by Joni Sensel
Scarl released the boy near the fire. “Get him something to eat, Ariel.” He retrieved his knife.
She jumped to obey. Hands fumbling at the food sack, she couldn’t take her eyes off Nace. He peered at her through tangled hair, a smile flickering before vanishing again. Her heart thrumming, Ariel smiled back.
“I can’t believe you followed us,” she marveled.
He responded with a dismissive wave and a quick point: Not them. You.
“Why?” she wondered, knowing the answer. His eyes swallowed hers.
“Because he’s creepy,” Sienna grumbled. Nace threw her a hostile glance before his gaze returned to Ariel.
“Sienna.” Scarl shook his head.
Rousing herself from the lock of Nace’s green eyes, Ariel brought him some dried meat and plums. Nodding a quick thanks, he tore into the food. Scarl sank beside the fire and watched him, running his knuckles thoughtfully along his stubbly jaw.
“Did you sneak up on him?” Ariel asked.
“Until he heard me,” Scarl said. “He has very good ears. Fortunately I remembered his name, so he listened instead of just running.”
“What’s he doing here, though?” said Sienna.
A ghost of a smile crossed Scarl’s face. “Watching pretty girls, mostly. Nothing I haven’t done. He’s just doing it a long way from home.” But he sighed and cast Ariel a pensive look.
“Sorry,” she said.
Nace snapped his fingers to draw their attention. He waved toward Ariel while looking at Scarl and shaking his head: Don’t blame her. He tapped his own chest.
Scarl nodded. Satisfied, Nace began eating again. Yet a scowl slowly formed on Scarl’s face, and from across the fire Ariel could see the muscle in the Finder’s jaw working.
Softly she said, “He’s not bad, Scarl. Don’t be too mad at him.”
Chewing, Nace shifted his gaze uncomfortably from one to the other.
“I’m not upset,” the Finder replied. “It was foolish of him, but we’ll deal with it. That’s not what troubles me. There’s something else going on here.”
“What do you mean?”
Misgivings shadowed his face. “You may think I’m crazy.”
“After Orion? And your cap? And my skirt?”
He snorted. “You’re not comforting me. But here it is: there’s a bead on your necklace—a silver teardrop.”
Ariel found it with her fingers.
“Its story concerns a boy who falls in love with a wandering gazelle,” he went on. “She’s really a maiden, enchanted. He follows her far from home, never quite catching her.”
Sienna snorted. “I wouldn’t give Nace that much credit. It’s only a—”
A cry escaped Ariel. She’d heard “The Enchanted Gazelle.”
“You know it?” Scarl asked.
She nodded and whispered, “But…”
Scarl lifted his hands helplessly. “I wouldn’t even have thought of it—except that it’s in your necklace.”
“Spooky.” Ariel pulled her arms tight to her ribs to stop the shiver crawling under her skin.
When Sienna questioned them, Scarl explained, “When the boy loses her, he throws himself over a waterfall. His sacrifice frees the girl from her spell. But she’s so filled with remorse that she throws herself over, too.”
Ariel caught Nace’s worried expression. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “We’re not going to pitch you off any waterfall.”
“What are we going to do with him?” Sienna wondered.
“He’ll have to come with us,” Scarl said. “We’re much too far from Skunk to turn back now. We can drop him off when we return toward the abbey.”
Sienna huffed. “Ariel said I’d have to go back by myself. Why can’t he?”
“You’re an adult.”
Sienna’s brooding scowl whisked away, replaced by a smile. “Of course. But we’re already short on food, aren’t we?”
“We’ll get by.” Scarl rose. “I’ll do some finding right now.”
Among his finds was a creek mottled with the shadows of fish. When he returned to get his line and hook from his pack, the others decided to join him. Sienna claimed a small pool for washing her hair and the rest traipsed upstream. Scarl threw in his line. Rather than helping Ariel pick rose hips from a bush along shore, Nace waded into the water and froze like a heron. He darted both hands below the surface and came up with a wriggling fish.
“If you can do that, why haven’t you been eating better?” Scarl asked, unhooking his own catch.
Nace steepled his hands into a triangle and shook his head: No fire.
“You’ve at least found fruit, haven’t you?” Ariel asked. She understood his halfhearted nod, though. Rose hips, for instance, were really best in a hot mash.
As Scarl rebaited his hook, he said, “Speaking of fruit, Ariel, I’ve been thinking about Vi’s story and Timekeeper.”
“Me, too,” she said. “I think that’s why my dart said we had to answer its summons by Beltane.”
He nodded. “Beltane, the time of spring planting. You probably know Harvest Fest in the fall. Reapers also celebrate Lunasa—the ripening. And Lunasa is marked by the full moon in August.”
Ariel nibbled tart ruby skin from a rose hip, revealing the seeds packed inside. “So you think finding the Vault is like planting the seed … but it won’t bear ripe fruit till we prove we’re worthy of it?”
“Something like that.”
Grimly she studied her rose hip. When she glanced up, Nace was looking at her. Although he clearly knew nothing of what they discussed, he gave her a reassuring smile, and simply having him near made Ariel want to try harder. She tossed him a rose hip. They chomped and swallowed together.
Once her shirttail was loaded with fruit, Ariel sat on the bank, where Nace watched Scarl clean their catch. She plucked tiny daisies from the grass. Though they weren’t the right kind of daisy, she couldn’t resist pinching off petals, counting under her breath whether he loved her or loved her not.
With a daisy half plucked, she cried, “It was you!” She gave Nace a glare that melted into a smile. “You’ve been dropping flowers on my blanket every night! Haven’t you?”
A sly grin lit his face. He raised his finger to his lips and mimed a tiptoe approach.
Scarl turned sober eyes on Nace. The boy’s grin faded.
Trying to warm the sudden chill, Ariel added, “We thought it must be a ghost to be so sneaky. Ha!”
Scarl’s lips compressed, but he only rinsed his knife in the stream and then raised it to catch the light, checking for clinging fish scales.
If she hadn’t been anticipating some remark from him yet, Ariel would have missed what came next. With the knife still held high, Scarl lifted his gaze from the long blade to Nace, who watched as carefully as Ariel did. His face dark, the Finder held Nace’s regard a long moment. Then his eyes shot to Ariel and bounced immediately back to the boy. The knife between them never lowered.
Pulling a corner of his mouth down, Nace nodded once, almost imperceptibly.
Scarl echoed that tiny nod. The shadow lifted from his face, and he wiped the blade dry on his sleeve. Only when Nace threw Ariel a look that was part shame and part defiance did she realize what had happened: Scarl had given Nace a curt warning that the boy had understood and accepted.
Ariel marveled at that soundless and almost invisible male communication. Then anger swelled inside her. Scarl didn’t own her, and she didn’t need that much protection. She remembered a conversation they’d had only hours ago. It sounded different in her memory than it had in her ears, and this time it did not make her giggle.
“Scarl.” She tried to smile to soften her words, but her mouth didn’t really obey. She pushed on anyhow. “Mind your own business.”
Scarl raised his eyebrows, slid his knife back into its sheath, and picked up the cleaned fish. For an instant Ariel feared she’d imagined the whole thing and now would have to explain. Embarrassment had begun to burnish
her cheeks when Scarl met her gaze.
“You’re fourteen,” he said quietly. “You are my business.” He strode past her toward camp with their dinner.
Ariel watched him retreat, feeling the prickle of Nace’s eyes on her. A sound sidled in, overtopping that sensation.
Faster, fly faster. Fail full, fail, fall … all lost.
Ariel craned her neck wildly before she spied the moon drifting on the afternoon sky. The sinister hiss had returned.
Nace touched her, inquiring what was wrong.
“Oh, Nace …” She didn’t know where to begin. She’d been about to ask what he knew about her yellow skirt, Scarl’s cap, or Orion. The voice of the moon had made her realize how impossible it would have been for him to be involved. Scattered flowers were one thing; lost items turning up from before she’d met him were another. Like the full meaning of the moon’s renewed urgings, those mysteries would not be so easily solved.
Ariel barely noticed when Nace took her hand. A strange thought rolled through her mind as though it belonged to somebody else: it was good that Scarl took responsibility for the girl, Ariel, because the Farwalker had more pressing business.
CHAPTER 23
Dog Moon, Gibbous
Tell me about my necklace, Scarl.”
Ariel’s commanding tone drew apprehensive looks from both Nace and Sienna. Until then, she’d said little all evening, and Scarl probably thought she was pouting. In truth, she’d simply muffled her outer senses to better listen for those she heard inside. She was determined not to stray from her correct path again.
While her companions grew drowsy around Sienna’s fire, Ariel had spread her map in her lap and gazed at it, not trying to understand but rather to absorb something from it. The string of moons had caught her eye, curling along one side of the drawing like, well, a string of beads.
“Please,” Ariel added. “It must be important. Vi thought so, too.”
Scarl eyed her from across the fire and kneaded his temple. “Could you feel me thinking about it?”
“The map reminded me. What were you thinking?”
“I was recalling the story for every bead—the ones I haven’t already told you—and another story as well. It’s probably the first tale every Storian’s apprentice learns. Do you know ‘The Reflecting Abacus’?”
When she shook her head, he glanced at the others. Although Nace nodded, Sienna had not heard it, either.
“I’d better start by telling you that.” Scarl reclined on his elbows, stretched out his long legs, and stared at the fire.
“Imagine this,” he began. “An aged Storian had two apprentices, and in his final illness he called both to his bedside. ‘Choose beads from my abacus,’ he told them.
“The older apprentice immediately took the most beautiful and valuable beads. All that remained were ugly seed husks, wood, and clay. The younger apprentice, who did not care to quarrel, took what was left without protest.
“Observing their choices, the Storian said, ‘Go work your trade for a week and come back to report.’
“When they returned, the older apprentice said, ‘Those beads are cursed! I should have noticed how many pretty beads have stories of sorrow, evil, or greed. Each befell me. I was robbed, I went to bed hungry, and I had to sleep in the rain. I don’t want this abacus after all.’
“The master took the abacus back.
“‘These beads may not be much to look at,’ said the younger apprentice, ‘and some also have tales of sadness, but I told stories from them many times, and I am content.’
“But the master took back the ugly abacus, too. ‘We will swap one for the other,’ he declared. ‘Go work your trade with the opposite beads, and come tell me your luck.’
“He lay abed, coughing, until their return. This time the younger apprentice spoke first.
“‘These beads are so pretty, everyone asks for their stories,’ he said, ‘and even the sad ones hold wisdom and their own sort of beauty. I am content with this string as well.’
“The older apprentice grumbled, ‘The ugly abacus is as bad as the first. People laugh. And although its stories contain happy endings, they certainly did not improve my luck. Perhaps I should start fresh with beads of my own.’
“‘Perhaps you should,’ said the old Storian. He gave both strings to the younger apprentice. ‘But you will find the same truth. Beads reflect the Storian who bears them. Take less care for beads and more care with your heart, for that is the true source of your stories as well as your luck.’ And with that the old master passed from the world.”
When Scarl fell quiet, Sienna asked, “But what happened to the apprentices?”
“The first took the Storian’s house and his trade, as befitted the elder, and lived a life of the sorrows and hardships in the stories he knew. The younger took the full abacus and told its stories to all who would listen. He enjoyed little wealth but much luck and love, because the younger understood what the elder had missed: The stories they knew were the same. What matters is how they are told, and how they are heard, and how they echo in our hearts.”
Ariel admired the way Scarl’s words seemed to linger. She finally broke the spell to ask, “And my necklace?”
He shifted and stirred the fire with a stick. The cloak of authority he slipped on for stories fell away.
“Your necklace,” he murmured. “I chose the beads mostly for their appearances, because I knew the girl who would wear them has a true heart, one that reflects only courage and cheer. So nothing in those stories could hurt her. She’s no Storian and won’t be repeating them anyway. But…”
He gave her a rueful look. Embarrassed by his praise, she struggled to meet his regard.
“But that may have been foolish,” he continued, “and the story I just told might be wrong. I think your little story abacus is echoing into your life. Not only with good luck or bad, but details of the stories themselves.”
“What else besides the waterfall and Nace?” she asked. “The fail-safe bead, I guess, but that’s about trees. And I don’t really see how the bridge story—”
“Neither do I, yet. For that I am grateful. But listen: You have a bead with a story about a Flame-Mage who goes on a journey, and one sits beside you. You have a bead with a tale of moon power and divining, and we discussed that in Skunk. And do you remember when I told you ‘The Selkie Stolen Away from the Sea’? Yes? But maybe you don’t see something that crossed my mind when I told it: you were stolen away from the sea, too, and also changed, never to return to your home.” He glanced at Sienna and back to Ariel. His voice dropped. “And the reason the selkie was stolen—we talked about that while collecting wood today. Didn’t we?”
Ariel kept her eyes fixed on Scarl, hoping his glance hadn’t revealed that she’d broken Sienna’s secret. She knew exactly what he meant, though: misguided jealousy.
He added, “Those reflections make me shiver and pay attention to the rest of your necklace. Our path has a bead at each turn.”
Ariel looked down at her lap and the map’s string of dots… or stories. She didn’t like the feeling it gave her. “Tell the rest of the stories.”
“No. Let me sleep on it first. Maybe I’m the one jumping at phantoms, full of guilt for picking unhappy beads.” Scarl rose and slipped around the fire, extending his hand. “But I want you to take off the necklace.”
Ariel’s hand flew to her throat. “No!”
“I’m not going to destroy it,” he said. “Not yet, at least. But some of those beads contain tragedies, Ariel. If I’ve set something in motion I shouldn’t have, it might not be too late to undo it. Turn and let me untie it.”
She cringed, shaking her head. Sympathy shone from Sienna’s face. Nace looked sorry, too, but he nudged Ariel to comply before himself reaching for the back of her neck.
Squirming away, Ariel clutched the beads. A wordless plea sparked in her heart.
The map speaks for itself.
She turned her face to the moon. “
What?”
“You heard me,” Scarl said. “I don’t want to argue about this. I’ll stow it in my pack and we can see if another story manifests.”
“Not you, I—”
The map speaks for itself. The meaning of the words, which Zeke had once passed along from a stone, hovered just beyond Ariel’s reach.
Scarl moved toward her again. Her mind filled with a terrible image of being held down while he ripped her necklace away. Desperate, she blurted, “You didn’t pick them!”
His determined look turned quizzical.
“You can’t feel guilty,” she told Scarl more evenly. “You didn’t pick out the beads.”
“Well, nobody else did. What are you thinking?”
“Wait.” Ariel’s free hand smoothed the linen scrap in her lap to ease the way for understanding to come.
“Are you stalling?”
“You said you crafted my necklace in the last couple of months.” She plucked at the map. “We found this last spring, way before you picked any beads. We couldn’t figure it out then. But can’t you feel it trying to speak when you look at it?”
His eyes narrowed. “You know I can. It’s driving me mad. But—”
“It made you pick certain beads. Neither of us understood what it says, so it was trying to speak in some other way—in a language you especially know.”
Scarl inhaled sharply.
“Now the map is alive,” Sienna muttered.
Nace, who’d been listening with his usual intensity, gestured impatiently: Not the map. The world. He thought briefly and elaborated with his hands: The heart of the world.
“The Essence,” Ariel murmured.
His eyes distant, Scarl said, “And it speaks to you through the moon, and in the language you know.”
“Or the language my feet know, at least.” Ariel’s cheeks bloomed. “Lately I just haven’t been listening as well as I might.”
Scarl eyed the misshapen moon. It would swell to perfect roundness in less than a week. “Perhaps you’d better,” he said.