Lyra Lore
'THE FIRST MISTAKE'
Remarkable, Lyra thought, how quickly the settlers had mixed Gythian with the rough syllables of the Grangor tongue to create the language of Trostanian. Lyra never deigned to speak it, but understanding Trostanian was essential in the multicultural port town, no matter what garish throaty things it did to the lyrical Gythian syllables. Only five years ago, her barriers had melted the Halcyon glacier and already the settlement had become a growing, respectable town. Dockside inns filled to bursting with taxpaying travelers seeking their crystal fortune, adding their native nomenclature to the evolving language. On the docks, sailors called to one another in fluent Trostanian as they passed crates down the ramps from the ships’ tenders to the docks.
Lyra, escorted by her Grangor guide, disciplined her expression into sobriety, but her eyes shone as they darted around the dock. Golden-cloaked Gythian soldiers emerged from a tender hefting ornate chests and crates. With an impatient but formal gesture of greeting she approached the most decorated of the soldiers, a silver-templed man holding the hand of a small boy. “I was told my replacement would be of the mages, but I suppose Trostan can be held well enough by the army now that it’s operative,” she said. “You and your son are welcome here.”
“You’re mistaken, Lady Lyra. Your replacement is of the mages.” The soldier guided the boy forward by his shoulders. “Archmage Lora bade me deliver him to you and memorize her message.”
Lyra’s heart sank along with her eyes as she gazed down at the boy, resplendent in a night-black fur cloak far too large for him, his terrified dark eyes widened with hope. “Deliver the message, sir.”
“‘Greetings, Battlemage Lyra,” snapped the soldier. “‘The Mage Guild of Gythia is pleased to present Samuel the Mageborn, son of Archmage Lora the Mageborn and Scholar Titus the Mageborn, to be fostered and educated under your wise tutelage until such time as he comes of age and can take your place in the governorship of Trostan.’”
“What’s this?” asked the Grangor.
“Politics,” said Lyra through a wound-tight jaw. “Or a cruel joke.”
The Grangor hunched down. “Welcome, Sam. How old are you?”
The boy held up four fingers.
“Four winters old! Such a handsome big boy you are.” The Grangor mussed the child’s hair.
“Lora has banished me to Trostan for fourteen more years.” Lyra coughed out a laugh. “She still fears me.”
“We’ll make you up a room in the mage tower, Sam,” said the Grangor. Without ceremony he swung the boy up onto his shoulders and the soldiers followed them into town, leaving Lyra to stare off into the warm sea of her memories.
~
In Gythia, the onshore cold from Bladed Bay breezed the curtains in Lyra’s mage tower apartment. Back then, Trostan was a stratagem, a hope for Gythia’s post-war recovery effort. Before she experienced the ice storms of Trostan, Lyra thought this breeze unbearable; she rolled over in bed, smooshing her face into Titus’ chest to escape it. “Hold me,” she mumbled into his skin. “I’m cold.” He slung one leg over her waist, making her giggle. “Useless, you are. Now I’m overheated just on this spot. Get off me and I’ll make tea.”
He held her down, sliding a steel letter opener through the wax seal of a scroll. “If you wanted to escape, you’d turn me into a toad or something, Miss Battlemage.”
“No need,” she said, arching up for a sour morning kiss. “I trust you.”
“That is your first mistake. Ooh,” he said, drawing the sharp point of the letter opener down her side, “It’s from the Archmage. You are important now.”
“Your envy is unattractive.” Lyra shivered and smiled, inhaling the sweat and sandalwood scent of him. “What is that?”
“A letter came for you with breakfast.”
“If it is for me, don’t you think I should open it?”
He held the scroll out of her reach. “Battlemage Lyra of the Mage Guild, blah blah … immediate deployment to the Kall Peaks to establish the colony of Trostan …”
“They’re sending us to the Kalls?” Lyra reached for the scroll, but Titus held fast to it, his brows knitted.
“Your petition of marriage to Scholar Titus the Mageborn is heretofore denied due to the arrangement of marriage to …”
Lyra rolled over him and snatched the letter from his hands; wax bits scattered onto the bed. “.. to Lora the Mageborn,” she mumbled. “There’s been some administrative error. Someone mistook my name for Lora’s. This has happened before.”
“You are not Mageborn.” Titus drew her close. “You knew they might choose to arrange my marriage. The Guild wants …”
“… Mageborn children,” she said. “But I went through all the proper channels. I filled out the forms. I thought ….” She held his ears in her hands, pressed her forehead to his. “We do not have to obey. We can be farmers in the provinces. We can disappear in Taizen Gate.”
“You have worked since childhood to rise in the guild’s ranks. I will not allow you to give up everything you worked so hard to accomplish,” he said, burying his face in the plum tumble of her hair. “We are Gythian foremost.”
She soaked his neck with silent tears, her fingers clawing into his shoulders.
'THE NIGHTMARE'
Samuel returned to his room at sunset to find Lyra there, staring at the collection of ceremonial Grangor headdresses he’d mounted on one curved wall. He dropped his dripping snow gear on the floor and fell back on his unmade bed, flopping one arm over his eyes. “So there will be a lecture tonight,” he muttered. “Safety or obligation?”
Lyra picked her way with care across the disaster of stacked books, maps and papers, giving a wide berth to the skeleton of the mammoth seal Samuel had speared at his Grangor hunter trial. “Did you… eat this creature?”
“The tribe feasted after the trial. I ate the right flipper and the chief ate the left.”
Lyra shuddered. “I shall have your room cleaned. There is a spider above your bed.”
“It’s a sleep-spider. It gobbles up dreams and spins webs in the shapes of those dreams. I took it from the Netherworld. Don’t touch it.”
Lyra’s eyes blazed. “I told you not to dabble in the Netherworld. The nightmares and phantasms …”
“And dreams and ghosts and Valkyries. Magister Reim …”
“And I told you to stay away from that crazed old man. Is that where you were all week?”
Samuel chuckled, his arm still covering his eyes. “Add that to your list of disappointments. I have given up trying to please you. I rather think you are incapable of pleasure.”
“You do not have the luxury of adolescent insolence.”
“The obligation lecture, then.” Samuel responded with an exaggerated yawn.
Lyra exhaled through her nose, eyes closed, collecting herself. “No. That is the Archmage’s duty now.” She dropped a heavy but small steel machine onto the bed next to him and he removed his arm from his eyes to squint at it.
“What is that contraption?”
“It came with the latest shipment. They have managed to make holograms work, thanks to infused Trostanian crystal. They’ve had holographic messages in Mont Lille for years …”
“… and in Campestria far longer.” Samuel sat up in his bed to inspect the box.
“It is progress nevertheless, so our efforts here are not in vain.”
“Well then, let us see what my mother deigns to say to me.”
“Samuel.” Lyra rested a hand on his shoulder. The gesture was awkward and made them both flinch. “I think … I do not know if this message …”
“Don’t worry, Lady. I am not an orphan harboring dreams of mommy bestowing affection on me after fourteen years of no word.” Samuel snorted. “The Magister said I was bred like a dog.”
Lyra was quieted by that. She focused her gaze on the message box, her violet curls falling to hide her expression while Samuel hit the button with his fist. The platform buzzed with blue light that broke and spat before it came together to form a face. The Archmage’s face. He had no memory of it, and there was no color to her eyes, but the resemblance was obvious.
“Samuel.” The sound crackled with static. “Lady Lyra has kept me informed of your progress. Well done on passing the first nine disciplines. The Mage Guild depends on you passing the tenth. You shall return home to prove your worth in the final test before your formal induction into the guild. I trust Lyra has prepared you well.”
Home. He almost missed what came after.
“After you have received your rank, you shall be positioned as governor of Trostan and lead the effort to move the Grangor population to the frontier. You shall see to the expansion of our crystal mining in the Kall Peaks. Your rapport with the Grangor beasts will be essential to this effort. You shall return to Trostan with whatever contingent of troops you deem necessary to assist you.
“Our guild and our empire depend on your success, my son. With your help, Gythia shall return to its former glory.”
The picture blinked out of existence and Samuel stared at the place where it had been. “Move the Grangor population,” he breathed. “Has she ever met a Grangor?”
Lyra clasped her hands inside her long sleeves. “If it is necessary …”
“They won’t go. I have seen their souls in the Netherworld. They are rooted to this land by blood and ritual and the hunt.”
“You sound like one of them,” said Lyra, her tone measured.
He stood and paced the room. “I’d have to kill them all. My mother wants me to kill them all.”
“You are Gythian.”
Samuel whirled to face her. “Why should I have to explain to you that this is wrong?” he cried, and the words spilled out of him in a dark magic that formed into a treacherous churning orb that surrounded them both.
Inside the orb was the deep cave-dark of nightmares. Nothing Lyra had taught Samuel of Gythian magecraft explained that darkness, or the weakening beat of her heart. She snapped awake without realizing she’d been asleep, gasping and shaking, and whispered the words of warding. A green glow shone through the blackness, drinking it in, dispelling it.
Above the bed, the sleep-spider wove into its web a shimmering silken depiction of Trostan in flames.
‘EVERYTHING IS GONE’
The Grangor people stood watch on a high icy shelf to watch the flames swallow the winding spires of Trostan. Smoke glittered around their faces and clogged their lungs as the city that had been the heart of the Gythian crystal trade turned into the mouth of hell. They threw Gythian gold down into the crevasse for safe passage for the dead. The coins had become, in one day, useless anywhere within a hundred miles.
The wise ones gathered in a snow-dusted cluster and thumped their staves on the ground in the ancient story rhythm. With a judgmental lick of his one tusk, the eldest began the first Telling of the story that would be told and retold for generations:
“It was Trostan once, but soon it will be forgotten.”
“The wise ones knew,” they sang in chorus.
“Humans came to tear holes in the glaciers. They came to rip the crystal from the earth. They came to drink of the well,” continued the next-eldest in her shrill tone.
“The wise ones knew.”
“Our trophy-hunters traded with humans for steel,” called the next.
“The wise ones knew.”
“The city collapsed under its own greed,” crooned another.
“The wise ones knew.”
“Their ancestors lie too far to carry home their souls,” wailed the eldest.
“The wise ones kn…”
An icy blast from the peak above trembled the ground and broke their song. “Sisuuk!” screamed a Mother, gathering her kits close. All eyes turned away from the flames to look upward. Instead of an avalanche, though, what came forth along with the freezing wind was a man, his spine bent with age, spotted skin fragile as onion layers. His claw-like hand gripped a staff. Around his shoulders he wore the pelt of a Grangor. Though none of the Grangor had seen him before, they all knew of the elusive recluse. Reim, they called him, master of ice, devourer of Grangor, terror of the Kall Peaks. Though they outnumbered him by many dozens, the Grangor backed away, weapons at the ready, while the ice mage exhaled enraged breaths that crystallized into frost.
“Where is the boy?” he growled.
“His mother knows,” replied the eldest, but it was only an expression among the Grangor. It meant that a thing could not be known.
With a sneer, Reim turned away from the Grangor and walked the path down the mountainside, grumbling to himself all the way. The river that bordered the burning city flowed black with ash. Reim struck his staff on the ground and the flowing water froze in place. He shuffled over it, coughing and hacking, into the city, waving his staff in irritation at the fires as he passed them. They sizzled and hissed into frozen, charred kindling.
“Kid!” he called. “Hey kid!”
The city had bustled with trade and travelers that morning; now, only the livestock raced away from their burned enclosures to the rivers at either side of the basin.
The mage choked the fires under his conjured frost one by one, leaving destroyed homes and businesses under thick sheets of ice, by turns calling out and mumbling to himself. He stopped to roll his eyes at the mage tower, resplendent in its ancient Gythian spires, the center of Trostan’s government. The top third had collapsed; the rest was a scorched husk of its former magnificence. This, too, he left frozen behind him. Round the town he traveled, tension rising in his voice. “Hey kid, you’re late! Where’d you get off to?” he continued until he reached the halcyon well at the center, the only thing unaffected by the flames. Noxious fumes rose from the burnt detritus of Trostan, drowned under ice. There, at the well’s edge, was a small woman with her face buried in the furry shoulder of a much larger Grangor. In one hand, she held a lantern that cast eerie shadows in the swirling ash.
“Ay!” shouted Reim with an annoyed clearing of his throat. “Who’s in charge here!”
The woman turned her soot-stained face, mapped with tears, toward the stranger, revealing the singed remains of the robes of a High Mage of Gythia. Her shoulders rolled back, her chin tilted up, and though she was much smaller than the other two, the answer to Reim’s question had been answered.
“The boy,” he demanded.
The woman shook her head and held the Grangor’s forearm for support. “He’s gone,” she answered, then looked up at the Grangor’s chubby face. “Everything is gone.”
'THE CONSEQUENCE AND THE INCEPTION’
On the muddy shore of Trostan, Lyra watched a Grangor search expedition wind their way through the ghost town, past the glowing blue well of power and up the glacier trail. For days they had sorted through the smoking rubble, rubbing ash away from the faces of the dead, hearts in their throats, but Samuel had not been found.
The old ice mage shuffled up beside her, leaning his weight on a staff, one bushy eyebrow raised. “No one’ll blame you if you don’t go back.”
Lyra didn’t hesitate. “I am Gythian.”
“Uh huh.” Reim made the blah-blah motion with one gnarled hand.
“It’s time,” she said.
Reim stretched out one arm; from his palm, a spinning ice ball formed. Lyra’s breath froze in her throat. Goosebumps rose on her arms. Frost leapt from Reim’s fingers; icicles formed on his beard; ice coated his staff and he slammed it into the mud. The ground shook as an ice spire shot up at the center of Trostan, spearing the sky, sealing the well.
“Your turn,” said Reim. “Shut it down.”
The spellbook blinked and fluttered open between her hands; the ancient words dropped from her mouth. The city’s magic borders scrolled away from the sky, fluttered in the air and returned to the book. Held back for decades, roiling clouds fled down from the peaks, flooding the destroyed city, releasing snow in fat flakes that blanketed the seared wreckage in blinding white.
The mages boarded the last of the ships. From the stern, Lyra hugged her spellbook to her chest and watched the expanse of her life’s work shrink away into the distance. It had begun as a frozen camp for miners, thieves and get-rich-quick schemes, but within Lyra’s protective barriers, it had become a pocket of color in desolate white. Gythian settlers had filled it with spires, sculpture, vegetation, legitimate trade and proper jurisprudence. The mage tower of Trostan, though a shadow of the one at home, had been all her own, its rounded walls lined with books and art, now ash.
~
Twenty years and some earlier, the view from the prow of the icebreaker ship, with its strengthened hull crunched up against what would soon be the port of Trostan, was of white and more white, sandwiched between a cruel gray sky and a choppy gray sea.
The fateswoman’s dour mouth twisted under her white hood as she dumped the divine doves out of their gilded cage without ceremony. When they flew into the masts, she proclaimed it a positive augur as she’d been paid to do. The reading of the fates mattered not at all to Lyra, but the surrounding ship decks were packed with lower-born citizens who would not have disembarked without a good augur. These explorers and miners had settled this forsaken and frozen area of the Kall Peaks, where only Grangor had roamed before crystal had been found. High above, on the ledges of the mountains, the cat-beasts themselves watched. If Lyra succeeded, more ships would follow from Gythia with future Trostanians: architects, merchants, artists, agriculturalists with their seedlings and livestock, more miners and equipment and shipbuilders, teachers and physicians for their children.
Lyra huddled under a red fur cape that would have commanded respect were it not soaking wet. Spring in the Kalls meant sleet, a sleet that slammed into the sea at such a volume that her speech about the glory of the empire and hope for a future of affluence was abandoned.
Never before had so many eyes laid upon her. Never before had so much responsibility rested on her shoulders. Never before had she wished for failure.
“If there is a day for it, let it be today,” she muttered.
“What?” bellowed her Grangor guide. Though covered in fur, he seemed no worse for wear; the wetness slid away from him and his toothy grin triumphed over the storm.
“I had a speech prepared,” she yelled back. “I don’t think they’ll hear it!”
“May as well just do your thing!” The Grangor’s claws clasped together over his generous belly.
Lyra focused her gaze on the glowing glacier, all else falling away. She sank a deep, cold breath into her lungs and held it there, warming it, before releasing it out in a fog. “Come, Ambrosius,” she whispered, and her spellbook fled away from her cloak to float by her upturned palm. His eye rolled up as she whispered the words that appeared in runes on his pages. Another deep cold breath and the sleet sizzled when it struck her, and then her crimson fur cloak warmed and dried, then her hair, and she gathered the warmth between her hands and wished, as always, that she could hold it forever. Her arms spread wide and light flooded from her fingertips. Warm curved barriers formed at the borders of what would soon be Trostan, and the sleet fell around these wards like water around a glass globe. The clouds dissolved within her warm bulwark, the people turned joyful faces toward the sun, and the great glowing Halcyon-infused glacier began to crack and drip and flow into what would be known, for the next generation, as the twin rivers of Trostan.
'THE TRIAL’
Bright-plumed Titanbeaks pulled the mages’ litters through the Gythian streets: the Archmage in her own, Lyra and Magister Reim in the next. Lance insisted on riding in the third with Samuel; he craned his head out of the curtained window to gape at the complex of short military towers and training yards sprawled against the great obsidian wall, then the closed-up and somber Ministers’ Tower, the Cartographers’ Tower with its landings and patios housing all sizes of telescopes and finally the Mage Tower, taller by a hundred feet than any other and wide as a city block. It was adorned around each level with golden sculptures of past Archmages, each holding the ancient wand named Verdict.
Samuel entered the tower under the hard golden gaze of his sculpted mother and followed his escort into the grand center theater. The acrid taste of unfamiliar magic stung his tongue. Lyra and Reim stopped Lance from following; the three stood by the door.
A walkway edged with sculpted obsidian pillars led to two stone platforms, one higher than the other. Samuel stood on the shorter; atop the high platform stood the guild’s top-ranking mages, the Archmage at the fore, her robes removed to reveal the somber black lace vestments of judgment. “Samuel the Mage Born,” she said, her sugared tone echoing in the immense room, “your tenth trial begins now. If you pass, you shall receive your rank in our guild.” She stretched Verdict forth. “I hope you are prepared.”
Samuel pulled from his belt the wand named Malice. “So I am not to answer for disobeying you, Mother? For burning down Gythia’s hopes? Does it trouble you overmuch to acknowledge the failure of your bloodline?” He spun the wand between his fingers before clenching it in his fist.
A shadow fled from Verdict and landed in Samuel’s periphery a split moment before pain flooded his belly. He whirled to face his aggressor and stared into his own face, at Malice pointed at his own torso. There was no time to register this ultimate betrayal before his shadow double flanked and shot again.
~
Lance lunged forward only to slam full-force into a shimmering green wall.
“For every action, there is a consequence,” said Lyra.
Reim watched the fight, expressionless, white-knuckling his staff.
~
A rushing water sound filled Samuel’s ears. He circled to the right and his shadow self mirrored him; there was a flash, and a sting bloomed on Samuel’s leg, a pain that sank to his bones. He curled his tongue around the words of power and a burst of magic fled from his wand, missing the shadow by a breath. He dove and spat out another word: “Uruz!” Another shot just missed the shadow’s neck. The shadow returned the blasts and Samuel dodged. They traded dark magic fire until the platform was a blinding shower of light. He could not outwit himself.
But the shadow could not learn.
He feinted right and leaped away from his double, springing to the nearest pillar, cracking his ribs, two fingers curled around the canine teeth of a carved lion’s head. With the half-second he’d bought, he pulled himself up to crouch atop it.
“Kenaz,” he cried, and the air wavered, and around him were the souls of ancient mages, thousands of them with hollow eyes watching, and the darkness of the Netherworld enveloped him as he leaped. Light flashed from Malice and the shadow crouched, spun wrong and caught the full force of the spell in its back.
When the dark had dissipated, Samuel stood alone on the platform. The Netherworld, having been opened, lurked close, the phantasms murmuring hate and promising justice. Above, the Archmage extended Verdict again.
“So you present a test no one can survive to save yourself the embarrassment of convicting me.” Samuel’s bitter laugh seized as he held his broken ribs. “That is how Magister Reim’s son died, isn’t it? He asked too many questions.”
“If it is so,” said the Archmage, “then you should concentrate on succeeding.”
A second shadow fled from Verdict, forming beside Samuel. He slid back, Malice held in his fist like a blade, his eyes narrowed at his new opponent –
– and his arm dropped as he flinched away from the little boy who looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes: Samuel, as he’d been fourteen years past when he entered Trostan for the first time, Malice far too big for his little hands.
“Such poetry,” mocked Samuel. “I suppose I shall face my wise old future self next?”
“You shall have no such future if you fail,” called the Archmage.
Samuel sidestepped the shadow boy’s fumbling shots with ease. Tears welled in the boy’s eyes.
“I would rather fail,” said Samuel, and released the phantasm that twisted and curled into the skull-shape of nightmares, sailing around the shadow child and then the mages high above, lulling them all to sleep. The shadow disappeared and the Archmage fell.
~
The shimmering wall dropped. A spinning, churning hole appeared in the walkway by Lance’s feet.
“Go,” choked Lyra behind him. “Go!”
~
The Archmage landed in Samuel’s outstretched arms, slamming him to the floor. His shoulder dislocated from its socket, sending shocks of pain through his arm and spine. He snatched Verdict away from her, rolled away, yanked his shoulder back into place with an agonized gasp, then stumbled to his feet. “Where is she?” he screamed.
“Who?” gasped the Archmage, blinking, disoriented.
“Gythia’s little creature.” He bent over her, spitting the words into her face. “Trostan wasn’t the only iron you had in the fire. Where is the Storm Queen’s niece?”
The Archmage flinched away. “Gathering allies,” she whimpered. “The Halcyon -”
Samuel sneered and aimed both wands at the Archmage’s face. “Well done, Mother.”
Armor clattered as the knight rolled into position between them, weapon at the ready, shield high. Samuel stepped back, wands crossed in front of him.
“Reconsider, my friend,” growled Lance.
Samuel’s grim mouth cracked into a smile. “You are better than Gythia ever was,” he said, and fell back into the churning portal.
Reim stood at the portal’s source, palm out as Lyra’s face turned blue. Icicles hung from her ears and hair. Her book, encased in ice, laid useless on the floor. Samuel tumbled from the portal’s source at his feet, struggling for breath as he looked up at his teacher’s distressed eyes.
“Magister,” he whispered.
“Run, you fool.”
ALTERNATE FATES
'DEAR DIARY' LYRA
'DEAR DIARY,'
Everything is AMAZING because it’s my tenth birthday! I’m sad that my horn hasn’t grown out yet. Most of my family have antlers so they say I will also grow antlers but I think when I grow up I’ll have one of the super-rare unicorn horns because I am the very best in my family at magic.
I got to wear my party dress today, the pink one with the satin roses and ribbons. Every other day, I have to wear the mage academy uniform. I like the academy but the uniform is plain black. Today I had a party and cake and I even danced once with Titus, the cutest boy at the academy.
When I grow up, I’ll wear my party dresses every day, except they’ll have real roses instead of satin ones, and pretty shoes for dancing. I’ll be the best Battlemage in the Mage Guild, maybe the world! I’ll defeat Gythia’s enemies with rainbows and love magic because Titus will be my husband. He acts like he doesn’t like me just because I’m not Mageborn and he is but when we’re grownups and in love that won’t matter at all.
When I grow up, I’m going to have the best life, and I promise I’ll never go anywhere without you, Dear Diary.
Love,
Lyra
'SCHOOL DAYS' LYRA
'THE CLASS PRESIDENT'
So you want the best lunch table. You want teachers to step out of your way in the hall. You want everyone in school to know your name. You want to be class president. Hah! Everyone thinks they can be in charge until they’re herding a bunch of unruly sheep-eyed adolescents with raging hormones, questionable morals and underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes. But I’ll give you a few pointers if you think you can make the cut.
First: Fashion must be on point – within the confines of the school uniform, of course. Right now, bows are in. Bows on shoes, bows in hair, bows on blouses. Also acceptable: embroidered satin bomber jackets, old school tech and high top sneakers. When I decide something is in, the student body follows, or they can take a portal away from my eyeline.
Second: Excellence. There is no such thing as a B. You don’t skip extra credit assignments. You don’t sleep. You do not get the sniffles or the flu. You don’t join clubs, you start them.
Third: You know everything. It’s all in the book: birthdays, who’s dating who, which rival school the soccer team is playing next week. And if the president of the Glee Club gets a C on her chem midterm, the glare of disapproval in your eyes will banish her to some other lunch table… and encourage her to study more next time.
Fourth, but most important: For high school, you’re going to need a squad.
'MOON' LYRA
'THE REUNION OF SUN AND MOON'
One autumn, while Celeste was on the moon for her annual mooncake tasting, she noticed in the distance the silhouette of a grand palace.
“What is that?” asked Celeste with her mouth full of cherry mooncake.
A nearby bunny looked up from her clipboard, on which she was marking Celeste’s preferences. “That’s where the Moon Queen lives,” she said. “She rules over us all because she loves us.”
“No!” cried another bunny. “She’s the Moon Empress. She’s here because she drank a potion that made her fly up to the moon and now she’s stuck here.”
“She chose to be here,” said a third bunny. “She’s a Moon Goddess. She used to be in love with the Sun God, but he broke her heart. She chose to become the Moon Goddess so she would be on the other side of the world from him.”
“Is she a bunny?” asked Celeste.
“No. She’s like you,” said the bunny. “Except her name is Lyra, and she has antlers, and she’s always sad.”
Celeste brushed the crumbs from her hands and set off to the palace, leaving the bunnies to their bickering.
Lyra answered the door herself. She narrowed her eyes at Celeste.
“Stand up straight,” she ordered.
Celeste stood up straight and cleared her throat. “I thought you might like some cherry mooncakes. They’re the bunnies’ newest flavor.“
“No, thank you,” said Lyra. “The Autumn Festival is for family. I am all alone.”
“Why do you live on the moon alone?” asked Celeste.
“The man I love lives on the sun,” said the Empress. “He stopped the sun in the sky so he could look at me all day and all night. So the sun shone all the time on one place, and the rest of the world was cold and dark.”
“That’s bad,” whispered Celeste.
“So my people banished me to the moon, so that the man I love would have to chase the moon all day and all night.”
“The Autumn Festival is for family and moon-watching,” said Celeste. “The man you love should be here on the moon with you.”
The Empress’ eyes brightened, and for the first time, she did not look sad. “But how would he get here?”
Celeste whistled and a comet flew by. She grabbed its tail and flew off the moon and all the way to the sun, where she found a man napping all alone in a sun-apple orchard.
“Are you the man who chases the moon?” asked Celeste, tapping at the man’s forehead.
“Yes,” grumbled the man.
“You’re late for the Autumn Festival,” said Celeste. She climbed a tree and tossed down a bunch of sun apples. “Bring these. We already have mooncakes.”
“Mooncakes? We’re going to the moon?” The grumpy man’s voice softened as he gathered the sun apples.
“Come on.” Celeste held out her hand and the man grabbed it, and when the comet swung around again they rode it all the way back to the moon palace. All together, they celebrated the Autumn Festival with cherry mooncakes and sun apples and hugs.
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