Fall From the Moon (A Bánalfar Novel Book 1)

by CS Hale

  “Would you like help?” I asked the women. Daria opened up her sewing box. “You’ll probably have to teach me, but I’m willing to learn.”

  Cadalin looked to Laera for an answer.

  “Are you sure it’s not beneath you, my queen?” Laera asked. Her wide eyes held Vienne’s.

  “Nothing should be beneath a queen. If she is not willing to do what needs to be done, of what use is she?” Even Daria gave me a stunned look. “If she is not willing to shelter, then why should she be sheltered? If she is not willing to serve, then why should she be served? If she is not willing to fight, then why should she be protected? If she is not willing to sew —” I paused and bit back a smile. “— however badly, then why is she in the solar?”

  Silence hung in the room. The leaping animals on the cheery tapestries lining the walls offered the only hint of movement.

  “I would understand if you would not wish your child to be clothed in my clumsy attempts, but I would at least like to try. I would like to be useful.”

  “No. Of course n-not,” Cadalin stammered. “I mean, I would not be embarrassed to have my child clothed in something made by my queen.”

  I smiled kindly. “What would you like me to work on?”

  “Perhaps we could teach you to hem,” Daria said.

  “I think we have something.” Cadalin turned to the basket between her and Laera.

  Laera sorted through the small garments in various stages of completion and pulled out a white square of fabric. Daria’s cheeks reddened. Eyes firmly fixed on the floor, she rose so that Laera could take the place next to me. I prayed my face hadn’t flushed as well. I had told them nothing was beneath me, so how could I now complain that I was now being asked to hem what was obviously a diaper?

  Laera didn’t meet my eyes. “Fold the edge over, then over again.” She swiftly turned the fabric. Then using the fingers of just her left hand, she pinched the folded edge between them to keep it from coming undone and ran her thumb along it to smooth it down. Laera adjusted the pleat with her free hand until it was uniform. “Then sew down the edge.”

  Cadalin handed her a needle. It flashed in the sunlight as Laera moved the needle swiftly in and out of the fabric, leaving a neat row of stitches along the top. When she neared her index finger, Laera set the needle high in her lap and turned the next section. “Now you try.”

  It was fabric, not paper like my origami, but my fingers had no trouble creating the folds. “It’s just like the outline stitch, only smaller,” Daria said when I picked up the needle.

  In and out. In and out. I concentrated on making my stitches small and even.

  I ran my finger over the first completed section. “This isn’t that different from the paper folding I’ve done.”

  “Paper folding?” Vienne asked.

  “Yes. You take paper and, depending on where you make the folds, you can create all kinds of animals or even boxes.” Mild curiosity appeared on their faces.

  “What are they used for?” Niah asked.

  “Decoration.” Though the cranes weren’t. They had a purpose. “Toys,” I added, thinking of the jumping frogs.

  Laera’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ll have to show us sometime,” she said in that tone of voice that always meant the opposite.

  “Well, not today.” I folded the next section of white cloth. “I have plenty of work for today.” I smiled at them and focused on the needle. They could try and intimidate me, but today not even diapers were going to get the best of me.

  I hadn’t thought about folding anything since I’d made the twenty-three cranes for the crew. But cranes are not just creatures that carry departed souls to the afterlife. They are also symbols of good fortune and long life. One tradition was to do a Senbazuru — a group of one-thousand cranes folded and strung together so that its creator could ask the venerable cranes to grant a wish.

  That, I thought as I looked through the paraphernalia on Valemar’s desk, would be one thing I actually could do. Make a thousand cranes and wish for the Cordair to be gone. But not today.

  A hinged, wooden box contained the creamy sheets I was looking for. Thick but not stiff. I sat at the table and folded one corner to the edge of the other side. I sharpened the crease with the back of my fingernail and turned down the remaining edge. That piece I folded back and forth then ran my tongue along the crease. The moisture softened the fibers and allowed me to make a neat tear.

  With the excess gone, I had a square sheet of paper, and my fingers began their work, the steps so familiar that I didn’t even need to think.

  Valemar came in as I searched for something to distract my drifting mind from the last time I’d done this. His hair draped across my back as he peered over my shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “Origami,” I said. “The ancient art of paper folding.” My fingers continued. Fold … crease … turn … f old … crease … turn.

  “I see. And why do you fold paper?”

  I looked back at him and gave him a mysterious smile, my lips passing just inches from his. “Wait and see.”

  I opened my last three folds and flipped the paper over. Fold … crease … turn … fold … crease … turn.

  “You keep undoing your work,” Valemar said, soft in my ear, when I opened the folds on that side as well.

  “Hush.”

  Fold … crease … turn. Following the creases I’d already made, I began to turn the diamond in upon itself. The ends of the paper began to point up like the wings they’d become. I folded down the wings, pinched them against the body while I made the head, then pulled. The body popped, filling out. I offered Valemar my crane.

  “What is this?”

  “Tsuru,” I said. “The sacred crane. Legend says they live to be a thousand years old.”

  “Very possible,” Valemar said, his eyebrow hooked, as he stared at the bird in his palm.

  I gently shoved him with my shoulder. “Not the paper, silly. The real birds. They are white with black feathers on their inner wings. These droop and give the birds the illusion of a black tail when their wings are folded. Their throats are black, and the crest on their heads is red. And they stand nearly as tall as I.”

  “Do they?”

  “They may not live a thousand years, but often to seventy. And once they find a mate, they stay with their chosen one as long as they both live.”

  Valemar brushed the hair back from my face and tucked it behind my ear. His finger traced the curve of my ear, flat against my head — so unlike his own. “Tell me more,” he whispered.

  “They’re a symbol of luck and longevity.” My mind filled with the image of my last cranes all lined up on the bridge of the Palmas Cove. I bit my lip and pushed it away, reached instead for the new life all around me. “I thought I’d give this one to Cadalin.”

  Valemar pulled a chair up next to me and sat down. He twirled the paper crane by its tail. “Who taught you?”

  “One of my teachers at school.” I smiled, thinking of my fourth grade year and Mr. Patterson who’d brought in the stack of origami paper. He’d been of the opinion that we spent too much time with our eyes glued to our tablets. And we still did, for the patterns were found there. But then our eyes would shift to the folds, and our hands flipped something other than an image on a screen. And soon we could do both.

  But such a world was utterly foreign to Valemar.

  “He wanted us to have a connection to the past,” I said instead. “People on my world have been folding paper this way for over two thousand years.”

  “Not too long then,” said the man whose family had been ruling Bánalfar for nearly that amount of time.

  “It’s still ancient.”

  “Are you calling me ancient?”

  I smiled. “Only your bloodline.” I sighed. The Shororato would occasionally intercede in Earth affairs so things didn’t get “out of hand,” but countries still rose and fell. “No one has held power that long on the moon.”

  “It is a m
oon of blood.”

  “It is a red moon, the color of fire.” I took the crane from Valemar and spun it back and forth between my fingers, bringing it to life. “In the land of the crane, red is a lucky color. Red brings happiness. A bride wears red on her wedding day, and it is forbidden at funerals.”

  “The moon has brought me happiness,” Valemar said.

  My breath caught in my throat. “Has it?”

  Valemar reached out and stroked my face. “Definitely.”

  I SPENT THE next several days singing to my birds, sewing more diapers for Cadalin, and studying with Valemar and Padrid. But I was never outside the walls of the Low. Other than the few hours I’d spent in the steppe and then on the back of Heymond’s horse (mostly unconscious), I’d been cooped up one place or another since the Palmas Cove had set off from Earth weeks earlier. I could see the open fields and inviting woods on the other side of the Leisna from the windows of the High but I had not been allowed to visit them. The sound that drifted up to my window of boys playing in the river below sparked rebellion in me.

  I sought out Valemar in his study. “What are my duties as queen?” I asked him, feigning innocence.

  Valemar looked up from his papers. “Why do I get the feeling this is a trick question?”

  “I just want to check that I’m working on all my skills.”

  Valemar pressed a fist to his mouth. “And what skill do you think you’re lacking in?” he asked from behind his hand, his serious tone negated by the amusement dancing in his eyes.

  “Well …” I stepped to the front of the table. “I know that Aedenfal is only one of Bánalfar’s strongholds.” I traced a pattern on the table with my index finger, watched the oil from my finger create loops and swirls on the surface. “I would expect that you travel between them. Do you plan on leaving me here?”

  Valemar frowned. “No.”

  “And how do you get from place to place?”

  “Darana,” he said, naming the animal I always thought of as a “horse.” “Where are you going with this?”

  “Ah.” I dropped down into one of the chairs and tapped my fingers on the arms. “Then we have a problem.”

  “Spit it out, Astrid.”

  “I don’t ride.”

  Valemar sat back in his chair as stunned as if I’d hit him. “You don’t ride? What do you mean you don’t ride? You rode here from Fairfada.”

  “In front of Heymond. Unconscious most of the time.”

  “You rode to and from the Cair on our wedding.”

  “Sidesaddle. At a walk. All I had to do was sit.”

  The information proved too much for Valemar. He flung himself out of his chair and paced the room. “How do you get from place to place on the moon?”

  “Not on darana.” I suppressed a sigh. Surely my metal ship was a clue that things were different ‘on the moon.’ “So, you can see that I am clearly lacking a skill I need,” I said as Valemar continued pacing the room, now mute. “I am hoping you’ll lift the restrictions that have kept me within Aedenfal’s walls. Unless you intend me to ride clamped in someone’s arms every time I need to travel.”

  Valemar gave me an icy glare.

  “Then I should learn to ride. Someplace with soft ground in case I fall? The fields outside Aedenfal, perhaps?” His eyes narrowed even further. For a moment, I thought he was going to refuse.

  “Is it really that dangerous outside the walls?” I asked. Fear made my voice tiny.

  A breath he’d been holding rushed out with a whoosh. “No,” Valemar said. He came to stand next to my chair. “The Cordair have been keeping their scouting parties to the eastern edges of Fairfada. It’s just …”

  And I knew from the look in his eyes what his fear was — that I’d appeared from nowhere and could just as easily vanish.

  “Are the fields and woods surrounding Aedenfal safe?” I asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want a wife who rides like the wind or one who needs to be carried?”

  Valemar’s eyes twinkled. “Like the wind?” He squatted down next to my chair.

  “It could happen today,” I said as butterflies collided in my chest. “Don’t know how to stop. But eventually on purpose, leaving any pursuers in the dust.”

  Valemar brushed a strand of hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear. “Have you had to leave pursuers in the dust?”

  “A few times, but then it boiled down to who had the fastest ship,” I said, thinking of the time the Lesela had changed their minds on the price of the cell growth serum and how it was only Dave’s special modifications to the Cove that had enabled us to escape the system.

  “By ship.” Valemar looked thoughtful. “So you sail everywhere?”

  “I suppose you could say that.” Large vehicles were sometimes called land yachts.

  Valemar continued to play with my hair. “We’ve never really talked about the moon.”

  I swallowed heavily. “No.” I hadn’t brought it up. It was easier to keep the truth hidden if I let him believe what he wanted to believe. Easier to keep from shattering his world. Safer for me, not only for that reason, but the voice in the back of my brain thought it would be better if I broke the law as little as possible. Just in case the Shororato did show up. Things would go even worse for me if I altered the perceptions of this world, if I changed how they perceived the universe.

  Valemar’s eyes narrowed, catching the fear that appeared on my face. I could see questions flash by in his eyes. Questions he left unasked.

  Valemar dropped his gaze. “Is it safe?” I asked again, my voice little more than a whisper.

  He gave my hand a squeeze. “Yes.”

  Valemar stood up without looking at me. “I’ll have Calan make the arrangements. You should be able to ride.” He picked up several of the papers and began to study them. It was a subtle dismissal.

  I rose from my chair. “Thank you.”

  Our conversation might have come to an end, but I had a feeling that the questions had just begun.

  They took me out through the watergate. Calan, the darana master, waited on the far bank with four other riders and a mount for me. The boatman offered me the same gracious smile he had when I first arrived, and it was as if the clock had turned back on itself. I was glad that Heymond was not in the group. If time unwound, I would have to start at the beginning again.

  The oars splashed, each stroke temporarily drowning out the hum of insects and the stamp of hooves, impatient to be off. The aroma of wet and dying grass filled my nose. Calan reached an arm in to help me from the boat when we reached the other side. “My queen.”

  I took his hand and scrambled onto the bank. A light breeze lifted the hair from my shoulders. I fought back the urge to climb onto the strange horse and kick its sides, send it running through the trees, the wind streaming back my hair, pulling the water from my eyes. I couldn’t drive here. There were no cars to climb into. No convertibles to put the top down and let the speed take over my soul, to put distance between me and the things that chipped away at my life.

  One day, maybe, I’d be able to climb on a darana and do that. Maybe one day soon. But not today. Today, I needed to learn to control the animal. Today, I needed to learn to control my body.

  Today, I needed to be the queen.

  I walked up to the mount Calan had selected for me. “Hello, pretty girl.” She snuffled my outstretched palm. I reached up and scratched her cheek. “What’s her name?”

  “Loenir,” Calan said. “Old Alfari for ‘the light of the stars.’”

  I suppressed a smile. Her coat was just darker than their hair, dusky yellow but still blond. “Do all Alfari come from the stars?” Loenir tossed her head.

  “The old tales say it’s so, that our blondness comes from the stars and our red hair comes from the moon,” Calan said.

  I looked at him over my shoulder. “And dark hair?”

  Calan’s eyes fell. The other men looked away. “It is said to be a mark of
those touched by Oluendi.”

  “Ah. I see.” So the general consensus was that I had been touched by evil. It explained a lot.

  And their thoughts weren’t so different from those held by Earthlings. There was still the idea that the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black (though the Shororato uniforms were white, and they were something in between). I’d despaired of it myself after my mother had taken me to see the ballet Swan Lake, for Odette, the princess, was the white swan, and Odile, the evil enchantress, was the black.

  We once feared the dark, my mother had said, drying my tears. For we were vulnerable, unable to see what things lurked there. She’d turned her gaze to the heavens, and I’d looked up, too. But space is black and filled with so many things. Do we see the stars at noon? she’d asked and looked back down at me.

  No, I’d whispered.

  They cannot be seen in the light. It is only the dark that allows us to see some things clearly. And gently wraps us as we sleep at night. She’d smiled and tucked her arm through mine.

  “Darkness is the only way we see the sky’s diamonds,” I said aloud, echoing my mother’s words. “Loenir is not possible without it.”

  The men shuffled their feet. “Very true, my queen,” Calan said.

  I gave Loenir a pat. “Now, what do I need to do?” I asked. “I’m familiar with the concept, but I’ve never really ridden on my own.”

  Calan held the stirrup for me. I put my foot into it, grabbed the front of the saddle as instructed, and heaved myself up. Calan’s hand went out to catch me if I fell, but I was easily able to swing my leg over. I gave thanks for the long tunic and leggings Daria had dressed me in.

  I looked to my right, searching for the other stirrup, but Calan said, “Not yet, miss … my queen. They’re just there so your legs don’t get tired from dangling. You don’t keep your seat by gripping a saddle. You stay on a darana through balance. Sit there awhile and find your balance.”

  I kicked my toe out of the left stirrup and did as he suggested, feeling for how my form matched Loenir’s. Calan took up Loenir’s reins and mounted his own animal. I laid my hands on my thighs and focused on finding my center as Loenir began to shift beneath me.