Moon Spun

by Marilee Brothers

  I settled into a lawn chair, thinking his mission might take him a while. Actually, I hoped it would take him a while. I wasn’t scared, exactly, just anxious about what to expect. Seriously, how could Melia’s screwy plan have a ghost of a chance against Phaedra and her band of dark faeries?

  In what seemed like less than a minute (remember faery time?) Ryker was back. Embarrassed, I looked at the sky while he got dressed. He bowed and presented me with a rolled-up parchment.

  “Your grandmother said you are not to worry. As you say in your world— Boundland instead of Boundless, ‘ the bases are covered.’”

  Squinting through the growing darkness, I read,

  To my granddaughter, Princess Avalon. By all the breath in my body, by all the blood coursing through my body, I will vouchsafe your return to Boundland. Should the unforeseen happen—and it will not—you have my solemn promise. That which you have done, to wit, stopping the world, I will undo.

  Your loving Grandmother, Melia, Queen of the forest faeries.

  I could barely make out the insignia at the bottom. I held it up to the moonlight and was able to see the ornate letter M crowned with deer antlers and draped with lacy ferns.

  “Will that do?” Ryker asked.

  I tucked the parchment into the pouch I’d strapped around my waist, placing it next to two small bottles of water, three granola bars and a Swiss Army knife, the only item of value left behind by Brain Dead Roy, Faye’s former boyfriend.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  348

  Before I could lose my courage, I followed Ryker into the cistern. Down, down we went until we passed through the oaken door. This time, Ryker let me pound in the iron nail. I gazed around, expecting to see the glass tunnel, but instead, I saw a field of sunlit, waving grain. I grinned at Ryker. “Oh, yeah, Boundless. They grow lots of wheat there.”

  We had a little chuckle before he took my hand and said, “Fast or slow?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you want to go the long way or the short way?”

  “Short.”

  He gripped my shoulders and turned me to face him. “Word of warning: touching is involved.”

  “What kind of touching?”

  He lowered his face and brushed his lips, feather soft, across mine. “That kind.”

  Flustered, I felt my cheeks warm up. “Well,” I stammered, “I guess that will be okay—just this once—as long as we’re clear on the wooing thing.”

  “Crystal clear. No wooing.” His eyes flashed with brilliant blue light. “You forget, Ava, I am only half Love Talker. My mother is pure forest faery. My fealty is to your grandmother. Never forget that.”

  An instant later, Ryker pulled me close to his body. His warm hands cupped my face. Before he touched his lips to mine, he whispered, “Please trust me. I would not cause you harm. Not for the entire world. Now, keep your eyes tightly shut. Do not open them until I tell you to.”

  I have this thing about people giving me orders. I want to say, “Why should I?” or “No way!”

  Consequently, I had to fight my instinct to rebel. I squeezed my eyes shut, wondering if Ryker would notice if I peeked.

  I felt the brush of his lips touching mine, like the wings of a butterfly. Fleeting. Tentative. Nothing invasive. So far, not so bad. But then, still cupping my face, he tilted my head at a slightly different angle and his lips became warm and insistent. My lips parted, and all rational thought disappeared as his tongue swept through my mouth.

  His kiss sizzled through my body like wildfire. Before I knew what was happening, my feet left the ground and we swirled through the air as if caught in a vortex. My only point of reference was the sensation of Ryker’s hands holding my head and his lips against mine. When I realized we were truly airborne, I stiffened in Ryker’s embrace. He murmured against my mouth, “Don’t move. Don’t open your eyes. Just feel.”

  Eyes tightly closed, my body wrapped in a warm, moist current of air, I tried to suspend reality as we whirled through Boundless, joined only by our kiss. Since I’m not good at suspending reality, my mind began to race. What is keeping us aloft? Yikes! Maybe I should open one eye and take a teensy peek. Before I could act on the thought, we hit the ground, hard. We tumbled out of control in a tangle of arms and legs, until we came to a stop with me astride Ryker, who had changed into his Boundless form, complete with long black hair and strange bird eyes. I glared down at him. “You need to work on your landing.”

  He gave me a mischievous grin. “Works for me.”

  The high-pitched squeal of pixie laughter and the sound of rushing water told me we’d reached our destination. I scrambled off Ryker and hauled him to his feet, looking around for familiar landmarks. The waterfall and pool were the same. Everything else was different. No throne made of rock. No rose petal armchair. Instead, a thatched-roof cottage with smoke curling from the chimney stood on the river bank. A smiling Melia stepped through the door, dressed in a tunic and leggings made of leaves. On her head, she wore an elaborate headdress of moss-covered deer antlers. A small leather pouch dangled from a vine worn around her neck. She wore a wide leather belt from which a scabbard hung. Protruding from the top of the scabbard was a sword fern. I tried to hold back a 349

  groan of dismay. A sword fern? That was her weapon of choice? In my previous visit, Melia’s face was the color of ashes. Now, her cheeks had a greenish glow, and her eyes sparkled.

  “Hawk! Avalon! You’re here!”

  “Why is she green?” I whispered to Ryker.

  He shook his head like I was a hopeless idiot. “She’s a forest faery. Forest faeries are green. The increased color in her face means her health has improved, no doubt, from the pleasure of seeing you again. Also, she is looking forward to being re-united with her folk.”

  The pixies flew to Ryker and sat on his shoulder. Both Maddie and Ari were armed with cocktail toothpicks and held them aloft like tiny spears. When I looked closely, I saw their faces were coated with the fairy equivalent of khaki and green camouflage paint. Ari, still wearing her pink panties and purple cape, waggled her eyebrows and said, “Maddie and Ari are ready to kick some serious butt!

  Right, sister?” Maddie had shed her princess gown and was now dressed entirely in black, like a tiny ninja. She struck a pose, flexed a bicep and screeched, “I was born ready!”

  Melia walked to me and held out her arms. “Come to me, granddaughter.”

  I stepped into Melia’s hug, surprised at her restored vitality.

  Still gripping my arms, she pulled back and gave me a quick once over. “What have you in the pouch? Weapons?”

  My hand flew to the moonstone. “Nothing important in the pouch. My only weapon is this. You’re not expecting me to kill anyone, are you?”

  “If things go according to plan, there should be very little bloodshed.”

  “Good.” I looked into her eyes, so like mine, searching for signs of fear, and saw nothing but steely resolve. She stroked my cheek. “Don’t be afraid, child. We will prevail.”

  All at once, the tension drained out of my body and, at that moment, I decided to trust Melia. She was the expert here, not me. And if her folk were on the brink of death, like Ryker said, well, it would be pretty lame of me to turn my back on them..

  Melia said, “I have a little something for you.” She removed the pouch from around her neck and loosened the drawstring. “Cup your hands.”

  I did as she asked, and she poured a dozen, marble-sized stones into my hands. “Moon missiles,”

  she announced with a smug grin. “Direct from the Good Mother herself. Luminata gave these to me years ago. ‘B.C.’ Before Claude. She said, in the right hands, these stones are magic. I only just remembered I have them.”

  “They look like regular old rocks. I wonder what’s magic about them.” I kept one in my hand and put the rest back in the pouch. I studied the rough stone carefully, turning it this way and that. It took a while, but I finally spotted a perfect circle maybe
a quarter inch in diameter, where the stone had been polished. I held the stone up to the light and saw sunbeams dance across the circle in a tiny, refracted rainbow.

  When I realized what I held in my hand, I inhaled sharply. “They’re moonstones,” I said. “Pieces of unpolished moonstone.” I checked the rest of the stones. Sure enough, each one had a tiny polished circle that exposed its real identity. “But, how are they magic, like my moonstone? What do they do?”

  Melia shrugged. “Guess you’ll have to find out on your own.”

  Ryker leaned over my shoulder to check them out. “Try throwing one against that tree.”

  I threw the stone. It bounced, harmlessly, off the tree trunk and fell to the ground. Ryker and I grinned at each other. “It’s just a rock,” I said. “Maybe it’s a David and Goliath thing. It only gains strength against overwhelming opposition.”

  “Who?” Ryker said.

  “Never mind.”

  350

  Melia said, “Yes, each little moonstone has a tiny, polished circle. There has to be a reason it’s there. But, why?” Brows furrowed, she crossed her arms and stared off in the distance. “Hmmm, maybe they’re like little satellites.”

  “Satellites of a bigger . . . ” I began.

  Ryker said, “The moonstone. The one around your neck.”

  “You think?” After retrieving the rock I’d thrown, I held it about six inches from the moonstone pendant and zap! The marble-sized rock flew from my fingers and glommed onto the moonstone like a heat-seeking missile. Both the pendant and stone began to glow with an eerie greenish light.

  “It’s charging,” Ryker said.

  Melia said. “I believe Hawk is right. Try throwing it again.”

  I pulled the rock away from the moonstone’s magnetic field and fired it at the tree again. Turned out fired was the right word. As soon as it left my hand, the stone picked up speed, leaving a trail of fire streaming behind it. It even made a cool little hissing sound. When the missile embedded itself into the trunk, the tree cried out, quivered violently and crashed to the earth, its exposed roots flailing like arms and legs.

  After a moment of stunned silence, I cried, “Oh, my God, I killed a tree!”

  Melia, a look of horror on her face, ran to the tree and began crooning to it in her faery tongue.

  “I’m so sorry,” I called out. “I didn’t know that would happen.” I tried to go to Melia, but Ryker stopped me.

  “Watch and learn,” he said.

  Melia used both hands to wipe the tears from her face and flicked them onto the fallen tree.

  “With the tears of your queen, my dear and faithful subject, you are healed. Seek you the nourishing earth and rise. I bid you rise.”

  I watched, astonished, as the tree groaned and began to rise upward, its roots scrambling in the earth for purchase. Soon, the tree stood upright, roots buried deeply in the ground again. Melia murmured a few more words, patted its trunk and walked to us, her green cheeks streaked with drying tears. When I tried to apologize, she patted my arm. “It wasn’t your fault. None of us knew the power of the moon missiles.”

  She turned away from us and clapped her hands. “Uncle Davey! Girls! Come. We must be off.”

  This time, I knew what to expect and ducked behind Ryker as the horse-like kelpie burst out of the pool with the water sprites on his back. The blond one, Meg, had a whip made of kelp coiled around one shoulder. Pookie was armed with nothing more than a smile. Melia waved a hand. “Pixies away!” With a painful squeal of glee, the little pixies pushed off Ryker’s shoulder and zipped away.

  “Uncle Davie will take the sprites. Avalon, you and I will go with Hawk,” Melia said. And so, armed with a dozen moon missiles, a sword fern, a whip made of kelp and two cocktail toothpicks, we advanced.

  351

  Chapter Twenty Five

  I soon found out “going with Hawk” did not mean we’d be slogging through the jungle or using our previous mode of transportation, the lip lock.

  “Hawk will fly us there,” my grandmother said.

  Oh, please. I’d just seen Ryker transform into a hawk, and there was no way a bird that size could fly me and Melia anywhere. “Um, aren’t we a little too big to ride on his back?”

  Melia and Ryker exchanged a look. “You have not seen Hawk in his true form.”

  Without further ado, Ryker lifted his arms skyward and began to spin in place like a human tornado. As he picked up speed, a hot wind coiled around his body, then peeled off and struck me full in the face. Automatically, I threw an arm across my face to protect my eyes and staggered backward. The hot blast of air stopped as quickly as it had begun. I lowered my arm and opened my eyes. Before me, clad in glorious feathers of russet and golden brown, stood a red-tailed hawk the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

  “Oh my,” I gasped.

  Melia smiled at me. “I believe Hawk is now capable of carrying us both.” She made a slight bow and waved a graceful hand toward Ryker. “Shall we?”

  My legs were shaking when I approached the giant bird. He turned his head and watched me with one golden eye. I reached out and stroked his velvety feathers, jumping back when he gave a deepthroated squawk.

  “Climb on, dear,” Melia urged. “Hawk grows impatient.”

  I scrambled onto Hawk’s back and wrapped my arms around his neck. Melia climbed aboard. She anchored herself by holding the waistband of my jeans with one hand and a handful of feathers in the other. “We’re ready, Hawk. Let’s go!”

  Hawk ran a few steps, flapped his powerful wings and the ground fell away. A scream of exhilaration burst from me as we gained altitude and skimmed over the treetops. A dozen or so wing flaps and we became one with the sun and sky as we sailed over the landscape of Boundless. I summoned my courage and pushed up to a sitting position, savoring the warm wind on my face and the feel of Ryker/Hawk’s feathery, muscled body beneath me.

  Hawk caught an updraft, extended his wings in a fixed position and soared. My laugh of delight was the only sound in the silent sky. I glanced over my shoulder at Melia. Her dark hair floated around her antler headdress in a tangle of curls. She smiled. “You appear to be enjoying your ride. You might mention that to Hawk. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

  I stroked Hawk’s soft head. “This is the coolest thing ever. Riding on the back of a giant bird is way more fun than your motorcycle. Thanks.”

  He bobbed his head in acknowledgment. Something occurred to me. Ryker was unable to speak. What a golden opportunity to have a little fun.

  I looked for his ear. Couldn’t find it under all the feathers, so I leaned close to his head and said,

  “You know, Ryker, about this whole wooing thing. Somehow, I don’t think it will work out. What if we had a kid? Would it be a bird or a baby? Would it have little pink toes or wings and a beak? And, frankly, I don’t see myself sitting on a bunch of eggs.”

  I kept it up, non-stop, yucking it up at my own stupid jokes. Melia joined in with ladylike titters. Finally, Hawk opened his beak, clamped down on a strand of my widely blowing hair and gave it a 352

  vicious yank.

  “Ouch!” I rubbed my head. “If you’re not enjoying our little chitchat, just say so.” I leaned back against Melia, hopefully out of his reach. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. You can’t.”

  Melia’s laughter tinkled like wind chimes. She patted Ryker/Hawk’s feathered back. ”My poor, poor Love Talker. Your enchantment does not work on Princess Avalon.”

  Hawk cranked his head all the way around, opened his beak wide, hissed and flapped his pointy pink tongue, which made us laugh all the harder.

  Time to cut the bird some slack. By way of apology, I leaned forward and rested my cheek against Hawk’s soft feathers, gazing at the scene below. The jungle-like forest had vanished. We soared over rolling green fields bisected by a wide, twisting river, its banks overgrown with dark, tangled bushes. The open landscape was dotted with an occasional grove of trees, each appearing as a dark oasis against the li
ghter green background. Nothing evil about rolling fields and a river . . .beautiful, right? Then, why did I feel a shiver of apprehension?

  “Look!” Melia pointed over the top of Hawk’s head. “We’re approaching the Dark Queen’s fortress.”

  The spires and towers of the sprawling castle soared upward, its silhouette darkly sinister against the bright blue sky. The fortress was completely surrounded by a rambling stone wall and water-filled moat. My heart sank. I clutched a handful of feathers and moaned, “Oh, Ryker. We are so screwed.”

  We began to glide toward the ground well away from the castle and touched down in a clearing surrounding by a thicket of trees. Melia and I slipped off Hawk’s back.

  “Let’s duck behind a tree while he changes back to his other form,” Melia said. “When he’s this big, the wind he creates can be quite violent.”

  Melia and I found a stout tree to hide behind. Hawk, fluffing his feathers and squawking ominously, tracked our movements with an intensely interested gaze. Not wanting to miss a thing, I peeked around the trunk. Hawk tucked his wings in tight to his body, pointed his beak at the sky and began to spin in a most unbirdlike way. At wanting to miss a thing, I peeked around the trunk. Hawk tucked his wings in tight to his body, pointed his beak at the sky and began to spin in a most unbirdlike way. At first, all I saw was blur of flying feathers. Then, with a

  whoosh, a wave of heat rolled off Hawk, flattening the grass and stirring up dust devils. I ducked behind the tree and covered my face.

  When the wind subsided, a stark-naked Ryker was standing next to the tree, glaring down at me.

  “I assure you, our offspring will not have wings and a beak. And, furthermore, you would not be required to sit in a nest.”

  Melia and I burst into laughter. Taking care to look above his neckline, I said, “Since you couldn’t talk, I thought I’d yank your chain a little.”

  His brows drew together. “What chain? I have no chain.”