The Crescent Stone

by Matt Mikalatos

  Jason looked at her arm, his face pale. “Maybe I should go find some clothes for you.”

  He disappeared, and the sound of the door clicking shut echoed in the small room.

  Fine. She didn’t need his help. She peeled up the edges of the tape on her inner elbow and pulled both sides toward the center. The needle bit deep. She wasn’t sure how to turn off the drip or if there was some special way to pull out the needle. She grabbed the base of it, her hand shaking, and with the smoothest motion she could muster, pulled the needle away from her arm.

  She gasped. It was out, still drooling liquid onto the floor. A pinprick of blood welled up. A quick rifle through the bedside drawers produced a small piece of cotton, which she put over the wound. She found a roll of colored Coban to wrap around her arm and bit the edge to tear it.

  Jason ducked under the curtain with some folded green scrubs. His shirt had brown stains dripping down the front.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I spilled chocolate pudding all over my shirt and went in the waiting room and started shouting that I was covered in blood and needed a change of clothes.” He looked down at his jeans, which were also covered in pudding. “I got you some pants, too. I’ll wait outside.”

  She tugged the pants on. They tied at the waist, so although they were baggy, they would stay up. The top slid on easily. She found a rubber band in the drawers and pulled her hair back, wincing at the tender spot on the back of her head. The strange silver markings of her bracelet tattoo glimmered even under the fake light in the hospital room. The jewel glowed under her skin, but it didn’t hurt.

  They slipped out of her room and into the elevator. Darius was downstairs in the waiting room. Darius gave Jason a funny look when they came out of the elevator together, but then he was wrapping Madeline in his arms. She leaned into the hug, thankful for him, thankful he was here and had brought her the bracelet, and glad that, for a moment at least, this seemed uncomplicated and normal.

  “Did they release you already?” he asked. “Shouldn’t they do some more tests?”

  Madeline squeezed his hand. “Darius. There aren’t more tests. We know everything there is to know.”

  He lowered his head, a look she had seen too often on his face since her diagnosis. “Okay,” he said. “I know that. Can I give you a ride home?”

  A sharp pain came from the bracelet. “I can’t go home.” The whole story came pouring out. Darius held her hand loosely, his eyes on hers the entire time she spoke, but he didn’t speak until she was done.

  “So the magic works?”

  She lifted her left hand so he could see the silver network of tattoos. “A hundred percent.”

  Darius’s face filled with wonder. “Madeline, it’s everything we dreamed about. It’s just like The Gryphon under the Stairs.”

  She nodded, smiling. “Finally something is working. There really is magic.”

  “So we’re going to fight these—what are they called again?”

  “Scim.”

  “We’re going to fight the Scim, and in a year we’re coming back.”

  Madeline pulled her hand away when he said “we.” Of course he would say that. But there was no guarantee he could come . . . He hadn’t made a deal. He hadn’t seen Hanali.

  Jason said, “I don’t think you have a ticket.” He held up the silver tattoo on his wrist.

  “I’m coming,” Darius said, glaring at Jason.

  “Darius,” Madeline said. “Your parents—”

  “We’ll be back in a year,” Darius said.

  Jason was getting nervous. “Can we take this outside before someone comes looking for the kid who checked herself out of the hospital?”

  Madeline led them out to the street. She walked with purpose, away from the automatic doors and toward 23rd Street. Darius paced beside her, and Jason brought up the rear, his hands in his pockets, his shirt and jeans still covered in pudding. She knew Darius wouldn’t be able to go. She felt it, as deep and certain as the magic moving through her. That was how it worked. She had read all the books. Darius didn’t see Hanali, Darius didn’t make a deal, Darius wouldn’t be able to cross into the Sunlit Lands. That didn’t mean they couldn’t try, but . . . She tried to think of a way to make it noble, make it helpful for him to stay.

  “I need someone to explain all of this to my parents,” she said.

  Darius laughed. “Your parents will call the cops if I tell them this.”

  “I could leave a note with you. Or send them a text.” But her phone was still at the school, in her backpack. Her tattoo twinged, and Jason gave a yelp at the same moment. She knew which way to go, sort of—it seemed to be almost pulling her off the main street, down a narrow alley. “You’re right,” Madeline said, stepping around a dank puddle. “Don’t tell them anything. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “How about I just come with you? Then this won’t be an issue at all.”

  “Okay,” Madeline said, exhausted. “Come with us.” Darius winced when she said “us.”

  The bracelet was guiding them into an old neighborhood. If she went too slow, her breath started to go ragged. She moved quickly, following it toward the end of a long cul-de-sac.

  A chain-link fence surrounded a low spot where long grass grew in a slight depression. All the neighborhood’s runoff water eventually came through here. No one stirred in the neighborhood. No one opened a door or looked out a window. A hummingbird sat on the fence, chirping. That was weird. She hadn’t noticed a hummingbird doing that before, and it seemed larger than usual. She thought back to the bird that had been talking to the woman in her garden. Could it be the same one? Could the Garden Lady have sent it?

  Madeline rubbed her chin. “I think . . . we’re supposed to climb this fence.”

  Jason groaned. “Tell me we’re not about to crawl through a drainage ditch.” He wrapped his fingers through the chain-link fence and pressed his face against it. “Ugh, I can smell it from here.”

  “I’ll go first,” Darius said, but when he put his hands on the fence, a brilliant flash of light knocked him backward. He lay on the ground, smoke rising from his clothes.

  Madeline’s heart leapt into her throat. She ran to Darius and knelt beside him. She helped him sit up. “Are you okay?”

  “Electric fence?” Darius asked, still dazed.

  “I’m still holding onto it,” Jason said.

  The hummingbird chirped and flew to the other side of the fence, zipping back and forth in a strange, almost hypnotic pattern.

  “We should come back with a ladder,” Darius said.

  Madeline considered this, but her breath went immediately ragged. “I can’t wait.”

  Darius frowned. “I always told you I’d follow you to the ends of the earth.”

  Madeline smiled and pulled him into a warm embrace. In The Gold Firethorns, Lily betrays the Eagle King. Ian, Prince of the North, escorts her to the edge of Meselia after she is banished. In one of Madeline’s favorite moments of the whole series, he lays his crown down at the border and steps across with her. He says, “How can I be loyal to the king and disloyal to my beloved friends? I will never leave you. I will follow you to the ends of the earth.”

  Madeline leaned back so she could see Darius’s face. “But do you remember what happens in the story?”

  Darius nodded, a frown returning to his face. “Lily sends Ian back to serve King Kartal, and she heads into the wilderness alone. He watches her disappear into the mist, and the people call him Prince Ian the Sorrowful in the years to come.”

  “Except I’ll only be gone a year,” Madeline said. “And when I come back . . . things will be normal again.”

  Darius squeezed her shoulder. “That’s not how it works, Maddie. You don’t go away for a year and come home to ‘normal.’ You come back and . . . you come back and everything has changed.”

  She didn’t answer him, because she knew he was right. She stood, and he stood beside her. “So I gues
s this is the ends of the earth,” she said.

  “On the bright side,” Jason said, still at the fence, “she’ll be fighting evil monsters during that year. So. There’s that.”

  Darius frowned. “How is that a bright side?”

  Jason shrugged. “Monsters are bad. Somebody’s gotta fight ’em.”

  “Ignore him,” Madeline said. She pulled Darius’s forehead against hers. “I’ll miss you,” she said. “But a year from now I’ll be able to breathe. I’ll be able to live life again.”

  Darius sighed. A deep, resigned sound. “It’s only a year,” he said.

  “Tell my parents . . . Tell them something. Tell them I’m okay.” She shook her head. “Or don’t tell them anything, I don’t know what’s best. Do what you think is right, Darius.”

  “I know the right thing to do already. I’m going to find a way to come to you,” Darius said, and she knew it was true that he would try.

  One more hug for Darius, as long as she dared, until her breathing started to go ragged. When she stepped away from him and toward the fence, her breath returned.

  Jason stood near the fence. He cupped his hands into a stirrup. “I’ll boost you.”

  Madeline laughed and leapt onto the fence. She slung herself over and dropped to the ground on the other side. She could breathe. She’d never need help to jump or run or scale a fence again.

  Jason, on the other hand, appeared to have never climbed a fence in his life. She tried to coach him, and he fell off twice. Eventually Madeline leapt back over the fence and cupped her hands into a stirrup. She boosted Jason to the top, and he made his way to the other side with the help of a missed rung and gravity.

  “I did it!” he shouted. “King of the world!”

  They grinned at each other. Madeline looked back to Darius, but the world on the other side of the fence looked grey and sluggish, like a video in slow motion, covered with a thick fog.

  “Magic?” she asked.

  “No turning back now, I guess,” Jason said, but that had never been a real possibility. Madeline shouted good-bye to Darius and told him they were safe, but he moved so slowly she couldn’t tell if he heard. She wrapped her fingers in the chain-link fence, trying to see him more clearly, but the fog only grew thicker. She could barely see him now. Madeline whispered another good-bye. The space between them had already begun to grow.

  The hummingbird zipped in front of her face, and she spun to watch it, but she couldn’t see where it had gone. She didn’t think the bird had crossed outside the fence. The drainage area wasn’t huge, but it was clear of fog, and there wasn’t another way out that they could see. A cement pipe protruded from the ground, just big enough that Madeline could crawl in on her hands and knees. A sludge of accumulated mud coated the bottom. A flicker of light came from far down the pipe.

  “Do you think this . . . ?”

  “I absolutely do not,” Jason said, but she knew this was the way. Of course it was.

  They stared at it for a full five minutes, neither of them speaking. Her breathing didn’t change, but she knew. “I have to,” she said at last.

  Jason shook his head. “There’s no way Hanali crawled through there.”

  The hummingbird appeared between them, then darted into the pipe. A chirp echoed back. Madeline glanced at Jason. “You saw that, right?”

  “I did not see that,” Jason said, crossing his arms.

  Madeline put her hand on the lip of the pipe. She wrinkled her nose. A dank smell of ancient, decayed leaves and old mud came from the darkness. But there was light farther down. She could see it now for sure. She took a deep breath, thankful once more that she could breathe at all, and crawled into the tunnel. The mud squished beneath her hands and knees, but she moved steadily forward. She felt a lightness, a relief to be moving in the right direction. She would miss Darius, and her family, and her friends, but she was glad to be moving, to be breathing, to be headed toward health and freedom. If only Darius could have come.

  From somewhere behind her Jason said, “Seriously. Hanali would never get his costume dirty like this.”

  She smiled, glad for Jason’s company, and crawled steadily toward the dim light ahead.

  7

  UNDERGROUND

  In great need may ye return to the Sunlit Lands,

  for ye are our cousins and neighbors.

  FROM “THE ORDERING OF THE WORLD,” AN ELENIL STORY

  Jason had never followed a hummingbird into a disgusting sewer before, and so far he did not like it. He suspected he would pass on future opportunities. It stank like something had died, then been eaten, digested, and expelled, and then died again. The stench climbed right up into your nose and just lay there.

  The pipe narrowed. Crawling became difficult. “I feel like a snake,” Jason said and immediately regretted it. Please let there not be snakes in here. His arms were folded under his chest, and he moved himself along with his fingers and toes. He felt like he was having trouble breathing, but it was just good old-fashioned panic.

  “You’ll be okay,” Madeline said. “Pretend it’s a waterslide.”

  “I’m afraid of waterslides,” Jason said.

  Madeline scooted ahead of him, also on her belly. All he could see were her sneakers as she pushed forward bit by bit with her toes. All he could hear were Madeline’s muffled sounds of exertion and the sucking sound of their bodies moving through the sludge. He bumped into her now and then, or even gave her a push, a process which involved putting his forehead on her heels and wedging forward. She didn’t seem to mind. His arms and legs felt like gelatin. He wished someone was shoving him from behind. He wished he wasn’t in a pipe at all.

  He hoped the name Sunlit Lands was not a euphemism. If they popped out of this tube into a giant sewage factory and Hanali expected them to fight giant sludge monsters or something, he would . . . Well, he didn’t know what he would do. Throw a mud ball at Hanali, maybe.

  The stench got worse.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing up there,” he said. “But it stinks.”

  Madeline didn’t answer. No doubt keeping her mouth shut to prevent anything getting in there. Smart. With every hard-earned inch forward the light intensified, as did the smell of the mud.

  “There’s a turn in the pipe here,” Madeline said. “It’s a little tight. Wait—don’t push yet.”

  Jason stopped. He lay his head down at the bottom of the pipe, trying to conserve his strength. Bad choice—now he had mud on his face. Great. C’mon, Madeline. Keep moving. He didn’t think he could go back the way they’d come. He hoped the pipe didn’t narrow any farther, or their year in the Sunlit Lands might be spent in this pipe. Stupid hummingbird.

  “I can see the exit,” Madeline said. “The pipe slopes down from here. I’m going to lie sideways, and when I say to push, push.”

  The mud slurped as she wiggled around trying to find a better angle to get herself through the kink in the pipe. “Okay,” she said. “Push, but not very—”

  Jason pushed with everything he could, his muddy forehead connecting with her muddy sneakers, and there was a slurping pop followed by a high-pitched scream of terror or maybe joy from Madeline. Jason reached for her, but he missed, and he stuck his head around the corner in time to see a blazing circle of light and Madeline sloshing toward it in a river of mud and water.

  The pipe widened below (finally!), and Madeline managed to get her arms and legs against the sides of the pipe and stop herself from shooting out the end. “It’s the exit!” she called. Her head was silhouetted against the light. “It’s a big cave,” she said. “Really big, with lots of pipes everywhere. They’re all gushing water into a pool below. I can’t tell how deep it is, but it looks like it’s maybe twenty-five feet down.”

  Desperately worried he wouldn’t be able to get himself around the corner without Madeline’s help, and certain that she couldn’t get back up the pipe, Jason twisted once, violently, and found himself careening down the pipe on his bac
k, screaming and—as the pipe widened—flailing his limbs. He slid down at roughly the speed of a bowling ball covered in olive oil. He had time to shout half of Madeline’s name before knocking into her and carrying them both flying out of the pipe and into the cavern in a confused tangle of limbs.

  This is the end of our adventure, he thought. He was glad no one else was there to see him die by barreling down a mudslide out a sewage pipe and into a runoff pond. He felt sorry for the coroner because they both stank so bad.

  The water clapped shut over them, and they sank, fast. The water was half mud and revealed little when he opened his eyes. In the thick darkness he saw a white shape nearby—Madeline? He kicked over to her.

  What turned its face toward him was not Madeline.

  It was a face he might have said was a woman’s if not for the sickly white color and the sharp, protruding teeth. The flat, black, pupil-less eyes were another giveaway. She reached for him as he tried to swim away, kicking with all his might.

  Her hands were webbed, with black claws where fingernails should be.

  His head broke the surface just as the creature’s hands closed around his ankle. He shouted for Madeline, who was pulling herself up onto a long metal walkway, then he descended, struggling, toward the bottom of the murky pool. He heard a distant splash, but all he could see was the mermaid thing pulling his face toward its gleaming shark’s teeth.

  Madeline’s fists barreled into the creature with the full force of her dive behind them. It shrieked and lost its grip on him. Jason thrashed, trying to get away, then Madeline kicked off from the creature’s midsection, grabbing Jason under the arms as she rocketed upward.

  They broke into the air, and Jason drew an enormous, gasping breath. Madeline dragged him out of the water onto the walkway.

  “Mermaids,” Jason gasped. “I am now afraid of mermaids.”

  “We should get away from the water as quickly as we can,” Madeline said and started across the narrow walkway.