Below the Moon

by Alexis Marie Chute

  “We can’t wait,” is all Nate says.

  So I pull and claw at him. I bash his arms away from the collection of objects, scattering them across the rubble of the rock throne. He gets angry, not at me, I know, but at the situation—at his and Nameris’s failure to operate the Tillastrion; at his inability to save Mom; at the sense of being lost that surely bites at him in this weird world beyond his control.

  Nate shakes me loose, and I fall. My hands scrape across the stone stage and tiny buds of blood sprout and blossom. I watch the smoke. It’s all I can do. I pull on the long chain I wear around my neck with Grandma Suzie’s locket, which I clutch for comfort. The Bangol key—the one I found in the secret pocket of the book Luggie gave me to draw in—dangles limply against the back of my hand.

  Tiny fingers, greenish and warm, try to comfort me, but I can’t even gaze up at the sprites. Xlea appears and startles me. What will she take from me this time? I inch backward on the stage, leaving a pattern of my blood behind on the stones. Xlea folds my hands in hers. They feel like static, yet soothe my wounds. When I break my gaze from the smoky lilac wall and wobbling golden octopus, the blood on my palms is gone and my skin glows pinker than I remember it.

  That’s when I realize my error.

  The chain, locket, and key are visible for all to see. Instinctually, I cup my tingling hands around them. No one appears to have noticed, and thankfully all eyes look beyond the band shell.

  “There they are!” Dad hollers and jumps down from the stage.

  With his free hand, Luggie waves the lilac enchantment away from Grandpa’s face, but still, both of their sets of lips are swollen like ripe tomatoes. Their eyes, even Luggie’s large yellows, are blinded by the smoke’s opaque film and nearly crusted shut with sand. Dad reaches them, and I’m hit with a wave of relief. Then, to my horror, I realize that the three of them—Luggie, Grandpa, and Dad—might be left behind if Nate and Nameris are successful with the Tillastrion.

  My arms quiver as I push myself up from the stage and fall headlong toward the throne. Not close enough. My head is a sloshing mess of cancerous fatigue, deafening me to all sound but Lillium’s high-pitched chirp near my left ear. She’s ordering the sprites to lift me. Digging their spindly barbed legs into my bomber jacket, they haul me forward, inch by inch. The toes of my shoes drag, drawing two parallel lines in the rock dust.

  The face and hundred eyes of the golden octopus emerge through the smoke as it pursues the three left on the ground. Dad pulls along Grandpa, who nearly buckles under Luggie’s weight. Grandpa stumbles and falls, and Dad fights to rouse him and Luggie.

  “Sisters!” The voice is Callisto’s. She takes to the air, flanked by two other Steffanus sisters, each descending upon my favorite people, encircling them in an embrace. Lifting off from the wrecked surface of Jarr-Wya, they fly feverishly for the band shell.

  A sandy tentacle pierces the group, separating them. Callisto and Luggie spin off course. Dad and Grandpa arrive, carried by the other Steffanus sisters, and collapse into a heap. Dad rushes to the edge of the stage, but Callisto and Luggie are still three arms’ lengths away. Still, he reaches for them.

  “This will work!” It’s Nameris.

  “Now or never!” Nate answers.

  I can’t let them operate the Tillastrion before Luggie is saved from the Millia. Callisto, too. My mind wills my throbbing arms and legs to cooperate with the sprites, who are tiring quickly. I aim my feet, one after the other, and throw myself on top of the Bangol king’s throne. I clutch the locket in my sweaty grip, praying for strength.

  Time now moves at half speed—so slowly that I wonder if I am released from the prison of the long and short hands of the clock to achieve all that is needed in these fateful moments.

  Dad’s hand is just shy of Luggie’s …

  Dad is held from falling from the stage by Junin and Lady Sophia, who are linked to Azkar and Duggie-Sky, who hold hands with the Lord and Islo and Kameelo, who cling to the Steffanus sisters and other Olearon warriors, and Pinne and Quillie, who hold fast to Nate and Nameris, their tiny hands dug deep in the men’s hair.

  Dad’s fingers curl around Luggie’s!

  Nothing happens.

  Nate curses.

  The Tillastrion remains a pile of garbage.

  Stupid garbage!

  The golden octopus approaches.

  I open my hands to look at Grandma Suzie’s locket one last time before we all die. The Bangol key slips down the slack chain. It touches the pile of garbage.

  The second it touches the Tillastrion, everything changes.

  There is light. There is pain. There is bliss.

  The sandy voice of Senior Karish wilts and vanishes.

  We’re moving between worlds, just like Mom described. I’m torn in two, my body dissected organ by organ. My mind can’t hold on to the unsettling image of myself.

  As we pass through bands of color, like blurring scenery seen from a car window, I notice a shape repeating every blink or two. A keyhole. Many keyholes. Why hadn’t Mom mentioned this? Unless they only appear to a person with a key. My key. Or, I should say, the Bangols’ magic key that made the pile of garbage come to life.

  I’m so weary I can barely move, and still my body seems to be floating all around me. Somehow I manage to get the ornate metal key into a hole. The bands of red, blue, and green open in a perfect circle as if on hinges, and I peer inside at a white world with patches of azure surrounded by a vividly yellow sky. At first I hear nothing, then an eardrum-cracking blast. The planet cracks in two, spilling from its core hungry lava that drips out through the surrounding atmosphere. When it connects with the great black beyond, it forms hard marbles of gloom.

  I pull my head back through the door and slam it shut. The bands of light continue seamlessly past me once more. Again, I spy another keyhole, and I can’t help but give in to curiosity.

  Past this doorway, I find myself peering into an overgrown forest much like the white woodland of Jarr-Wya. Broad emerald foliage shadows the forest in warm, diffused light. There is a rustling sound above my head, and I inch beyond the door to gaze up. What I see would have terrified me if it wasn’t for my connection with Mom. In our many conversations since her power was unlocked by Rolace, we talked about the giant spider with the head of an old man. Rolace was alone in the world of Jarr, but here, through this mysterious passageway, I see his family. There are easily forty of these spiders hanging and swinging from the leafy canopy. Their round bodies are hairy, with twelve skinny legs jutting out at all angles. The bodies carry the heads of white-bearded men who remind me of Grandpa Archie before he came to Jarr-Wya.

  The men-spiders are chattering loudly as they stroke silvery beards that droop low from their wagging chins. They look to be sharing steaming drinks while grabbing at pieces of a dying creature tangled in their web. Suddenly, my face touches something silky—smooth, yet also tacky like glue. I hadn’t realized that I’d taken a full step into this faraway world, until now. The men-spiders also notice.

  All their eyes are on me—human eyes at first until their faces morph, stretch, contort, pinch, and finally disappear into a fully arthropod form. I shudder and tear at the web adhering to my cheek, but it stays in place. In one fluid motion, knowing cancer is no match for my fear-fueled adrenaline, I turn and leap back through the doorway, which thankfully was held open by the toe of my shoe.

  The bands of colors streak once more as I’m back in the flow of the Tillastrion. My heart is beating hard and I’m sweating. I set my attention on Mom. Picture her face. Remember the feel of her skin against mine. Replay her voice over and over.

  I don’t dare place the key inside any of the other waiting keyholes that whoosh by. The spiders’ web is still on my face. It was real, not just a mirage of portal jumping. I slide the chain with Grandma Suzie’s locket and the key back inside my shirt.

  I understand now why the key has tingled against my skin since I first looped it onto my chain. Luggie a
nd his sister Nanjee had no idea what I was up to. They had steered the clay basket, held in the air by the wing power of a cluster of awakins. The butterflies, never sleeping, had carried us over the blue and white forests to the eastern shore. There, far above the ground, was when I discovered the key. The tingling felt like love, right from the beginning. Now, I recognize that love as life instead. Life. The heartbeat that keeps us all here.

  If we can trust what Callisto told us, then that life force that I feel is Naiu. Soon it will depart from all worlds. I think of the poor white planet dripping lava, sad and heartbroken.

  I’ve never visited that white world or the men-spiders’ forest, yet I was just there, and it was as real as any of the color around me. I’m piecing it all together. While a Tillastrion can take you and your traveling companions where at least one of you has been before or where you’re from, the key unlocks all worlds. Immediately, I realize the immense potential of the object resting against my skin.

  This reaction makes me aware of my body in the portal—my weakness, the insurmountable fatigue, the inescapable side effects of cancer—even between worlds.

  At my back, where the Olearons’ sack is slung loosely, I feel a dampening pool. The cap on the ink vial must have cracked opened in the kerfuffle. There’s nothing I can do but let it fill the inside of my bag with black, which is also what’s happening to my mind. Everything fades from grey to soupy onyx as I slip under the cloak of sleep, but not the restful kind; the cruelty of illness has stolen away my resolve.

  My eyes are vaults closed tightly. All I know now are smells: burning; the saltiness of my favorite potato chips; water—the sensation when water enters your nose and gets caught in your throat and you can smell and taste it at the same time; sunshine on skin, warm, sweaty, and sweetly perfumed. Then, it’s flavor: spice; the burn of hot chili peppers on pizza.

  Pizza. That is my last thought, and it lingers with me until smell is replaced by sight. Pure white light envelops me and clears away all corners of conscious thought.

  Chapter 32

  Tessa

  Tessa nibbles her lower lip. She is alone with her own voice in her head. She had pulled at Ella’s consciousness as long as she could as she tumbled through dimensions with the Bangols. They held the connection even after Zeno began redecorating the island of Lanzarote. Then the link was severed.

  Tessa realizes that without Ella’s efforts, holding onto each other’s minds worlds apart is nearly impossible. Tessa suspects Ella is asleep or perhaps unconscious. She won’t consider a third option. When she calls out to her daughter, there is no answer, only her echo. Tessa moves on to nibble her already-bleeding nails, and the nagging pain at her fingers snap her out of self-deflating talk and the loneliness that bites at her.

  She leaps to her feet from the cool tiles, nearly frozen by the air-conditioning that blasts from a hidden vent. The place where she is held captive is modestly furnished with a simple floral loveseat and water-stained wooden coffee table. Tessa flicks on and off the sole light switch, watching with befuddled awe as the linen-shaded lamp in the corner comes alive, then fades, then comes alive once more. They lived for weeks, she guesses, on Jarr, with no electricity or heat apart from what the Olearons and the sun provided. By the end, the sun dwindled and so did its warmth, leaving only the moon to hint at the burning star’s endurance.

  The room has a whitewashed interior, like most exteriors on Lanzarote, except for one wall, painted such a blinding neon green that it amplifies the migraine jackhammering the front of Tessa’s brain. She can feel a goose egg at her hairline where Zeno struck her with a rock. Tessa is no longer bound by ropes or chains, so she can wander the space freely, though she is not free.

  All doors to the room where Tessa paces are either locked or barricaded shut from the other side. Wooden steps lead to an elevated door on the green wall: a study. That was where Zeno plotted with Borgin—calling for maps of Lanzarote and the other Canary Islands—before venturing out with a troop of Bangols to begin construction. Tessa listened through the door, but the Bangols spoke in their own language—harsh, clipped, and gargled sounds. She strained her power to enter the minds of the stone-heads. Her telepathy was only marginally successful. What she did discover, however, was that her gift also translated the Bangols’ plotting into a language she could understand. Or was it the other way around? Was she suddenly able to comprehend Bangol?

  Tessa cringes at Zeno’s plan. He will construct a fortress on Lanzarote, a place of refuge and protection, that will withstand weather and intruders. Then they will link the islands with arching stone bridges. This is easy for Tessa to picture. She witnessed the Bangols’ skill with stone firsthand on Jarr-Wya’s eastern beach.

  Tessa has no doubt the Bangols will succeed—if they are not stopped. She knows she must act, but fears it is not a job for one. True, Tessa is accustomed to being alone, but this challenge feels hopeless. She does not wish for Ella and the others to transport themselves to Lanzarote, but instead press on to find the Star. At the same time, she frets that their eventual arrival on Earth will be too late.

  The first stone bridge will span north from Lanzarote to the island called La Graciosa, a craterous volcanic landmass with little in the way of civilization. La Graciosa is not considered one of the main Canary Islands, being so close to Lanzarote and with a minuscule number of inhabitants. It would have been a perfect island to build a fortress on, but Zeno insisted the Bangols need humans to work, grow food, and soldier for them in the likely chance of attack by sea. Lanzarote provides such humans. Also, Zeno’s familiarity with the island affords him certain advantages. For the first time, Tessa realizes that he had been planning this new fortress all the years of his banishment.

  Once La Graciosa is overcome, which Zeno wagers will be the easiest of all takeovers, the Bangols plan to expand their stone bridges south, across the sea from Lanzarote to the heavily populated island of Fuerteventura, from where they will build the longest bridge in Bangol history to the circular mountainous island called Gran Canaria. Then they will spread to the last of the larger islands, bird-shaped Tenerife. Once Tenerife is overcome, Zeno believes the smaller isles—La Gomera, La Palma, and El Hierro—will easily fall under his rule.

  The arching ceiling above Tessa is held in place by aged wooden supports given new life with a coat of shellac. The wood surrounding the windowsill has been painted white to match the walls and ceiling. Tessa winds a crank, opening the window and allowing floral air to waft in. Its smell is laced with salt and construction dust.

  Beyond her window is a narrow road lined with whitewashed buildings. Tessa does not know what day it is or even the time, only that the artisan market, Artesanal Mercado Haria, with its green tents, is closed. No shops are manned or assembled. Instead, terrified people yell to each other and rush through the streets, loading vehicles and bicycles with belongings and food and hurrying away to one of the coasts to board boats off the island. One lonely tented structure remains along the street, with its roof of white and mustard yellow stripes that flaps in the sweltering breeze.

  The sight of small compact cars—a red Nissan, a blue Mini Cooper, a grey Hyundai Elantra—zipping through the streets unnerves Tessa. The contrast of the Bangols’ balloons to the puttering vehicles is a sharp one. Tessa’s old life—her job as an emergency room nurse, their family’s dated Seattle bungalow, Ella’s plethora of doctors, and Tessa’s smattering of casual friends—still feel removed from who she now finds herself to be, even though she is home. Earth.

  Most buildings in Haria are a story tall, but the one holding Tessa is two. She contemplates jumping, but the asphalt-and-stone sidewalk is unforgiving. Below her sole window are enchanted rocks spanning many feet in all directions. Chosen for their sharpness, the stones balance magically, their piercing ends pointing up, destroying any hope Tessa might have of dropping from the window and surviving. Plus, she reasons, struggling to see good in her ill situation, I may be safer in here. Her eyes are
on the activity of the Bangols in the distance, and she shudders as yet another piercing human scream reinvigorates her migraine. Already the Bangols are wrangling humans to their will.

  Beyond the white buildings with green and blue doors, past archways of thorny bougainvillea bursting with lush pink flowers and rows of forty-foot-tall palm trees, are dirt roads with shoulder-high rock walls. No wonder Zeno felt like this was a familiar place to hole up in during his banishment, muses Tessa. The walls and roads lead up stout hills on all sides of Haria. The small town is a half-hour drive by yellow cab from Arrecife on the coast, where the Atlantic Odyssey had been captained by Nathanial Billows. Nate. Tessa’s heart pangs with confused notes.

  Up on the low mountains, Tessa can make out hupper fur garments and sweating grey skin. Clearly, the magic that surges through the Bangols’ ancient veins has diminished, though it is not fully abated, in the human world. On Jarr, the Bangols herded rocks like obedient children, whereas on Lanzarote, the stone-heads are forced to exert greater effort. Rocks crash and crack against each other. Tessa can hear the high wail of a Bangol whose foot has been crushed under a boulder. She can also make out Zeno, who stands astride a mound of upturned earth, barking orders at those bustling below.

  The whole island is abuzz with activity. A second contingent of Bangols rounds up humans, testing their ability for manual labor. Those who refuse are persuaded by the sharp edge of stone. From the corners of her eyes, Tessa watches a group of children fill backpacks with candy bars looted from a local confectionary, then cower behind a white wall as a pair of Bangols troll by.

  Tessa recalls the day excursion she and Ella took to Timanfaya National Park, a half-hour drive west of Arrecife. Their rickety bus wove around volcanic craters that pocked the island like the face of the moon. Archie opted not to join Tessa and Ella, which Tessa now knows was his plan all along, despite feigning disinterest. The sole reason he emptied his bank account to take his daughter-in-law and granddaughter on Constellations Cruise Line was to find Zeno and, through him, Arden.