Moonlands

by Steven Savile

  Ashley didn't doubt Blaze's sincerity for a moment, even if being in the presence of a talking wolf-man was so far removed from anything she imagined she'd be doing when she woke up that morning, it didn't change the truth. Listening to him, Ashley began to understand what drove him on. Key words kept repeating themselves, core concepts of nobility, honour, justice. This wasn't the talk of a monster. Or at least not the kind of monster she'd grown up believing in—but they hid under the bed and in the closets and only came out at night to scare you so much you couldn't sleep. They didn't talk in terms of valour or decency. They didn't mourn lost pack mates. All of which meant that no matter how monstrous Blackwater Blaze might look to Ashley he was something far more complex than a simple monster.

  Despite everything, Ashley found herself thinking she could trust him. Funny that, putting her faith in the creature that had been sent to kill her, but the world—both worlds, she amended, were full of ironies so why not one more?

  "You don't understand. I'm no one. I haven't done anything. I'm just a girl."

  "You are far more than that." The tip of the umbrella began to waver. "You are a lynchpin, Ashkellion. You are pivotal to so many people beneath the moons. You are hope and damnation all at once."

  The words spun around inside Ashley's head. Sometimes they almost made sense. The Wolfen obviously believed them, and that was enough to make the threat serious no matter how ludicrous it was to think that the world revolved around her. A lynchpin?

  "Even if I am her daughter it is not who I am any more than my hair colour means I'm a fiery tempered cow. It's stupid. I'm me. I'm Ashley Hawthorne. I'm not even sixteen yet, never mind some lynchpin the fate of kingdoms revolve around. I'm just a girl," she said for the second time, but Blaze wasn't buying it any more willingly this time than he had the first time.

  "You are the Fae Queen's daughter. There is no escaping that. You stand to inherit the Kingdoms Under the Moon. That makes you the very heart of things."

  "It's a mistake. All of it. It has to be. You are wrong. I'm not who you think I am. You're all wrong. I am Ashley Hawthorne. I go to Regents Park Girls School. I'm useless at maths and spend most of my lessons day dreaming about anything and everything that isn't school. This isn't my world. There's only one moon in my sky," Ashley said, knowing even as she said it that there were seven moons on the mural she'd painted on her bedroom wall. What she really meant was: this isn't happening to me. It can't be. But it could, and it was.

  "Or you are not who you think you are," the Wolfen countered, echoing the journal's first message.

  They walked for two days and a night. The only way Ashley could tell was the subtle shift in the hue of the moonlight as different moons came into ascendency. Targyn Fae had been right; it was never actually dark. The moonlight was more like a filter, shining a pinkish-red tint on the land as they walked on into the second night. In all that time the seven moons showed no sign of setting.

  So in two days her world was reduced to two constants: walking and hunger.

  She felt dirty and tired.

  Their path had taken them away from the dizzying drop of the cliff edge inland. All of the smells were so much stronger than back home. At first it was overpowering. She could smell everything. Every blade of grass, every leaf, even the water and the air itself, they all had such unique and overwhelming aromas. It was dizzying. Sensory overload. She didn't think she'd ever grow accustomed to it, but she did.

  She could still hear the constant churning of the Night River. They followed a line of standing stones that ran parallel to a dusty road.

  "Is it always like this?" she asked.

  "Like what?" Blaze asked.

  "Like this? Not dark, not light, just… like this?"

  "No. Not always, it depends on which moon holds sway."

  "Does it rain?"

  "Of course."

  "Snow?"

  "In winter, sometimes."

  "How do you tell the seasons apart? Are their growing seasons and harvests and—"

  "Again, of course. We are bound by the laws of nature."

  "But I don't understand how anything works without the sun to nurture it," Ashley said.

  "There are Moonwells scattered across the land, they sink deep into the ground, tapping the essence of the world. That essence feeds the plant life and vegetation as it spills forth."

  "The nearer you are to a Moonwell the lusher the trees and plants?"

  "Indeed."

  "So there's no photosynthesis?"

  "I don't follow?"

  "The plants don't need the sun to grow?"

  "There is no sun; they need the essence of the Moonwells and the right balance of moonlights from the seven moons."

  "Fascinating," Ashley said. "It's not like that back home."

  "No, but there is no magic back there," Blaze said as though that answered everything.

  A colony of bats ducked, darted and dived through the air ahead of them, somehow seeming to be everywhere at once. They emitted an eerie low whistle as they flew. Ashley watched them, a peculiar glow from the centre of the cloud catching her eye. It took her a moment to realise what it was.

  Rain, the dragonfly fairy.

  Her first thought at the sight of the peculiar littler Warden was why, if Blaze had no intention of killing her, couldn't they wait for the others. What was it Ephram had said? Together they were strong.

  Blaze walked on a little way ahead of her.

  The road was in poor shape. The few cobblestones that remained were either cracked or worn down so smooth they could have been made of glass. The Wolfen's claws scratched across the stones.

  Ashley walked on with her head down. Time and again she caught the soft glow of Rain's light reflected in the polished cobblestones. Ashley needed to get away from him for a minute, but she couldn't exactly escape, he'd only come after her, so she needed to make him go and leave her behind.

  The sight of a lake through the line of trees gave her all the inspiration she needed.

  "Is that water?"

  "It is."

  "Clean water?"

  "It is not filled with the toxins and pollutants of your old world," Blaze said, "So, yes it is clean water."

  "Good. I'm hungry. I'm tired and I'm filthy. You do have food for us, right? Because I haven't eaten in ages and I'm starving. And I need to feel clean."

  "I will find some. The water is good. Bathe. I will return."

  He was gone for almost an hour.

  Ashley used the time well.

  Before stripping and going down to the water's edge she took the journal from her patchwork satchel and looked for an empty page to write a message on. It couldn't be a normal page, it had to be one of the journal's enchanted ones. The last time she'd written on one of them it had completely erased her words, offering its own instead. She didn't have time to worry about it now. She had no idea how long Blaze would be gone, so she acted quickly, writing:

  Mum,

  Blackwater Blaze took me through the Moongate. I think we are heading to the Shard of the Subluna—the tower—to face the King Under the Moon. Blaze saved me from the Nightgaunt. He says he won't hurt me. I believe him. The King betrayed his pack. He isn't the monster everyone thinks. He is a creature of honour. He wants justice.

  She thought about writing something else. An apology. An explanation. But this wasn't the time. Instead she finished the note:

  I don't know how long it will take for us to reach the tower—a day or a week, it all feels the same here—or what is going to happen when we reach it.

  I am sorry. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want anyone else to suffer because of me.

  I know all you ever wanted to do was save me.

  ASH

  She folded the paper in half and half again, then whispered, "Rain? Rain? Are you there?"

  The pale glow darted out from behind the stones, flitting left and right erratically as the Fae light skimmed across the grass towards her. The curious little creat
ure stopped moving long enough for Ashley to focus on her, but even then her whisper-thin wings were nothing more than a blur as they beat at the air. She came to rest on the cover of the journal.

  "Quickly. Please. I need to get a message back home. Take this," she offered the folded journal page to the Fae, realising the preposterousness of the task as even folded in four it was still twice her size and probably twice her weight as well.

  Yet Rain tried to wrestle with it.

  "I can't. It's too unwieldy. I must travel light. When the sky turns red the confluence will be ended. The Moongates will close. We must be fast. Tell me your message. I will commit it to memory." The Faelyn said in that staccato way of hers, each short sentence punched out.

  So Ashley told her.

  "Are you sure you can remember this?"

  "I will deliver your words. I will bring the others through. You are not alone, princess. You never have been. Not for a single day."

  "Thank you."

  "Stay alive, Princess."

  Ashley drew in a deep breath to ask another question, but the Faelyn was already gone.

  She just had to trust that the diminutive Warden would carry her message where it needed to go, and that her mum would come. It didn't matter what kind of blood flowed through her veins, being a daughter wasn't just about that, it was about all of those days in between coming into the world and going out of it.

  She looked up at the sky, still not quite able to believe they were different stars up there, and dreading the moment it turned red because that would mean she was on her own.

  If she hadn't already painted this place on her bedroom wall she might have thought she was going mad. Or maybe she was? Maybe that was why she'd painted the Kingdoms Under the Moon on her wall in the first place?

  She fought to clear a path through the thick undergrowth to the water. It took her five minutes, with low hanging branches whipping at her face and tall grasses and weeds pulling at her feet, to reach the edge. She undressed quickly, folding her clothes neatly on a rock by the water's edge. Then she slipped into the deliciously cold water. It was so cold she launched herself upwards, spraying a spume of water and splashing wildly as she whooped and shivered, then she submerged herself beneath the surface, holding her breath as her heart raced and her body tried to adjust to the cold.

  The water was invigorating.

  She swam from one side of the lake to the other, then rose slowly from the lake. The moonlight glittered inside the water as it sluiced down her body. She stood beside her clothes but without the sun to dry her skin it would be ages before she could get dressed again without soaking them.

  She heard a rustle in the undergrowth and turned slightly, keeping most of her back turned to the woods. She caught a glimpse of yellow eyes watching from the trees. She shivered, feeling his eyes on every inch of her skin. Her pulse quickened. Heat flushed through her toes all the way to her throat. Ashley bent quickly and dressed, still wet, in her clothes.

  Not once did she give away the fact that she'd seen him there, watching her, or how it had made her feel.

  Actually, she wasn't sure how it made her feel.

  She was shaking as she hurried back to the road. Her clothes stuck wetly to her body as she sat with her back against one of the stone pillars. There was no sign of Blaze. He was obviously pretending to hunt. There were markings on the stone. Engravings. The images looked like an endless knot of snakes chiselled deep into the surface, but these snakes had no heads and no forked tongues. She didn't know what the carvings signified but they obviously meant something. She used the carving as a way to master her nerves and control the shaking. It took her a while to realise she was shaking because of the cold against her skin, not Blaze's hungry eyes. Each of the stones were also marked with the seven moons, save for one, the middle pillar, which had an eighth carved into its face. That gave Ashley something else to puzzle over.

  Finally Blaze returned.

  She couldn't look him in the eye. He had a brace of hares he expected her to eat. She couldn't. In truth the sight of the wretched animals between the Wolfen's teeth was enough to have Ashley swear off meat for the rest of the life. Or it would have been if only she'd liked more vegetables, or any vegetables, for that matter.

  "You are cold?" The Wolfen said, dropping the dead rabbits at her feet.

  The water was freezing," Ashley said.

  "Come, use my body heat to warm you," the Wolfen said, settling down on the ground and inviting her to curl in beside him.

  "I'll be okay," Ashley said, stubbornly.

  "Suit yourself," Blaze said. "Eat," he told her. "It is good. Fresh." In his world if you were hungry you ate what you were given. There wasn't room for niceties like dressing the meat or deboning it. Or cooking it, Ashley thought, watching the Wolfen lick his lips with a long tongue.

  He got stuck into his food with abandon, tearing at the meat, chewing and swallowing, licking at his lips, tearing at the meat, chewing and swallowing.

  Ashley couldn't share his relish. She stared at the dead rabbit on the ground in front of her. She couldn't bring herself to touch it never mind put it in her mouth.

  She wrapped her arms around her stomach and huddled up against the stone pillar.

  After he'd finished with his own, Blaze shrugged—an incredibly human gesture—and muttered, "You're hungry aren't you? So eat."

  She shook her head.

  He didn't need a second invitation.

  Blaze snatched the second hare up from the ground and tucked into it. He'd stripped every ounce of meat from the bone in less than a minute and was ready to carry on walking.

  He didn't wait for her to follow him.

  They walked on for another couple of miles, until genuine hunger had Ashley unsteady on her feet. "I need to stop," she said.

  Blaze looked at her, loping forward until the tip of his snout was no more than an inch from the end of her nose. She could taste his foul breath in the back of her throat. Blaze tilted his head slightly, first left then right, and whatever it was he saw when he looked at her, he obviously deemed it unworthy. He tossed his head back, howled out his frustration and then sank to the turf beside her. "Stay," Blaze said, as though she were a dog, then set off, his huge easy gait carrying him away ten times faster than she could ever have run.

  She looked at the moons wondering how on earth the sky could ever be big enough to hold so many stars, when one of then suddenly fell, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. It was quite possibly the single most beautiful thing she'd seen since coming into the Moonlands. One falling star. The fact that it meant the star up there had effectively died didn't make it any less beautiful to look at. And in a sky that was always dark there could never be a more beautiful sight, unless every single star was to fall, blazing trails like confetti as they did. But even then, that would simply have been a different kind of beautiful, not more beautiful.

  She took her phone out of her bag and took a photo of it.

  There was no signal, just the word 'searching' where it should have displayed her network.

  She hadn't expected there to be a signal, but for just a moment she had hoped there'd be one.

  She would have done anything to hear her mother's voice, if only for a moment, even just the recorded message saying she couldn't come to the phone right then.

  She looked at the photo before she put the phone back in her satchel. The falling star looked like a trail of silver across the black screen. She set it as her wallpaper and dropped the phone back into the bag.

  This time when Blaze returned he had a handful of berries and what looked like a large flat mushroom. "More to your liking?"

  She wasn't sure that it was, but given the lack of alternatives beggars could hardly be choosers. Blaze raised it to her mouth. Her lips parted. He slipped one of the berries in her mouth and bit down on it. Flavour exploded in her mouth as the berry's juice spilled over her tongue. It was like nothing she'd ever tasted; like a fusion of cranberry juice, fo
r the tartness, white chocolate for the underlying sweetness, and lemon for its refreshing zest. By rights it should have tasted terrible, but the longer she let the juice linger on her tongue without swallowing the more flavours were released by her taste buds. She licked her lips, her tongue brushing against his fingertips. He didn't flinch. Blaze put another berry onto her tongue and another, feeding her, and each time the sheer taste of each one as she bit down on them was overwhelming. Her head swam with the nearness of him and the flavours of the fruit he fed her, wanting to cram a handful of the berries into her mouth, even if it made her sick.

  She ate until her belly was full.

  And that was the amazing thing; looking at the berries when Blackwater Blaze had offered them, it was inconceivable to think they could ever fill her up, but they did.

  Conversely, the mushroom tasted like cardboard, but perhaps that was because instead of feeding it to her, Blaze laid it at her feet.

  Ashley ate it, knowing it could be the last thing she ate for quite some time.

  "Now we walk," Blaze said, even as she was chewing her last mouthful.

  "I need to sleep," Ashley objected. It was true. She did. She hadn't realised quite how much until she said it. She yawned.

  "You can sleep when you are dead," the Wolfen said. "We need to walk."

  Ashley didn't have the strength to argue with him.

  She pushed herself to her feet and trudged on, head down.

  She tried to think about anything other than fact that the more she walked, the closer she came to the Shard of the Subluna and the quicker she brought about…well she wasn't quite sure what was going to happen next. She needed to buy time for Rain to deliver her message and for Ephram and Targyn and the others to find her, because whatever it was, she didn't want to do it alone. So, despite the miraculous revivifying powers of the berries, when the road curved around a crystal blue pool of water Ashley closed her eyes and let her legs turn to jelly.