The girl hopped off the pile of gore and walked over to us. The sword tailed behind her, shaking off blood and cleaning itself off on the edge of her cloak before coming to rest point-down in the air just behind her. The long crossguard jutted out from the sides of her head, as if she had horns.
The girl stopped in front of Max, smiling wanly. It might have been charming if she hadn’t just dismantled a living thing as if it were a pinata. Max ignored her, shouting and stepping to the side. One of the demons that wasn’t a puddle had gotten back to its feet and was making for the girl. A few more cracks sounded as Max unloaded the rest of his magazine into the demon. He stared at it until it stopped moving.
We all stood in stunned silence, too amped up on adrenaline to do much of anything else. My nerves flared, but after a few minutes of no new movement or sound, they died down. The stillness was only broken by our heavy breathing.
Max finally spoke. “You… you just saved by life,” he said, looking at the girl.
The girl looked back at him, dumbfounded. “And you just saved mine.”
They stared at each other for a few moments longer. The girl’s face, which hadn’t been flushed by her exertion, began to redden. “I—I didn’t think it’d happen this way,” she stammered. She stepped within an arm’s reach of Max, putting her palm in front of her face before gesturing towards Max with her index and middle finger in an unfamiliar motion. “I’m Cici,” she said.
Max waved awkwardly at her, not copying the gesture. “Name’s Max.”
They continued to stare at each other awkwardly. Max had to crane his head upward to look at Cici, who in turn had to look down. Neither blinked, as if they were having an unannounced staring contest. I glanced nervously around the treeline. There didn’t seem to be any more demons.
“Okay,” Amethyst said, stepping towards them. “Whenever you’re done with whatever that is, we should probably go,”
I put on my backpack, continuing to look for danger and gripping Occidae nervously. “Take us to the town that’s close by,” I said.
Cici looked at me with wide eyes, as if I’d said something unexpected. She waved dismissively in a direction. “It’s not that far. About half an hour.” She didn’t start off, though. Instead, she unclasped her cloak and laid it down flat on the ground.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Cici looked up at me again, her eyes narrowing a bit. “Finishing the job,” she said. She knelt down next to one of the intact demons. Her greatsword moved in front of her. I heard two crunches, then Cici moved back to her cloak, depositing a pair of antlers. She continued about her grisly task until she had built up a small pile. She bundled the antlers up in her cloak, then slung the package over her shoulder.
“Alright,” she said, starting off in the direction she had pointed. “This way.”
Max and Amethyst grabbed their bags and we followed Cici into the woods. Sure enough, after a few minutes of walking in nervous silence, we reached the town we had been navigating to. The palisade stretched endlessly in either direction. It was a lot bigger up close.
“Is there a gate anywhere?” Max asked.
Cici gave him a confused look. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.
“Well, how do we get across the wall?” asked Amethyst.
Cici shot her a questioning gaze. “The same as anywhere else,” she said.
She walked up to the wall and stepped onto the center of a small wooden pallet. She Max over. He stepped next to her, obviously not wanting to stand at the edge and yet not wanting to get uncomfortably close to Cici, instead opting for a strange in-between. She looked at him a moment and pulled him in by his shoulder. Both blushed slightly. “You’ll fall off,” she muttered.
Amethyst gave them a bombastic side-eye before throwing me a meaningful look. I shrugged. The pair began to rise slowly in the air on the pallet, which was floating with no visible mechanism.
“Well, frick,” Amethyst said, taking off her bag and fishing in it. She pulled out a small metal cylinder as Max and Cici stepped over the wall onto another pallet and disappeared behind the wall. The pallet they were on began floating back down.
I held out Occidae in front of me, unclipping the straps and holding it out in front of me. With a press of the button on the grip, it folded itself back neatly into a box. I wouldn’t be needing it inside the town. Hopefully.
We walked up to the pallet as it softly touched the ground. Amethyst motioned for me to pause. “Hold on,” she said, “lemme mess with it for a minute so I don’t do anything stupid.” She stood staring at the platform, motioning her arms slightly. It rose up a little, the floated back down.
“OK,” she said, stepping onto the center of the pallet. I followed. It rose gently, like it had before.
I felt a little vertigo as the ground receded beneath us. There was no platform at the top, just another drop straight down into the village. People moved out and about down in the streets, evidently not surprised by what we were doing.
Amethyst peered over the other side of the wall. Max and Cici stood next to another pallet on the ground. “Dangerous,” Amethyst grunted, and the other pallet rose into the air. It came to rest level with ours, a small gap away.
We crossed to the other pallet and began descending. “I guess that’s why they don’t have gates,” Amethyst said.
“It makes sense if you think about it,” I said. “This gets rid of unnecessary weak points. Plus you don’t have to guard anything.”
We touched down softly and joined Max and Cici.
“Let’s go put y’all’s bags down at my house,” she said. “They look heavy.”
“Darn right,” said Amethyst. “These are fifty pounds each. My body is killing me.”
We followed Cici along the cobbled streets. People went hither and thither, going about their daily business. Something was strange about the way they were dressed—it was all nearly the same. Every man, woman, and child wore solid-colored T-shirts and shorts. They were all different colors, but there was nary another outfit to be seen. None of the t-shirts had graphics, or even patterns for that matter. With her cloak now over her shoulder, Cici now looked barely different from any of them.
A mixture of squat and tall wooden buildings lined the streets. Unlike the footpath, there was no stone to be found in them. They were far more than simple log buildings. Masterfully carved and bent planks joined one another at dovetails, some stained darker or lighter, others painted to match a theme.
Each house was like its own art piece, brimming with personality that defied the confines of the medium. How could villagers that wore such plain clothes own houses so unique? Some doors were tall with pointed arches, others square, others outright circles. The windows similarly varied in size, shape, and arrangement. Instead of being separated by large grass lawns, the houses were packed close together, various trees growing in between them in small dirt alleyways. It was certainly a far cry from the suburban hells I’d set foot in back on Earth.
Finally we stopped in front of a house with an oval door painted a deep violet. It looked to be two stories tall and a little thinner than the houses surrounding it. There didn’t seem to be any way of identifying it other than the way it looked; there weren’t any house numbers or even any street names.
Cici stepped up onto the house’s front porch, twisted the doorknob, and swung the door inward. Strange. It seemed to be unlocked. Really, there didn’t look to be a lock on it at all. Cici stepped over the threshold and motioned us through, holding the door open from the inside.
I stepped inside, breathing in a faint but familiar smell. Lavender. The room gave me a funny sort of feeling. Elements of its design were familiar—the landscape portrait hanging on one wall, the simple rug on the floor, the sunlight streaming through the windows behind us, the floral wallpaper. Yet, it seemed distinctly foreign to me. There was no furniture of any kind. No overhead lights, no switches on the walls, no outlets. No doors on the passageways that led out of the room, not even sliding panels. Honestly, it looked like something out of a fever dream. The recognizable parts and missing pieces formed an interior design that seemed squarely in the uncanny valley and yet too lived-in to be fake.
Beside me, Cici knelt down and took off the boots she was wearing. I followed her lead, nudging Max and Amethyst and motioning for them to do the same. Cici led us through the empty doorway on the right, which opened into nothing but a flight of stairs. We followed her up, the wood creaking softly under our feet.
The stairway led to a hall with three doorways on the right and a window at the end. This time they actually had doors on them. She opened the first and walked in. The room was as simple as the one we had been in before, but actually had furniture. Six beds were arranged in a circle around a rug in the center, their pillows pointing towards the center. Each was little more than a wood frame with a mattress, sheets, and a purple blanked.
We stood at the threshold, not sure what to do. Cici looked at us as if we were supposed to know what to make of the room. She looked around the room, as if she might be missing something strange.
“There’s… nobody staying with me,” she said. She sat down on a bed near the corner, putting her bundle of antlers on the ground. Her sword moved to rest against one of the bed posts, which had a red scarf tied around it. None of the other beds had any kind of marking.
I walked over to the bed opposite the one she was sitting on and set my bag and Occidae down next to it. Amethyst followed me and chose the one next to mine. This of course left Max with the brunt of the decision-making. He could either take the other bed next to mine, alienating Cici on the other side of the room, or he could risk choosing the one next to hers and opposite Amethyst’s in order to balance the room symmetrically. Alternatively, he could hedge his bets by taking the bed in-between Amethyst and Cici, but this would imbalance the room worse than if he slept next to me.
He stood chewing his lip for a moment, obviously working through this social trilemma. In the end, his sense of balance won the day. He plopped his bag down next to the bed opposite Amethyst’s, watching Cici for a reaction to see how he did. Cici blushed slightly, but didn’t say anything. Max looked away and blushed as well.
Amethyst looked at me with a flat expression, then started pulling back her covers. She nodded at our host. “Well, Cici, thank you for the bed. I am done with today. I’ll see you guys in the morning.”
“Wait!” said Cici, with a horrified expression on her face. “You haven’t even bathed yet!” Amethyst stopped what she was doing and looked down at the clean bed, then her grimy self. “Yeah. I guess I didn’t think about that. Sorry.”
Cici pointed out towards the hallway. “Go in the next door down.”
“Cool,” Amethyst said, rummaging in her backpack for toiletries and clothes.
“What’s in the last door?” Max asked.
Cici leveled a stern glare at him. “Don’t go in there.”
Amethyst glanced at me—she seemed to have a habit of this—then headed out the door.
Cici turned to look at me. “Why is she trying to sleep so early in the cycle?”
I thought a moment. I suppose if this really was the Moon, we’d be jet-lagged a bit. I looked out the window. The sun didn’t look anywhere close to setting.
“It’s been a long day for us,” I explained. No need to try and convince her we’d come from a different planet. Besides, it really had been one heck of a day. Adrenaline had been pumping through my blood basically non-stop since… Since Dad had called.
There was still nothing there. I just felt… wrong. Maybe I’d feel better once I started doing what I was supposed to be doing. Now that Amethyst and Max were safe, I could start gathering the information I needed to close the breaches.
“What do you know about the things that attacked us?” I asked Cici.
She looked at me a moment then cocked her head. She paused, as if unsure of how to respond.
“You talk and act rude. Ever since we met its been nothing but direct questions and demands.”
Max made a face like he’d tasted something sour.
Cici gestured at my jeans. “You wear long pants during the fortday. Made of canvas.”
She gestured at Occidae down beside my bag. “You’re able to use aether, but you don’t even know the names of basic animals.”
My heartbeat quickened a little. She was being awfully confrontational. Max mouthed the word “busted” at me.
“Y’all even keep asking me off-topic questions,” she said. “Everyone knows it’s rude for the guest to choose the topic, but you’re not being rude on purpose.”
Cici leaned forward, taking a conspiratorial tone. “Y’all’re not from anywhere near here, but y’all don’t look like you’re from the poles. You don’t even look like you’re from Selenaia.”
She gestured upward dramatically. “Y’all from… Gaia?”
Max breathed a sigh of relief. “That saves us the trouble of trying to explain it,” he said.
I glared at Max and made a “cut it out” motion with my hand.
He thew his hands up at me. “Dude, we are quite literally space aliens here. There’s no way we can just pretend we’re native to the Moon. We don’t know jack squat about anything here.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to try,” I said. “Yes, we don’t know anything about this place, but that also means we don’t know friend from foe. Some discretion wouldn’t hurt.”
“Foe? Nobody here can hurt you,” said Cici. “Why would—oh.”
She lowered her voice. “So, it’s true then. On Selenaia, people kill each other?”
I was taken back. “What—yes, they kill each other, do they not here?”
Cici shook her head, wide eyed. “No. We’re bound by the Social Contract.”
Max looked at her incredulously. “That’s an abstract concept. That doesn’t keep anyone from killing each other.”
Cici looked between us, shaking her head solemnly. “I can’t imagine living somewhere where it’s just a concept.”
She looked over at Max, pausing to choose her words carefully. “As soon as we’re born, our spirits are linked to a stone with our laws on it. We physically can’t disobey any of them.”
“Sounds convoluted,” I said. “What happens if you want to change the law?”
Cici shook her head. “They’re not laws you’d want to change. And it’s simple, there’s only five.”
She held out a hand to count them on her fingers. “First—don’t injure signatories. Second—don’t rape signatories. Third—don’t enslave signatories. Fourth—don’t steal from signatories. Fifth—your children must sign.”
Max’s jaw dropped. “People here just… can’t do those things?”
“Nope,” said Cici. “Their soul doesn’t let them.”
I gave Cici a skeptical frown. “That’s it? Those words are kind of vague. Is there any more than that? Does this contract have specifics?”
“Bruh. Their souls are bound to it,” said Max. “That’s about as ‘spirit of the law’ as it gets.”
“He’s right. It’s just those words,” Cici said.
I shrugged. “Just seems too good to be true.” It was more than just the practicality of it. There was something about the concept itself that bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.
My thoughts were interrupted as Amethyst walked into the room. That was fast, she hadn’t even been gone ten minutes yet. She was wearing what was presumably her sleep clothes—a pair of athletic shorts and a graphic T-shirt. The shirt had the slogan “become ungovernable” emblazoned in fiery letters above a skeleton holding an AK and a rusty pipe bomb.
Max gestured at her wildly while looking at me. “So, Ms. undercover agent. How would you have explained Amethyst’s shirt?”
I looked at it for a moment. “Max, I don’t think I could explain that to someone who lives on Earth.”
“What did I miss?” Amethyst asked flatly.
“Max blew our cover and Cici knows we’re from Earth,” I said. “They have magic laws that don’t let them kill people,” Max said.
Amethyst nodded and walked over to her bed.
“Cool. I don’t care.” She yanked back the covers and plopped down in the bed. She pulled the covers over her head and disappeared. “Goodnight,” she said, the blanket muffling her voice.
“That’s a mood,” said Max.
I looked at her bed. I was exhausted, but I didn’t want to sleep just yet. The best way to beat the time lag would be to wait until they slept at whatever time they did here. Besides, I needed information.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but can we go downstairs?” Max whispered. “I want to let her sleep.”
Cici nodded and tiptoed out the door with Max in tow. I grabbed Occidae, slinging it on my back and following them. It was time to get our bearings.