You Smell Like Moonlight

Maya folded the medical report in half and slipped it into a compartment of her canvas bag. She didn't look at it again.

The doctor had said a lot: Percentages, cycles, possible side effects, and plans for family support.

She sat there, nodding, offering a polite smile during his pauses.

Then, she stood up and walked through the disinfectant-scented corridor to push open the hospital doors. A July breeze from the south hit her face, carrying the faint, salty scent of the harbor.

This was the last time she would ever set foot in this place.

She repeated this to herself, then stopped thinking about it.

She had given up her apartment three days ago.

When the landlady came to collect the keys, she gave Maya a lingering look, probably noticing that she had cleared out all the furniture and left only a backpack.

Maya didn’t explain. She had lived in this city for six years, yet her belongings wouldn't even fill the trunk of a taxi. There was nothing in this city worth holding onto.

A colleague asked her in the group chat where she was going. She replied:, Travel.

She set the group chat to "Do Not Disturb" and slipped her phone into her coat pocket. Inside the pocket, she found a ferry ticket to a place she’d never been: a small town called Urvik at the far end of a northern fjord.

When she found the town on a map, she saw that it was nestled at the end of a narrow stretch of water with mountains looming behind it, their contour lines crammed together. Far enough, she thought to herself.

The ferry’s horn blared through the fog for a long time.

She stood on the deck with her elbows on the railing and watched the city to the south shrink bit by bit into a gray outline.

First, the colorful wooden houses in the harbor became indistinguishable, then the church spires, and finally, the entire landmass turned into a line, melting into the seam where sea and sky met.

The farther north the ship sailed, the steeper the coastline became. No longer were there flat tidal flats and sandy beaches, but rather black cliffs that rose straight from the sea as if split by an axe. The cliffs were covered in bright, glowing green moss. Set against the white foam splashed up by the sea, the moss looked like ancient runes.

There weren’t many passengers on board.

Few people travel north at this time of year anyway. A middle-aged man in glasses stood next to Maya for a moment, holding up his camera, before retreating back into the cabin, saying the wind was too strong.

Maya didn’t move. She turned up the collar of her coat, zipping it all the way up and letting the wind pour in from every direction.

It was a clean kind of cold, not like the air from a hospital’s air conditioner that has been filtered and recirculated countless times.

The boat rounded a bend, and suddenly, the snow-capped mountains on both sides emerged from the clouds.

These were real snow-capped mountains.

The snowline on these mountains was low. Everything above it was white—a white tinged with blue, like a giant beast lying in slumber.

Glaciers squeezed down from the saddle between two peaks, their ends stretching into the sea. Layers of blue shone through their fractured surfaces.

Maya looked at the blue and thought to herself, It wouldn't be so bad to see mountains like this as my last sight.

She didn't push the thought away. She let it stay there.

The ship arrived in Urvik in the evening.

Technically, there is no true evening in the northern summer.

The sun had merely shifted behind the mountains, and the light took on a honey-and-ash hue, dyeing the entire fjord a blend of deep gold and cool blue.

The small town stretched along the water’s edge. Its houses were built of dark wood and had thatched roofs dotted with small yellow and white wildflowers. The wooden pier creaked slightly underfoot and was covered in moss.

Only three people were on the pier.

An old man sat on a mooring post, smoking a pipe. A young woman carried a bag of belongings toward the town.

A man of indeterminate age dressed in dark blue work clothes was loading boxes onto an old pickup truck. The old man glanced at Maya, took his pipe out of his mouth, and pointed toward the hillside.

"Hytte," he said.

She didn’t understand. He pointed again, and in the direction of his finger stood a small gray log cabin with a thicker thatched roof, like a fuzzy hat.

She nodded. Later, she learned that "hytte" meant cabin.

People in the north called their vacation cabins by that name, no matter how humble they were. Hers was indeed humble: a bed, a table, a chair, and a small wood-burning stove. The window faced the fjord, and opening it revealed the entire expanse of water.

When the landlord handed her the key, he said something through the door that roughly meant, “Don’t go into the mountains alone at night.”

She heard him but didn't take it to heart.

She had nothing left to lose anyway.

She sat down at the only place in town where the lights were still on.

It was a small restaurant with reindeer antlers hanging at the entrance. Inside, there were only a few empty tables. The owner was a plump woman with her hair braided into a thick plait wound around the top of her head.

Without asking Maya what she wanted, she simply brought over a cup of black coffee and placed a plate of thinly sliced brunost beside it.

"Brunost," the owner said, smiling gently. "It's delicious."

Maya picked up a slice and examined it.

It was brown with a texture like soft cheese and smelled of caramel.

She took a bite. First, the flavor was sweet, like caramel. Then, the tang of goat’s milk spread across her tongue. Finally, an indescribable saltiness lingered in her mouth. The three flavors refused to yield to one another, battling in her mouth.

She furrowed her brow. Then she picked up a second slice.

By the third slice, she realized this taste was unlike anything in the South.

Down south, the flavors were uniform and standardized. No matter which shop you walked into, you knew exactly what you’d get. But brunost wasn’t like that. It was so strange that it made her want to try it again.

She finished the entire plate.

That night, she lay in the small bed of the log cabin.

The quilt smelled of sun-dried wood with a hint of camphor.

The light outside the window was slow to fade. During the northern summer, there is no true night, only a gray-blue twilight that softens the outlines of the mountains and transforms the surface of the fjord into a leaden-gray mirror.

She stared at the ceiling, listening to her own breathing.

Then, she heard it coming from the direction of the mountain ridge—a long, piercing howl.

It wasn’t a bird; birds don’t have that much breath. Nor was it the wind; the sound of wind passing through a pine forest is rustling and fragmented, never so complete. And it certainly wasn’t a dog. She had heard stray dogs barking late at night downstairs, and their barks were short, urgent, and full of purpose.

This sound was not like that.

It was long and slow, starting on a high note and sliding down bit by bit before rising again halfway through—like an ancient song. It was like something pouring out its heart to the sky, needing no reply.