Fritz lay very still in her bed. She closed her eyes tight and tried to sleep. Sleep wouldn't come, though. Why not just get up? No, there was school tomorrow. The bus would be here very early. She turned on her right side, curling her legs in tight against her torso and resting her face on an outstretched arm.

How do you turn off your brain when the moon is full? She wondered about that. She could lie perfectly still, eyes closed, the same as she had done a thousand times before, to no avail. On dark nights, the Sandman came quickly. But let the moon get full and it was all over. Mr. Sandman was nowhere to be found on the full of the moon.

She turned again, facing in the opposite direction, away from the window. There, that was better. The moonbeams streaming in through the sheers were so bright it was like trying to sleep with a spotlight in her face. What was the power of the moon, anyway? Why did her spirits rise, her blood race, her pulse soar in the magick of its light?

Concentrate on the fan, she told herself. She loved the attic fan. In the summer they opened the windows at night and let the fan run. She loved the steady low hummmmmm and the energy that pulsed through the walls of the house when the fan was running. The house was given life by it. Under its influence, static walls joined together to become a living entity with a pulse, a path, a journey.

The best part about the fan, though, was that its noise covered up small inconvenient sounds. Like the sounds one might make if one decided to slip out the bedroom window to turn their face to the stars and the moon. She was wont to do that kind of thing. Twirling around in her nightgown, a small ghostly figure beneath an enormous and brilliant sky, she celebrated the magnificence of her universe.

She could be out there right now if she didn't have to go to school tomorrow. She knew right where to look for the North Star. And the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. She knew Taurus, too, because that was her constellation. And when the summer sky gave way to the winter sky, she waited and watched for Orion. It was a yearly ritual which she performed without fail. Orion was a very old friend to Fritz.

Her daddy's pickup truck was parked right outside, just beyond the walnut tree. She could take her pillow and stretch out in the bed of the pickup, stargazing to her heart's content. It was just a short walk to the driveway. No, there was school tomorrow. She closed her eyes tighter and tried to will sleep to come. But it did no good. Her head was full of visions. She could see the stars above her, could feel the moonbeams on her face. And away in the distance, she could hear the creatures of the night speaking to the cosmos.

She often heard some animal that she thought was a panther. From somewhere to the North would come his piercing cry. It sounded like he was in the woods by the old Greer cemetery. His voice echoed through the night, intense and powerful, almost a cry of pain. And yet a greeting, too, projected into the moonlit sky. When she first heard it, the sound had chilled her to the bone. Nowadays she howled back.

Uncle Sterling told her the animal was a black panther. She knew you couldn't always trust Uncle Sterling, though. He liked to tell you things just to mess with your mind. Then he'd laugh his ass off behind your back, watching you freak out. So she didn't know if it was a black panther or not, but she liked to think so.

Fritz's eyes flew open. The room was flooded in a million silver hues. In her dresser mirror she could see the window behind her and the face of a magnificent golden orb shining through it, perfectly framed in the center. She sat upright and grabbed her pillow. Then slowly, quietly, and ever so carefully, she removed the screen from the window.

  Wonders Of The Universe