Moonfall Kingdom

You might say it started with a rabbit. A rush to go nowhere fast. You might say is started with loneliness.

That's not all of it though. Honestly, that's not even how it started. That's just when things got weird. So where do I start? Where I was born? A city in the South. If you have to ask which South, then you obviously aren't from there. When was I born? Longer ago than you might think. Who am I, and why am I being so vague? I'm your humble narrator, and it all comes back to a bunny and a game as old as the universe.

I guess the best place to start is the road trip to South Fork to visit my aunt. I had come into a bit of money and was about to start losing vacation days, so I put up an out of office email, loaded up my truck, and headed west-ish to a place where dial up modems and land lines were the height of technology. Working where I worked, you had to really get off the grid to enjoy a vacation.

The drive generally takes two days, unless I'm in a rush. I do my best not to rush while I'm on vacation, so on the first night sundown saw me pulling into a tiny town in the middle of nowhere looking for a cheap motel and a bite to eat. The motel had a faded sign and mattresses that were surprisingly soft considering they seemed to be made of solid rock. The dinner came from a diner on the outskirts of town. The place was rundown and covered with dust and rust and dead leaves from an ancient tree that covered the back half of the building, a deep and ancient shadow in the bright light of the full moon. A sign in the window claimed they were open and a chalkboard on the door claimed this was the Jade Rabbit, home of fine Chinese cuisine.

I probably should have avoided a ramshackle ethnic food place in a backwoods town so white bread that the old women running the motel had called me a "furr-in-er" under her breath, but I've never been able to avoid trying food in a place that it doesn't belong, because, once in a rare while, the meal is wonderful. This time, the gamble paid off. The inside was far better kept up than the outside. The walls were a deep forest green and covered in an intricate pattern that I later realized was made up mostly of different rabbits. The decor was not the only thing better than expected. I was treated to some amazing dumplings and cha siu bao that rivaled anything that I've had at dim-sum. The food was so good that I drifted off into my own little world, lost in the tastes and the smells for longer than I care to admit.

When I came to my senses I realized that I was pleasantly full and the restaurant completely empty, save for my waiter, a spritely old asian man that seemed to be pulling double duty as the cook. Realizing that he had been serenely sitting there, watching as I rudely stuffed my face, was more than a little unnerving. "Oh. Uh. The food was great." I'm not the most eloquent when caught off guard.

"Yes."

I waited for a moment to see if he would continue. When it became apparent that he wasn't going to say anything else, I offered "Love the place too. Interesting decor. Matches the name really well." Other than the old redneck at the motel, I hadn't spoken to anyone outside of work in nearly three weeks. My conversational skills were a little rusty.

He nodded. "The rabbit is of nature. The rabbit is of the moon. On a night like tonight, with the moon high in the sky, the walls separating the worlds weaken. There are gifts to be given, fortunes to be made."

I grinned. "Gifts? From moon bunnies?"

The old man did not smile with me. "Adventure. Immortality. Laughter. Which would you choose?"

"Immortality." I said without any hesitation.

"A good choice", he nodded thoughtfully, "but not a wise one. Not wise to not ask the price of the gift. All magic has a cost."

"What is the cost?" I asked cautiously.

"Adventure brings madness and danger. The risk of death. Immortality brings isolation, loneliness. Betrayal. Laughter brings pain, and with every joke performed for you, there is another played on you. Are you still content with your choice?"

"Oh. Well, I'd rather not have the madness, and laughter doesn't seem to be that good a trade. I can find my own laughter without lunar intervention. In this hypothetical situation, what would happen if I chose nothing?"

He shook his head. "One does not refuse a gift from the heavens. Houyi tried, and Chang'e suffered. Some cannot even find it for all the trying in the world. Michael Collins searched longer than anyone knows, traveled to the moon itself, and history has mostly forgotten his name."

"Oh, well. In that case, I would choose immortality, and all that comes with it."

He nods, the ghost of a smile crossing his face, and turns back to the kitchen. He returns moments later with a steaming pot of tea and a porcelain. "It is herbal. Cinnamon, mostly. Fresh, from the tree out back. On the house."

I took the cup with a smile. I could be melodramatic and say that I knew from the instant that liquid touched my lips that my life had changed. That destiny, if there is such a thing, had swept me up in its current and my future was no longer my own. But honestly, at that moment, all I knew was that I was drinking a good cup of tea.

I didn't begin to get suspicious until the next morning, as I was leaving town and decided to see if the old man served breakfast. The Jade Rabbit, and the cinnamon tree that shaded it, were gone in the bright light of day. I drove around for almost an hour before I gave up, circling the entire town twice, even going so far as to ask the lady working the desk at the motel. She had never heard of it.

I left the town a bit nervous, but wrote it off as some strange dream. It wasn't until hours later, after dozing off at the wrong moment, catching a bit of gravel, sliding off the steep road, and plummeting to the valley almost a hundred feet below that I knew. Sitting in the wreckage of my truck, watching my bones and flesh knit themselves whole, I knew that I hadn't been dreaming. I knew that life was never going to be the same again.

Red Wine at Midnight

The day that I got the news was probably the worst day of my life. I got out of class to find this huge guy waiting for me in a dark suit. He seemed like a caricature of an FBI agent. It was bad enough I thought maybe my friends hired a stripper as a joke. I thought, at worst, that I might have been one of the unlucky people that the RIAA was prosecuting for five songs I downloaded in high school. 

His badge said DEA. That confused me even more. My friends always made fun of me for being a good girl. I couldn't tell them why I stayed away from drugs, why I couldn't afford to let my grasp on reality slip, but aside from a little teasing, they took it in stride. I had almost an entire campus of character witnesses. 

It turns out he wasn't there because of anything that I had done. My little brother had mouthed off to the wrong drug runner, and brought an entire cartel down on my family's ranch. From what they could tell, there had been no survivors. I suddenly felt like my brain had been dunked into a pool of ice. 

He told me he would spare me the details and the small part of my mind that hadn't completely numbed noticed that he shivered slightly when he said it. He said since my family kept to themselves it had been almost a week before anyone else had come by.  He said other things, but the rest of the conversation passed in a blur. I remember wanting to scream at him, hit him, call him a liar. Instead, I just leaned against the wall, detachedly observing the tears streaming down my own face.

I somehow made it back to my dorm room. Two days passed, two days that I don't think I would have survived had it not been for friends who kept me fed and put me to bed. The biggest shock to me was that anyone had dared to do this to my family. Everyone knew the stories about my grandmother, and her grandmother, and on, and on, stories stretching back to when our history was passed down orally. No one in town would meet our eyes and I would hear whispers of 'sawish' when I was little, before I understood what it meant. Even the drug lords were wary of her, of us. It didn't make any sense. 

The next day my aunt called, she had been able to cajole the locals into arranging a funeral, but it would be almost three weeks before the priest would be anywhere near the ranch. She even booked a flight home for me. I don't think I thanked her, but I should have. I certainly couldn't have made the arrangements on my own.

After two weeks, I began to be able to function somewhat normally again. I carefully controlled my thoughts, keeping my mind away from certain topics. I even attended a few classes, though I left most of them early, some overheard remark or questioning glance sending me into another fit of sobbing. 

On the long flight home, I finally began to poke at the knot of emotions that I had been trying to bury. To my surprise, inside the mess of despair and loss, there was a tiny ball of hate and rage. I explored these feelings in a way that went against all my training. Saya would have beaten me for the thoughts that flashed through my head, for the plan that began to form. 

By the time I landed, the plan was a little more formed. The two day drive into the wilderness was enough time for me to work out all the details. I could have made it in one, but I took a few detours to gather the components I needed. Besides, I had no real desire to show up early and deal with my distant relatives for an extra day. 

The funeral was quiet, simple. The priest performed the most basic rites, leaving well before the sun could set. At least he knew enough to respect and fear us. The rest of the relatives filtered out slowly, leaving me to my grief. I told my aunt not to wait up for me, gesturing with a bottle of wine to the emptying graveyard. 

I was alone by the time the sun peaked behind the foothills, pulling various items from my backpack. The ritual itself was simple enough, if you knew what you were doing. Saya had warned against the simple spells, out right saying that they were careless use of dangerous energy, things to avoid. She even implied these were evil things, things that belonged to true witches, but that night I was beyond caring. I needed my vengeance. 

Once I chanted the last chant, they appeared. Saya appeared first, in the distance. I could not bear to meet her eyes, but I could feel the disapproval radiating from her. There was a moment's pause, almost as if I was being given a chance to change my mind, then the rest rose from their graves. I nearly wept at the sight of them, translucent though they were. Mother, Father, Jorge, even little Alejandro. Their eyes burned with the the same hatred that beat in my heart. I called again, stronger this time, and from the depths rose generations of my family, ready for vengeance. 

It was nearly midnight when Alejandro led us to their camp. Waves upon waves of the dead came crashing down. When one of theirs fell, he rose again a few moments later, fighting for us. It was the stuff of nightmares and horror stories, and all around us rose cries of "La Brujita!". I basked in it, killing more than a few with my bare hands, others with my ceremonial blade. Before long I found the runner that started this whole tragedy. He was kneeling, crying, clutching a rosary as he prayed to a god that could not help him. 

I took my time, savoring it for as much time as I could spare, but he died all the same. When he rose again, a thing of spectral fury under my command, he mutely led me through the tents, to the last pocket of resistance. I pointed him like an arrow at the heart of their leader, and loosed him with no remorse. Oddly, I could not raise the drug lord. It seems his soul had already been promised to another. 

After taking care of the drug runner and the cartel boss, the joy of revenge seeped from me, leaving only emptiness. I let the few survivors run terrified into the dregs of the night. The story they told would spread, a new legend would grow, and our people would be safe once more. 

I returned home, reaching the ranch with the rising sun. To my surprise, the dead followed me, shimmering in the sunlight, but still, not fading as I expected. Saya chides me endlessly for not ensuring that the spell would expire. As she says, the easy things are easy because they are careless. Things could be worse, but I certainly couldn't return to school with things as they are. I now spend my days on the ranch, playing with my brother, talking with my grandmother, trying to find a way to let them have their rest once more. 

Some days I worry that I've actually gone insane, that my brain couldn't cope with the loss and that I'm really curled up in my dorm room, or a mental ward, or worse, bloody and broken in a cartel stronghold after drunkenly charging in to confront them. If it is madness, it is a nice madness. I've got the shades of my family, my home, and in the night I can hear the cries of "La Brujita" echoing in the hills.