Woven in Moonlight

by Isabel Ibañez

  I take deep breaths, forcing myself to think of the mission. Of Catalina. Atoc can’t be king, but I still remember my treasonous thought from earlier. Catalina cares too much about what people think of her; she’s more interested in being their friend than their leader. At least currently, she isn’t fit to rule. But she’s still our best hope, and she’s smart. With the right teacher, she’ll learn to be an effective queen in time.

  My gaze lands on the piles of bundled wool, and my shoulders relax. There’s the answer. Weaving will calm me. I snap the covers back and scramble out of bed. After dragging the loom closer to the balcony doors, I gather the wool.

  Each possible location for the Estrella has to be thoroughly searched.

  The clouds break, and Luna shines her silver rays. Moonlight touches every corner of my room. I weave thread after thread, turning strands into art, turning art into a secret message. I only use keywords and pray to Luna it’ll be enough. This time I keep the size of the tapestry manageable, depicting a colorful lizard.

  After three hours, I finish. I stretch my sore back and stiff fingers.

  The tapestry winks silver in the moonlight as I drape it over a chair. A slight movement makes me blink. I lean forward, and the lizard flicks his tail.

  Madre de Luna. It moved. How is this possible? When I saw the bee’s wing flutter, I thought I must have imagined it. But this—this thing—looks as if it’s getting ready to jump off my tapestry. His legs are bent, and it stares at the edge.

  “Luna,” I murmur. “What is this?”

  It flicks its tail again and inches a half step forward, bumping into the message part of the tapestry. “Oh Cielos. You’re really moving. Wait … just stay there, why don’t you? You’re really scaring me.”

  It comes as no surprise that the thing ignores me. The lizard takes a step backward, its tail skimming the tapestry’s edge. My breath catches in my throat. Is it trying to get off the tapestry? Can it do that? It takes another step, then another, until it reaches the last row—and then it leaps.

  I jump back as it skirts underneath my bed. Now what? My heart slams as I slowly drop to my knees. I lift the blanket and squint into the dark. A pair of silvery eyes gazes back at me. I swallow a scream.

  “Come here.” I reach out to the lizard, praying to Luna it won’t bite off my finger. “I won’t hurt you.”

  It moves toward me and takes a tentative step into my open palm. As I stand, the lizard’s tail curls around my hand.

  “Incredible,” I say breathlessly. “You’re … alive.”

  The lizard curls deeper into my palm, his woolly eyes shut. It’s sleeping. In my hand. Madre de Luna! I bend closer, parting my lips in surprise. Every stitch remains the same. It’s an animal—but not. A woven thing that breathes air and moves like a reptile. I made it and now—Wait. As I turn toward the tapestry, I let out a little laugh. There’s a gaping lizard-shaped hole. An easy fix—I’ll simply add in a new pattern.

  Nothing like this has ever happened. I mean, I’ve been weaving stars and constellations all my life. And yes, they glimmer and shine like the night sky. But they never … moved.

  My knees quake. What if this is part of my Illustrian magic? Part of Luna’s gift? My moon thread breathes life into my creations. Did I do something differently? Then it hits me.

  Color.

  Beautiful, vibrant, messy, forbidden color.

  Cielos! What else can I do? I ease the sleeping lizard onto my pillow. “I’ll be right back. I just need to finish the tapestry.”

  My new pet doesn’t stir and I smile. I go back to work and fill in the hole. As I weave, concern presses against me. How am I going to send this message? Atoc won’t allow me to bestow yet another gift onto a merchant. I finish the tapestry and immediately start another, my fingers flying across the loom. I want to create more animals; I want to see if all my creatures can come to life. I’ll use up every last scrap of wool in my room if I have to.

  The breeze ruffles the curtain from the open balcony. Luna’s light makes crisscross patterns on the floor. I take a deep breath and turn the wool into moon thread. The silver light from the thread makes me squint. I ease the wool over and under the warped threads. A frog takes shape. I choose the poisonous breed—the one that scares me the most. One touch is all it takes for the venom to do its lethal work. But this frog has my moon thread. It’s a friend.

  The moment the frog has all four legs, it leaps off the tapestry. Laughing, I jump to my feet as frog and lizard circle each other warily. And suddenly they’re running around each other as if playing a game only they understand.

  My fingers itch to create more and more. I’m breathless and happy and I forget the Llacsans, forget about the Estrella. It’s the happiest I’ve been in a long, long time.

  Two hours later an anaconda curls around my feet, a sloth falls asleep on the foot of my bed, three little ants rest happily on my pillow, and a llama nibbles the corner of my bedspread. They all have the moon thread somewhere on their bodies, on ears and paws, a leg or a tail. The sloth and llama slowly stretch, the wool lengthening until they become regular-sized creatures. I’ve never seen this kind of moon magic before. What a gift from Luna. And they’re for me. Not for the condesa, and certainly not for Atoc.

  Me. I love them.

  Stretching, I glance down at my nearly empty basket. I have enough supply for one more message to Catalina. I want to ask her about the discontented Illustrians roaming the streets of La Ciudad. I want to know if she has a plan, or if she’s at least thinking about a solution.

  But the question remains: How will I get the messages out of the keep? I throw a disgruntled look over to the tapestry I’d woven earlier and rub my brow in frustration. Part of me wishes I could transform into a bird and just fly out—

  Madre de Luna.

  I scoop up more wool, turn it into moon thread, and get to work. The head of a parrot appears beneath my fingers. On the body of the bird, I weave my message about the possible locations for the Estrella. Finally I add its claws and wings.

  I want the bird to fly to the fortress and deliver my message. The parrot’s wings twitch. I gasp in delight, stumbling to my feet and knocking over the stool. “Come on,” I whisper. “Show me what you can do.”

  The bird peels off the tapestry and hops to my arm.

  “Can you fly?” I ask the parrot. It turns a baleful eye in my direction. A smile tugs at the corner of my lips. This one has personality. “Can you understand me?”

  The parrot flutters its wings as it grows to full size. Its claws dig into my skin. Spreading its wings, it soars away from me, and I whirl around on the stool, following the bird’s movement. It flies close to the balcony.

  My heart races as I fling open the doors and drop to my knees. Moonlight covers me from head to foot. The bird nips lightly at my skin.

  “Luna,” I say breathlessly, clenching my eyes. I need her help. Can she light a path to the castillo for the bird so it won’t get lost?

  I wait for a sign. And wait some more.

  Luna reveals herself to us all the time. In small ways, in big ways. She pushes the constellations into new positions to communicate with us. Her moonlight revives and heals, and she speaks to those devoted to her. Her magic blesses us with extraordinary gifts.

  I open my eyes and look at the parrot, then motion toward the night sky. Urging it onward as I cling to the hope that it will fly to the Illustrian fortress.

  “Don’t let me down, bird,” I say. “I’m counting on this getting to Catalina.”

  It nibbles at my finger affectionately and soars out and away. I stand on the balcony as if transfixed. The bird glides high into the inky night.

  It flies in the direction of home.

  CAPÍTULO

  The next afternoon, Juan Carlos takes me to the gardens. He seems to know when I need fresh air, and the realization irks me. We walk to my favorite bench and he leaves me there, watching carefully from under the shade of a toborochi tree. The ston
e is hot beneath my long skirt, but I ignore the press of its heat.

  One of the castillo’s side entrances opens and out comes the healer, carrying bottles of dried herbs and walking toward the army training grounds. He tips his head back, shutting his eyes, letting the sun warm his face, and something flutters within me. Vaguely uncomfortable. I almost call out to him, but I bite my lip.

  It doesn’t matter. He sees me and stops from across the garden. We stare at each other for a moment, and then his toes pivot in my direction. He lazily cuts through the garden, his eyes on mine until he’s standing a foot away from the bench.

  “You’ll melt out here if you don’t seek shade,” he says. “Your face is turning red.”

  “Buenas tardes to you too.” I motion toward the glass bottles in his hands. “What do you have there?”

  “Dried lavender,” he says absently. “Seriously, you should get out of the sun. You’ll burn—”

  “Stop worrying,” I say.

  Rumi looks over my shoulder and meets Juan Carlos’s gaze. “You’re supposed to be watching her.”

  “I am watching her.”

  “I meant—” Rumi breaks off with a quiet laugh, his face flushing.

  Juan Carlos chuckles as if there’s some joke between them. The healer gently places the bottles onto the cobblestone, the glass clinking against the hard rock, and sits next to me. We sit in silence for several long minutes. I’m enjoying the honey and mint scent too much to go back inside the stifling castillo.

  My gaze lands on the watchtower, several stories high. Assuming my parrot reached the keep, Catalina has read my message by now, and she’ll be able to check out the distant coordinates. Only I can search that tower.

  My fingers curl into a fist. I’ll do it tonight. I have the disguise.

  “You haven’t said a contrary or sarcastic thing in ten minutes,” Rumi says suddenly. “Are you feeling ill?”

  “Can’t I be—I don’t know—deep in thought?”

  He exhales and some of his exasperation escapes with his breath. “It’s hot. Come with me to the fountain.”

  Said fountain is in the middle of the garden courtyard. I glance at it and then back to him. “I’m comfortable where I am.”

  He stands and holds out his hand.

  I roll my eyes but let myself be dragged toward the fountain. “You’re so bossy.”

  “I swear to Inti,” he says, letting go of my wrist. “You try the patience of a saint.”

  “You aren’t a saint, Llacsan. No matter what your mother might have told you.”

  For some reason this makes him smile. Warmth spreads throughout my body as if someone has draped a cloak around my shoulders. We sit on the fountain’s edge and dip our fingers into the water, hauled in from a lake nearby. He drips some of it onto his face and neck. I frown. Outside the castillo, everyone else has to pay for the water from small lakes and streams. In here, we have more than we need. Enough to fill fountains. I wonder if the Llacsan journalists wrote about that in their publication.

  “What’s that expression for?” he asks.

  “Honestly?”

  “I didn’t know you could be.”

  My gaze narrows. He’s teasing me. “Then I’ll keep it to myself.”

  “No,” he says softly. “Tell me.”

  Somewhere in our interactions, he’s lost that constant look of contempt. Still impatient and annoyed with me from time to time, but it’s no longer a visceral hatred. He’s not hostile or watching me distrustfully as one would an enemy. We’re different, but that only makes our conversation deeper. I don’t mind that he challenges me. I wonder when exactly that happened. He’s not what I expected, and part of me finds him interesting. Catalina says that people are like books. Some you want to read and enjoy; some you hate before you’ve even read a word.

  Rumi has become a book I want to read.

  “Why didn’t the Llacsans in court protest the treatment and arrest of the journalists?” I ask.

  His lips part in surprise. “Why does it matter?”

  “I’m trying to understand … everything.”

  Rumi studies me. “His Majesty can make any decision he wants. It’s his prerogative. Besides, they acted against the throne. It’s treason. If His Radiance didn’t check every offense, there’d be chaos and dissension.”

  I smother the spark of annoyance rising within me. His reply comes out like polished marble. Not one scratch, and too smooth. Is he really so besotted with his king that he can’t see clearly? Especially after the Llacsans’ torture?

  Of course not. He’s up to something.

  “But he represents all of you,” I say. “Llacsans. I would—”

  “Technically speaking, His Majesty represents everyone in Inkasisa. Not just the Llacsan half.” He frowns. “More than half, actually. If you count all of the different tribes in the Lowlands.”

  “Who aren’t technically Llacsan,” I point out.

  “But native to Inkasisa,” he challenges. “Peoples born and bred out of this land. Unlike you.”

  “I was born here.”

  “Yes,” he agrees. “But instead of coming to learn and live with the natives, you worked against us. Taking over and changing everything.”

  Irritation shoots through me. “It was a long time ago—”

  “You belong to the new Inkasisa,” he continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “A way of life we were never invited to share. A way of life that damaged us. One where we were forced to work beneath you, rather than alongside. Your queen created misery but had the nerve to call it peace. The king wants to take things back to the way they were—before the Illustrian plague.”

  I shift on the bench, angling away from him. A peculiar feeling of guilt washes over me. One that I try to quash. The treatment of the Llacsans disturbs me, but it isn’t as if my life has been easy either. Because of them, the revolt, the king’s earthquake, I lost my parents.

  “What is it?” Rumi asks. “Let’s have it out. Whatever you’re thinking, I want to know. Otherwise …”

  “Otherwise what?”

  He shakes his head slightly, as if physically clearing his thoughts. “What I said obviously distressed you.”

  “Of course it does. I’m not a monster,” I say. “It’s just … Sometimes I feel as if you’re trying to tell me my life is easy. And it’s not. After the revolt, I had no one for months. I lived under a doorway. Poor and hungry.”

  “I’ve never assumed your life was easy, Condesa. What I’m saying is that it’s been easier than mine. What was your life like before the revolt? Did you have a roof over your head? Did you ever go hungry? Were you allowed to go to the public school?”

  I squirm. “Sí.”

  “Yes, what?” he presses.

  “Yes, I had a home,” I mutter. “I could go to school.”

  “I did not,” he says. “Everyone was affected by the revolt, but for Llacsans, this was on top of living under a ruler who denied us institutional power. The only people who benefited under the former queen were the Illustrians. Growing up, you were free from oppression. I was not. This is why Inkasisa can never go back to the way it was before—for four hundred years.”

  His words sink in. He isn’t saying that I haven’t had to make sacrifices, but for centuries Llacsans suffered while Illustrians flourished. The revolt begins to make sense to me. Which only sends more questions whirring inside my head that I don’t want to answer. The biggest being: What does this mean for Catalina, who does want to revert Inkasisa to the way things were?

  What does it mean for me?

  “Is that what you want, Condesa? To rule like your aunt?”

  The truth nearly bursts from my lips. I’m not the condesa. I don’t want to speak for her. I want to have this discussion as Ximena. But that’s impossible. I need to turn the conversation away from me before I say something truly idiotic.

  “Do you think that’s what El Lobo wants?”

  Rumi shrugs. “I think one thing is very c
lear: He’s at odds with my king. That makes him an enemy to the throne.”

  Yes, that much is clear. But El Lobo has also gifted what he’s stolen to the Llacsans. He definitely stands for something. Like the Llacsan journalists.

  Rumi gets to his feet. “I have to tend to the guards who survived El Lobo’s attack. The capitán wants them lucid for questioning.”

  “Have you learned anything?”

  He glances down at me, looking faintly amused. “If I have, why would I share it with you?”

  I keep my face neutral. I’d give anything to listen in on that conversation. I want some hint, some warning as to what will come next. Any one of those guards could have seen something.

  “Let me take you back.”

  “No need.” I gesture to the approaching Juan Carlos. “The infantry is here.”

  I throw Rumi a wry smile as I stand. The whole way to my room, our conversation sits heavily in my heart. This isn’t an act of my imagination—Rumi has been different. Less hostile. Now when he disagrees with me, his tone remains even. Aside from his unapologetic loyalty to his cousin, our exchange was almost pleasant. Enlightening, even.

  He isn’t so bad when it’s just the two of us talking. Atoc brings out the worst in him. Bumbling, idiotic, and embarrassingly effusive in his praise for the usurper. He tries too hard to win Atoc’s approval. Everyone knows it and his king takes advantage of it.

  It’s hard to watch. I like the person Rumi is without an audience.

  Juan Carlos opens my bedroom door and waits for me to walk inside. But I stand transfixed, my attention on the lone figure standing at the end of the hallway. One of Sajra’s attendants. The eggplant-colored robe covers every inch of his body, and a hood obscures the upper half of his face.

  When he’s sure I’ve spotted him, the man moves out of my line of sight.

  “Condesa?” Juan Carlos asks. He jerks his chin toward the open door. “Your dinner will be up soon. It’s your favorite.”