The Twelve Kingdoms: Shadow of the Moon

sword around.
    "Hey, you there?" she asked herself again. "Where's Keiki?"
    No answer. Nothing. A big lot of help he had turned out to be. She raised her head nervously. What if Keiki came looking for her and missed her? She recalled the yelp of pain the instant before she fell. She had left Hyouki behind, surrounded by the monsters. Had he survived?
    The unease pressed down on her head and shoulders. She jumped up, quelling the scream of panic rising from deep inside her.
    Looking around she spied to her right a break in the woods. Nothing between here and there struck her as dangerous. She could at least venture that far. Beyond the forest was a fallow field. The field was strewn with a thicket of shrubs plastered against the discolored earth. Beyond the field a cliff leaned out over a black sea.
    Youko approached the edge of the cliff. Closer, and it was like standing at the top of a tall building and looking over the edge. What she saw amazed her.
    It was not the sheer height of the cliff . It was the water, black as the night sky, almost blue in its blackness. Even in the light of dawn the sea looked like night. But then, as she followed the face of the cliff down into the water, she realized that the water itself was not black. It was perfectly clear. How deep she could not begin to imagine. The sea must be so vast, so deep, that no light could penetrate its depths.
    Then, from deep within the deep, she saw a glittering point of light. At first she could not make out what it was, but then there were many more of them, the small specks of light spread out against the wide black like grains of sand. Together the light gathered into a faint, background glow.
    Like stars.

    Vertigo overcame her. She sat down. She knew what it was. She'd seen pictures of stars and nebulae and galaxies. Reaching out below her was the universe. Her thoughts suddenly overwhelmed her. She could no longer turn her face from the truth in front of her: I don't know this place. This was not the world she knew, not the ocean she knew. She was in a different world altogether.
    Oh God.
    "It can't be true," she said aloud.
    Where was she? Was this place safe? Dangerous? Where would she go? What would she do? Why did this have to happen to me?
    "Jouyuu-san." She closed her eyes, raised her voice. "Jouyuu! Please answer me!"
    She heard only the roar of the ocean in her ears. Not a whisper from the being that possessed her.
    "What am I supposed to do? Isn't somebody going to help me?"
    One full night had already passed. Her mother must be worried sick about her. Her father would be furious.
    "I want to go home."
    Tears tumbled down her cheeks. She choked back a sob. "I want to go home," she said again. She couldn't hold it back. She hugged her knees, buried her face in her arms and wept.

    Youko finally lifted her head. She'd cried so hard and so long that she felt slightly feverish. Crying her eyes out had made her feel better, but only a little. She slowly opened her eyes. The ocean stretched out before her like the universe.
    "How very strange--"
    She felt as if she was gazing down on a sky shot through with stars, a starry night arraigned against the serene blackness, the galaxies turning slowly in the water.
    "So strange and yet so beautiful--"
    In time Youko calmed down and managed to collect her wits about her. Absentmindedly she gazed down at the stars in the water.

Chapter 10
    S he sat there staring out at the sea until the sun had risen high in the sky. What kind of world was this? Where was she?
    They had passed through the halo of the moon to get here. That alone was hard enough to believe. In any case, to capture a moonbeam like that, it seemed equally unlikely that you could do the same thing with the light of the setting sun.
    Then there was Keiki and all those strange creatures. None of them were from any species on Earth. They must come from this world. That's the only thing that made sense to her.
    What was he thinking, bringing her here? He said it was dangerous, he said he would protect her. Yet here she was. What were they up to? Why did those monsters attack her? It was like out of a nightmare, the same dream she'd been having for the past month.
    From the beginning, from the moment she met him, none of it had made sense. She knew this much: she was lost. He had shown up out of nowhere, had dragged her off to this strange world without a second thought about the circumstances of her life. It wasn't because he hated her, she