder.

“Where are you?” I exhale, letting the words dissipate through my breath, out into the air around me. People may not be easy for me to connect with, but animals always have been.

Wild things understand each other.

I hate myself for the thought, but then I also can’t push it away. Don’t want to.

Moira is a psychic. A seer in this almost supernatural way. Like in a Disney movie, or some picture book full of princesses, fairies, magic beans, and make-believe. It wasn’t until I got older that I started to notice the gaps in her fairy tale. But there are parts of that story that even now—after all the disillusionment has settled—I cling to. Like a rabbit’s foot for good luck or something. I want to be special, even if I don’t want to be like her.

A streak of white screams through the blue.

“There you are.” My lips twist into a smile.

I move my finger into position, the cool metal beneath my skin sending a jolt through my hand. The owl’s wings are broad, swooping gracefully, and its talons open to hook the arm of a spruce perched right at the edge of the ridge. The bright white swath of its feathers is barred with brown through the wings and tail.

Not it, I think. She.

As she settles in, she swivels her head, turning her piercing yellow eyes in my direction. I am not foolish enough to think she’s posing for me, but I snap the photo as if she were. She opens the hook of her dark gray beak to release a high, clear cry into the sky.

My heart leaps at the sound, an almost uncontrollable urge to reply. That is what freedom sounds like. I know because I’ve felt it time and again in the years since I walked away from Kismet. From my mother and her many premonitions.

I’m living a life I made for myself.

All by myself.