Luna: New Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

wide and high and two kilometres long. An empty, virgin universe, precious as a geode. This is the place, Adriana Corta declared. This is where I will create a dynasty . Within five years her machines had landscaped the interior, sculpted faces of umbanda gods the size of city blocks, set up a water cycle and filled the space with balconies and apartments, pavilions and galleries. This is Boa Vista, the mansion of the Corta family. Even on this celebration day the rock trembles to the vibrations of excavators and sinterers working deep in the walls, shaping rooms and spaces for Luna and her generations.
    Today is Lucasinho’s moon-run party and Boa Vista has opened its green heart to society. Luna Corta weaves between amors and madrinhas, family and retainers, Asamoahs and Suns, Vorontsovs and even Mackenzies and people from no great family at all. Tall third-generations and short, squat first gens. Dresses and suits, turn-ups and petticoats, party gloves and coloured shoes. A dozen skin and eye colours. Wealth and beauty. Friends and enemies. Luna Corta was born to this, to the sound of falling water and the murmur of artificial wind through bamboo and branch. She knows no other world. On this special day, there is meat.
    The caterers have set up electric barbecues under the overhang beneath Oxum’s bottom lip. Chefs poke and turn skewers. Greasy smoke rises up towards the skyline, set today for a bright blue afternoon with passing clouds. A bright Earth afternoon. Waiters ferry large plates of skewered meat to the guests. Luna places herself between a woman waitress and her destination.
    ‘Hey that’s a pretty dress,’ the waitress says in very bad Portuguese. She is short, not much taller than Luna, and square. She moves too much for the gravity. A Jo Moonbeam, fresh off the cycler. Her familiar is a cheap skin of unfolding tetrahedrons.
    ‘Thank you,’ Luna says, switching to Globo, the simplified English that is the common tongue. ‘It is.’
    The wait-woman offers Luna her tray.
    ‘Chicken or beef?’
    Luna takes a greasy, juicy beef skewer.
    ‘Careful not to get that on your lovely dress.’ She has a norte accent.
    ‘I would never do that,’ Luna says with immense gravity. Then she skips down the stone path beside the stream that runs through the heart of Boa Vista, pulling at chunks of bloody beef with her small white teeth. There is Lucasinho in his party clothes with his Dona Luna pin and a Blue Moon martini in his hand. His moon-run friends surround him. Luna recognises the Asamoah girl, and the Sun. Suns and Asamoahs have always been part of the family. It is easy to recognise the weird, pale Vorontsov boy. Like a vampire, Luna thinks. And that must be the Mackenzie girl. All gold.
    ‘You have beautiful freckles,’ Luna declares, butting in on Lucasinho’s group. She looks the Mackenzie girl full in the face. They laugh at her boldness, the Mackenzie girl most of all.
    ‘Luna,’ Lucasinho says. ‘Go and eat that thing someplace else.’ He makes it sound like a joke but Luna hears better. He’s pissed off at her. She is getting between him and Abena Asamoah. He probably wants sex with her. He is such a user. There is a line of upturned cocktail glasses at his feet. A user, and drunk.
    ‘Just saying.’ Cortas say what they think. Luna wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Meat, and now she hears music. ‘I got freckles too!’ She touches a finger to her Corta-Asamoah cheeks, then runs on again. She darts over the stepping stones in the river in search of the music. She splashes up the river, kicking up slow-falling spray. Party guests coo and shriek and move away from the flying water but their faces are smiling. Luna knows she is irresistible.
    ‘Tio Lucas!’
    Luna runs up to him and throws her arms around his legs. Of course he would be near the music. He is talking with the immigrant woman who served Luna the meat. She now bears a tray of blue cocktails. Luna has interrupted him. He