• The Moon Vine Keeper


    Prologue
    Her Dream


    He ran and ran until he fell over a log and rolled down the gulch, head first, into the wide, thrashing river. He immediately sank to the hard, deadly bottom. He kicked off and thrust his head above the raging waters, sputtering, and gagging as the ice-cold current shoved him toward the crashing waterfall. He scraped and slid, trying to find a hold on the passing rocks. Each time, he slipped over or around the rock, only succeeding in bloodying his fingers.
    The falls came at him like a hollow, and bitter slap in the face. Foam and mist stung his face like an angry hornet. He went under again and felt the impossible weight of hundreds of gallons of water on top of him. He thought his head might explode with all the pressure. Everything went black. He didn’t feel the smack of the still, calm water at the bottom of the waterfall, but he did hit it…hard.

    There were rocks everywhere; smooth, river-worn rocks. Past the rocks were trees, tall and magnificent, they called to him. Or maybe it was something beyond the trees that called him; all he knew was that he had to go to it, no matter what. The noise was beautiful and alluring, inhuman.
    He lifted his head, it throbbed horribly fast and he almost had to put it back on the hard surface of the bank. He tested his arms to see what had happened. His right shoulder was badly damaged, almost verging on smashed. The same went for his left knee and three fingers on his left hand.
    Amid all that he somehow managed to stand and find a makeshift crutch. He half hobbled, half hopped through the trees. Not too far from where he had lain on the bank, and half way through the small forest, was a dense wall of blue-green vines. He ‘walked’ around the outside of the wall and concluded that they grew in a circle, and that the stunning noise was emitting from inside the ring of vines.
    He ran his good hand along the outside when he walked around again, and part way through he felt an out of place indentation in the wall. He pressed in the upper, right-hand corner and the vines slowly stretched and twisted until they formed a gap large enough for a person a few inches shorter than himself.
    On the other side of the vines he saw a small cottage with smoke produced from the chimney. He labored toward the door and raised a fist to knock on it; just before making contact with the door, everything went black, same as before.