The Crescent Stone

by Matt Mikalatos

  Shula hugged her. “Lie down, Madeline,” she said, trying to be gentle.

  “I’m okay, Shula, honestly.”

  “It will be easier to move you when the paralysis sets in if you’re lying down.”

  Madeline lay down, waiting for the venom to take effect, trying not to cry. Rondelo sent a bird for help.

  “Why is someone trying to kill a newcomer?” he asked. “Who is she?”

  Madeline felt a little annoyed that he was talking to Shula as if she wasn’t lying at their feet.

  Shula said, “I don’t know why, but the Aluvoreans went to a lot of trouble to do this. One distracted me with the guards, the other pulled Madeline away.”

  Rondelo’s frown deepened. “The Aluvoreans are the most peaceful people in the Sunlit Lands. What drove them to this?”

  “I don’t think they were trying to kill me,” Madeline said, wiggling her fingers so they could see she wasn’t paralyzed. After a few minutes of being ignored, she stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Obviously, whatever happened, the poison didn’t take. So can we get on with our day?”

  Shula and Rondelo exchanged looks.

  “Should we take her back to the dorms?” Shula asked.

  Rondelo scratched Evernu behind the ears, watching Madeline with careful interest. “No. But I’ll join you wherever you’re headed. A little extra company today can only be good.”

  Three times he made Madeline repeat the description of the woman who had given her the flower: once to him and Shula, once to the guards, and a third time to a bird, which he released. “They will search for her,” he told Madeline. “Though since she escaped through magical means, I fear it is unlikely they will find her. Come, let us walk together.”

  Shula walked on one side of Madeline, with Rondelo on the other. The stag walked behind them. Shula’s hand kept moving to Madeline’s arm, as if to steady her. “I feel fine,” Madeline said.

  “Sometimes,” Shula said, “when a snake bites, it doesn’t release venom. Maybe it was like that.” Madeline shuddered. She hated to think she had avoided paralysis by a quirk of fate. She made a mental note not to accept any more flowers. She rubbed her hand where the flower had stung her. There was an irritated red mark on her skin but nothing more.

  11

  LESSONS

  And so the Majestic One sent away the Kakri,

  and they live in the desert to the east, beyond the Tolmin Pass. They build no houses and plant no crops.

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

  After the terrifying interview with Break Bones, Jason took a bath. He still couldn’t get his left sneaker off, which meant he couldn’t get his jeans off, so he took a bath in his jeans with one shoe on. The level of filthiness in the bathroom afterward couldn’t be exaggerated, partly because Jason was fascinated with how the tub magically filled with the correct amount of perfectly hot water. He had a splash war with the tub, seeing if he could empty it before it refilled. The mud on him seemed to cloud into the water and then disappear, so he experimented with slinging the freshly remoistened muck out of the tub as well. When he was done, he was clean, but the bathroom looked as if a gigantic muddy dog had shaken itself off in the middle of the floor.

  He sloshed into the room he shared with Kekoa and David. “I’m afraid to look at the bathroom,” David said, “if this is you all cleaned up.”

  Kekoa had a book in his hands, but he dropped it onto his bed, his mouth open wide. “Did you bathe in your jeans, brah?”

  “I couldn’t get my shoe off,” Jason said.

  Kekoa reached into his waistband and pulled out a small, sharp knife. “Come here then.”

  Jason stepped backward, but David grabbed him and threw him onto the floor. Kekoa cut his shoelaces, then scooped up both of Jason’s shoes, walked into the bathroom, threw them into the toilet basin, and closed the lid. The shoes were gone.

  “Aw, man,” Jason said.

  “You don’t have to keep messed-up stuff like that,” David said. “We can order up fresh ones.”

  It was time for bed after that. There were three beds, one on each wall except the one with the door to the hallway. They gave Jason the bed beneath the window, so he could “smell the night rain.” It wasn’t night, though, not really, even though it was late. There was a sort of dimming but no true night. Out the window Jason could see the short wall around their gigantic house, and beyond that a few scattered buildings, and then the much taller city wall. It wasn’t even dark enough to see any stars.

  Kekoa and David had an evening ritual. They each shared a thing they were thankful for from the day. This surprised Jason. He made a joke about them being “so sensitive,” and they gave him a lecture about it. “A true warrior has to be thankful for the people and places and world they are protecting,” Kekoa said.

  “Yeah,” David said. “You have to respect the land and the people in it. If you don’t take the time for gratitude, you miss your everyday blessings.”

  “Also if you don’t participate, we will beat you up.”

  “It’s true, dude.”

  “Fine,” Jason said. “I’m sure I can think of something.” But honestly, since what happened with Jenny, he had struggled to find things to be thankful for. Some of the rawness had begun to pass, but he still couldn’t make it through a day without thinking of her. Of course he had also ditched his entire life to come to the Sunlit Lands with Madeline and had been immediately separated from her. On the other hand, he hadn’t been eaten by a mermaid, which was a new category of things to be thankful for.

  Kekoa said, “I’m thankful for the weather today. Clear skies, blue and deep.”

  David said, “Yeah, man. For me, I’m glad there’s a night off from the fighting to welcome our new roomie.”

  Jason didn’t say anything for a while, and he could tell they were waiting. “I’m glad Break Bones didn’t yank his chains out of the wall and kill us,” he said finally.

  They laughed at that for a while. “Now one thing we hope for the new day,” Kekoa said. But Jason didn’t hear those, because he was sound asleep.

  He woke to full, bright sunlight streaming through the window. His roommates were already up and dressed. David laughed when he saw Jason’s eyes flutter open.

  “Breakfast!” he said and slapped a warm bowl of porridge with purple berries into Jason’s hands. The porridge was bland and the berries too sour. Then he saw the pudding cup sitting on the end of his bed.

  He scooped the pudding into his porridge and mixed it in, which created a sort of chocolate-flavored chunky puddle that was somewhere between edible and delicious. Kekoa grabbed the empty pudding container and ran a finger around the inside.

  “What is this? Pudding?”

  “Yeah,” Jason said. “My deal with Hanali was a cup of pudding every day for the rest of my life, and in exchange I’d hang out here for a year.” He smacked his lips. “Magic pudding tastes exactly like hospital pudding.”

  Kekoa and David laughed until Jason grinned too, even though he didn’t know what was so funny. “I’d love to have seen Hanali’s face,” David said. “Some guy who didn’t ask for money or fame or anything, just a cup of pudding. Ha ha ha.”

  “What did you guys get in your deals? Or are we not supposed to tell each other?”

  “Ah, that’s poho, man. Everybody knows everybody’s business around here,” Kekoa said. “For me, some haole stole my family’s land. I do my time here, and when I go back the Elenil give me back the land, and they said they’d take care of the haole, too.”

  Jason took another bite of his strange breakfast. “What does that mean, they’ll take care of him?”

  “I don’t ask, they don’t say. Maybe they’ll bring him back here, I don’t know.”

  “Me, I stay until I’m twenty-one,” David said. “My parents died. Well, my mom. My dad, I can’t live with him. So when I’m twenty-one, I go home, the Elenil give me a hundred grand, and I’m on my way.”
r />   Jason looked at his empty pudding cup. “A hundred grand. That’s a lot of pudding.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “But I didn’t think of that ‘for the rest of my life’ thing. I should have just said a thousand bucks a day.”

  Kekoa threw Jason a pile of white clothes with a pair of white sneakers on top. “Pudding cups, that’s a new one around here. There’s some real interesting ones, you’ll see.”

  Jason got dressed, though he hesitated when he got to the white gloves.

  “You have to wear those,” David said. “It’s an Elenil thing. Hands are private—you only show them to people who are close to you.”

  They asked if Jason planned to fight the Scim that night, and he said he wanted to go with them, at least. See what it was all about. He wasn’t sure he wanted to fight. They talked about it while David led them to a long, grassy field where they could practice. “We have to get him to a storyteller, though, yeah? They’re not going to let him fight tonight if he hasn’t heard the story.”

  A table the length of a limo had been set out, and on the table there were weapons. Bows, scimitars, maces, knives, staffs, and a variety of others, mostly hand-to-hand stuff. No guns or any sort of firearm or explosive. Kekoa sorted through them, setting aside different options he thought Jason might like. “Hmm, maybe a mace? Oh! These are cool, this is called a katar. Or what about this? What’s this called again, David?”

  “Tonfa.”

  “Yeah. Tonfa.” He held it up to Jason. It looked like a night stick.

  Jason picked up a bow. He didn’t want to stab or smash anyone, and if he did get involved in the fight that evening he’d rather be as far away from it as possible. Kekoa pointed out a hay bale with a target draped on it. Jason grabbed an arrow and tried to put it up against the bow, but he kept fumbling and dropping it.

  The fifth time it fell off the drawstring, he threw the bow on the ground. “Why do the Elenil want inexperienced teenage fighters again?”

  Kekoa and David burst out laughing. David showed him a smooth oval on the bow, near the grip. “Put your bracelet tattoo right next to that,” he said.

  A warm sensation traveled through the lattice of Jason’s tattoo. He picked up the arrow, expertly nocked it, found himself standing in the proper position, and straightened one arm, the fletching of the arrow now near his ear. He corrected slightly for the wind, loosed the string, and watched the arrow fly. It thunked comfortably into the outer edge of the target. Not a bull’s-eye, but a moment before he hadn’t even been able to get the arrow onto the bow.

  Jason looked at his hands in wonder. A thrill of adrenaline went through him. It felt like that perfect moment when you’re an expert and everything is going right and you’re on top of your game. It came so naturally, so easily. “How?”

  “Magic, brah. We don’t learn how to fight—we learn how to channel the magic. Takes an afternoon to become the best fighter ever.”

  David juggled an ax and two knives, spinning them easily over his head. “The Elenil loan us their fighting skills. Most of them are hundreds of years old. So it’s their skills, but we do the fighting.”

  Jason frowned. “Our bodies, our risk.”

  “Nah,” Kekoa said. “You get wounded, they fix you with magic. Just don’t get killed dead. They can’t do anything about that. But lose an arm or get a crushed rib cage, boom! They’ll fix you right up.”

  “That’s not cool, man,” David said. “Bringing up the arm thing.”

  Kekoa laughed and handed Jason another arrow. “One of the Black Skulls cut David’s arm off a couple weeks ago. Should’ve seen him running for the wall with one arm, the Black Skulls chasing him. Pretty hilarious.”

  David gave him a fake, sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, hilarious. They would have killed me if not for Shula.”

  “Black Skulls?” Jason had the bow up again, the arrow nocked and ready to loose. A minor adjustment to his fingering, and the arrow sailed to the target, lodging a bit closer to the center this time. Amazing. He felt a swell of pride at his skill, at how easy it was to launch an arrow into the target from this distance.

  Kekoa picked up a bow, held his tattoo against it, and started firing arrows. Three shots, three bull’s-eyes. “They’re like the best Scim fighters. Pretty creepy looking too. There’s three of them, and they wear long white robes and black-painted animal skulls over their faces. Nothing hurts them. They’re not like us, where they need to go somewhere to heal—it’s like an arrow to the heart doesn’t do anything other than slow them down.”

  “They’re dead already,” David said. “I’m telling you, they’re dead. They don’t even bleed.”

  “Stupid,” Kekoa said. “There’s no such thing as zombies.”

  “Man, you don’t know. You’re shooting magic arrows for a war between monsters and angels. How do you know there aren’t zombies?”

  Kekoa put a hand on Jason’s bow and pushed it toward the ground. “Okay, quick tutorial. The oval on the bow, that’s a magical receptor. Think of it like a permission slip. Some Elenil has given the bow permission to borrow their skill. While you have it, they don’t.”

  “It’s like your tattoo,” David said. “It’s the permission slip that tells the magic you’re allowed to be in the Sunlit Lands and allows your pudding to be delivered in the morning.”

  “So,” Jason said slowly, “I’m stealing someone else’s skills to do this.”

  Kekoa shook his head emphatically. “They’ve given permission, remember? But when you aim, you reach out through the magic and take the skill. Some of it’s coming through without trying, but you have to—” Kekoa struggled to find the right words, finally ending with “—you have to reach for it.”

  “It’s like a waterway,” David said. “You have to open it all the way to get the full skill. You’re leaving some of the skill with the owner. You’re taking enough magic that there are two mediocre archers right now, instead of one terrible one and one amazing one.”

  “Does it . . . does it bother them when I take their archery skills?”

  “They don’t even know unless they’re trying to use those skills at the same moment.”

  Jason took a deep breath. Okay. He could do this. He concentrated on the archery skills he would need. Balance. Steady hands. Clear vision. The smooth movement of the drawstring, the careful release. A confidence came over him, the sort of confidence you feel when you’ve done something a million times and it’s not even that it’s easy, it’s automatic. When he opened his eyes, his silver tattoo was shining with a white light.

  “Look at how much magic is flowing through!” David said. “Good job. Shoot an arrow!”

  The arrow fell effortlessly into place, and raising the bow was like taking a breath. Jason could see the precise place he wanted the arrow to go, could feel himself correcting for the slight breeze and the distance, and when he released, the arrow flew in a graceful arc, beautiful and perfect and dead into the center of the target. He raised his bow in the air and let out an enormous whoop of joy, and he and David and Kekoa danced and jumped around, shouting and cheering.

  “You almost sound proud. As if you have done something worthwhile,” said a voice, low and skeptical.

  They stopped celebrating. Kekoa made a face. “Hey, Baileya,” David said.

  She was a full head taller than Jason and wore loose-fitting cream pants tied at her waist with a red sash. Her blouse was also loose, but a deep-blue color like clear water, billowing out wide at the sleeves then tapering to a tight cuff on her wrists. Her smooth skin was the tan color of sunbaked sand. Her hair was pulled back but flowed as easily as her clothing, a dark-brown wave moving around her face and past her shoulders. The color of her hair was echoed in a spray of freckles across her cheekbones. But her eyes were easily the most striking thing about her. Jason had never seen eyes that color. They seemed almost to emanate a pale silver light. He couldn’t look away. If not for the eyes, he would have almost thought she was human.

  He
reached out to shake hands. “I’m Jason,” he said.

  She held his gaze, as if waiting for something, but he didn’t know what.

  She turned to his roommates. “Have you taught him nothing?”

  David shrugged. “He can shoot a bow.”

  “We did cut him out of his shoes,” Kekoa said helpfully.

  Baileya sighed. “In the Sunlit Lands, especially among the Elenil, to touch bare hands is a great intimacy. It’s deeply offensive to offer such a thing when announcing one’s name. It is wise to keep your hands covered and, in most cases, to keep them out of sight altogether.”

  “I’m not Elenil, though,” Jason said. “And neither are you.”

  Her eyes sparkled. Or maybe it’s just that they were glowing, Jason couldn’t tell. “It is a compliment that you noticed,” she said. “I am of the Kakri people, beyond the Tolmin Pass. My mother is called Willow, and my grandmother Abronia. I have come to make my fortune and fight the Scim.”

  David flopped down on the grass. “She fights the old-fashioned way. Her own skill—no magic—and she keeps her wounds.”

  Baileya nodded curtly. “Which is why I come here to my practice area. A practice area I assume you are finished with, as you are taking the hard-earned skills and abilities of others rather than honing your own.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Kekoa said. “We’re done.” He paused. “Hey, Baileya, we’re supposed to take Jason to a storyteller to get the whole ‘why we fight the Scim’ story. Any chance you’d want to tell him?”

  “Tell him yourself,” Baileya said, studying the weapons in front of her. She picked up a medium-sized hatchet.

  “It can’t be a human telling the story,” David said. “You know the rules. It has to be a citizen of the Sunlit Lands.”

  Baileya gave him a sour look. “I came to make a fortune, not spend it.”

  “What does that mean?” Jason asked.

  Kekoa laughed. “The Kakri don’t use money, they use stories. It’s their only currency. So when she says she came here to make her fortune, it’s like she came here to live some adventures, or learn stories their community doesn’t have.”