The Reluctant Champion

The Moon

The moon was rolling down on him like a mountain. It swept inexorably through the sky, faster than a man could walk. It grew even as he watched. He suppressed the urge to duck, to run back down the face of the sky away from the juggernaut. But this was what he had come for—somehow he had to find a way to bridge this last gap.

One moment he was fighting panic at the thought of being dashed from his perch in the sky. The next, he realized that it would not strike him—it would miss him altogether and leave him stranded. He had been misled by the size of it into thinking it was closer than it was. In fact it was still larger than he imagined and would pass far—how far?—over his head.

Now, with the bright moon so close, the sprites came out into the open. They swarmed around him like mayflies, chittering in their scratchy voices. More sprites flew up from the moon's surface, wings silver-opal to the earth sprites' iridescence, and together they danced across the face of the moon. Galen hung between the stars, problems forgotten for the moment, staring open-mouthed.

Something about the swarms of sprites—they looked like minnows chasing each other through shallows—made him remember a legend of how an old man let down a fishing line from the moon and created the tides by hooking the sea. He had a fishing line in his pack with the rest of his supplies. Could he hook the moon?

It was awkward to get into his pack when his purchase was three hard, unstable stars, but after some fumbling he managed it. The line was there, neatly coiled about a wooden grip. The hook and sinker—what hook does one use to catch a moon?—were already on it. He considered replacing the sinker with a heavier one—or all of them—or a pot—but decided it was heavy enough to throw and that was all he required.

Slinging the pack back into place on his back, he looked up to gauge the distance. Hopeless. The moon filled practically the whole sky above him, denying him any sense of scale or distance—he had no idea whether his little line would even reach. He gave a mental shrug. The worst he could do was fail.

He pulled out a few fathoms of slack and started the weighted hook into a slow swing around his head. Once—twice—and he let it go, the line snaking out, eating up the slack almost as fast as he could pay it out.

The sprites above darted away from the line at first, like fish from a cast stone. Just as Galen realized that the line would not reach, that the whole enterprise was hopeless, one of them doubled back, seized the hook, and flew away with it.

Galen gave the line a jerk to pull it free. The sprite didn't let go—instead a dozen more sprites attached themselves to the line and began dragging it in crazy zigzags across the sky. Cursing, Galen seized the line in both hands and, using the instant he had before he started to fall and he had to use his hands to save himself, yanked hard.

There were scores of sprites on the line now. Instead of pulling the line away from them, he jerked himself right off his footing and swung yelling across the sky. The sprites, chittering in great excitement, pulled him higher and higher until Galen could see details of the moon's surface. He whipped sickeningly around the little cloud of sprites every time they changed directions, until he realized that the surface of the moon had become down—it was below him and getting closer.

The sprites were apparently getting tired but were still unwilling to let go of their prize. With each swerve and dip, they dropped a little lower until Galen nearly scraped the top of a range of hills. Close enough. Galen let go of the line, dropped the short distance to the hill's steep slope, and rolled and tumbled down their far side, coming to a stop in a cloud of moondust.

Bruised and sneezing, he picked himself up. Around him, the dust settled lazily back to the surface of the crater, opalescent and gleaming like ground pearls. The land around him was barren and flat. Before him, its gates aligned on the boundary of light and shadow, stood an immense palace.