Moon's Flower: A tale of Hidden Kingdom Read online

  Moon’s Flower: A story of Hidden Kingdom

  Once upon a time, long, long ago a flower fairy looked up to the sky and dared to fall in love with the Man in the Moon…

  Moon’s Flower

  Copyright, December 2013 Marie Hall

  Cover Art by Phatpuppy Creations Copyright 2013

  Edited by Judicious Revisions

  Formatted by Authors HQ

  http://www.MarieHallWrites.blogspot.com

  Smashwords Edition

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Marie Hall, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the context of reviews.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this ebook.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Marie Hall. Unauthorized or restricted use in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patent Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2013 by Marie Hall, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America

  Dedication

  Several months back I was pretty sure that Hook’s Pan was going to be my final installment of Kingdom, but because of overwhelming fan support for the series to continue I promised you all that I would. I’m thankful for each and every note sent my way because the truth is, writing this book helped me to realize just how much I LOVE this world and it’s characters and I may not have figured that out unless you all encouraged me to keep at it. So this is to every single one of you readers who begged for more. A writer is nothing without her fans…

  Chapter 1

  “Come, gather ‘round now. Gather round.” Danika spread her arms, silently urging the little ones to gather round the crackling glow of blue fairy flame. Her call echoed through all of the white rose flower garden. The moon was aglow tonight, brighter than usual and impossibly huge. Each craggy pock and dark mark stood out in shocking, bold relief. The trees danced with movement as the golden trail of light from fairy children heeded Danika’s call.

  “Come, come. Hurry now.” She rushed them on. “The moon will not stay in the sky for days, the story must be told. Now, come on.”

  “Danika,” a flower sprite squeaked, her thick brows bunched in consternation, “what is the rush? We do these tales every year and every year ye act the same way. Hurrrry, hurry. Bah.” Her accent grew stronger, the iridescent lilac dress she wore glimmered from the flickering campfire. Violet eyes pinned her with a disgruntled little glare.

  Wind song rained down from the leaves in the trees.

  The excited chattering of hundreds of twinkling fairy children created a circle around her. Danika smiled.

  “Genevieve, as chipper as ever, I see.” Danika gave her a tight, little smirk. “Always great to have you here.”

  The sprite stuck her tongue out, with her large pointed ears and cherubic face, she appeared more child-like than the little fairies surrounding them, not like the thousand year old flower sprite that she actually was.

  “Dani. Dani!” The girls cried in unison. “Story time? We love stories. Who is it about this year, Dani? Tell us.”

  The girls were dressed in the garbs of their birth. Tree fairies wore dresses of bark, flower fairies came in all colors and shades. Some wearing voluminous blue bonnets, others draped in the crimson red rose, some wearing vines of twisted baby’s breath. Their wings buzzed excitedly, their smiles were large and expectant and Danika ate it up.

  This was her favorite time of year. When the nip of frost tickled her nose, the air smelled crisp and clean and white, and the fairy children learned a hidden story of Kingdom.

  Stories so old that few remembered, few knew. Save for the keepers of the fairy tales and Danika. Because, well, she was old and often times got bored and liked to study the stories so long forgotten.

  The tales of betrayal and desperate love, of heroic acts and spiteful deeds. Like the one tonight, the sad, lonely tale of the Man in the Moon.

  Although this hadn’t been a tale she’d ever needed to study, this was a tale imprinted on her heart.

  “Ssh, ssh, ssh.” She drew her hands up and down, placing a finger upon her lips. Her iridescent dragonfly wings buzzing loudly. “Calm down, or there’ll be no story tonight.”

  A beautiful little primrose fairy clapped her hands. “Oh, Dani, I wait all year to hear your tales. What is it tonight, Dani? Tell us, please.” Her big, brown eyes sparkled with delight.

  Smiling, puffing her chest out with a wee bit of pride, she waited until an expectant hush fell across the crowd. Even the churlish sprite seemed to lean in when the air around them crackled and sparked with anticipation.

  “Tonight is the tale of the Man in the Moon,” she pronounced solemnly.

  “Man in the Moon,” Genevieve curled her nose, wagging a doll like finger in front of her upturned nose, her high-pitched voice grating on Dani’s sensitive ears. “Come, come, Danika. I’d much rather hear the tale of the princess and the frog, or even of handsome Midas and his deadly golden touch. Why, even Humpty Dumpty would be preferable to the Man in the Moon. What a dreadfully boring man he is.”

  Sighing, Danika rolled her eyes. Attempting to ignore Genevieve’s obvious attempts to needle her into throwing a tantrum in front of the children. But she would not do it; Danika was the epitome of professionalism.

  Most of the time anyway.

  Slipping the wand out of her vest in such a way as to keep it hidden, she muttered an incantation under her breath. A tiny little spell, one that would make the toadstool Genevieve currently sat on into a thorny, wooden barb.

  Yelping as she shot up into the sky, Genevieve gave her an evil glare before, with a tiny “humph” sound, turned and flew back into her tree branch.

  A child peeked over at the sharp, dagger like thorn and swallowed hard. Danika merely smiled. Genevieve was a thorn in her side, always had been, served the temperamental and disruptive little twit right.

  “Okay then,” Danika clapped her hands. “As I was saying… The Man in the Moon.”

  “Danika?” A calalily fairy waved her hand, the golden halo of curls around her head, framing her heart-shaped, angelic face.

  “Yes, child?”

  “What is so special about the Man in the Moon?” Turning to look up into the sky, a study of concentration across her face, she asked, “all he does is sit inside the moon and guard the sky. What is so terribly exciting about his tale?”

  Pointing upward, Danika waited until every tiny head looked up.

  Voice low, she weaved a spell with her words. Calling forth colors from the trees, the flowers, the sky itself. The wind howled, gathering in strength as color danced and swirled, forming an image in the sky. An image of a handsome man with rich chestnut brown hair and piercing brown eyes the same rich shade of a tilled flower garden.

  “His name is Jericho, and he does so much more than merely sit within the moon.”

  The little fair
ies all sucked in a breath of awe at the vision of the man, he was quite possibly one of the best looking men in all of Kingdom.

  Smiling back at the wispy curls of color forming his face, Danika nodded. “Jericho was a mortal man once. Born in a land far, far away. A wild and untamed land full of myth and superstition but very little magic, ancient England of Earth…”

  “Ohhh,” whispered several voices. One girl with a mound full of dark braids twisted around her head, turned to ask Danika, “If he was from Earth, how did he get here?”

  Nodding, Danika pointed back at the image. The colors were shifting, creating a new pattern now. A massive field of heather spread out toward the distant horizon as an orange sun began to set.

  “Why was he brought here, Dani?” Janicka, a red-headed fairy with a riotous mass of curly hair, asked.

  “Because Siria spotted him one day and his beauty transfixed her. She whisked him off to Kingdom… but seriously,” Danika waved her hand, as the colors began to shift again, trying to form itself into an image of a blindingly beautiful woman, “you’re making me get ahead of myself. Now listen to my tale and ask no more questions.”

  The girls hushed, sitting upright with expectant looks upon their faces.

  “As I was saying. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago…”

  Chapter 2

  Jericho strode to the balustrade, gripping the gray stones with white knuckled intensity as he gazed downward through the canvas of darkness and pin bursts of stars, peering into the magical realm beneath him.

  Moonglow lit his corner of the castle. Once, long ago, he’d been a shepherd riding the rugged and peaked plains of sheep country. Alive and normal. But everything changed the day he’d found her.

  The beautifully stunning woman draped in a glowing gown of buttery gold.

  He’d stopped in a sheltered grove to give his horse—Midnight—a chance to drink. That’s when he’d seen the blond haired goddess, she’d been dipping her toes in the pond. At the sight of her bare feet and the gown that had fitted her like second skin, he’d fallen immediately under her spell.

  Her big, luminous tawny eyes had captivated him. The rosebud lips and high, slashing cheekbones. The slender column of her throat, every inch of her was built for seduction. Proper women of his day didn’t dress like her. Didn’t let the long length of their curls tumble down around the head and shoulders, or wear a diaphanous gown that hid nothing of the curves beneath.

  If he’d been smart, he’d have known something wasn’t right about the woman in gold. But as was often the case with him back then, it’d merely taken the sight of a beautiful woman to make him forget every bit of common sense he’d ever possessed.

  She’d opened her arms out to him and they’d slept together. He hadn’t known he’d be sealing his doom, hadn’t known that sleeping with the sun would burn… hadn’t known that things like fairy tales could actually exist.

  Sighing, he peered into the endless expanse of sky, heart longing to see the bejeweled beauty of land.

  Darkness, it belonged to him now. He could never walk the daylight hours. What Siria hadn’t told him when she’d taken him into her body was that she’d marked him, turned him into a man of myth and legend.

  That every five hundred years a new man would be chosen. Jericho had gone from being a humble shepherd, to being the Man in the Moon. Locked away forever in this part of the castle. Only allowed to walk the land of Kingdom on the thirtieth day of the month, during the turning of the lunar cycle.

  Only once a month could his feet touch land.

  Two days from now. He squeezed his eyes shut, as the old familiar feelings of hate for Siria tried to rear its ugly head. Two hundred years ago, give or take when he’d first been brought here, he’d attempted to escape every night for the first year.

  But the Man in the Moon could not leave, could never leave his duties. He’d be a prisoner in this castle until his five-hundredth year.

  The wavering heat of the setting sun massaged his back. Shaking his head, he knew what was coming.

  The air tightened, shivered with the pressure of her. The air rushed with the smell of spring and sun warmed honey. Heart clenching, not because of her, but because of how much he missed what he could no longer have, he inhaled deeply. Damning himself for craving her presence every night.

  “Jericho,” Siria’s sultry, exotic tones whispered across the heated flesh of his neck, making his heart clench with both revulsion and painful need.

  “Siria,” he murmured, refusing to turn.

  Though they shared the same castle in the sky, the two of them could only meet for an ephemeral period of time each day. The fleeting moment when both sun and moon hung together.

  “Will you not turn and look at me?” she whispered. “I’ve missed you so.”

  As much as he hated her for damning him to this solitary existence, he couldn’t help craving what she brought him. Twisting on his heel, he turned, attempting to ignore the hunger of her touch. His desperate need for warmth and life.

  Siria was as heart-achingly beautiful now as she’d been when he’d first seen her.

  Her skin, flushed a radiant bronze, almost seemed to glow. Much like a hollowed out candle would after burning for several hours. Hair—a hundred different shades of yellow—was pulled up into an intricate knot of beauty, making his fingers itch to trace each fat curl coiled enticingly around her face.

  Those tawny amber eyes he’d once compared to a lioness’, gazed at him with fierce longing, parting pearl pink lips, she took a step into his space. Rays of sunlight crawled upon the balustrade floor, driving away the shadow. He wanted so desperately to have that light touch him, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

  Not again. Not with her.

  “Do you not miss me?” she asked, tracing a finger down the front of her slitted gown which exposed more flesh than it helped cover up.

  Her warmth cried out to him, brushed against his body.

  Jericho had always loved the sun. To be condemned to a perpetual world of darkness was the worst sort of punishment for him. If she’d truly loved him, she would have let him go.

  She would have never brought him here.

  “Get away from me, Siria,” he snarled, wrapping his cloak of shadow tighter around his body, so that not even a trace of light could penetrate.

  Liquid eyes turned somber. “Someday you will forgive me.”

  “I will never forgive your lies, your duplicity.” The frothing, churning anger riddled his gut, and lifting his chin high he took a step back, shoving himself against the railing.

  Her radiance was already beginning to dim. The moon and sun would soon be separated once again.

  Nostrils flaring, she tossed her head. Even in her anger, she was regal. Beautiful. At times he despised her all the more for it.

  “I gave you eternal life when I brought you to Kingdom. You only have to serve the moon for a time—”

  “Five hundred years is more than a time!” he growled, clenching his fist.

  Upper lip curling into a snarl, she waved her hand at him. “Stop acting like a baby about this. I gave you a choice, to stay with me or not. This was your decision.”

  “Based on lies, Siria. You know that. If you’d told me the whole truth I would have never come.”

  The golden glow of her body merely a flicker now, she took another step toward him. “You will show me the respect I deserve.”

  He laughed. It was a sound full of scorn and disappointment. “You deserve nothing from me. Respect is earned, a lesson you clearly never learned.”

  Lacing her fingers together, looking more human and less goddess-like now, she took a different approach. “I only wished your love. We could not be together on Earth—”

  “Yes, we could have,” he argued, this was the same old argument. “You could have come to me as you did every day, I would have loved you until the day I died, Siria.”

  Delicate, golden brows dipped. “That’s just it, Jericho. N
ow we can be together forever. Once your time is done serving the moon you’ll have no obligations other than to love me.” She held out a hand that was beginning to turn a ghostly shade of white.

  Soon it would be the moon’s turn to reign in the sky and she would disappear from his sight.

  “Damn you,” he hissed. “I would have given you everything, but you stripped me of choice. I do not love you, Siria. Not anymore.”

  For a split second there was a flash of pain in her eyes. But then she was narrowing them and they were suddenly filled with fury. “What does love have to do with this?” she snapped. “I do not need your love, Jericho.” Lifting a nearly translucent finger in front of her face, her last words before fading were a ghostly whisper, “I own your body, now and forever. You belong to me, you always will…”

  The burn of anger dissipated the second she was gone. It was too exhausting to hang onto it.

  He’d not been lying when he told her he no longer loved her. Yes, he craved her, imagined he always would. But not her, not really. He craved her fire. Her light. Eternal life was his eternal torment, because the light would never belong to him again. Even when the five hundred years were up, he’d never again be able to feel the heated press of sunlight bathe his flesh. That was the price he paid for sleeping with the sun, that was the price he paid for telling her he loved her.

  Snorting, he turned his back on the empty space where she’d once been and gazed back down on the canvas of night.

  When Siria was in the sky, the canvas was nothing but darkness. But when it was his turn, and the moon possessed the night, that was when the scroll of black became a wash of color.

  All he had to do was will to see and he could. There was so much of Kingdom he now knew intimately.

  From the deserted dunes of eastern realm, to the liquid lushness of the Seren Seas, the madness of the Hatter’s wonderland, to the old crone’s candy forest… but none of those lands appealed to him.