Luna grimaced in confusion. So the Fay Queen continued.
‘Who but the eternity of heaven can send an angel to create herself and her twin?’
*
Chapter 49
‘I’m…eternity?’
Luna laughed, as if this were the craziest joke of all.
The Fay Queen merely smiled, as if waiting for Luna to accept this obvious fact.
Rouger, too, had the same smile.
He had accepted, it seemed, that he was this new Earth. No matter how crazy it seemed.
But…eternity?
That was even crazier still!
No one could be eternity!
No one would want to be eternity!
Especially not her!
Not Luna!
‘But…’ she began unsurely, ‘I don’t want to be eternity. Or heaven, or whoever it is you seem to think I am. I’m Luna. I want to be Luna!’
As she spoke, her voice unintentionally became more determined, more strident and angry.
‘And I don’t want Rouger to be the Earth, either!’ She glanced over towards Rouger. ‘I don’t want him to be my twin! I came here looking for the boy I loved!’
‘Loved?’ Rouger sounded surprised. ‘I didn’t know. Never knew.’
Luna gave an embarrassed laugh.
‘Well, of course I realised you didn’t.’
‘Hah, whoever would have realised eternity could be embarrassed!’ The Fay Queen appeared highly amused by Luna’s confession. ‘Now love; that’s different. Eternity is endless love.’
Rouger approached Luna, reaching out with a hand to take hers. Luna shrugged away.
‘You’re my twin now, remember?’
‘Ah, the best laid plans…’ The Fay Queen still seemed amused. ‘They don’t always turn out how we expect, do they?’
‘But wait!’ Luna exclaimed excitedly as it dawned on her that there might be a solution to all this after all. ‘If I’m not affected by time…then I can simply go back to before I started all this nonsense off!’
‘Where – or when – would you go back to?’ the Fay Queen asked. ‘It has already all happened. Yet is also still to happen anyway. The beginning is also the end. The end the beginning.’
‘All this is so crazy!’ Luna declared furiously, feeling that she was on the point of tearing her hair out.
Could eternity do that? Tear her hair out?
‘Why did I do all this?’
The Fay Queen gently took her hand.
‘I’ve found there is one great advantage in all this, Luna. For, of course, I don’t have to exist as just the one person, in only one time…’
*
Chapter 50
The whirling hawthorn blossom swirled around them, as if they had been caught in a sudden snowstorm.
Luna could hardly see, the white blizzard cutting her view down to little more than an arm’s length. She heard rather than saw the rapidly approaching horse. The racing-heartbeat rhythm of the pounding hooves echoed about her in the clearing she and Rouger had discovered.
The arrival and movement of the horse seemed at last to have altered the flowing of this strange wind she couldn’t feel yet could so quite easily see the chaotic effects of. The glowing white flakes were beginning to rise rather than fall, to separate enough for her to finally get a clearer view of the swiftly encroaching rider.
At first, the rider and horse appeared to glow as glaringly white as the swirling seed balls.
It was the Fay Queen, she was sure!
She cried out a warning to Rouger, whom she still couldn’t see despite the way the previously falling blossom was continuing to rise.
‘Hide Rouger! Don’t let her see you!’
But it was nothing more than an illusion, for as the rider shed more and more of the veiling white flakes suffusing her, she was revealed to be nothing more than a young girl riding low in the saddle.
Her youthfully athletic mount, however, continued to hurtle across the clearing as if he had recently being born anew: a new lease of life that had granted him renewed reserves of energy.
He and she rode as if the Devil himself were chasing after them!
As they charged past Luna, vanishing into the undergrowth behind, it instantly became clear that the whirling storm wasn’t made of blossom after all: it was thousands of mistletoe berries, glittering like a night sky full of bright, miniature moons.
They climbed and wheeled around the great tree that dominated the clearing, a universe of countless stars, the heavens themselves come down to Earth.
The magical wind took up the thin, green branches of the mistletoe. It wound them around and around in its fluidly flowing grip, twisting them, intertwining them. Weaving them into a passably natural imitation of wickerwork walls.
‘Look at that,’ Rouger yelled, marvelling at the way the wind was by pure chance creating this marvel out of so much chaos, ‘it’s like its forming a natural house in the crook of the tree!’
Luna could finally see Rouger, the wind at last dropping away, the twinkling berries seemingly magically supported in the air by strong yet incredibly slender stems. Rouger was elatedly pointing up into the tree, where its many branches and the entwining mistletoe stalks had somehow formed themselves into what could be loosely termed the rough beginnings of a tree house.
‘If I add a few wood boards, a bit of watling; I bet you I could make us our very first home up there, Luna!’
He was already climbing up into the tree, already making plans detailing how he would turn all this into at least a room, perhaps even a house.
Luna grinned happily.
That was Rouger all over; his mind always full of such fantastical projects, his need to bring things together, to create something unique and intricate. Yes, yes – I could change the world if I had you!
‘I shall be like Jack, who I’ve heard once built a great house,’ Rouger yelled out excitedly from somewhere deep within the veiling foliage. ‘And you Luna, you can be…’
‘Jill,’ Luna cried back, though she couldn’t think why, for she had been distracted.
She was staring in bemusement at the sharp, golden glow of what she was sure could only be a freshly growing apple.
Strange, she thought; how on Earth could such a beautiful thing grow from an oak?
*
Now naturally, many people might find all this an unsatisfactory happy-ever-after ending, especially for a girl who is really eternity.
But then, as we’re each a tiny little piece of her, it’s perfectly natural to have a uniquely personal idea of heaven; isn’t it?
End
If you enjoyed reading this book, you might also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.
The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly
The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale
A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things (Now includes The Last Train)
The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator
Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus – The Desire: Class of 666
P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl – The Wicker Slippers
Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)
Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – The Last Angel – Eve of the Serpent
Seecrets – The Cull – Dragonsapien – The Boy in White Linen – Porcelain Princess – Freaking Freak
Died Blondes – Queen of all the Knowing World
Coming Soon
Lowlife
Elm of False Dreams
God of the 4th Sun
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