Below the Moon

by Alexis Marie Chute

  I wait. Silence. I scream at her again. Then, I hear her.

  You’re faint, Ell, and I feel thin. Can’t you see me? I can see you there, on the stage. I’m standing, well, hovering here, above the gorge of metal and machines.

  You’re still here? I can’t see anything in the crater. Not you or the Bangols or the Tillastrion.

  I jump to my feet as if our company missed something so obvious, but no. The earth is still vacant but for a carelessly broken gear. Nothing hovers in the sky but the hungry black flyers.

  I suppose it takes longer to transport such a great number. It’s beginning now, Ell. Everything’s warped. My arm looks as long as a tree. If I stretch only an inch farther I can stroke your cheek, take your hand in mine.

  Something’s not right, Mom. We didn’t feel this when the Atlantic Odyssey transported us to Jarr-Wya. That had to be just as many people, and the ship just as large as the Bangols’ machine.

  But we weren’t the ones who operated that Tillastrion, remember? We were stowaways. It was Archie … he must have felt this, as I’m feeling now. Ahhhhhh …

  What is it, Mom?

  The clouds are pressing down on me. The light, it shifts, melting from dusty blue-grey to chalk white and blinding. The magic is morphing into a snaking, slithering violet. The color winds between the folds of my brain. I can’t think.

  Keep talking to me, Mom.

  Jarr-Wya is fading. The grainy smell of the Sea of Selfdom is being sucked from my nose, replaced by the burn of lava, of eyelashes, and of sunshine. I’ve missed the sun … My mind feels cut, Ella. Lacerated into dead and alive, the two sides connected by a singular tract of die-hard synapses. Pulsing. Clouds spin. Claws are on my arms. The Bangols …

  I’m going to save you, Mom. Tell me everything you see and feel. Our company will follow you, wherever you go. And if not them—I gulp, hearing my error—then me. You never gave up on me, no matter what cancer threw my way—our way—and that’s how much I love you, Mom. I’ll go wherever you go.

  No, Ella. No. Your cure is close. Let the others worry about the Steffanus sisters. Sneak into the mountain and find it. I mean this, really: save yourself. My life is a shadow of yours. No child should die before her parent. Please, Ella. Listen to me.

  Mom, I can’t, I won’t. I’m scared, and without you, the fear will eat me alive, cure or no cure. Mom? Are you there?

  I’m here. I see the ocean above me, the whole immensity of it. Sea creatures. Blamala crabs. Drowned wyverns, all smug and dragon cruel. The shellarks and other shelled ones swimming so low, diving for the Star, always beyond their reach. I can see the Star, too, but I don’t understand it. Its rays of light mix with curls of floating foliage. Waves. A tsunami of color crashing down, down, down, moving closer, shaking my bones. I’m pinned now beneath the sea’s floor, buried in the sunken grit of the world.

  Which world?

  All the worlds.

  I’m coming for you, Mom. Nate’s with me on this. He won’t leave you either. And Dad, well, I know he still loves you, but it’s complicated.

  Second. Save me second. After you. You first. Save you first.

  Mom, I can barely hear you. Your voice, it’s broken.

  Save yourself, save Jarr-Wya. I’m okay on my own. Ella, I know how to fight for myself. I’ve done it all my life.

  No one should feel alone, Mom, and I think I know a bit more about that than I should … Wait! The others are talking. The Lord is grumbling about Dad’s plan, which involves delivering Xlea unharmed and making peace with the Steffanus warriors. The Lord thinks we should have wounded them when we had the chance, that the Olearons who remain in the city would have seen the fire and come to help. Then we wouldn’t be so badly outnumbered.

  I continue. The Lord wants to return to the mountain and to send a beacon of fire into the sky, calling to the glass city. That way the Olearons can burn in attack from two sides if we’re not granted access to the tunnels. The Lord wants to reach the Star now more than ever, while the Bangols are missing in action—to use the Star’s power to defeat the Millia before we’re transported to Earth to confront the Bangols, though I know what that means. To the Lord, confrontation means battle. It means blood. The Lord is acting strangely, Mom. He’s more vicious than he was a second ago. It’s like he’s a different person.

  Stay away from him, Ella. Do you hear me?

  Yeah, Mom, I do. But—

  He’s not safe. Stay with Dad, Grandpa Archie, and Nate, but still go for the Star.

  No.

  No? Don’t argue with me. I’m the parent here—

  And you’re also not technically here …

  Ella? Ella—what’s happening there? What’re the others saying?

  I can’t believe it!

  What, Ell?

  Dad! How can he agree with the Lord? All he cares about is the Star!

  No, all he cares about is you, Ella. For your dad, finding the Star means saving you. Oh no!

  What, Mom? Are you hurt?

  I’m outside of myself. Inside out, upside down. It’s either pain or bliss, but the difference between the two is like the thin line of a blade.

  Nate will help me, even if Dad won’t. Nate has refused the Lord’s plan; he says his priority is saving you and our world, our home. He says that Jarr can save itself, that it’s his mission to return every last Bangol to their northern shore. Grandpa Archie is pacing. He looks younger, but the frown on his face ages him. He’s biting his nails, sinking back into the rubble of the stone band shell. I can tell he’s conflicted.

  Why won’t you listen to me, Ella? You never listen! I tell you to do your homework and you ignore me. I make a schedule for your medications and you forget your pills at home during school. I do everything for you, and now I want you to do something for me: go to the mountain. Stop being difficult with the company, the Olearons, and Luggie, who are all trying to help you, even if it’s indirectly. While the others fight, climb into the caves, and find the way down to the Star, kill it, let it go free, do whatever you have to do. Listen to me. This once. Please!

  Nate says he needs a Jarrwian to operate the Tillastrion, but all of them have agreed to go after the Star.

  Ella, you’re not listening! Fine. Give Nate a message for me.

  No, Mom—

  Ella, tell Nate that I beg him to save you first. Please. I feel so very thin and may not survive this anyway. The Bangols are crushing me. Their bodies are like rock. Their head-stones make the beginnings of a hundred bruises on every part of me. I think we’re getting close to the end of this journey. I can hear their language, their moans. They’re worried about what’s to come on the other side.

  Mom, I respect you. I love you. I always heard you when you bossed me around at home. I was always listening, at least with one ear. And I’m sorry for not always doing what you said. I’m afraid this is going to be another one of those times. You’re in danger, and yes, you may not make it, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on you.

  I’m being pulled upward, Ell. My body is nearly bent in two. I’ll never make it to the other side of this. Everything moves so fast through … what is it? Water, or air, or light? And the colors all bleed, the clouds crash, the vibrations shiver through my veins, and I can’t speak aloud even if I wanted to. I can make out Zeno, though. His voice is a trumpet, loud and sharp. He says we’re almost there. That he can smell Lanzarote and his shop, Treasures, tucked away in the market. Ouch, oh! My back, my head …

  Mom!

  Everything has become so still, and now my head is a spinning top. I’m vomiting blackness. The air here smells … familiar … the sweetness of grass and brine of the North Atlantic Ocean. Spanish cooking; coriander, red pepper, garlic, sugar cane, and oven-roasted fish covered in salt. We’ve made it to the Canary Islands! To Lanzarote. To the city of Arrecife, where the Atlantic Odyssey docked on our cruise. I’m bleeding, Ell. The Bangols are tying me up, carrying me. Not Zeno—he’s off ordering the Bangols around. I can
overhear them. We’re heading to Artesanal Mercado Haria, the artisan market in the town of Haria, to Treasures.

  I can hear people screaming—through your subconscious. What are the Bangols doing?

  Their powers are diminished, but they can still control rock. They’re bellowing, calling forward the stones of the island. They’re crushing people in their way, carving the earth. They’re planning to build a fortress of stone. Zeno has approached me. The look on his face is disgusting, greedy, power-hungry. He’s boasting. The Bangols are going to construct huge arching bridges—like the ones on the eastern edge of Jarr-Wya—to connect the seven Canary Islands, ruling from here before spreading, hungry to dominate. First Lanzarote. Then Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, then the three smaller landmasses. All seven Canary Islands will be connected as one. I spit on Zeno. He doesn’t like that. He’s coming at me. He’s got a stone raised in his hand. Oh no!

  Mom? Mom?!

  Oh shoot, this is not good, not good at all. What do I do? I can’t draw fast enough. I’ll have to write with the paintbrush, even if Luggie can’t read my language. He should have learned when his sister Nanjee pestered him to.

  The Lord puts his gloved hand on me, on my right hand, stopping my paintbrush. I forget how to breathe. I wasn’t expecting the Lord’s touch, and it unnerves me. Mom’s warning floods my mind, and I forget how to move. His black eyes are unreadable, bottomless pools at night, dangerous.

  “Speak, child,” the Lord commands.

  What? I’m so confused. Why would he want me to croak out a bird? Oh, owww, argh! His hand is crushing mine, so subtly that I doubt the others can see, and now I can’t help but wince and cry out in pain. As I do, one single green bird flaps upward from between my teeth. It has only flapped its wings once before the Lord plucks it from the air.

  “Junin, a carrier flask,” the Lord orders. She brings him a small metal vial with a blue flip-top from her traveling sack she rescued from the flood. He releases my hand and tears a strip of paper from my stash. He dips my brush into the black ink and writes a message. I glance at it but it’s in Olearon. The brush was given to me by the red beings, and it’s obvious the Lord knows how to use it. In comparison to my large thick letters, his lines are thin and sure.

  The Lord rolls the paper into a tight cylinder and slips it into the carrier flask, which he straps to a leg of my bird. He secures the lid, then whispers into the green bird’s ear. Its human-like eyes bat their long lashes at him, and it chirps and nods. The Lord tosses the bird into the air where it rises hurriedly in a swirl of lacy air to become a green morning star above us.

  I scowl at the Lord. My teeth are clenched. I hate him, perhaps more than I’ve hated anyone—more than the heartless bullies at school, more than my cancer. My illness hurts me, but the Lord has sealed the fate of my world. He’s called the Olearons to Baluurwa. There’s going to be a war that has nothing to do with saving Mom and the other humans.

  My body aches with weakness and nausea, my cancer picking the perfect time to flare up. Otherwise I’d have beaten the Lord, hit him harder than I did Tuggs when I saw him kick Luggie for helping me on the eastern bridge. I need an outlet for my anger, my helplessness. I imagine clawing that ridiculous glass breastplate from the Lord’s body, shattering it, and hurting him so badly that he bleeds. I know it’s wrong. Dad would pull me off before my fantasy played out anyway. He’s not a fighter; it’s against his nature, even here. Despite studying history, or maybe because of it, Dad is anti-violence. At least the Dad I knew. That Dad would never go along with the Lord’s plan. Maybe it’s violence that glows through his orange veins.

  The Lord called Grandpa Archie a thief for stealing that magical glass, but it’s him who is the robber. He’s stolen my father. He’s sentenced Grandpa to servitude, if not certain death. He’s abandoned Mom. I hate him.

  As much as I want to pound my fists on his chest, cancer is my true lord. Ugh. I need to vomit, but I swallow the acidity back down my throat. I can’t let them know—not any of them. Not Luggie, who will worry and insist on taking an easier road. Not Dad, who will take up Mom’s post in coddling me. And especially not the Lord of Olearon, who will feel justified in ignoring my plea to follow the Bangols to Earth to save the humans. I lock my jaw; that’s all I can do. I run the remaining ink wetting my paintbrush through my fingers, smoothing the frazzled bristles into combed lines.

  “Azkar, Islo, Nameris, Junin, come,” the Lord of Olearon commands. “Preparations are in order. We have one sunset in which to join with these humans”—and the way he says humans infuriates me—“in constructing a Tillastrion.”

  I can’t breathe. Did I hear the Lord correctly? Teach one of us to build a Tillastrion? My mind is reeling. Is the Tillastrion to help save the humans—and Mom? But what about the bird? It doesn’t make sense.

  Grandpa Archie runs forward, startling me with his swiftness. Confusion scrunches his forehead. As if reading my mind, he chokes out the question rolling around in my head. “The green bird? Pardon me, my Lord, but … did you summon the Olearons to battle the Steffanus warriors?”

  All that’s playing out before me is both too rushed for comprehension and in the same breath too slow, like a video that lags when the audio skips ahead. The vomit rises again, and I cough it down. I dig my fingernails into the simple glass ornamentation on the handle of the blue-bark paintbrush, distracting the cancer with new pain.

  The Lord answers Grandpa Archie, “The Maiden in me finds wisdom in the perspective of the child—Ella Wellsley. When my Maiden sacrificed her Jarrwian body, dying to save your lives”—he looms over us humans—“she became my closest confidante. We are as intimate as two souls can be. She counsels me to spare humankind from greater loss, Archibald, advising me to finish what we have begun and to rule peacefully, even if that means Bangol extinction.” The Lord turns to Luggie. “As you would agree?”

  Luggie nods, his face submissive—though I notice his clenched fists.

  I understand why the Maiden would urge the Lord like this; Mom told me she was always kind though unforgiving, faithful yet fierce. She protected Mom and Archie as they wound their way across the island to find me in the east. When Valarie’s vengeful spirit transferred into the mob of attacking carakwas, it was the Maiden who paid the ultimate price. She died so that the rest of us could live. That’s bravery if you ask me. Slaughtering the Bangols to ensure peace makes sense, coming from her.

  What confuses me is Luggie.

  Why is he accepting the Lord’s plan without argument? These are his friends, his relatives that the Lord talks about so casually. Bangol genocide. The Lord worded it well: extinction. Yes, I want to save the humans, but for their own sake, not as a side effect of hunting down the Bangols. Why is Luggie bending to the Lord’s will? When we’re alone, I’ll ask him somehow, but not now. The way the Lord is staring at him makes my skin crawl.

  Grandpa Archie turns to me. “Ell, are you strong enough to portal jump with us?” He takes the hand of my uninjured arm, ignoring its inkiness, and strokes it as he used to do when I was little. I pull away harshly and straighten my back. I won’t let any in this company—Grandpa Archie included—see how weak I really am. I nod purposefully, scowling at the notion they’d leave me behind.

  “Did your mom find jumping between worlds bearable? Could she handle it?” he asks. I know Grandpa. This is his way of saying that if Mom couldn’t take it, neither can I. He continues, “When Zeno and I operated the Tillastrion, being so close to the device, to the Naiu, I felt like I was burning, my brain was bisected, my skin floating apart from the rest of me. I’m sorry if that scares you, Ella. I don’t mean to. It was also beautiful, like being up in the clouds, weightless, surrounded by sky, or a part of the ocean—not just in it, but one drop of water among trillions. But I’m worried about you … you most of all. I have no idea what you experienced on the cruise ship, if the jump from home to Jarr was as painful for you as it was for me. I worry, Ell. Please don’t look a
t me like that …”

  I’m scowling, of course, pretending to be strong, though I don’t want to injure Grandpa with my forced bravery. So I smile weakly. When Grandpa Archie and Zeno transported our cruise ship to Jarr-Wya, I felt a lesser degree of what Grandpa describes. We all felt something.

  We had just returned from touring Timanfaya Biosphere Reserve on the island of Lanzarote. Mom and I were heading to our cabin when I felt a strangeness overcome me. Everyone in the hall was aware of the change of atmosphere inside the ship. It was a feeling of weakness and disorientation, and altogether unlike my cancer spells. Mom chalked it up to turbulence and a bad bout of seasickness as we pulled out of port and changed our clothes for Lady Sophia’s concert.

  My head seemed disproportionately large compared to my body. The air-conditioning smelled of churned earth and flowers. Wisps of cloud wafted casually down the hall and under our door. Sweet-smelling, lilac-colored smoke pursued us. I didn’t know whether to inhale it deeply—it being so sugary delicious—or to hold my breath. Mom told me to do the latter.

  As the lilac smoke toyed with us, as it surrounded our cabin, Mom’s words grew slurred. I thought my eyes were tricking me. Her lips grew swollen, along with her hands and eyelids. Then I felt the fullness of my own lips. Mom and I withdrew to the bed where we waved away the smoke, but it was no use. The color was light and happy, but the smoke made my head feel heavy and covered my eyes with a nearly opaque film. I slept without dreams. I’m not sure how much time passed before Mom woke me up and cleared my eyes. The Maiden of Olearon stared down on us, and then I saw Grandpa Archie lying limp at the foot of the bed. Once awake, he relayed to us that Dad was dead, another of Zeno’s lies.

  If Dad can survive the trip and live as an Olearon for years, I can do it. If Mom and Grandpa can make the jump between portals—both at the center of the device—then I’ll be fine. I hope.

  I nod at Grandpa Archie with courage in my clenched jaw. I crack the lid off the ink flask and plunge the brush into it. I draw words for Grandpa, penning each letter as well as I’m able, writing my definitive answer: