Prologue
In a distant place, concealed from the world’s gaze, there existed a kingdom bathed in a soft, golden light. A realm of exquisite beauty, where river-like swirls of moonbeams danced through the air, mingling with a nearly tangible, faintly eternal melody of stars. The light of a thousand fireflies upped the magic of the moment while the air seemed to shimmer with the glow of the bound crystals that jutted from walls and ground. In the very centre of this brilliant world ruled the Queen of Light.
She was sat upon a throne, hewn from brilliant quartz. Her wings (like those of the golden emperor moth) folded at her sides, and she appeared to be quite still. But appearances can be deceiving, and she was not as still as she looked. The stillness of her cave hung in the air like an unbidden thought. In the darkness of the cavern, the once-living world of the fireflies had gone quiet. Sounds and lights that had been part of this world had dimmed.
From her throne, the Queen rose, her movements slow and deliberate. She walked to the edge of the cavern, where the largest crystal once pulsed with light. Now, it stood dull and lifeless, its surface cracked like old glass. The faint hum that used to resonate through the cave was barely audible, as though the world itself had grown tired.
The creatures of her realm weakly hovered in the air around her, their lights flickering like the last dying sparks of a fire. She felt their exhaustion like a parent feeling the tiredness of a teenager who is finally, finally at the end of their nightly homework grind. Every step she took was barely accompanied by the faintest sound of buzzing, one that was growing weaker with each passing moment.
At the biggest group of fireflies, she stopped. “You must endure a little longer,” she said softly, her voice bouncing off the cavern walls. “I will not let you fade into darkness.”
But her words, though kind, felt empty. She had done all she could. She had invoked the light of the stars, the warmth of the earth, and even the brief luminosity of far-off comets, but none of it had amounted to anything.
The moon was the sole light that could save her people.
For thousands of years, the moon had poured its light into this hollow, nourishing the crystals and energizing the very air. Yet now, something had shifted. The moonlight was no longer sufficient, no longer as potent as it had once been. Each night, the fireflies’ luminescence waned, their gossamer wings held together by the most tenuous of life.
The largest crystal was touched by the Queen, her fingers skimming its coolness. She opened her mind and let the words she had been holding tumble forth into the air of the cold cabin. It felt as if the very crystals were listening to her. She had only one chance at this.
She pivoted and strode to the cavern’s heart. Her throne lay ahead, its unblemished surface shimmering just enough to be seen in the kind of light present there. She halted, knocked the breath out of her lungs, and lifted her hands into the air above her.
“Please forgive me,” she whispered.
The atmosphere surrounding her started to emit a sound, deep and low and very much like the distant rumbling of thunder. Light began to flow toward her, at first very weak but then quickly becoming immensely bright, very rapidly. It gathered in her hands, stretched in front of her, and it was almost as if it were flowing into her. The light looked like liquid silver, swirling and pulsing in her hands as though it were alive.
The light came from the moon.
Carefully held by the Queen, the object remained an enigma. An unreadable expression covered her face, but luminescent motes of light around her seemed to want to partake in the tightly controlled ceremony. They erupted with light, brushing against the incipient darkness, as if to envy a light-filled cavern that might some day exist. And then the air was still as the Queen stepped forward.
The influence was immediate.
For years, the crystals hadn’t shown this kind of brilliance. They didn’t seem to glow from a discolouration in surfaces. Instead, their fractured surfaces glowed like polished diamonds. The fireflies emerged, then stilled, their lights suddenly bright and full of promise. The cavern’s life force pulsed through brilliant crystals and steady, glowing fireflies.
For just a moment, relief flooded through the Queen. She had done it; she had saved her people.
Yet, when the moonlight flowed into the cave and illuminated its every crevice, she felt the true heft of her actions.
She faced the cave’s entrance, where a thin sliver of the night sky shone through. Beyond the trees, the moon hung low, its surface now too dim and too pale to be called brilliant. It illuminated nothing. Its usual glow was no more, and the world beyond the entrance was dark because of it.
Ached the Queen’s heart. What her actions would mean for the beings relying on moonlight – the animals that hunted under its glow, the plants that stretched toward its silver beams, the people who found comfort in its steady light – she knew all too well.
“I had no other choice,” she whispered, sorrow suffusing her voice. “I cannot allow my kingdom to plunge into darkness.”
When she took her place on the throne again, the hollow sang with vigour. The fireflies flitted through the air, their luminescence as potent as ever. The crystals flashed and glowed. Yet the Queen sat still, her hands in her lap, her wings but a quiver away from lolling.
High above, the night deepened.
Far and faint, the stars blinked and seemed to be blinking in some kind of celestial code, as if they were looking for someone. It was so still outside the cave that you could imagine any number of things waiting just beyond the shadows of the trees. And those shadows stretched and reached out in ways that made the forest look like something alive and only mostly subdued.
Across the night sky in a small town, a girl named Ellie sat by her window, sketching the moon. In that moment, she and her pencil were part of an odd stillness, a moment in which even the cold structure of a moonlit drawing seemed insufficient to encompass the majesty of the night sky. She looked up at the sky, her heart sinking.
The moon had disappeared.