The Two Moons
The two moons are the pair of moons that hang over Eslura: one unnaturally large and golden, the other violet and about half its size.[1][2] They were the first thing that told Beatrice Tidal she was no longer on Earth.[1] The golden moon periodically passes across the violet one, and that alignment is what the High Moon Festival is held for. The Festival is a yearly one, which is as close as the books come to giving the moons a cycle.[3][2]
Neither moon is named anywhere in the books. Eslurians call them the golden or gold moon and the purple or violet moon, and nothing more.
The moons
Bea surfaced in a lake on her first night in Eslura and saw two moons hanging in a purple sky. When she got to the bank and lay on her back she made them out as "an unnaturally large golden moon and a much smaller purple moon", flanked by an army of shimmering stars. She rubbed her eyes hoping one of them would go away, and both were still there when she opened them.[1]
The golden moon was blindingly bright that night and had dimmed by the time Reagan Hideaway looked at it again from the Avonbourn some days later.[2] It still gives light enough to show a whole meadow almost as if it were day, down to the colours of the wildflowers in the grass.[4] The second moon is "violet and half the size of the gold moon", and in the nights before an alignment it hangs just above the golden one.[2]
The alignment
The two draw together night by night. Reagan, looking up the night before the High Moon Festival, saw the violet moon sitting just above the golden and knew the pair would align by the following night.[2] By the next evening the golden moon had climbed high and covered over three quarters of the purple one.[4] At the eclipse itself the golden moon covers the violet entirely.[2] Afterwards the purple moon edges back out from behind the golden, and by dawn both have sunk beneath the mountains.[5][6]
The alignment moves a city. Alpin Loomin told Barnaby Britto, who had not heard of it, that "when the two moons align it sinks into the earth", meaning the floating city of Galecrest, and that "Once the moons pass by each other, the city will rise again".[7] That is exactly what happened: with the moons gone below the mountains and the sky pink at dawn, Galecrest lifted slowly back out of the ground and into the clouds.[6] Why the moons should do this to a city, and to no other place recorded, is never explained.
The Sacred Rulers all attend the Festival at the eclipse, so The Council meets while the moons are aligned.[8]
The moon as a measure of time
Eslurians count time in moons rather than in months. Demise reckoned a stolen soul as another thirty-two moons added to his own life.[9] Reslyn Keiser told Aero Ellisvat he had not come to the Avonbourn for two years and three moons, which puts a moon well short of a year, and Aero had meant to make a journey in two moons on the night of an anniversary.[10] A thing done recently was done a few moons ago and a thing long past was done many moons ago, including Aezaros retrieving the stone from the heavens.[3][11] One of these moons is what an Eslurian says where someone from Earth would say one of these days.[12] Travellers reckon an evening's ride by whether they can get in before the moons peak.[13]
The new moon is a fixed point in the calendar and people keep appointments by it. Millennium Loftwind gathers the children of Galecrest at her castle each new moon to read them Eslura's ancient tales.[14] Lumikki Otsby and her twin Remidigon Otsby took tea together in her room on every last day of a new moon, and it was his failing to arrive for one of them that first told her something was wrong.[15]
Eslura also keeps a high moon season. Vendalis, a troll living on the slopes of Alakyer, asked a party crossing her mountain in it what they thought they were doing, and told them that "climbing through the mountains during high moon season is a fool's errand".[16] What the season covers, how it lines up with the alignment, and what makes it dangerous in the mountains are all left unsaid.
What is not recorded
Beyond the alignment, very little. The books give the moons no origin and no myth of their own. They do not say how long either takes to circle Eslura, how the alignment is predicted, or how far apart in the sky the two normally sit. Nothing links them to the gods, to Aezaros and the stone she retrieved from the heavens, or to the elemental kingdoms. No festival other than the High Moon Festival is tied to them, and no character in any of the three books looks up at them and explains what they are.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Book 1, Ch. 6.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Book 1, Ch. 19.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Book 1, Ch. 3.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Book 1, Ch. 23.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 25.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Book 1, Ch. 26.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 24.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 8.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 1.
- ↑ Collection, "The Heart of the Kella".
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 11.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 22.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 18.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 5.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 7.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 6.