The moonlight that shimmered through Lune’s bedroom window was unlike anything she had ever seen: it fluttered her curtains, moving across her carpet like smooth, silver waves. For a long time, she lay there in the dark, staring up at the sky; though as she set her head back down to her pillow, Lune discovered that her bed had become the sea.
How strange, thought Lune.

All of a sudden, a wave of moonlight swept over her bed, lifting her up through her open window to an enormous hill in the distance.

She had never noticed this hill before.

Swooping under the stars, adrift beneath the silver sky, Lune soared across fields and over forests, until she could make out the dark silhouettes of tents, colorful flags, and strange creatures dressed in costume, pirouetting on the hillside, alight under the glow of the metal-white moon.

Suddenly, Lune felt herself floating back to the earth; at last, after the night had set her down on top of a hill amidst the carnival scene, a tall and thin man emerged from the crowd of eerie masked creatures. He wore a long nightcap, and a black mustache; when he spoke, the surrounding creatures fell silent.

(His voice sounded like moonbeams.)

“We have been waiting for you,” the man said quietly, to Lune.

Lune said nothing.

“Do you know why?” The man asked.

Lune shook her head.

“He has come,” the man said quietly.

Lune shuffled her feet; she couldn’t remember feeling so sleepy, and awake, at the very same time.

“Who is he?” Lune asked.

The man looked to the sky.

“Him,” The man said. He turned his gaze back to Lune. “The Weaver of Nightmares.”

The creatures behind the tall man began to shuffle and sway restlessly. For reasons she did not understand, Lune nodded calmly, feeling as if she had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

“Well,” she said quietly. (She didn’t look at the moon.). “Here I am.”

The tall man nodded once, then turned to the strange creatures behind him, who had been listening to their moonlit conversation in deep, concentrated silence. Then—very suddenly, as if it had been scripted—they began to dance and twirl.

“Do you know what to do?” The tall man asked, turning back to Lune with a look of great significance.

“Yes,” Lune said without hesitation.

With that, she turned and strode down the hillside, in the direction of a deep, dark forest.

At her back, on the hillside, she could hear the strange creatures begin chanting her name.