There were black horns protruding from the turban that came to ornamental points. He had the appearance of a devil, cloven hooves and furry legs that gave the impression that he wore shaggy brown pants, and his smile felt so sinister to me. I remembered what the white cloak had said on the ship, that I was in a place other than the one I was born to, and I paused. This man with obscured eyes and horns was very intimidating, looking over me with the widest smile that defied the logic of the head. The head was human sized, but the mouth stretched wide under the nose, pulling the lower portion of the head to far points. His appearance was startling, but I recognized my human biases in the moment and decided to allow this man, this being of another world, the chance to demonstrate his intentions rather than assume them based on my experiences in a place foreign to him.
“You fell from the moon?” the man asked me. “And you are intact?”
I tried to maneuver my body so that I might get up onto my knees to speak with him, but the chains were heavy.
“My name is Leeland,” I said. “I am a stranger in a strange land. I did not fall from the moon, I fell from another existence. I do not know the customs of this place, but I will be in your debt if you could tell me more about this place and help me to navigate it for as long as I am here.”
The man laughed.
“You sound like a human,” he said with a raspy voice that made the hairs on my neck stand on end, and when he opened his mouth to speak, I saw all of his teeth in more than one row on the top and bottom. “Human, but not,” he said with a chuckle.
I was sure that it was my biases that made this man repulsive and I tried to see past the physical and I realized that he too, like the white cloak, was very impressed by my being. I was unique, even among other humans he had encountered.
“You can’t have fallen from the moon,” the man said. He approached me and even with the turban over his eyes, he knelt before me and began to remove chains so that I could stand on my own. “If someone had brought you to the masters, you would have been famous all over the moon. No, you are new, and I will please the masters by taking you to them. Where are you from, thing?”
“I am from many places, but the larger land is called America.”
I was finally able to stand but my wrists and ankles were both shackled with a lightweight chain connecting them.
The man never stopped smiling at me and as close as he was, I had to mask my fear. His mouth was strange and I was sure that he could have taken a large bite out of me if he chose to do so.
“And this is a land of, what, darkened humans? You must be more resistant to flames? Is that it?”
“Not more or less than any other human,” I said, focusing on the wonder with which this being regarded me. I reasoned that I was only chained because the people of this realm hadn’t decided if I was a threat, and I knew that once they came to know me better, we could all get along as friends.
“Well, we’ll be off soon. The ship should arrive any minute. The masters will be very curious to inspect you.”
He grabbed my chains and pulled me to the dock that was left empty by the white ship that had brought me to the city. As we stood, I looked around and realized that the man was singular, I didn’t notice anyone else with features like his.
“May I ask your name?” I said to him.
“I am Penglo, a Man of Leng,” he said without looking at me. His head was up like he stared up at the sky and I looked up with him. There was something solid about the colors of this place, as though everything at a distance was a painting made with bold hues and I imagined that approaching the darkness of the sky with its magical starscape would surely lead to collision with a large canvas.
“And where is Leng relative to this place?” I asked.
“It is far north, you will never know it, so we will not waste words.”
I nodded at this.
“Where are you taking me? Where are your masters?”
“To the moon, scorched one, the masters are on the moon.”
I hadn’t noticed the moon until he said the word, and then my vision of the sky was filled with it. It was bright gray, practically silver, and I could see darker gray regions around it’s surface.
“The work in the mines is grueling, but you will grow into it. Humans always seem to adjust.”
Before I could ask more about this, we both noticed the ship pulling up to the dock. It was a black ship, and there was a row of long oars on either side that moved in perfect cooperation to maneuver the ship. The ship moved swiftly and it navigated the waters with ease. It stopped easily at the dock and there were two others who resembled Penglo on the deck, only their eyes were visible and their facial features were those of hairy men, only their mouths seemed truly bizarre to me.
“You summoned the Galleys for this…” one of the men on the ship called down as they both looked down over the side of the black railing. “…what is this?”
“There must be more,” the other said, searching the docks.
“Oh, Brethren of Leng,” Penglo said, shaking his head while he chuckled, his wide mouth curled up at the ends. “Do you not see the difference in the human before you? This is a Scorched Man, darkened by proximity to heat and able to withstand it like no other man. The masters could use this one deep down in the mines.”
The Brethren of Leng on the deck eyed me and they discussed Penglo’s claims.
“Where did you get it?” one of the Brethren asked.
“Fell from the sky,” Penglo said and made a flourish with his hands. “It was brought to me by the white cloak…”
When he mentioned the white cloak, both of the Brethren on the deck made audible noises of surprise.
“The white cloak!?” one of them said. “This thing must be very mysterious, why would the cloak give it over to our masters? It must be abominable.”
The black ship began to gently rock back and forth.
“Yes,” one of the Brethren said, “you have done well, Penglo. Both of you come aboard, we must away to the moon.”
I followed Penglo and just as I stepped from the ladder and onto the ship, the ship backed away from the dock, and then headed west. The black ship moved much faster than the white one had, and before long, the port of Dylath-Leen was shrunk to nothing behind the horizon.
I didn’t question the Brethren of Leng as we traveled on the ship, I was too entranced by the warping of the reality around it. It was a subtle, but striking distortion; the view around us was dominated by the vast sea in which we traveled and the black night sky speckled with stars above it, and it all seemed to stretch and bend as we gained speed. Soon, we were going so fast that I was surprised that I was able to remain standing on the deck as the view around us blurred and swirled.
After some time that I couldn’t measure, the view around us began to slow and come into focus, and eventually I saw it, the stunning view of the silver moon that we approached as though we piloted a spaceship.
PRL Serials 