Flight of the Lunar Moth

Miriam Pickett was thirty-two years old, although most people assumed she was considerably older.

She possessed the unfortunate ability to enter a room without anybody noticing, remain there for several hours, and leave without anybody remembering she had arrived.

Her clothes were predominantly brown, grey or a peculiar shade of beige usually associated with elderly people's curtains. She wore sensible shoes, thick woollen cardigans and occasionally a small hat decorated with artificial flowers.

Her hair was mousey, her complexion pale, and her voice so quiet that people frequently mistook her attempts at conversation for the distant sound of a refrigerator.

Her friends called her Mimsie.

Or rather, they would have done, had she possessed any friends.

Mimsie lived alone in a modest terraced house in Batley, West Yorkshire, with four cats named Albert, Doris, Wellington and Susan.

She worked part-time at Batley Town Library, a gloomy Victorian building whose continued existence was a source of considerable irritation to the local council.

The council had already conducted four reviews into whether the library should remain open.

Each had concluded that the building was expensive to maintain, poorly attended and of questionable value to the community.

A fifth review was currently underway.

The council remained optimistic that this time it might finally achieve something.

Mimsie had worked at the library for twenty years, having started there as a Saturday assistant when she was twelve. During that time she had become intimately familiar with every shelf, cupboard, corridor and peculiar smell the building had to offer.

She liked the library.

It was quiet.

Nobody expected very much of her.

And, unlike people, books rarely complained when she failed to make conversation.

On her days off, Mimsie tended to her cats, washed her cardigans and visited the local park to feed the ducks.

The park was a melancholy place.

Its pond contained three abandoned supermarket trolleys, several car tyres, an impressive collection of crisp packets and a mysterious green substance that occasionally produced bubbles.

The ducks appeared untroubled by these conditions.

They swam contentedly between the trolleys, navigating the floating rubbish with the practised confidence of experienced sailors.

Mimsie brought them breadcrumbs.

The ducks accepted them without gratitude.

This suited everybody.

And so her life continued, quietly and without incident, until a Thursday evening in January.

The staircase

It was twenty-five minutes past five.

Outside, the winter sky had darkened to a deep metallic blue, and a bitter wind rattled the windows of Batley Town Library.

The last visitor had departed nearly an hour earlier, having borrowed a book about “Things to do in Bolton during wet weather”.

Mimsie was alone.

She had switched off the reading lamps, straightened the newspapers and returned a collection of gardening magazines to their proper shelf.

At half past five, she would lock the front doors and walk home to feed Albert, Doris, Wellington and Susan.

She moved through the library with her customary quiet efficiency.

The building creaked around her.

Old pipes knocked faintly behind the walls.

Somewhere in the distance, a clock ticked with unnecessary determination.

Mimsie checked the reference room.

Empty.

The children's section.

Empty.

The small reading room overlooking the street.

Also empty.

She turned into the narrow passage leading towards the rear storeroom.

And stopped.

There was a staircase.

Mimsie stared at it.

It was a perfectly ordinary staircase, made of dark wood, with a polished banister and narrow steps rising towards the upper floor.

Except that it had never been there before.

Mimsie frowned.

She had walked along this passage thousands of times.

For twenty years she had known every inch of the building.

There was no staircase.

There had never been a staircase.

Yet here it was.

She looked behind her.

The passage was exactly as she remembered it.

The old radiator.

The noticeboard displaying fire regulations from 1987.

The small cupboard containing cleaning materials.

Everything was familiar.

Everything except the staircase.

Mimsie considered whether she might have taken a wrong turning.

This seemed unlikely in a building containing only six principal rooms and a lavatory.

She looked up.

The staircase disappeared into darkness.

A faint draught moved down the steps, carrying with it the smell of old wood and something damp and unfamiliar.

Mimsie hesitated.

She was not an adventurous woman.

Indeed, the most adventurous thing she had done in recent years was purchase a different brand of washing-up liquid.

But the staircase intrigued her.

And, for reasons she could not explain, she felt that it had been waiting for her.

She placed one sensible shoe upon the first step.

The wood creaked softly.

Then she began to climb.

The room

There were thirteen steps.

Mimsie counted them.

At the top stood a single wooden door.

It was dark with age, its surface marked by deep grain and small imperfections. A round brass doorknob sat precisely in its centre.

There was no sign.

No number.

No indication of what lay beyond.

Mimsie reached for the knob.

It felt surprisingly warm.

She turned it.

The mechanism clicked.

The door opened.

Beyond lay a narrow room, perhaps fifteen feet long and six feet wide.

Its walls were clad entirely in dark oak panels, their surfaces almost black with age. Bare wooden floorboards stretched towards the far end, where a faint silvery light illuminated the gloom.

The air was cold.

It smelled of damp timber, dust and the peculiar stillness of rooms that have remained undisturbed for many years.

There was no furniture.

No pictures.

No shelves.

Nothing at all.

Except a window.

At the far end of the room, set within a simple white-painted wooden surround, was an enormous rectangular opening.

It stood six feet tall and five feet wide.

There were no curtains.

No shutters.

And, most remarkably, no glass.

Beyond it lay the night.

Mimsie stepped inside.

The floorboards complained beneath her feet.

She looked back towards the open door.

For a moment she considered returning downstairs.

The library needed locking.

Her cats would be hungry.

Doris, in particular, became unpleasant when dinner was late.

But something drew her onwards.

Something beyond the window.

Something in the sky.

The moon

The moon was rising.

Full and immense, it hung against the black winter heavens like a vast disc of polished steel.

Its surface shone with a cold, extraordinary brilliance.

Mimsie had seen the moon thousands of times.

Through bedroom windows.

Above rooftops.

Reflected in puddles and the oily waters of the park pond.

But never like this.

It seemed impossibly close.

So enormous that she could make out its pale plains and darkened craters with astonishing clarity.

The room around her began to lose its importance.

The cold.

The smell of damp wood.

The strange staircase.

All seemed distant and uninteresting.

There was only the moon.

Mimsie walked slowly towards the window.

A gentle breeze entered through the open aperture, stirring the loose strands of hair around her face.

She felt no fear.

Instead, a curious sensation of longing filled her.

It was as though something she had forgotten many years ago was suddenly calling her home.

She reached the window.

Placed both hands upon the white-painted sill.

And looked out.

Below lay the darkened streets of Batley.

Chimneys.

Rooftops.

Streetlights.

The distant glow of traffic moving through the winter evening.

Above it all hung the magnificent moon.

Mimsie felt an extraordinary lightness.

For thirty-two years she had lived a life so quiet that the world had barely noticed her passing through it.

She had never travelled abroad.

Never fallen in love.

Never danced beneath the stars.

She had never done anything particularly remarkable.

But now, standing before the enormous silver moon, she felt something stirring deep inside her.

Something beautiful.

Something impossible.

Without hesitation, she climbed onto the windowsill.

The night air surrounded her.

She spread her arms.

And flung herself into the darkness.

The flight

Instantly, a radiant light enveloped her.

It was soft and luminous, shimmering with delicate shades of silver, pale green and moonlit white.

Mimsie felt herself becoming weightless.

Her body seemed to dissolve into the brilliance.

Her cardigan vanished.

Her sensible shoes disappeared.

Her pale, ordinary hands became something slender and exquisite.

From her shoulders unfolded two magnificent wings.

They opened slowly, spreading wider and wider, their delicate surfaces patterned with extraordinary shapes and colours.

Long, elegant tails streamed behind them.

Her entire being glowed with an ethereal beauty.

Miriam Pickett was no longer a small, insignificant librarian from Batley.

She had become a magnificent lunar moth.

A creature of impossible grace.

She beat her wings.

Once.

Twice.

And rose into the night.

The rooftops fell away beneath her.

The streets became narrow ribbons of light.

The library diminished into a small dark shape among the buildings.

Higher she climbed.

The cold winter air flowed around her delicate wings.

Above her, the enormous silver moon illuminated the heavens.

She soared.

For the first time in her life, Mimsie was free.

Free from the library.

Free from the grey streets.

Free from the quiet, unremarkable existence she had known for so long.

She was radiant.

She was extraordinary.

She was beautiful.

She was eaten by a bat.

THE END.