New Book Idea - The Far Ones

This is a new idea that has been floating around inside my noggin.  Finally found a foothold.  It will most likely change over time, but its setting is an alternate world, and a time long before gunpowder.  I've always hated the idea of guns in books.  Its too easy to pull a trigger in today's world, so I write without them.


Curse of the Red Moon "Mom? Why is everyone so frightened?" The young girl looked up at her with wide innocent eyes. Her mother held her small brother to her breast, tears flowing down her cheeks. "Its an old story, Bean. Sit here while I feed your brother. I will tell you why they are so afraid of your brother." Bean, short for Benaldia, sat at her mother's feet and waited. She wasn't sure she should be excited to hear this story, but her heart beat faster nonetheless. "A long time ago, an old widow was killed in a war that has been lost to the dusts of the desert." Bean shivered. The desert had crept up to the village boundaries like a shadow, and it would soon be time to move. Its dunes loomed on the horizon, while its sand seeped under every door, spread by the east wind. "It wasn't always this way, Bean. The desert was our friend once. We would walk a day's walk into the sands, gather water from the buried city, and use the sand to build our homes. We respected the desert, and it protected us from the Far Ones. The ones on the other side." Bean was right. This wasn't a good story. "The Far Ones?" She shivered again. "Once, they were here, asleep for months on end, tended by the priests, and on the Red Moons, they would rise, and share stories of wars and lands with strange things we do not understand. On the next Red Moon, they would sleep, and not wake until the Red Moon rose again. The priests forgot their duties, and their bodies died. All except for one. It withered, but did not die. When it rose and saw what the priests had done, it walked into the desert, and died in the buried city." Bean frowned. "What does that have to do with Tao? And if the Far One died, how can he harm us?" Her mother wiped her cheeks quickly. "When the Far One walked into that city and died, the desert turned against us. No crops grow near it, and its pushing us further away from the city where we gather water. We need the desert, but it doesn't need us." She closed her eyes. "Before the Far Ones started to come to us, our ancestors lived in that city. But its cursed now. A foolish war was fought at its walls, seeking the gold within." She opened her eyes slowly. "An old woman died there." Bean looked up at her mother. "An old woman?" "She was a widow. Widowed on the day of her wedding." Bean held her hand over her mouth. The Maiden Widow's blood was said to be a powerful curse that no one dared to utter. She didn't know why, but it was taboo in their village. "She died on a Red Moon." Bean looked up at her mother, then spied what bothered her mother so much. On the back of his arm, hidden from plain sight, was a mark. "Tahvo was born with a red moon mark?" Her mother nodded. "He might be a Far One. And if he is, it could spell the end of us all."