In a Land Called Moya
In the infancy of dawn, the first faint hue heralds a new day. Bathed in muted rose within the heart of the Endless Pasture, a hoary buffalo heaves its last, labored breath. Its vitality, expunged from the hot bellows of its well-spent lungs, emits foul vapor one final time, a misted cloud of bovine breath, a wraith of ancient rumination, and mingles with the dew. The ancient beast is the oldest of its kind. Tonight, it will feed the wolves. Tomorrow, the vultures. For seasons to come, the patch of earth that is its uncovered grave.
Southward, across the Emerald Field, beyond the pockmarked plains, past the hundreds, thousands -- millions? -- of rabbit holes and unseen mole-made labyrinths, is Castle Cloud. Upon the Cloudy Mountain summit, a crenelated spire casts a gap-tooth shadow many miles eastward when the sun sinks low and emeralds turn to amber.
Further south, a fattened beaver with yellow-stained incisors fells a yellow-leaved tree, the final piece to dam the cold artery of rushing water, the lesser offshoot of a greater river. In the Golden Grove, no man is present and the age-old mystery remains, the silly yet thought-provoking philosophical musing that asks ‘if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?’ The beaver, if it could speak, would tell you that it does. It might ask its own question: ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no beaver is there to hear it, does it make a sound?’
Haloing a great lake is the Summerwood, a rich and dank, gloomy old forest that is home to a legendary stag. The beast, who has evaded all the best hunters, is said to be snow white, parchment pale, with silver antlers that twinkle like glowworms studding the underside of rock face awning. It has lived for two generations of man. It has left the father, as well the son, breathless, annoyed, and empty-handed. It sips cool water at the lake’s edge and is mirrored in the placid surface. In this moment, for a short while, there are two legendary stags within the wood.
The South Savanna is in need of rain. The men who stalk the zebra, skirt the lioness, note the audible crunch of their sandalled feet upon the withered, brittle grass. The noise alerts the herd and a storm of stripes erupts in braying madness. A kaleidoscopic, black and white frenzy bedazzles the eyes. One man spills honey-sweetened water from a leathern bladder. It hits dried earth to send a small cloud of dust inches upward into the hot air. It pools, undrunk by the hardened soil, drunk later, by many ants, and eventually, lapped up by the lioness.
Riding a southeasterly from the lofty heights of a sea cliff stone palace, over and across an azure bay, the near weightlessness of a small spider is carried, along with its silk train, an invisible strand trailing from its abdomen. It lands in the hot sand and dies almost upon impact. Not from the impact itself, but from the heat radiating off of the arid dunes. The Sienna Steps cast somber shadows that do little to cool what the sun has already scorched. If you could survive the two-day march westward, inland, you would come across a kingdom reduced to rubble, Old Ochre, where the bones of emperors have been eaten away by sand-swept gales, turned to fragments indistinguishable among the sand.
Northward, fertility returns in a slow gradient from ashen to olive. Trickling ribbons turn to streams which turn to rivers that feed deep lakes. Flowers pepper green fields and the air holds a verdant aroma. Mountains erupt from gentle foothills draped in cheery, quaint woodland. To the southeast lies the Meadowlands, where maidens are given over to the best suitors at the Autumn festival in Harveston, fathers agreeing to part with their daughters for the right price, an ample harvest. Northwest, spreads the Autumnwood, a perpetual sea of fire, with crimson maple and marmalade sumac, with canary birch, all under a sapphire sky. It is a region-wide fire without a hint of smoke.
If the Autumnwood is fire, then Great Vermilia, its northern sister, a wild peninsula jutting boldly into the Black Bite Sea, is molten lava, an open furnace that rages yet holds no heat. Then Amberia, like a ripe persimmon, a fragrant tangerine, with trees that rain bronze, that carpet the landscape with turmeric and honey. Here, an ancient blade juts skyward, embedded in a great rock, the fabled Sunstone on the Nephrite shoreline.
To the West, Seabridge spans the rough channels between ocean crags, primordial stone strewn with moss, festooned with salt and gull shit. An albatross casts a long shadow as it glides, angelic and pure, overhead along the slick ramparts. A sentry marvels at its grace, then frowns at the contrast that lies on the horizon, the southward swamp, the Blackmire, with its bubbling soup, its palpable rancor, a foul, liquid crypt to monstrous reptiles of past epochs.
Beyond that bleak marshland waste, Castle Tanzanite, a fortress to erstwhile foes now succumbed into an uneasy alliance out of necessity. Further still, amidst a towering plume of volcanic ash, black chimneys reaching toward the heavens, geological upheaval, the land vomiting itself into the air. Nestled between rivers of flowing magma, brazenly placed or perhaps immune by some magic, Castle Ash, threat to all, the reason old enemies now work together.
The Winterwood stretches northward, the air clean and cold and scented with pine. Spruce and fir, an endless multitude, blanketed in thick applications of snowfall. Squirrels chitter and flick their bushy tails. Ravens caw and flock. Amassed, an unkindness, they form a long, dotted tally across the still, gray sky, a constant stream of one-way traffic. A moose turns to let the wolf know it has been seen. It lowers its great rack to display to the predator why it is a bad idea to attack without the element of surprise. A hungry wolf scampers off. Later, under a waxing gibbous, awash with moonlight, it howls long and loud, forlorn and unanswered. The wolf remains hungry. An owl hoots its sympathies.
At the end of the world, where little life can reside, a castle of myth, Moonpearl, overlooks a frozen lake, a frosted wood, and to the north, a barren, ice-bound plain, an uninterrupted permafrost. Beyond that, the icy Bay of Opals, fat, furry seals and giant alabaster bears, glacial islands, ghostly pale, luminescent blue landforms. Further north, nothing awaits. Nothing but the unforgiving, angry open waters of Blizzaga.
Dimly lit by candelabra, by the dying embers in a blackened hearth, a woman, pale of face, a mournful queen, bereft and hollow, clings to what little hope hangs by a rotting sinew. She watches from her lofty spire for the return of her only love, her husband and king, who is many days late returning from the hunt. The last embers go cold and the fortress walls become white with frost. A queen goes to bed, hoping to dream of her love one last time. A cold wind enters through the window, a draft, perhaps a visiting spirit. Its momentum carries it across the room. Pages of an open book flutter, a trio of weak flames flicker, then go out. A candelabra no longer offers any light, but three faint lines of smoke, the smell of melted wax. A room goes dark. Everything goes cold.
Somewhere, some god, or gods, look down from above, or up from below, or from everywhere at once, embedded in all things, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. Somewhere, some god or group of gods gaze upon it all with great interest, mild interest, no interest. He or she or it or they measure up their creation, their triumph, their disappointing result. They take it all in. They smile or scoff or showcase no emotion, feel nothing. Perhaps there is no god. Not a single one. Perhaps there are many. Perhaps they, themselves, are worthy of a disappointed measure-up, a scornful gaze, a bad critique.
Somewhere, surely, there is a god, probably, that looks down upon the dying last breath of an ancient buffalo, the last breath of a queen who has died in her bed of equal parts grief and cold. There must be a god, or gods, that watch over the harvest fair, the pumpkins larger than wagon wheels, the virgin maid made fertile, like the lands from where she hails. Somewhere, perhaps upon a cloud, some god must listen to the sobs of the father who has given his little girl away, the elated wail of the father who sees what fortune he has gained.
Somewhere, it must be true, there is a communion of otherworldly souls, spirits, or animal-headed, man-bodied immortals watching over two nations at war with a third as they gauge the right time to dishonor their uneasy truce. There must be, has to be, some grand, untarnished divinity. Or maybe a god with a subtle flaw to his character. Bad temper. The jealous type. An all-powerful being whose only weakness is His own emotions.
Or maybe there is no god, nothing at all. Maybe no one, above or below, watches the marvels and horrors in its myriad splendor. But if there is a god, or many gods, to take in their collective creation, to survey the outcome of their efforts, no doubt they look in awe at their own work. The many marvels, the countless horrors. All that is in a land called Moya.
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James Callan grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, New Zealand on a small farm with his wife, Rachel, and his little boy, Finn. At the end of 2020 he left work to become a fulltime father. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bridge Eight, Beyond Queer Words, The Tiny Journal, Millennial Pulp Magazine and elsewhere.