Luna Maeve
Chapter One
Luna Maeve bounded across the sands of the Moon in great leaping strides. She had seen the glimmer from her castle, faint because it was so far away, but she knew that something had been lost, for all things that are lost forever on Earth find their way to the Moon by way of the glimmer.
She bounded past an American flag and the lower half of an old NASA lunar lander, bleached white by the unrelenting sun. The red, white, and blue of the flag was white, white, and white - less a flag of achievement now than a flag of surrender.
Six more leaps and Luna Maeve arrived at the site of the glimmer and discovered a set of car keys, attached to oversized fuzzy dice. She frowned. She was hoping for a more ethereal lost thing, like love or a memory. Keys were so… mundane.
Luna Maeve was barefoot and wore a tattered white and blue nightshirt that was dirty with moon dust. Her hair was long and white like the surface of the moon, and she wore a plastic tiara, painted gold and decorated with plastic jewels, a crown not truly fit for the Princess of the Moon.
Luna Maeve’s bare feet felt a vibration in the lunar soil and she twisted away not a second too soon as a golf club swung through the space her head had occupied a second ago.
“Bean!” yelled Luna Maeve, turning to face the Astronaut. The faceplate of his helmet was smashed, and from inside, an eyeless skull peered out malevolently. The name of the Astronaut was spelled out in block letters on the right side of his chest: BEAN.
Bean didn’t stay to fight. Instead, he swung the golf club again, forcing Luna Maeve to fall back, then he hurled the golf club at her.
Luna Maeve caught the golf club by the handle and leaped towards Bean, but the sneaky Astronaut was retreating. And he had acquired the keys Luna Maeve had found, then dropped, when the attack began.
With a leap Bean was seated in a long abandoned lunar rover, a tiny car astronauts once drove on the moon. With the keys and fuzzy dice Bean somehow turned the long-dead Rover on, and sped away.
Not knowing exactly why, perhaps because she was angry, Luna Maeve gave chase, her lungs gulping vacuum as she ran in great leaps.
The Rover was fast, but Luna Maeve was faster because she had Earth legs and Earth strength. As Bean drove along the lip of the Sargasso Crater, a hole so deep no one had ever seen the bottom, Luna Maeve leaped, calculating her jump to land her in the lunar rover’s passenger seat.
But Bean had once been a fighter pilot and had fighter pilot reflexes. He cut sharply left, driving the lunar rover over the lip of the Sargasso Crater and into the depths below.
Luna Maeve missed the rover and landed in the lunar soil, rolling on the ground, and narrowly avoided going over the Crater’s lip herself. Carefully she peered over the edge but could see no sign of Bean, the lunar rover, or the stolen keys and fuzzy dice.
But she knew the Astronaut wasn’t dead. Nothing on the Moon can die. Instead, you just got used to doing without things like food, water, and air.
Luna Maeve rolled onto her back and stared at the Earth, the planet of her birth. The planet she had lived on until she had become lost.
The keys weren’t that important Luna Maeve told herself, except that somehow the keys worked on the long-abandoned lunar rover, activating long-dead technology. It didn’t make sense unless the keys were special somehow.
Maybe the keys are magic, thought Luna Maeve. Maybe the keys are the things I need to get me home, to get me found again.
Luna Maeve picked herself up and stood at the lip of the Sargasso Crater. She closed her eyes and willed herself to fall into the darkness. She used the golf club to steady herself and manage the speed of her descent. All about her was darkness so complete she thought at first the dull green glow below her was a hallucination.
The curve of the crater sloped gently inwards, and Luna Maeve was soon running, in great moon leaps, at an ever-decreasing angle until she met a relatively flat area. All around her were glowing green fungi, Selenites, native to the Moon.
It was easy to see the path of destruction Bean had caused by driving through the Selenites in the lunar rover. She could see the gentle moon creature's broken bodies slowly re-wrapping themselves and coiling into new formations. She choked on Selenite spores that polluted the pure vacuum she breathed.
Then Luna Maeve gave pursuit, running in the direction of the lunar rover, careful to not further damage the Selenites.
Luna Maeve bounded as fast as her legs could carry her and soon saw Bean and the lunar rover beelining for a small object at the crater’s center. Usually, these objects were whatever bit of cosmic debris had impacted the Moon and formed the crater eons ago, but this one was different. It was shiny and metallic, artificial. There were ersatz bits of metal, tangled and damaged, jutting from the spherical object and four letters painted in red on its side: CCCP.
Luna Maeve’s heart froze in fear, but her fear did not stop her. With a leap she tackled Bean as he left the lunar rover, knocking the keys and fuzzy dice from his grasp.
“I know what you’re doing, Bean, and I can’t let you,” said Luna Maeve. “You want to use those magic keys to reactivate Sputnik. But it will kill us all!”
Skeletons can’t smile, but a trick of the light made Luna Maeve believe that Bean was laughing at her, a gleam of triumph where his eyes should be.
Luna Maeve realized her mistake. Bean never worked alone, and in horror, she turned and saw two more Astronauts, Aldrin and Collins, inserting a key into Sputnik. She made a daring leap toward the Astronauts, but it was too late.
In a flash of light, Sputnik rose from the ground, throwing Luna Maeve back and floating effortlessly before her. The three Astronauts were on the ground, prostrate before their new God.
“I know you, girl,” said Sputnik, turning its malevolent glare upon Luna Maeve. “I came here to die, but nothing can die on the Moon. You vaporized my body, and imprisoned my ghost in this metal tomb…”
“Whatever fate has delivered you is your own doing Josef Stalin!” said Luna Maeve to the reanimated ghost of Russia’s greatest mass murderer. “I stopped you once, I’ll stop you twice!”
Luna Maeve leaped at Sputnik, swinging the golf club as a weapon, but Sputnik floated higher, evading the hit.
“I think not, little princess,” said Sputnik, as, following a silent command, the three astronauts attacked her.
“Stupid Astronauts!” screamed Luna Maeve, cracking helmets and fighting back against the onslaught. Then she saw more astronauts. Duke, Cernan, Mitchell, Austin, Scott, Armstrong, Shepard… all of them now skeletonized monsters seeking the one thing the Moon can never grant - Death.
The Astronauts grabbed her limbs and pulled her down. They piled on top of her and she felt herself drowning in woven nylon and spandex space suits, their hard space helmets colliding mercilessly with her all too human skull, concussing her.
Looking up, all but defeated, Luna Maeve saw Sputnik rising. And higher still, out the top of the crater, a quarter million miles away, she saw a sliver of the crescent Earth coming into view.
“Today the Earth dies, malyshka,” said Sputnik. “And perhaps one day I’ll find a way to bring death here, to the Moon.”
Anger filled Luna Maeve and with that anger came a newfound clarity. The Astronauts were scattered about as she fought back with renewed fury, and when she found the golf club she used it to hurt them more.
Sputnik paused his ascent to watch Luna Maeve.
“Why do you fight for life in a world where death has no claim?” asked Sputnik. “What does hope mean to you on this lonely world?”
With a leap Luna Maeve left the Astronauts in a pile on the crater floor, then rappelled twice off the sides of the crater, only to land on the tiny metal shell of Sputnik.
“Earth is my home, you monster!” screamed Luna Maeve, driving the golf club through the metal body of Sputnik, breaking it into a thousand pieces of useless Soviet-era junk. For an instant she saw the ghost of Josef Stalin, full of fear and regret, then she bound his spirit to the golf club.
“What have you done to me?” asked the small frightened ghost in the golf club as Luna Maeve landed among the defeated Astronauts, who were figuring out what gloves, boots, and helmets belonged to which skeleton.
“I’ve made you my problem,” said Luna Maeve, as she took the keys and fuzzy dice from Aldrin, who did not resist.
Then, with a series of leaps, Luna Maeve escaped the Sargasso Crater, magic keys and possessed golf club in hand.