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

  She knew she was primping, but she wasn’t quite sure how to stop it.

  “Well, human, I was thinking…” should she tell him her true thoughts? She didn’t know him. What if he laughed? What if he treated her as June had earlier? She frowned.

  The tip of his pinky grazed her chin, the touch jolted like fire and made her hiss with a sharp indrawn breath.

  “I will not laugh,” he said, but it was the way he said it, so kind, so sweet, that made her finally brave enough to open up.

  “I was thinking I should leave the fairy glen. Tonight. Right now.” She shrugged, feeling rather foolish now that the words were out and waited with a much too hard pounding heart for his reply.

  Glancing over his shoulder, the man appeared to be searching for something. It gave Calanthe time to study him more fully. It was hard to gauge with her a tenth of his size whether he was a tall human, but he appeared to be so. Wearing dark pants and dark brown jacket, he wasn’t dressed in any sort of garb to distinguish him as being from a specific region of Kingdom.

  Who was this man? It wasn’t as if there was an enchantment around the glen to prevent humans from entering, occasionally a few brave souls had been known to come inside for a visit… and over the years a few others, but those that had were always looking for their godmothers and they were quickly gone before anyone could see them for longer than a few seconds at most.

  But not many came to seek out fairies, since it was well known throughout the regions that fairies (apart from godmothers of course) were all rather self-serving and rarely prone to helping others.

  Why was he here? But more importantly, who was he?

  Moving toward a large green knoll, he sat.

  Why?

  Was he actually interested in chatting with her?

  Unsure whether he wished her company or not, she stayed where she was and waited, but for what, she wasn’t entirely sure.

  “So you want to leave the glen?” he finally prompted, with a small nod. And the way he was sitting, with his torso slumped over his bent knees and looking straight at her, it was obvious he meant to spend some time.

  Fighting a smile, she did something bold. If he meant to stay, then she didn’t want him to view her as simply a doll-like fairy. And it had nothing to do with wanting him to see her as attractive. Truly.

  Gathering her courage, she called forth her magic and transformed.

  ~*~

  Jericho stared transfixed as she became his size. Watching it from high up in his isolated castle was one thing, but to feel the rushing sound of bells whisper through the breeze, scent the rose wash of her body.

  He couldn’t move, could only drink her in and wonder why it had taken them so long to meet. Light exploded from her every pore, illuminating her from within and he wanted desperately to move closer to her, just so that he could absorb it into himself.

  Where Siria’s brightness was too glaring for him to gaze upon, Calanthe’s wasn’t. Lifting a hand, he swished it through the shimmering veil of her glow, dazzled by her.

  And when that light faded and she stepped out, he knew he’d done right by coming here. Her smile was wide, her eyes luminescent and so blue they reminded him of cut sapphires.

  Her dress was a waterfall cascade of white rose petals, billowing prettily around her lithe frame as she neared him with the hesitant steps of a doe.

  He didn’t move, didn’t even talk, afraid she might try to run away. Jericho sensed that if he didn’t startle her, she would come to him. But what little he knew of fairies, he knew what she was doing was aberrant. A woodland fairy rarely socialized with anyone outside their glen.

  His heart was a beating, furious thing, demanding she not leave him. Desperate for her to stay and it took everything he had not to rush her, hold her in his arms until she wanted him with the type of mad craving he felt for her.

  Each step she took closer brought not only the scent of roses, but more sweet and exotic perfumes. Because wherever she moved a plethora of flowers bloomed.

  Up close, her face was breathtaking. In miniature it was hard to see each and every curve and line. She had eleven freckles scattered along the bridge of her nose. A tiny mole over her lip. Impossibly long, dark lashes that feathered across her upper cheeks like a thick paintbrush.

  His stomach knotted and his skin broke out in a fine sheen of sweat.

  Finally she sat and he could breathe, because she was beside him. She was here, she was no longer just a dream, a desperate vision revealed in smoke that he could never have. Calanthe was right here.

  She sat far enough away that they weren’t touching, but close enough that the air tingled between them. Her hand landed just inches from his own, her fingers stretched out so far that if he really wanted to, he could very easily trace their delicate length.

  “I do,” she said.

  And he frowned, because for a second he’d completely forgotten what they were speaking about. Quickly he ran through their conversation, realizing she was answering his last statement of wanting to leave.

  She shrugged and he inhaled her heady, delicious scent so deep into his lungs he knew that smell would haunt him forever. “Or rather, I did.” She looked up shyly beneath her lashes, and his heart bumped.

  But she didn’t give him a chance to contemplate the meaning behind that, when she was asking a question. “What are you doing here, human? A fairy’s glen is not the easiest place to find. Not unless you know where to look.”

  His lips twitched. Her innocence was so refreshing. Siria was conniving artifice, Calanthe while much more bold than the average flower fairy, was in so many ways, quite naïve.

  “You brought me here, Calanthe,” he said it boldly, ignoring the nerves stringing his gut taut.

  Her fine-boned features frowned. “Me?” She patted her chest. “But I’ve never seen you before.”

  Unable to keep from touching her a second longer, he traced the curve of her jaw with the pad of his thumb. Her skin was so much softer than he’d thought it would be, in fact, it reminded him of what it felt like when he traced the petal of a rose.

  Eyes grown huge in her face, she stared at him and he wondered if she’d ever been touched like this before.

  Wrapping her hand around his wrist, she held on. He half expected her to ask him to release her, or for her to eventually let him go. But her fingers were curled and her breathing was hard.

  He licked his lips and her eyes zoomed in on the action.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  Being who he was, he understood time. Understood that he had only an hour left before he’d be banished back to his lonely castle. She was letting him touch her, in fact, he sensed she might even let him do more.

  And he was tempted.

  Goddess was he tempted.

  But he wanted to know Calanthe more than just physically, he wanted to know her viscerally. Wanted to understand her in a way no one else did. Wanted her to know him in the same way.

  That’s why he forced himself to scoot back, forced his hand away from her, and shuddered at the loss of it. When he looked at her, she too looked just as affected as he’d been. Licking her lips and frantically toying with the end of her braid.

  “You know me, Calanthe. You brought me to life,” he forced the words past a throat thick with desire.

  A pretty frown kissed her brows. “I don’t…”

  Heart so heavy, it almost hurt, he smiled. “My name is Jericho, and I’m the Man in the Moon.”

  Chapter 5

  “Le sigh,” the Tiger lily fairy Juniper smiled broadly. “This is so romantic,” her little, bell like voice sighed.

  “Aye,” Danika nodded. “It is that, but also quite forbidden.” She fixed a stern brow upon her wee charges. “At least back then it was. The scandal of a human and a fairy falling in love. It’s unheard of,” she harrumphed for that added bit of drama.

  “Oh no,” the calalily shook her head vehemently, causing the pollen from her dress to scatter
through the breeze. “There’s been many more romances between fairies. Why, Guinevere and Lancelot—”

  “Aye,” Danika nodded, “and has that tale been butchered, but that is neither here nor there.” She waved her hand, “fact is, when Jericho and Calanthe fell in love, it had never happened before. They were trendsetters to be sure… but their love, as all great romances are I suppose, was doomed from the start. They just didn’t know it then.”

  “No!” the loud cry startled Danika, and it took a moment to realize it’d come from within the shadow to her right. Squinting, she fought a grin when she noticed Genevieve.

  “I thought you’d gone abed, Gene,” Danika teased the churlish sprite who finally deigned to step into the light.

  But rather than come back with a snappy retort, she continued to shake her head. “They’ve only just gotten together and already you tell us it’s doomed. They haven’t even had a chance. It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not. I was going to just skip ahead to the betrayal, but if you’d rather hear a wee bit more about their romance, I could of course, go into more detail.” She studied her nails as if she’d be the one doing Genevieve the favor when, in fact, the romance had always been the best part of the story. “Of course there are parts of it that aren’t quite… erm,” she cleared her throat, “PG rated.”

  “What is PG?” the primrose asked.

  Danika laughed and shushed her. “None of your business, squirt.” Now, how to tell the full romance without it getting graphic for the children?

  Then an idea formed, a positively, evilly, wonderful idea that made her lips twitch. The children would never know.

  “Gene dear,” she looked at the sprite, “you might want to plug your nose.”

  “Huh?” Was all the sprite could say.

  The children looked perplexed as Danika herself slipped an invisible band around her own nose. “Children, do understand when you get a little older, perhaps then I might share, but for now…” Letting her words trail off, she slipped her hand into her pocket and took out the one weapon in her arsenal no fairy should ever be without. A tiny gleaming red vial full of noxious gas.

  Literally.

  Unstoppering the cork, she released the dragon fart into the air. Eyes growing impossibly wide, the children inhaled before they could pinch their noses shut and within seconds they’d all passed out snoring loudly.

  Using her wand to whisk a cleansing breeze through the glen, Danika nodded at Genevieve. “The coast is clear.”

  Laughing uproariously, the sprite danced to the very front row and sat cross-legged before the fire. “You are truly cruel, Danika,” she chided.

  “Bah, dragon’s fart will only keep them slumbering for an hour. By that point I will have gotten through the best part.” She winked. “Now, we haven’t much time…”

  ~*~

  “The Man in the Moon,” Calanthe whispered and then struck her palm to her forehead. “The moon’s flower! That is you?” Whipping her head around, she stared at him anew. And suddenly the surprise gave way to shock. “You?” The word was just a breath of sound.

  He nodded. “You called me to you.”

  And where before she’d only been shy, now she was mortified. What did he know? What had he felt? Goddess! She squeaked in her own hand when she thought about the way she’d caressed the petals, how they’d literally seemed to dance and quiver beneath her touch.

  Covering her eyes with her hands, she groaned.

  But he was gently prying them off her face, and staring at her with eyes that reminded her of rich, fertile soil and she didn’t think. Because if she had, she knew she wouldn’t have done it.

  She traced the lines of his mouth with her finger. Moved up the curve of his jaw, across his firm forehead and then back down again. Repeating the action and he let her and this time she understood the quivers in his flesh, understood the popping of muscle… because she hadn’t been tracing just a flower, she’d been touching the man.

  Only his hard moan brought her back to the present, to the reality of what she was doing and she snatched her hand back, hugging it tight to her body as if burned. Every instinct in her screaming to get up and run away.

  But as if he sensed it, he shook his head. “Don’t leave me. I don’t have much time left.”

  Swallowing her panic, Calanthe took a moment to collect herself. “Why?”

  “How much do you know about me?” he asked, touching his chest.

  She shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “No.” He sliced his hand through the air. “Not me, Jericho. But me, the Man in the Moon?”

  Only that he existed. That the Man in the Moon controlled the shifting tides of the sea, brought the cloaking veil of night to the lands. But Calanthe’s life had always been dominated more by the sunlight than the darkness. Sun made her seeds sprout, fed her flowers so that they’d grow and bloom as they ought.

  “Very little,” she ruefully admitted.

  His smile was soft. “I’m a man, born of an entirely different place.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “In Kingdom?”

  “No.”

  He laughed, and the sound shivered across her flesh, made her stomach curl in on itself.

  “I wasn’t born in Kingdom. I was born far, far away. In a place called Earth.”

  “Earth?” Of course she’d heard of Earth, a place filled with humans who read their stories and thought of them merely as myth, as tales to tell around a campfire. A place with no magic, and very little belief in it. “How did you get here?”

  “Siria,” he said the name like it should mean something to her. But it didn’t. What she did notice though was that when he’d said the name it was cold and inflectionless.

  She shrugged.

  “She is the sun.”

  Calanthe laughed. “I never knew the two of you had names. How odd that I wouldn’t know that. I see the sun and moon every day and never wondered about it. But how did she bring you here from Earth?”

  Leaning back on his hands, he stared out at the night with an unseeing gaze. As if he weren’t looking at the forest, but back into the past.

  “The moon and sun can travel across all planes of existence. From Kingdom to Earth and a trillion different realms in between.”

  “Wow,” she breathed, not just a little amazed by that fact. “What have you seen?”

  His smile was broad and so breathtaking that for a moment she really did forget to inhale.

  “Galaxies.” He stared up at the sky. “The birth and death of planets and stars, of entire civilizations. Creatures so strange as to give you nightmares. Civilizations comprised of peoples with purple skin and tusks for mouths.”

  “Purple skin and tusks for mouths,” she laughed. “You’re lying.”

  “No.” His eyes twinkled. “I have seen things you could not even dream of.”

  Excited, blood pumping as she tried to imagine it, she sat to her knees. “How old are you, Jericho?”

  Blinking, as if coming back to himself, he turned toward her. “I’m not really sure actually. Time moves so differently here than it did on Earth. The days are so much longer. But I’ve been locked away in that castle for over two hundred Kingdom years.”

  She frowned. “Then how can you safely move in between realms. I’ve always heard that only those from Kingdom can go to Earth and not age back to what they should be now.”

  “True, and were I to actually leave Kingdom, I would surely die.” He said it with such bluntness, she didn’t think he’d actually mind if he did.

  But just the thought of it made her heart want to seize with terror. She’d only just found him, and strange as it seemed, she knew deep down with every fiber of her being that Jericho was the excitement she’d been waiting her entire life for.

  No, it wasn’t done. A fairy shouldn’t want more than what a fairy had. But being with him now, she was full. No longer empty, or cold, or depressed. He filled the hole, the ache. The night she’d met him as a flower, and
now, meeting him in the flesh… he was her adventure.

  It was wrong on so many levels, she knew that, and knew that should they get caught now it wouldn’t go well for her… but she simply couldn’t bring herself to care, because this was right.

  She grabbed his hand, slipping her fingers through his. Looking down at their joined palms, he smiled and it made her heart sail.

  “I live in the castle, up there.” He pointed to the moon and as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t see a castle at all. Nothing but the crags and cliffs of the moon. “The magic of Kingdom permeates my home. In essence a slice of Kingdom goes with me wherever I go.”

  Wiggling just an inch closer, she tried to hide the blush. She knew she was acting bold, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Not where he was concerned.

  “But you’re here now.”

  Lifting their hands he stared at it for a while and then shrugged. “Yes, for now. But I can only do this once a month.”

  It was like a slap of cold water to the face. “Why?” She tried to hide the fact that she wanted to see him again, wanted to do this every night for the next million nights, wanted to talk of other planets and strange and exotic people, but she knew the sad note in her voice was giving her away.

  Using his other hand, he traced her knuckles and his touch felt so good. Like a brand it burned straight through her, made her nerves tingle. But then he did something even more amazing. He lifted their hands and kissed each and every single one of her fingers. Lingering long between kisses and she couldn’t help herself from moaning because the pleasure was wild and racing and making her dizzy.

  Her body reacted strangely, in a way it never had before. Her limbs felt heavy, why… even her thighs tingled, and her dress was suddenly much to tight on her chest.

  She feared that perhaps she was dying. But was it possible to die from too much pleasure?

  “I cannot stay long,” he finally whispered, and holding her gaze, she read the sincerity in his gaze.

  “But we’ve only just met, Jericho.” She shook her head. Wishing there were someway to keep him with her. “If you knew of me already, knew how to find me, why did you wait so long to come and get me?”