Category: Curiosities of the Moon

The Curious Leaf: Voyage to the Moon 012

TCL Cover“Come, child. I’ll see you to your ship,” the pale queen said, holding out her hand and smiling the serene smile of a person caught in a pleasant dream.

“But I’ve only just arrived,” Kya said, taking the queen’s hand nonetheless. She cast her hungry eyes about the hall, drinking in the glowing white stone of the walls, the smooth, delicate throne of ivory, and the black marble floor shot through with stars.

The queen gestured to a round door that opened silently on its own. “Not all visits happen along the times of our choosing.” They stepped through, and to Kya’s surprise, she found herself back at the harbor, The Curious Leaf bobbing gently against the white ash dock while the sand leading up to the harbor gleamed like crushed diamonds bursting with moonlight.

She turned to the queen, her mind ripe with questions. “How . . . ?”

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The Curious Leaf: Voyage to the Moon 011

TCL CoverThe dark queen raised her hand as if to caress the bottle, but stopped just short of touching it. Her eyes gleamed with a crafty look. “That is not the only apple you have in your possession, I believe.”

Kya blinked and put the apple back into the pouch. “No.”

“The apple is for you?”

“No.” Stronger this time as the certainty that the dark queen meant to trap her somehow grew with each beat of her heart.

A secret smile deepened the corners of the Moon Queen’s lips. “Do you know for whom the last apple is intended?”

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The Curious Leaf: Voyage to the Moon 010

TCL CoverThe new queen gave her a smile like the edge of a knife, bright and shining and ever so sharp. “For the same reason you had to give up your roots to sprout wings. To have one, you must give up the other. Not all dearest dreams are willing to share.”

The queen turned and sat on her throne, her hair white and her gown silver once more. “It is a cruel fate, but one that all creatures share if they only dare to look.”

Kya looked down at the perfect moon apple that glimmered with a quiet light. If what the Moon Queen said was true, then she held perhaps the rarest and most dragonish of treasures in her hand. And the dragon himself had given her not one, but three. Entrusted them to her care.

And the seeds!

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The Curious Leaf: Voyage to the Moon 009

TCL Cover“Ah,” the Moon Queen said, arching a brow, but not offering to take the apple “I see you have been to see my dragon. How does he fare?”

“He was hungry, Your Majesty,” Kya said, doing her best not to stare. Being a flower up until very recently, she had never had the opportunity to see anything more exotic than the oak tree growing outside the window or the flower freckled meadow down the way, and she found herself wanting to drink in all the strange beauty of the moon as though preparing her roots for a long drought.

“Yes,” the queen said with a faraway look in her eye. “It is in his dragonish nature to be so. Were he to stop hungering, the apples he guards would wither away into empty skins with dry, wrinkled fruit.”

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The Curious Leaf: Voyage to the Moon 008

TCL CoverThe apples glowed with a soft, milky light that lapped against the skin in Kya’s palms. Soothing. Relaxing. Refreshing. But even more than that, the light from the apples awakened something deep inside her. Something whose first language is of dreams and who isn’t afraid to wish.

Her heart grew with this knowledge, warm at first, but slightly uncomfortable as it forced her heart to stretch beyond its natural boundaries.

“You will care for my apples,” the dragon said. Not a question.

Wordlessly, Kya gulped and nodded. She placed them gently in the pouch that also housed Hearthorne’s silver bowl. They were perfect and unblemished, and she aimed to keep them that way. With only the smallest hint of regret, she selected a single apple and held it up by way of offering and of keeping her word.

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