Paper Moons Part Nine (Patreon)

A/N: To gain access to the alpha build with all the current choices, joing the Baron tier for the code.

Curling my knees to my chest, I looked up towards the sky. It was rumored that the moon wasn’t even real. That it was made of pressed paper and bits of flowers that were dried between its pages.  It looked thin and gauzy up in the black, surrounded by stars that were merely reflections of the lanterns below.  Tucking my knees to my chest, I blinked up at it, not knowing how I was supposed to get a piece of the moon, let alone some sort of essence from its light.

“We have to find someone who knows about what we seek,” I told him.  “A scholar perhaps?”  Did the Night Market even have scholars. I was used to them back home. They lived in the big cities and wore fancy clothing made from the local shops. My mother had taken me through the streets once, when father had been conducting a sermon at the local perish.  I could remember how soft everything looked. How vibrant the clothes were. It felt decadent somehow and I knew if I ever got the chance to own clothes like that, I would be extremely fortunate.

I supposed now those shops and those clothes didn’t exist any longer.  I wondered if everything was an empty shell back in my world or if the world itself had been wiped from existence.

“I’m afraid I may not be much help to you in who to contact about obscure lore,” Gabriel was telling me. “But that does not mean I won’t be willing to be by your side the entire time.  Given what you are, protecting you may be my only purpose now.”

Turning my head, I regarded him softly. He too was looking up at the sky, a furrow between his brows that spoke volumes of his drifting confusion.  “Do you view me as that? A purpose.”

“Yes.”

“But my entire reason for being here is to help you.” I was supposed to be the one to save him from the madness. To pull him back from the brink and help him walk a path that was filled with far more pain than the Knowing usually allowed but pain that was survivable nonetheless.

“That is your reason,” he said.  “It is not mine.”

It was then that I realized, I did not know Gabriel’s true feelings on what we were doing.  Reese was a demonstrative force and one that had been saying from the second I arrived at his doorstep, to save his son. Elias was quieter but no less willing to do what was necessary, but so far, I had seen Gabriel do nothing for himself.

“Gabriel,” I asked with a small frown. “Do you wish to be saved?”

His eyes were flat as they drifted down from the moon, dimming the further from the celestial path he got. He stared out at Reese and Elias, watching the taller man twirl the blond haired Fallen, the two of them laughing as they kicked up willow wisps from beneath the wildflowers.

“I wish to save him,” he said, nodding towards Elias.  Out there, he almost looked normal. Not the sickly man riddled with worry for the ones he loved.  “My existence doesn’t matter but if we can find something that helps me, perhaps it would help him as well.”

“You mustn’t think like that,” I told him. “If we are to find something to help you, you are going to have to want to steer away from the madness. For you.”

“I have lived my entire existence never once thinking of me.  You want me to be strong? To have a drive to beat back what is going on in my head? This is how I will do it.  I care very little about my own existence past the point of how it affects others.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.  It felt hopeless somehow.  Like if this man didn’t believe he was deserving, this was all for nothing. Then again, I wasn’t sure what I was doing at any given moment and was practically winging every action in some hope that one would stick and make sense.  Gabriel, with his lack of faith in himself, still sounded far more confident than me.

“Well, then we find a cure for you. For Elias. And perhaps along the way I can convince you that you are worth it.”

A small smile quirked the edge of his lips. “Yes. Perhaps.”

~~~~~

I didn’t know what we hoped to be doing when we set out the next day. Someone with knowledge of the moon.  It sounded like the key to what we needed but was nearly impossible in nature.  Not when the Night Market was vast.  It wasn’t as if we could simply go within the markets stalls and start asking for moon scholars.  Though, I suppose I wouldn’t have put it past the market to have a district dedicated to that.

In the end, we had wandered the streets for an entire day, our direction aimless and discouraging. For me, at least. Gabriel’s expression seemed to never change.

“I’m tempting to just start hiring the town criers to call out for our information,” I muttered.

“What’s a town crier?”

“Someone that goes around yelling at inconvenient times.” I had only seen a few in this world. I supposed it was more of a staple in mine.

Ducking beneath draped clothes of vibrant orange and purple, winding around stalls glued together with pine sap and gold, we found ourselves almost lost within the market.  I was tired. Fed up. And completely understanding that I was in over my head.  A Graceling. It was a name that had weight. It was simply just not a weight I could apparently handle.

Sitting on a dirty edge of wall that had crumbled and never rebuilt, I looked out of the silks that fluttered in the soft breeze.  It was a pretty district and smelled heavily of dye. The heat boiled in copper vats, pigment drifting upwards and staining the lanterns above.  Head in hands, I groaned loudly in frustration. Gabriel stood by stoically and I nearly had to laugh and how unmoved he was by all of this.

“Hear you need to find someone with knowledge about the moon.”

My head snapped up.  Gabriel’s stoicism had not changed, but his sword was now pointed at a man that stood a few feet from us. His black hair was tied back in a knot, a few strands of it falling across his eyes, hiding a piercing gaze. He didn’t look concerned with the weapon pointed at him.  He didn’t even look at Gabriel at all.

“How did you hear that?” I asked, suspiciously.

“When a Graceling and a Fallen are going through the market asking about the moon, it’s a little hard to ignore,” he said, tipping forward a bit.  “You two may want to be more subtle.”

“Who are you?”

When the man made to move forward again, Gabriel did not move. The sword dug into the man's chest, finally shifting his attention upwards towards Gabriel.

“I’m going to have to ask for you to lower that sword,” he said.

Gabriel looked like he was far more likely to just run the man through but I held up my hand, trying to show him that it was okay. When the sword finally fell, he didn’t let the man get much closer. It was clear he was still going to use himself as a barrier between me and this stranger.

“Don’t make me regret this,” I told the newcomer.

He smiled at me. “I have the information you seek.  There is someone you can contact, in fact, that is considered a child of the moon.”

I perked up at that. “A child of the moon.”

“That’s what she calls herself. I took the liberty of looking into her.  She comes off as crazy, but perhaps there is truth in her insanity. It is the moon after all.”

My heart fluttered. It was a lead. If it wasn't a good one then we could move on, but at the very least, it was something.  “I would very much love this information,” I told him.

“Good. You are going to have to pay for it.”

Gabriel stepped in front of me. “You should be giving the lady the information simply because she asked.”

“Technically, she didn’t ask. And technically, I don’t have to do anything you say. I am asking her to hire me. Not you.” Peeking over Gabriel shoulder, he quirked a brow at me. “Do you need a moment to confer?”

I shook my head, pulling out the bag of coin that Reese had given me.  “Speak. Please.”

He eyed it in a bit of surprise.  Perhaps I had tipped my hand into how desperate I was for this.  But the money was supposed to buy our information.

With a low whistle, he nodded, gesturing towards the bag. I opened it, so he could see the coin and the amount that was contained inside the sack.

“You are looking for a small village on the outskirts of the market. I can draw you a map to there.  You are going to want to prepare yourself with weapons and rations because it is going to be about a two-day journey. There, is a girl.  Not quite a child but certainly not a woman yet. She is said to have a spell upon her, keeping her in a liminal state.  She was cast from the market and now lives within this village, forced to remain until she perishes. But at night, she sings to the moon. Claims to know it.”

“And why should we trust that this information is real?” Gabriel asked.

“I don’t know,” the man said.  “The people who live on the outskirts have not outright killed her which I believe is a good sign.  You don’t usually keep problems like that around unless they can give you something.  And from my knowledge of the moon, the ones who deal in its light, are soothsayers.  I don’t know what you’re looking for or how that would help but…” he shrugged.

“Thank you,” I told him. It was more than we had.  Standing, I handed him the coin, noticing that Gabriel kept himself near the entire exchange. “Can I ask your name?”

“You can,” he said with a crooked smile. “But it’s probably best I don’t give it to you. You need me though, I’ll be around.”  Taking the coin, he turned, whistling as he disappeared within the silks once more.  I could hear the clang of coin long after he was gone.

“Do you trust it?” Gabriel asked.

“I don’t know.”

“But are we following the lead?”

“It’s the only one we have.” I told him. There was a heaviness in my gut over it. We could have very well bought information that would lead us to the middle of nowhere. The outskirts were unkind and not inhabited, from what I knew.  The odds of us returning did not feel well.

Looking at Gabriel, I took a deep breath.It was clear he was looking to me for how to proceed.

[[Let us leave immediately]]

[[Don’t start the journey tired. Rest for the night and get to know your companion]]

[[Grab your supplies and make camp on the outskirts in order to get a better idea of what you’re dealing with]]