Below the Moon

by Alexis Marie Chute

  “What choice do I have?”

  “The choice is a clear one between life and death. Between death and love.”

  Every cell in Luggie’s body aches to call forth the earth, slap it down in a wave of dirt and roots and shattered glass, to make true the lie of the Lord. To destroy the bloodthirsty, hypocritical Lord of Olearon would earn the respect of the Bangols and perhaps forgiveness from his father. The act must be done before the Lord speaks lies and poisons minds against him; otherwise, Luggie will never succeed in returning home. What sweet retribution, Luggie thinks, for Nanjee and the true-hearted Bangol warriors. Luggie’s friends—the dutiful who reluctantly followed Tuggeron’s orders to drown the humans to bait the Star and coax it out from its hiding place in the sea beneath the island.

  The Lord’s closeness makes it impossible to shift the grassy earth beneath their feet quickly enough for Luggie to beat the Lord’s blaze of fire to scorch everything in the room in half the time. The Lord knows this as well. His red neck and face emit a heat that trickles down Luggie’s brow in silver drops of fear.

  The Lord is too close. He whispers, “After the Star and its power are mine, and our company descend Baluurwa for the Bangols’ northern fortress, I will call upon you. Obedience. You will stand straight, proud, fierce. Your stones will be clean and your head clear. Tuggeron will burn. But not you. And not those who cross the line of fire to stand at your side. You will lead them in serving me, and in striving for true peace for all Jarrwians.

  “And about the human girl,” adds the Lord, sneering. “She uses you for a purpose, as do I, though hers saves only herself, while mine spares thousands. If you truly possess affection for her, remember how closely I control those she holds dear: her mother and her grandfather, Tessa and Archibald Wellsley. And of course her father, faithful Ardenal. Do not give her cause to blame you.

  “Like you, I once knew complicated love.” The Lord’s voice is tight. “It was ripped from me. Love is worth the fight to protect it—in the name of peace, of course, Luggie. You would be wise to remember this.”

  Luggie is startled. Who is the Lord speaking of ? To his knowledge, the Lord ruled with his Maiden before her death, as had all Olearon rulers before them. How was their love complicated? How was it ripped from him?

  Since the Maiden’s blaze consumed both herself and the monster incarnation of cruise director Valarie, the Maiden came to inhabit the body of her Lord. They must be joined in spirit now—in the closest, most intimate way. Luggie cannot make sense of the Lord’s confession. Luggie grinds his teeth, ignoring whatever vulnerability the Lord reveals. Likely for a purpose, he reasons. He growls, “And if I do not obey …”

  “Consider it, yes, but know disobedience ends in death. The rule of the Bangols will fail, your race will be annihilated in my unforgiving fire, and you will watch them burn. I will bestow one final mercy on you: to live a long life. We Olearons will write about you, the last stone-head, in our histories, as the rest of your kin fade from memory.”

  “And Ella?”

  “In every thread weaving the present into what will become the history of Jarr, I see her inevitable end. Her death. She cannot live. If she were to bear your child, that life would be the unity of us all, which I will not have. It must never come to pass.”

  A haunting shudder throws back the Lord’s head. His eyes search the sloping glass ceiling, as if he orients himself in the city. The shiver works through him from head to booted foot. Finally, he takes a rounder, softer stance. Luggie watches dumbly, baffled, unsure if he should help or escape in these fleeting breaths.

  Luggie timidly asks, “Do you need the healer?” He takes a step away as he speaks, worried that the Lord will scald him if his movements are not predictable.

  “What foolishness is this? Why have you not followed the human girl? Out with you, or I will leave you behind.”

  “You held me back,” Luggie says, fuming.

  The Lord scowls at Luggie and turns, leaving him alone with his questions in the glass chamber.

  Coolness rushes in at the Lord’s departure, and Luggie wipes sweat from his flushed brow. He blinks in confusion, flashing his glowing yellow eyes. It is as if the Lord forgot their conversation entirely, as if the convulsions induced immediate amnesia.

  What did the Lord mean that a child birthed of Luggie and Ella would unite all? That babe would be new, that was true—one part Bangol, the other human—but Ella had no Olearon blood in her veins. Her father, Ardenal, had transitioned into an Olearon after he arrived on Jarr-Wya, after his encounter with the magical man-spider’s web.

  The Lord is confused, Luggie reasons. Poisoned with lust for the Star, just like my father.

  The memory of Ella’s drawings, done just minutes before, fill his vision. Would a child be their future?

  Luggie’s attention shifts to his bed, beneath which the secret history of the Olearons lies tucked between mattress and frame. He does not know if the Lord has yet interrogated Archibald about the mysterious record. Archie stole the secret history from the Olearon throne before the original company ventured to the Bangols’ eastern arching bridges in search of Ella. The Maiden confiscated the glass object from him before she died. All believe that in her sacrifice to wipe out carakwa-Valarie, the history was lost to the sea. None know that Luggie found and concealed it. Not even Ella.

  For now, Luggie is content to keep quiet about the survival of the history. The wisdom burned into its glass calls to him, even when preparing for the new mission. Perhaps, Luggie thinks, I can barter the object in exchange for something—or someone—more precious.

  “Obedience is earned.” Luggie’s voice is scratchy. He tenderly slips the secret history into his sack. “The Lord, like my father, soon will see: I am not as easy to control as they believe.”

  Chapter 3

  Archie

  The journey to Baluurwa the Doomful points the company toward Jarr-Wya’s interior, where the blue forest butts up against the black rock on the west, between the Olearon field and mountain. Baluurwa rises sharply out of the island’s center, its angle dangerous, though smaller fragments of ground—grass, dirt, and rock—float on all sides. These levitating pieces of earth connect to the mountain by twisting vines and step-sized stones that magnetize the whole offshoot, binding it together. From many of these mini airborne islands spill flowers and sloping trees, their roots dangling out through the dirt to drink from low, sweeping clouds.

  To Archie, Baluurwa appears like a looming squid, its tall pointed head directing everyone’s eyes up toward the storm. The sky remains dark, the color of bruised plums. It’s been this way all day, as we trekked toward the mount, every waking hour, Archie reflects nervously. Weak sunlight fights its way through the wounded atmosphere. The dusky sky is impenetrable. Is there even a sun up there? he worries. The mountain reaches into the space around it with tentacles of vines and stone. There, chunks of land sway lazily in the churning storm, dropping pebbles and leaves that forget from where they fell by the time they settle on the ground far below.

  Archie looks at his watch. It is a nervous habit, but a futile one. His watch of a long-defunct brand, with a chipped face and tired leather band, no longer ticks. Its face looks back at him blankly, showing the time it stopped.

  Eleven-thirty.

  Archie wonders if that was the nighttime hour when the Atlantic Odyssey was overtaken by Olearon warriors after the ship jumped to the waters of Jarr-Wya. Or late morning, when the vessel crashed on the Millia’s shore. Archie taps the face mindlessly, as if he can startle the watch from its hibernation to tell him how long they have been on the magical island. Days bleed into nights, and the dark overshadows everything. There once was the richness of color and life here and the touch of Jarr’s sun imbued Naiu, but the Star has stolen the light. The weather is not the only element driven into madness.

  THE company that ventures to Baluurwa includes humans and Olearons, plus Luggie. Archie points his finger as he counts. There is
the Lord of Olearon and his two henchmen; Yuleeo and Islo. Junin trails them. She is mother to a young red-skinned daughter—Faye—who was fast friends with Duggie-Sky. Archie commended Duggie-Sky for his brave tear-filled goodbye to the girl. Junin, accustomed to goodbyes, is a warrior from the contingent that rescued half the passengers who survived the Atlantic Odyssey crash and the evil Millia sands’ demand for blood. Archie trusts Junin, though he has less confidence in the one she serves.

  Azkar and Nameris, and their younger sibling Kameelo, who was gifted the power of flight inside Rolace’s web, also stand guard over the Lord. They still grieve the deaths of their other brothers, Olen and Eek. Kameelo keeps watch of the new company from above, where he flies in the dim sky. Since they proved their strength and loyalty on the trek east, the Lord keeps the three brothers closer than all but Yuleeo and Islo, his most intimate advisors and guards.

  Ardenal is the eighth Olearon, though he treks apart from the others, beside Archie and Duggie-Sky, whose four-year-old legs have not yet tired. Archie peers past the boy to his son. Arden—Ardenal on Jarr-Wya—wears the blue of an Olearon warrior, but that is not all he shares with them. His skin is warm red, his eyes the endless black of midnight. His hair is unlike it was when he was human; now, it is matted and forms a Mohawk across his skull.

  Ardenal, too, like born Olearons, can control fire, calling it forth from the nape of his neck, weaving blades of grass into weapons of flame and igniting his whole body. Even with this unexpected transformation, Archie relishes the closeness of Arden, who had been lost from Earth for two confusing years. It didn’t take long for Archie to recognize the ruddy, gangly creature as his son, though Tessa—Archie’s daughter-in-law, Ella’s mom, and Arden’s wife—was slower to recognize what Arden has become.

  Tessa and the captain of the Atlantic Odyssey, Nathanial Billows, talk in quiet voices on the periphery of the company. Archie scowls in Nate’s direction. He resents the closeness between Tessa and Nate, though a small part of him understands. He, too, longs for companionship—for his late wife Suzie—and accepts that Arden has changed. Archie’s mission of reuniting his family was complete when they found each other at the glass city, yet the fractured feeling between Tessa and Arden continues to divide them.

  Archie next counts his granddaughter, Ella, and the Bangol, Luggie, who walk close together, watching the tall branches of the blue forest for the compound eyes of the carakwas or the concealed bodies of the black flyers. Regretting his granddaughter’s fear, which he would remove if he could, Archie is thankful for Luggie—for Luggie’s hand on Ella’s back as he guides her, watching out for her.

  Archie knows the friendship of a Bangol himself, despite Zeno’s abrupt departure in the east. Zeno did not say goodbye, not to Archie or to any of them, and yet Archie’s forgiveness reaches his friend, no matter where he may be. Zeno rebutted his kindnesses and his trust, yet there was evidence that the selfish Bangol cared for the human who sought him out in the Haria marketplace on the island of Lanzarote on Earth, the human who helped him return to the island of Jarr-Wya and his fellow Bangols. Zeno leaped in front of Archie when the Maiden’s anger, and her fire, flared at discovering the secret glass in Archie’s hands.

  At the tail end of the company is the Spanish opera singer, Lady Sophia. The skin on her pudgy arms and neck grow patchy white and red with exertion. She still dons her ball gown, which she wore when the Atlantic Odyssey crashed on the Millia’s southern beach and dirtied on the rescue mission east. At the time, she scoffed at the idea of changing into more sensible trekking attire.

  “It’s the only way I can judge how much weight I’ve sweated from my hips,” she bellowed in protest in the glass city. The outspoken woman pestered Junin for a needle and thread so she could stitch two folds into the gown, allowing her thick ankles and calves to march unobstructed. Lady Sophia relented enough to slice the heels off her shoes with a glass blade. Her other demand was to join the new company.

  “I hated how the Maiden used me—being thrown off a bridge into the ocean as a ruse,” she said. “Still, the exhilaration of it inspired me to write songs of my own. Oh, I can only imagine what new arias will bubble up out of me on this new adventure.”

  The Lord scolded Lady Sophia, emphasizing the seriousness of their mission to defeat the Star—and with that, reverse all it altered: the poisoning of Jarr-Wya, the erratic weather, morphed creatures, corrupted minds, and the presence of the Millia sands.

  Lady Sophia shooed the Lord away, as only she seemed capable of doing, her cheerful mood unsullied by his ferocity. She merrily went on packing loaf after loaf of vulai bread, enough for five warriors, and told the Lord, “Now who’d sing you all to sleep? Couldn’t have that on my conscience!” She chuckled.

  Finally, Archie counts himself. Fifteen in all.

  There are fifteen in their quiet company, all leery of what may come when they reach Baluurwa. No one ventured to the mountain since the last Olearon Lord: Telmakus, the 29th. Archie read about him in the secret history of the Olearons, which he discovered in the armrest of the glass throne in the citadel. When the Maiden discovered him reading the glass history, she confiscated it, threatening to scorch Archie. At Ardenal’s insistence, she showed mercy instead.

  Archie’s fingers ache for the magical square of glass. At his touch, it revealed to him, in his own language, many things deemed private by the Lord. As he longs for the secret history, Archie laments its demise along with the Maiden, who had it with her when she faced the Bangols in the east and revolted against Valarie. How could the glass survive a blast of fire so hot it killed millions of carakwas? It can’t have survived, Archibald, you old fool!

  Archie stretches his hands, his arms, his back. How youthfulness crept into him from the first moment he touched the Tillastrion made by Zeno, he has no idea. This, too, like the glowing white words he read on the glass, he tells no one. Day by day, Archie feels himself straighten out, his crooked back no longer a wilted flower. His skin grows thick and conceals the web of veins that once rose as blue tributaries on the tops of his hands. He runs his fingers through his hair, savoring its thickness where he was once bald and speckled with age spots.

  “Grandpa Archie, carry me?” Duggie-Sky says in a whining tone, and though Ardenal reaches his toned red arms for the boy, Archie shoos him away. Archie scoops up the child without effort and swings him onto his shoulders. As the boy perches there, the muscles in Archie’s chest tighten and bulge in the pleasing way he remembers from the decades he spent as a roofer in Seattle. He was lean and strong then. Archie is certain he is changing, bizarrely, back into that shape.

  The pace of the company’s hike, compared with the urgency with which they had rushed east to rescue Ella and challenge the Bangols, is indeed slower and more calculated. The Lord is a looming presence amongst them, and all are more careful with each step. At the company’s center, the Lord discusses with Yuleeo and Islo in hushed voices their strategy for climbing the mountain and navigating its tunnels.

  “Losing the Maiden was the greatest tragedy,” the Lord says to the company as the glass city disappears behind them, hidden by thick blue trunks as they enter the forest. “This time, none will be that careless.”

  No one in the company has the courage to speak up for the successes of that mission. Ella was saved. The contingent of Bangols were annihilated, except for King Tuggeron. Most in their company returned to the glass city with only minor injuries. Yet, what they brought with them were haunted memories.

  All remember Valarie’s haunting voice as she emerged into consciousness on the eastern beach in the monstrous amalgamation of linked carakwas. The original company that remained after the expansive blast mourned the Maiden but are grateful. The spiteful words of the Lord only add pain to their misery. The Maiden’s mercy, how she spared them—if not all Jarr-Wya—from Valarie’s vengeance is an enduring debt.

  Back in Seattle, while Archie snored on the couch, Ella ascended into their attic and poure
d over her lost father’s notebooks. Those journals were filled with his research and sketches—drawings that became etched in Ella’s mind, which she later realized were clues to locating the remedy for her cancer—a remedy entangled with the fate of the worlds. She recreated these drawings to lead the company to the Star and, hopefully, her cure.

  Azkar grips Ella’s drawings in his hand as he treks, while Archie immediately memorized the images. His mind now traces their inky contours. What must we crack open? he wonders. Who must burn in a blazing fire? And how must a brain, heart, and flame unite, leading from one to the other? For Archie, the ink drawings elicit more questions than answers.

  Azkar studies one drawing with dotted lines that trace the exterior of Baluurwa, then point inward, through the center of the mountain. “This drawing is too simple, Lord. The Steffanus race burrowed many, if not hundreds, of tunnels through the rock …” His face is pinched in consternation. The black scar that runs from beneath his eye, down his left cheek, and to his collarbone puckers and pulls at his red skin.

  Nameris snatches the drawing. “Azkar is right. We could be lost for countless sunsets within Baluurwa.”

  Nameris is by far the most studious of the warriors. Due to his time spent studying—instead of training—he is rail thin, though fast on his feet. He reminds Archie of a friend of Arden’s from university. The young history student was a tall skeleton, as if his back had no bend, so he looked down on everyone—quite literally, but also as one who believes he knows much more than the rest.

  Yuleeo speaks up thoughtlessly, “If only a Steffanus remained, so that she might lead us to the right path—”

  The Lord cuts off Yuleeo. “Never wish for such a thing. The last of the Steffanus race died when the 29th Lord—my uncle, Telmakus—burned through the mountain before his end. This is a debt we owe to him, never to be forgotten. The last Steffanus nearly drove him mad with her ill-intended oracles, her wicked lava eyes, and her cunning voice. We all must take care”—the Lord raises his voice—“to mind the lies still carried on the wind. Report immediately to Islo anything heard on a whisper.”