Moon's Flower: A tale of Hidden Kingdom Page 4

  Her blond hair was plaited in a thick braid that hung over her shoulder, the very tip of it dangling by her knee. A tiara of gold and jewels so red they rivaled the beauty of a blood rose, winked in the starlight. The gown she wore left very little to the imagination. It was so sheer in places it gave the illusion of nudity, only well placed diamonds covered the parts of her only her man got to see.

  Flushing prettily, her smile was wide and without guile. And for just a second Jericho remembered the woman she’d once been, the one he’d fallen in love with.

  “Come to my bed, Jericho,” she stepped forward, hands outstretched, eyes soft and tender.

  But it could never be.

  His smile was sad. “Once, I would have been tempted by that offer. I do not wish to fight with you, Siria. But I must go.”

  Shaking her head, she took another tentative step in his direction. “Jericho, you cannot leave me.”

  The woman was Aphrodite personified, such beauty should inspire sonnets or song. But it left him empty.

  Hanging his head, he shook it. “I’m sorry, Siria. I truly am. I hope someday that we could be friends again, but that is all we could ever be.”

  A prickling warmth suffused him, and he didn’t need to turn to know that the veil of night was now his. Clenching his jaw, he turned to look at the colors swirling into a familiar pattern.

  But something warned him to keep his true intentions private, at least from Siria’s prying eyes.

  “Go home,” he said it softly but firmly.

  “Jericho?” His name trembled on her tongue, but nothing else came after it.

  He heard the questions in that one word, but he had nothing else to offer, so he said nothing.

  After three long agonizing minutes, he knew she’d gone and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

  In a land where magic was the currency of all, he knew he walked a very fine line. Just as he could not spy on what Siria did during the day, she too could not spy on what he did during the night, but should he give her any cause to be suspicious there were plenty of spies loyal to her within Kingdom who could, and would.

  Much as he wanted to go to Calanthe now, he forced himself to think of anything but her. The sky before him that usually only showed him images, had now turned into a spiraling funnel of blue light.

  Once a month, between the ephemeral period of waxing and waning the curse of isolation lifted and he could travel the realms. The only way to safely go to Calanthe so as not to raise any suspicion was to first visit each realm and spend a little time there, so that his appearance in the glen would seem more random than planned.

  Jumping off the banister, he slid through the funnel, forcing his thoughts to focus on anything but the glen, his first stop was Wonderland.

  He wandered about for an hour, walking around and around in circles, nibbling on chocolate vines growing off the chocolate tree, exchanged a few words with the Cheshire, before eventually moving on to upper Kingdom where the cloud people roamed, then to Dwarf Mountain. Which wasn’t nearly as pleasant as he’d thought it might be.

  The moment he’d landed on their rocky soil scouts had tried to toss a net over him, chanting that food had been found. He’d not stuck around long enough to decide whether they were inviting him in for a feast, or whether he was the feast.

  His last stop had been to Seren, the maids laughed and danced in the waters before him, urging him to take off his clothes and come join them for a small dip. And he might have taken them up on that offer, had he not wished to see Calanthe with the desperation of a man starving.

  It was sheer torture to pretend that he wanted to be anywhere other than where he was when every beat of his heart screamed her name.

  He’d already wasted three and a half hours of a very short night, just to make sure Siria wouldn’t know of his true destination.

  But finally the time had come and all the nerves in his stomach were forming into a massive ball that threatened to make him vomit. Once, long ago when he’d lived as a mortal on Earth, approaching women had been like second nature. He’d been gregarious, happy, and carefree. But for so long he’d been locked away in that tower of rock with only the darkness as his companion that he’d lost touch with how to interact with others.

  What if he said something stupid, or worse yet, nothing at all? If his brain just simply froze?

  “Jericho,” a mermaid he’d visited a time or two in the past called his name, breaking through the gripping panic.

  “Huh?” he shook his head, turning to look at the white haired and stunning beauty floating gracefully before the craggy and spiraling rock he’d been perched on the past hour.

  She laughed. “I can see that your mind is elsewhere, anything I can do for you?”

  Her voice was as dulcet and hypnotic as any proper siren’s voice should be. Normally, a sea-maiden could be quite deadly to a man. Mermaids did not give birth to males, ergo they were forced to find their mates above land, which was why so many stories of maidens dragging men to their deaths were so prevalent. They did, in fact, drag men to the briny depths of Davy Jones’ Locker, men who were never heard from again.

  But the moment the maidens had discovered he was the Man in the Moon they’d never tried to be anything other than playful with him. In fact, they treated him with difference and reverence, explaining once that it was the power of the moon that affected the very waters they lived in.

  That admission had made him feel safe enough to hang about with them.

  Standing, he dusted off the back of his pants and offered a weak grin. “I am fine.”

  “And in love,” her ruby red tail flicked briefly out of the water, as she laughed. “I know the look well.”

  Frowning, he stared up at the sky and their surroundings before quickly hushing her with a finger to his lips. “Do not utter those words again, maiden. Truths like that can be dangerous in the wrong hands.”

  “Ah.” She nodded as she brushed a finger against her petal pink lips. “Then consider my lips sealed. But whoever she is, lucky girl.” With a wink and a final nod, she sank beneath the waves.

  Heart pounding a terrible rhythm in his chest, he decided it was well past time to go, and with a simple thought, his funnel appeared.

  Fixing his mind on the glen, he went in search of his fairy.

  ~*~

  “Calanthe!” June shook her by the shoulder, her cheeks were splotchy and red from too much cider, her voice boisterous and her smile much too huge.

  The only thing she could do was shake her head and grumble, “what?”

  “You’re glum, that’s what. And I simply cannot have it. Look around you, Calanthe, you should be having a ball and yet you sit here, tucked away in a corner like one of Cinder’s ugly stepsisters, it’s really quite depressing.”

  And her friend was right. As always. The glen was beautiful tonight. Fireflies, their tiny golden butts aglow with flame, zipped and zagged through the trees, lighting up the fog filled woods. Casting everything in an eerie green glow. Toads were croaking, birds chirping their birdy songs, and spiders had woven the most amazing tapestries all throughout.

  The problem was, Calanthe wanted so much more than to dance, and laugh, and drink herself into such a stupor that she’d make herself a fool the way Julietta was doing now. A pine fairy whose gown of Douglas fir needles was coming perilously close to molting off her body as she danced and twirled through the air like a moth in the midst of its death throes.

  Which was why Calanthe was sitting on the heart shaped stump of a dead walnut tree and watching the scene before her with both a mixture of amazement and disgust.

  “I want more,” she muttered beneath her breath. Low enough that she expected her friend not to hear.

  “What?” June asked, leaning in as she cupped her ear while simultaneously chugging on her ale.

  Rubbing her forehead, knowing that perhaps she should just keep her thoughts to herself, Calanthe ignored her better judgment (as she was often wont to
do) and simply blurted it out.

  “This is all so pointless.”

  “What is?” June turned, giving Calanthe her full attention. But she didn’t look happy about it. In fact, she seemed rather sore about it.

  “This, June. Look. Can’t you see it? What exactly is the purpose? The meaning of all this?” Drawing out her hand to encompass all of the glen, she looked and she saw hundreds of smiling, laughing, drunken faces.

  Life was just one big, pointless, ridiculous, unending party. Every night it was the same thing. Snail races. Dancing by the flame of a firefly’s butt. Seeing who could belch and fart the loudest, whose raven was faster? Which pine nut tasted pinier? Whose wings were more colorful? Who could run farther? Jump higher? Blah, blah, blah… what nonsense a fairy’s life was.

  Turning back to her, June shook her head. “I see fun. Excitement. I see the effervescent joy of simply being. What is wrong with that?”

  Scratching the back of her head, feeling like she wanted to rip her hair out because she knew she wasn’t getting her point across at all, Calanthe growled. “There is nothing wrong with that. But is it wrong to want more?”

  “What more is there, Calanthe?” June tossed up her hands, sloshing the cider over the rim of the hollowed out acorn mug she held. “This is it. We are fairies, this is what we do. We tend to what we love and what we love lies here, inside this glen. What is so difficult to understand about that?”

  But hearing her friend say it, Calanthe knew in her soul that either June was wrong, or Calanthe herself wasn’t much of a fairy. And judging by the lack of crisis in her sisters eyes, she tended to believe it was she and not them who suffered in this way.

  “I’ve been made wrong then, sister. Because this life,” she spread her hands, “it leaves me empty.”

  June’s ruddy complexion went bloodless. “What are you saying? Do you not love being a flower fairy? Harvesting the seeds, planting, seeing them grow and scatter all across Kingdom? Does that not fill you with joy and peace?”

  Once it had, if Calanthe was being perfectly honest. And it wasn’t even so much seeing the moon’s flower that had changed her. The change had started long ago, when one day she noticed that her life consisted of the same routine day in and day out. Nothing ever changed. She was in stasis, stuck in this monotonous routine, and then she’d seen the moon flower and everything had clicked into place.

  There was more to the world than the glen. She wasn’t sure what she was searching for, but she was searching, that at least she knew now.

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  June’s big gray eyes blinked several times as her mouth opened and closed like a fish flopping on land desperate for a taste of oxygen, before finally shaking herself as if coming to her senses.

  “This is unheard of.”

  Calanthe’s smile was bittersweet. “Then you’ll understand my dilemma, my friend.” Thinking about the blanket of stars filling the skies, and the lands all across Kingdom an excitement Calanthe hadn’t felt earlier began to buzz through her bloodstream and she snatched a hold of her friend’s hands. “Let’s travel, June.” She flung one of her hands wide. “Let’s see this world.”

  In her excitement she failed to note that June had gone stiff and unresponsive.

  “I want to swim through the Never Seas, touch the golden grains of Eastern sand, sail above the clouds in—”

  “Then become a fairy godmother,” June retorted. “They often get to see the world.”

  Again, in her enthusiasm, Calanthe failed to note the hint of disapproval coloring her friend’s words. “No, I do not want to pair up couples.” She shuddered at the thought. “I’d make a horrible godmother, what do I know of love?” She laughed at the absurd idea as she plucked a fat leaf off a tendril of ivy creeping over the stump of the tree she sat on.

  That’s when she finally noticed that her friend wasn’t laughing with her. “June?”

  Adjusting the snail shell on her head, June’s lips pinched. “What is wrong with this life, Calanthe? Or being a godmother? That’s what we were born to do, what you were born to do.”

  Shaking her head, Calanthe had no words. Oh they were there, all crowding her tongue, but none of them could make it out. Because there was too much to say and she was obviously horrible at expressing herself. Not to mention the fact that Calanthe wasn’t really sure what she was feeling. So she rubbed the smooth leaf over and over and wondered why this life wasn’t enough.

  Why couldn’t she be as happy as every single one of her sisters so obviously seemed to be? Why did she always have to feel like the outcast? Why was she so different? Why?

  She wanted more. But more what? The only thing she knew was that when she found it, she’d know.

  Tossing the leaf aside, she shot to her feet. “I’m going for a walk.”

  Her thoughts were too muddied, and June’s censure simply wasn’t helping.

  Brows dipping, June latched onto Calanthe’s wrist as she made to sail off into the woods. “You’re not planning to head to The Blue’s cottage to steal another seed are ye?” she hissed it low enough that no one heard.

  It still didn’t stop Calanthe’s pulse from hammering in her throat. “I told you I wouldn’t.” She shook off her friend’s hand. “Whatever happens, June, I’m very sorry I dragged you into this mess with me. But I swear that you can trust me. Only please, give me time to figure all this out.”

  And without pausing long enough to give June time enough to respond, Calanthe barreled toward the tree line, flapping her ivory butterfly wings harder than she ever had. A restlessness was crowding her soul, making the vastness of the glen feel small and much too tiny for her.

  But when Calanthe thought of striking out and heading into Kingdom proper, she was so confused, without a clue where to start. Books would often lead one to believe that a fairy led a glamorous life, but it simply wasn’t true. Fairies seldom traveled outside of their nesting grounds. Where you were born, was where you stayed. And for those few who had a restless soul, they joined Godmother Inc. to become godmother’s, but the thought of living solely to pair up happily ever afters…

  She sighed, so lost in thought that Calanthe never noticed the stranger walking straight toward her. Not until she slammed so hard into his chest that stars swam before her eyes and she tumbled through the air with a tiny cry.

  A large hand caught her before she could hit the ground and the cry of pain from hitting the hard as steel chest, turned to one of surprise and then amazement.

  It was a man.

  A man inside the fairy glen.

  A beautiful, beautiful man.

  Where before her brain had been chaos, now it was silent and focused, all on him.

  He had thick, wavy brown hair that tumbled about a face that looked honed from the finest granite. His beautifully square-cut jaw was all sharp lines and held a hint of a beard that shaded the ivory paleness of his flesh. Piercing brown eyes were focused hotly, intensely on her face. But it was his lips that kept dragging her gaze back. They were neither too full, nor too thin. They were perfect, perfect lips and something inside of her began to grow warm.

  Her heart did a strange sort of racing thing in her chest. And as she lifted her hand to rub at it, it dawned on her that she was sprawled out on the palm of his hand. Her legs at odd angles, her white rose petal dress lifted high enough to expose a long expanse of thigh.

  Heat crawled up her throat and settled in her cheeks.

  He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. More glorious than the flowers that bloomed beneath her touch, even the moon’s flower that’d nearly brought tears to her eyes.

  And was it her imagination, but the wind seemed to hold a hint of that frosty perfume she’d smelled when she’d touched the glass-like petals.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked in cool, crisp voice. A voice that literally seemed to slip inside her soul and resonate through her blood like the hum of crystal dancing in the wind.

  “Huh?” was the
only thing she could think to mutter.

  His small grin, rattled loose the marbles in her head and with a slight shake, she got unsteadily to her feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I thought you’d seen me. I am about ten times your size. I would have yelled if I’d known you weren’t looking.”

  Legs feeling incredibly unsteady… good gods were her knees knocking? She attempted to ignore the very strange reaction she was experiencing to being in his presence and tried, without much success, to not appear as daft as she was currently feeling.

  “No, I’m sorry. I was just…” she frowned, because that overwhelming need she’d felt to flee earlier was now completely vanished, how very strange, “I was thinking,” she said weakly.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen a man before.

  She had.

  In picture books, and often times in tales told around the campfire as magical mirages lit up the night sky, but she’d never been within the actual presence of a live one.

  Never realized just how virile and masculine a male truly was. Fairies were all women. She’d never questioned why, until now. Looking into his eyes, feeling her heart thump a chaotic, frenzied beat, she wondered if perhaps it was because the mere presence of them was so… so… overwhelming. She swallowed hard with a tongue that felt two times too thick for her mouth.

  Even white teeth flashed when he smiled down at her. “What were you thinking of, little fairy?”

  He seemed in no rush to release her, and she knew she should get off his hand and stand on her own power, but something inside her was oddly hesitant to leave his side too.

  Grabbing her thick braid with two hands, she smoothed her flyaway curls down as best she could. Standing on his palm was nice, but it was making her act ridiculous. Needing room to breathe so she could think, she hovered away from him and thought for a moment she witnessed a flash of disappointment light through the rich brown of his eyes.

  Done patting her hair, she began flitting her fingers along her dress line, making certain the petals stayed where they should, fluffing them out so that they cascaded around her slim legs becomingly.