Rell and The Rose

Prologue and Ch. 1, The Wall

*

And so the younger princess returned a final time to the Blood Rose. She climbed the stone pedestal and begged the rose grant her passage out of The Dark Realm, to a Realm where her sister would never find her and she could raise her child in peace.

A Realm without magic.

The Blood Rose demanded a final cost, more horrible than the princess had ever expected. But again, she accepted. This time not for herself, but for the child growing inside her.

The child would never know magic—and never know the pain it had cost her.

So the Blood Rose granted her a single petal plucked from its stem. The petal led her out of the Dark Realm, across the wide, dark river and to a faraway Realm. A realm with a sun that had long ago bleached all magic from the land, with a blue sky impossibly high above, a thousand different shades of color. A land more dangerous, foreign and mystical than any she had ever beheld.

And it was called Rockspurt, Wisconsin.

*

RELL 

Hurry! It won't last long! Why humans so slow!?

I raced through the trees of the Dark Forest, following Poxel's serpentine body as he tucked his wings tight, swerving over trees, shaded coal and sable, vines twisted like dark webs.

I swear, Poxel, if this is another headless basilisk or frozen myph—

It's not! We almost there! Flap your arms faster!

But I didn't have the chance to ask my small shadow dragon where exactly he was taking me, because with a final leap I burst out of the trees, and knew we had found it.

What exactly "it" was... that was an entirely different problem.

Looming all the way up into the Dark Mist, and stretching out into the raven-hued trees, was what I could only describe as a liquid wall. It shimmered and rippled, like the surface of a windblown lake.

I took a hesitant step forward, and then another.

Poxel, what is this?

For a moment I worried maybe Poxel had created this, but whatever strange, wonderful magic this was, it was far beyond the capabilities of a small shadow dragon.

It's a wall, of course, Poxel sent back. He puffed his chest out, more proud than when he'd riled up an entire colony of dusk pixies.

I know... but a wall between what?

I made my way closer to the shimmering wall. A first I saw only my reflection: a young woman, her wild blonde hair decorated with leaves and twigs. Dark eyebrows over large, inquisitive eyes. Slender yet tall and strong as a man. A sword strapped to one side of her waist, and a dagger to the other. I shaded my hands, trying to see beyond the reflection of myself and into the Dark Woods.

Beyond the shimmering wall lay a small clearing, and beyond that, dark trees. I sighed. It was only the Dark Forest afterall. Here I'd thought, or maybe hoped...

I'd almost turned away when I saw it, suspended impossibly high in the sky across the wall. Something I'd only heard of in stories. Something passed down in legend and myth, that until now I'd always dismissed as a fairytale.

It hung in the sky, bright as a Mer pearl, shaped like a dragon's curved talon.

"Poxel," I whispered, "I think.... I think there's a moon on that side of the wall."