Meet the Moon Road

A short history of the Road between the worlds.

Step onto the Moon Road . . .

Imagine a world beyond our own, the one that you reach through faerie mounds and still pools and tall stones, where you hear the call of the selkie and the whisper of the Sidhe and the laughter of the Wild Hunt on a cold winter’s night.

Imagine that this world, where all the creatures of lore and legend make their home, is separated from the one we know by a strange and stubborn road – the “bonnie bonnie road” of English faerie lore, called the Moon Road by the ones who travel it between Here and There.

Protected by its Veil of plasma, the Road winds through the void between dimensions, a blackness deeper than the blackest of space, and colder than anyone can imagine, full of lashing strings of energy that can slash flesh and bite with a stinging chill. Faesiders call this void the Betwixt and Between. You must briefly cross the Betwixt and Between to pass through the Veil to other worlds, and today, magical bridgings help to protect travelers from more than a brief exposure to its vicious cold and energy streams.

The Moon Road is a creature with a mysterious and alien mind of its own, although no one has been able to communicate directly with it. It allows travel and commerce on its luminous white surface, but sometimes it violently rejects a traveler, so that the unfortunate one is pitched off and shredded to bits as they spiral into the Betwixt and Between.

That’s when the little cleaners — small, black beings from no one knows where, who groom and care for the Road — come scurrying with their buckets and their mops, washing away the blood before passersby get a glimpse.

Imagine, too, that the beings of these two worlds now known as the Earthside and the Faeside were born long ago of the same seeds of life — genetic material carried by wandering bodies such as comets and asteroids moving through the universe. The material they left behind was similar at its core, but it fed the evolution of a dizzying array of lifeforms.

When the Moon Road was young, the Earthside and Faeside remained close, so that there was much movement between them. Those were the days of legend and lore, when magical creatures, ancient astronauts and beings called gods walked the earth.

That’s why the many races of both the Faeside and the Earthside share traces of each other. For example, certain life forms on Earth have blue and purplish blood like most of the Fae. Some people on the Earthside still bear genetic material from a time when beings of both sides mingled and mated. On the Faeside, too, there are those with bits of human DNA from Earthside children taken as changelings long ago.

But as the Road expanded, it pushed the worlds apart. The Faeside remained the domain of “air and fire” where magic — the ability to manipulate energies, magnetic fields and materials like metals — was strong. On the Earthside, magic faded from everyday life. Our world became the domain of “earth and water,” where humans could draw power from the earth’s iron core and the water that covers so much of its surface.

Now, Faeside and Earthside have evolved in eerily parallel ways, developing technologies, societies and industries that mirror each other. But the Faeside has a closer connection to the old magics and the Road itself, while the Earthside grew away from that kind of elemental power, leaning harder into formalized religions and sciences.

The peoples of the magic-rich Faeside have expended a lot of money and resources into developing the Moon Road and the gateways linking it to the Earthside. They’re very aware of its potential for commerce, research and, yes, crime. The Earthside, magic-poor and more inclined to dismiss all this as fairy tales and folklore, remains largely ignorant of their endeavors. That makes the Earth easy pickings for bad actors from the Faeside’s Three Domains and other places where the Moon Road runs.

And that’s why the Directorate was born.

Behind the Scenes:

"Don't you see yon bonnie, bonnie road
That lies across the ferny brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland
Where you and I this night must go."

Thomas the Rhymer, Steeleye Span

That’s the inspiration for the Moon Road and the stories of Soledad City and The Bone Angel series — with of course a bit of a sci-fi twist.

Till next time —

JM