There was a bright moon on the horizon as the three arrived at Jaylon's place at the end of the dirt road. As he unlocked the front door of his small house, he stepped in and switched on an interior light. The place from the outside looked tawdry and old. It was a Victorian miniature, and typical of the small but not unsightly wood-crafted structures once embellishing the small towns along the Turquoise Trail outside Santa Fe. These small homes, like Simi's great grandmother's back in Madrid, had their heyday more than a one-hundred years before. That was when the silver mines were active in the area and the little houses were owned by the better-off of the mining companies, all during the short-lived silver boom. Like Jaylon's obscure abode, most of these once-charming houses were now abandoned or destroyed by age, adding to the Southwest's legends of "ghost towns."

Simi and Michelle followed Jaylon inside and could hear him moving about to illuminate other areas of the house. Soon he came back to meet the two in the living room. He walked across the wooden floor to a large Native American rug, decorated with Navajo geometric designs. It was spread in front of the fireplace, leaving the otherwise Spartan living area completely barren, save for some empty clay pots, again with Native American motifs.

"You'll have to sit here," he said a little apologetically, motioning for them to take a place seated on the rug. "As you can see, I have no furniture."

Simi was looking around the place with great interest, trying to glean whatever she could about the domestic habits of this young man she had since fallen in love with.

"We're all much safer here," Jaylon told the perplexed Michelle who seemed understandably uneasy about her coercion to accompany them out of Santa Fe and into the dark surrounding hills.

"It is  safer than the streets of the City," Simi told her. "Those guys in suits who came into the hospital tonight . . . they were definitely there to take stock of us. And I'm sorry to say . . . hoping the worst for Cody."

Jaylon nodded his head. "Yes. I'm afraid they still want him silenced."

These words came as a sobering revelation to Michelle.

"So . . . just who are these people we're fearing . . . and you're referring to?" she asked. "Hasn't anyone called the police on them?"

"Some of them . . . are  the police," Jaylon said softly, sending a chill down Simi's back and leaving a look of disbelief on Michelle's beautiful face.

"Relax," he told her. "In the two years I've lived up here . . . they've still not found me,"

"Do you live here alone," Michelle asked, looking around somewhat incredulously at the bare interior of the place.

"I always live alone," Jaylon answered matter-of-factly. "Where ever I am. But we do need to stay and talk for a while here," he continued. He then looked a bit nervously at his watch and then out the nearby window at the moon-lit sky. "There's some important things happening out there tonight. As we speak. And you both need to be aware of what they mean."

"Happening? . . . Like to us?" Michelle asked. She was seated across from Jaylon and Simi in a more comfortable position upon the rug.

"It's happening to everyone, eventually," Jaylon answered. "But it will start tonight by the actions of the moon."

"The moon?  How can that be?" the young woman asked. Fear was again  building over her attractive features and her body stiffened at the suggestion of this heavenly influence.

"Look. What you experienced today. . . and with those men in the hospital tonight? It's all part of well . . . energy . . . what Simi and I have been fighting here for some time . . . it's increasing," he warned.  A full-blown event will take place beginning tonight . . . with the eclipse."

"Eclipse?"  Simi suddenly remembered. There was some mention of it on the news the last several days.

The woman's demeanor now had a definite air of fright about it. "But how will that matter?" She asked. Her voice sounding frail and insecure.

"We're all tied to it. The moon," Jaylon said softly. "It regulates us. Keeps us into the cycles. But sometimes it signals imbalances. Like those we've been experiencing here. There'll be an instant change again when the moon's phase is interrupted. By shadow tonight."

The two females looked over at the window and could see the night sky was still brightly illuminated by the rising moon.

"So what exactly will happen when the eclipse begins, Jaylon?" Michelle asked. Her voice sounded more as if she was pleading with him. For some release from the tension she had found herself engulfed in over Cody's attack and now dire condition.

"More of us will arrive here. Into the Southwest. People like Simi and I. They will come into this vortex here around Santa Fe to make their presence known. And that presence will bring back the necessary balance. The world has known these imbalances before. History has been changed many times by these fluctuations of light and dark. By people who carry the energies of the two forces within them."

Both Simi and Michelle were silent. Stunned by the odd profundity of the unprecedented message Jaylon was relating to them. Simi could tell their guest was terrified. Jaylon looked at his watch again and suddenly stood.

"Come. We will be able to see the beginnings of this now. The eclipse has begun."

The two followed Jaylon outside, onto the small wooden porch of his house. From this position they could each see the bright moon just beginning to be slightly covered on its curved edge by a dark shadow. Imperceptibly slow, it moved across, threatening eventually to engulf the light and cast down it's muted radiance upon Earth.

"Who will these people be?" Simi asked him as they stood in awe of the gradually morphing night sky. "Which people . . . like you and me, Jaylon?"

Many from here. Around Santa Fe and others not from a great distance," he said comfortingly. "Many you did not know existed. But people who are linked to us by the forces I speak of. Of the dark force that you and I carry, Simi."

She felt the chill of the air and could smell the fresh mesquite in the lonely hills surrounding them. She moved closer to Jaylon and felt his warm arm cover her shoulders, pulling her affectionately against his body.

"But others will arrive as well," he continued. "From farther away. They'll come for this grand congregation of their presence. Amassing over the next several days from other states even. All points around us. You are just one soul, Simi. A local soul from this area. Madrid has always had its few and you are from this generation."

It all made so much sense to her now. Who she was. Who her great grandmother Theresa was. And why there were those strangers who had tried to drive her out of Madrid two generations ago. Why those messengers of the light eventually wanted her dead. And succeeded in eliminating her.

"We are being called on by the moon tonight to hold our ground, Simi. With our presence to form an even stronger field. Others will join to reinforce our power over the next hours."

"But what can we to do, Jaylon? How will we fight these others?"

"By our presence alone," he said. "Tomorrow, back in Santa Fe, we will be a stronger force than them. Our force is more potent since ancient times. Our existence cannot be eliminated. But without an equal stand, events can occur that leave things out of balance. Affecting invisible structures which shape societies. Emotions and attitudes will shift. Just as they have at critical times in the past. Just as Cody was attacked tonight."

"And all leading to what?" Michelle asked practically in a whisper.

"Catastrophes. Revolutions. Anarchy," Jaylon said, lifting an open palm silently and gradually toward the night engine of the moon. These are all possible results. When balance is allowed to become annihilated. The world can only tolerate so much of that. And then anarchy does rule. Either by the light side or by the dark. Such periods are equally destructive. History is a record of it. Mankind on either side of this light-dark battle becomes monstrous."

"Monstrous to whom?" Michelle asked, innocently, yet still fearfully.

"Monstrous to ourselves," Jaylon said with the conviction of a shaman, a wizard or a seer of much earlier times. "We cannot allow these major disruptions to the balance to exist. To form. You see, Michelle, your friend was getting in the way of the other side. He became a random element which threatened the light's efforts to defeat us. Lots of people will be caught in the middle of this who are not aware of the eternal cycle. The sheer dynamics of this repetitive process."

Simi looked over into the eyes of this young man she now loved. Those eyes were now intensely looking up at the dissolving orb of light. A dim atmosphere of stillness was falling over the landscape around them and she was herself startled at the event and Jaylon's revelations. Yet at the same time she was excited by them. The fact that she had devoted herself to Jaylon's cause, and had come to accept her innate placement in it, only helped to digest and accept what was occurring.

The close presence of Jaylon there under the night sky, reminded her of her love for him and how he had become so much more than a mentor. For he allowed Simi that night to bask in the ever increasing darkness which was an integral part of them both. It was a darkness she would come to understand even more as a necessity to the world. And one she had already seen from her childhood she existed in, however marginalized and perplexed by its vastness. 

* * *