The Timekeeper's Moon

by Joni Sensel

  He didn’t bother with his broken glass. Dropping to his haunches, he merely cupped one hand and gazed into it as if the glass rested there. Rain filled it instead. Nace looked on, fascinated. Shortly Scarl led them to a hump of exposed bedrock with a dusty cleft beneath. It was a tight space for four, with no room for a fire. Still, it was dry, once they’d ducked past the rain sheeting off the overhang. Grateful, Ariel patted the bedrock for Zeke.

  As they jostled against the rock and each other, Nace caught her eye. He pointed at Scarl and signed until she realized what he wanted.

  “Scarl,” she said, “Nace wants to know about finding.”

  “I’d like to, also,” Sienna added.

  “You’ve tried it; you can probably say more than I can,” Scarl told Ariel. “It’s hard to explain something you do mostly by instinct.”

  Ariel described the lesson Scarl once had given her: focusing on the glass alone, without thinking of the food she had craved, and then having her attention jarred loose so the location of something to eat flowed into her mind without conscious thought. She’d found only a lizard, but once roasted, it had helped curb her hunger. The memory prompted a question of her own.

  “You know how you always say you can’t find what doesn’t exist?” To the others, Ariel explained, “It’s his favorite saying. I’ve heard it two hundred times. But some things exist and don’t exist at the same time. Or they exist in more than one way. Like if you tried to find Misha, would you find his ghost or his bones or nothing at all?”

  Scarl winced. He tried to hide it by turning to stare out through their curtain of rain. “Nothing at all.”

  It took Ariel a moment to interpret his pained expression and realize it had nothing to do with the ghost of Tree-Singer Abbey. “Oh, Scarl,” she breathed. “You’ve tried to find Mirayna.”

  The muscles in his jaw jumped. She longed to ask questions, but she could almost touch the cloak of shamed silence he’d pulled over himself, and she knew he wouldn’t answer.

  “Who’s Mirayna?” asked Sienna.

  Ariel held her breath, aching for the pain she’d unintentionally stirred. If only her thoughts would stay ahead of her mouth!

  “Is she somebody in one of your stories?” Sienna pressed.

  “Sienna—,” Ariel began.

  “She was someone I cared about. I’m going out to hunt for Willow.” Scarl grabbed his coat and slipped back into the blustery dark.

  Sienna erupted with questions.

  “Scarl wanted to marry her,” Ariel said, with a certain satisfaction overridden by sadness. “But she left the world last spring.”

  “How?”

  Ariel gnawed her lip. The whole story was long and unpleasant, and she didn’t want to be caught midway when Scarl returned. She said merely, “She had a disease that stopped her body a bit at a time.”

  “That sounds dreadful. What was she like?”

  “She was an Allcraft. She—” Ariel’s tongue tangled in her own sorrow and a guilt she’d never admitted to anyone, not even Zeke. Mirayna had left the world some days sooner than she might have, and Ariel could never be certain whether different decisions on her part may have given Scarl a little more time with his love. She couldn’t think of Mirayna without regret.

  Nace touched Ariel’s arm, sympathy on his face.

  “What else?” When Ariel didn’t go on, Sienna said, “I’ll ask him, then, when he comes back.”

  “Don’t, Sienna. It makes him sad.”

  “He just needs some sympathy,” the older girl replied. “And maybe a hug.”

  Nace tsked and Ariel’s heart filled with dread. Obviously Sienna had never lost someone she loved.

  By the time the Finder returned, catching the others a wink shy of sleep, he had apparently lost his coat and looked soaked but much more composed. He announced that Willow had caught them at last. The horse had met Scarl not far away, forlorn and stumbling with weariness. Scarl had hobbled him where he could graze and draped him with the coat to help keep their gear and the horse a bit drier.

  They cheered.

  Once the echoes stopped bouncing off the rock, Sienna said, “I’m sorry if I asked a dumb question. About Mirayna, I mean. Ariel told me. Please forgive me.”

  “No apology,” Scarl replied. “You couldn’t know.”

  “I’d like to, though,” Sienna said. “I’d like to know more about you and her.”

  Taken aback, Scarl glanced at Ariel and fingered one cheekbone. “Well, I’m not going to discuss it,” he said. “You can ask Ariel for more tomorrow. She knows enough to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “It’s not idle curiosity,” Sienna protested. Haltingly, she added, “I’m interested in you.”

  Ariel choked. Couldn’t the Flame-Mage feel his discomfort? She almost wished they’d made camp in the rattling rain so the four of them wouldn’t be so trapped together. Nace kept his eyes low and rubbed his sore shoulder.

  Scarl looked at Sienna for long seconds without a trace of a smile. Familiar with that unblinking regard, Ariel guessed he was debating how to answer.

  Sienna saw only irritation. She blushed and picked at her nails. Though not long ago Ariel would have been pleased, now she felt sorry for her.

  “I’m sure you mean it kindly, Sienna,” Scarl said at last, “but that’s a little too much interest. I’m here to serve the Vault and to make Ariel’s farwalking easier, and that includes helping those she decides should walk with her—like you. I don’t want to sound unfriendly, but that’s really all you need to know about me.”

  Sienna gulped. “It does sound unfriendly.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that,” he replied. “You’ve just stumbled on a topic that’s difficult for me. Why don’t we talk about something else… how we can help you when we reach a village, for instance. You said you were keen to be married, if I remember correctly. Should Ariel say so?”

  “Or I could just tell them you wanted a new place to be a Flame-Mage,” Ariel threw in. “So you can pick out a husband without the whole village knowing.”

  Sienna shot Ariel a look of reproach.

  When she didn’t otherwise reply, Scarl said, “I could probably find the worthiest men, Sienna, and point them out for you to consider. Or if any fellow catches your eye while we’re still there, I would try to learn something about him, with your permission. I don’t want to feel as though we’ve left you defenseless. There are some in the world even more unkind than me.”

  Ariel and Nace both hid smirks.

  “You think I’m silly,” Sienna grumbled.

  “I didn’t say that at all,” Scarl replied. “I think you know what you want and are not afraid to try to get it. Those are rare and admirable traits. But you’ve never been away from people you know, and I—we—would like to help you get what you really want, and not something false.”

  “I think I can judge pretty well for myself,” she said.

  He dipped his head reluctantly. “As you like.”

  Wondering if Sienna still clung to her first plan, Ariel asked, “Do you want somebody cute or somebody rich?” She thought it was obvious that Scarl was neither.

  Nace clasped both hands audibly over his heart, adding love to Ariel’s list. It didn’t aid her immediate purpose, but it pleased her nonetheless.

  Sienna drew her fingertips through the dust alongside one knee. “What I want most,” she said finally, “is somebody new. Somebody or something. At home I felt like a tired coal that needed a blast of fresh air to fire me up.”

  Ariel snorted. “New things or new people? No matter where we go, you’ll get both. I can promise.”

  “Actually, I’m already getting both.” A weak smile returned to Sienna’s face. “It’s not quite what I expected, but… I’m still glad I came.”

  They sank more comfortably into stillness. Before sleep won her, Ariel’s thoughts returned to the notion that the Finder had sought his beloved’s spirit. She recalled his confidence about finding the bridge out of
the world. Troubled, she hoped that in another mood he’d be willing to tell her more. She’d like to ask, gently, if a Finder couldn’t simply find a new love.

  Yet that possibility worried her, too. She wasn’t sure there’d be room in his life for both a love and a farwalking daughter. She did not want to need him, but she did. It made her feel childish. Even more, though, it scared her—because one thing Ariel already knew was that even things she desperately needed could be lost.

  Her anxiety followed her into her sleep, or she followed it somewhere else. Sometime in the night Ariel awoke, the close blackness confusing until she remembered where they’d taken shelter. Nace lay curled beside her. She turned her head for Sienna and found only the dark, which seemed odd given the tight quarters; their limbs had nearly tangled before. Gently she reached out, not wanting to awaken anyone but needing assurance they all were still there. Her hand patted not earth but dry straw. When her fingers identified it, she realized it prickled beneath her as well.

  Ariel sat up so quickly she should have bumped her head. The surprise that she hadn’t stayed with her for only an instant. Scarl was gone, too, and it was not Nace sleeping beside her at all. It was Zeke. The wall at her back was flat—cut stone, not bedrock—and the stuffy air smelled of animal dung. She wasn’t far southeast of the abbey, but just beneath it, in the Tree-Singers’ goat pen.

  Her breathing fast and jagged, she closed and opened her eyes several times, hoping to pull herself back to the cleft in the bedrock where she knew she should be. Giving up, she nudged Zeke, hissing his name. He didn’t respond. When she tried harder and his body remained limp, she became gripped by a conviction that his corpse lay beside her.

  Wailing, Ariel scrambled away toward the pen’s wooden doorway and straight into rain. She slipped in mud and fell to her knees.

  A hand grabbed her. Someone laughed. “Princess!”

  “No!” She ripped away, squealing, from Elbert’s hateful voice. He caught the back of her sweater and then one leg. She could not fight free. Her thrashing muffled the voice rising over the beat of the rain. Only after most of his weight pinned her down could she make out more words—and a new voice.

  “Ariel! Stop! It’s all right!”

  The voice at her ear now was different. Though a Finder’s, it belonged not to Elbert but to Scarl. She cried his name and forced her eyes to make out the planes of his face. Recognizing sooner his lean body, she clutched him and shuddered uncontrollably in the mud.

  Slowly he eased up. “What is it? What scared you? Are you even awake? I felt you sit up and stir, but then you bolted like your socks were afire.”

  He tried to set her upright, but her muscles no longer seemed to work, and she sagged. She couldn’t catch her breath, either. “Nace!” she gasped. “Zeke! And I thought he was dead!”

  Scarl wiped her muddy hair back from her eyes. “Nace is right here. You woke him when you shook him. See?” He turned her head with his hand, and she saw pale ovals where both Nace and Sienna peeped out from the gloom. With soothing clucks, Nace rushed to her. Together he and Scarl drew her back into their shelter.

  It was darker there, and Ariel kept a grip on both Scarl’s arm and Nace’s fingers, afraid to let go lest she lose them again. They waited for her trembling to ease. When she tried to explain, they assured her they’d all been touched by her or had whispered to her, without a response, before she had fled.

  “I knew it must be an awful nightmare,” said Sienna. “When I asked if you were all right, you only moaned.” She leaned over Nace to give Ariel a hug.

  “I am now,” Ariel said, her voice quavering. She yearned to go home, though. Zeke was surely safe at the abbey, asleep, but after finding him lifeless, falsely or not, she longed to be certain. She rapped her knuckles on the bedrock and whispered, “Please tell Zeke I miss him. I’m worried about him. Please make sure the stones near the abbey keep him safe.” Once she’d started, she couldn’t stop banging the rock; stopping would let in her doubts, and the bedrock might turn to a goat pen again.

  Scarl caught her hand before her knuckles bled. “Easy. I’m sure he’s well.”

  They all lay back again, Ariel making sure her companions pressed close against her. As her racing heart calmed and sleep reclaimed first Sienna and then Nace, Ariel found a fistful of straw stuck to her blanket. Certain he was still awake with her, she pressed it into Scarl’s hand and whispered, “Tracks from the past. Clinging… or catching us like a wave from behind. I got pulled under this time.”

  He crushed it in his fist, flung it into the rain, and murmured, “I knew it wasn’t a nightmare. It seems to be getting worse.”

  “It is.” Struggling against despair, Ariel added, “But I think the only way out is forward.”

  He agreed. His hand covered hers. “Try to rest now, though.”

  Instead Ariel listened to the falling water outside and imagined first a waterfall and then a great flood, and a Noah who built not a boat but a Vault, and she wondered how Timekeeper might gleam under the approaching full moon. She hoped she would see it and do what had to be done before the strange waters rising around her could drown her.

  CHAPTER 28

  Dog Moon, Thirteen Days Old

  Rising early the next morning into freshly washed sunshine, Ariel felt she’d been given a rainbow of promise and hope. Cheered by birdsong, she and her companions greeted Willow with a double measure of petting before they set off. Ariel’s feet scampered, pleased to be moving, and she ignored the only shadow on their timely departure: wet rocks steaming in the sun reminded her too much of the dank smell of the map.

  Soon, rocks were not all that was steaming. Circling a large hill, the travelers walked into char. A wildfire had swept through; the rain must have quenched it. The blackened debris was still warm. Hissing clouds rose from their boots.

  Sienna’s eyes lit. “Look! My master talked about this, but I didn’t really believe it! See how the grass burned near the roots and the stems fell over, unharmed? You can tell where the fire started from that—the grass points back to its source.”

  “We must be on the trail of your dragon,” Ariel teased.

  “Good!”

  Scarl’s expression was a great deal less enthusiastic.

  “Think it started with lightning?” Ariel added.

  Sienna’s nose wrinkled. “It must have. But… some of the signs are confusing. And I’ve only heard about wildfire like this. I’ve never seen it. It takes a lot to start a wildfire back home in the swamp.”

  Once they’d walked well into the destruction, Ariel found it disturbing. Cinders crunched underfoot. The stench made breathing unpleasant, and the wind swirled ash into the air. Willow kept spooking at gusts until Nace left Ariel’s side to keep the horse quiet. The skeletons of trees, some scorched more than others, stood black against the sky like warnings. As they passed, branches or trunks sometimes crashed down, spooking them all.

  It didn’t lighten the mood to find the burnt carcass of a deer at the base of a slope.

  “Flame really swept fast up this hill,” Sienna murmured. She cast uneasy glances at the steep terrain.

  Spying the end of the blackness at last, Ariel charged toward it. Near the boundary, Nace pointed out a burned snag just off their path. A hollow had been chipped in the charred trunk. Staring out from the niche was a gleaming human skull. Unlike the ruined bridge, it had not been there long.

  “That didn’t get there by itself.” Sienna’s voice trembled.

  They shot nervous glances toward the ridgelines. Nace voiced the mood by pretending to slash his own throat.

  “I doubt it,” Scarl told him. “The work of animals, perhaps.”

  Dubiously Nace reached to pull it down. Scarl stopped him.

  “Let it be, Nace,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking, but it might be a shrine. A dead hero or someone beloved who left the world in a fire. We shouldn’t disturb it.”

  “Only if someone lives around here,” Ariel s
aid.

  “A village could be tucked behind any of these hills,” Scarl replied. “Whether your feet take us to it or—”

  Ariel exclaimed. She’d glimpsed a movement high on a ridge. By the time her roving eyes focused, they picked out only trees and rough land. But her imagination suggested that, for an instant, a human figure had stood there. Perhaps two.

  “I thought I saw somebody,” she explained.

  “A village must be close, then!” Sienna said. “My village, I guess. I’m excited. Let’s go.”

  They hurried away. Soothing green foliage had embraced them for more than a mile when they came upon a partial view of the narrow valley below their path. Ariel glanced down, half expecting tendrils of smoke from the hearth fires of a thriving community.

  “Oh.” The dread in Sienna’s voice caught everyone’s attention. They followed her gaze. Past the far side of the valley, a huge column of smoke boiled. Darker than the billowing clouds, it looked like a furious storm belched from the earth. Several twisting gullies opened into the valley, some green and some charred, and it was hard to tell which land now burned.

  “It was pouring last night!” Ariel protested.

  “Rain can be spotty, especially in storms,” Scarl said. “Can you tell which direction it’s going, Sienna?”

  Sienna folded her hands at her chin and solemnly studied the smoke. She checked the wind, made visible by shuddering branches.

  “I don’t want to scare you, but we need to be careful,” she said. “Let me watch a minute longer. I want to be sure.”

  At last she relaxed. “It’s mostly moving away, and back north,” she said. “We should be fine if we keep on in the direction we’re going. Safer than going back, anyway.”

  Ariel exhaled, as relieved to avoid a detour as she was to hear that the fire was no threat.

  Her relief was short-lived. Topping a ridge, they entered another burnt landscape. Purple fireweed dotted these slopes, bright against the char.

  “This one’s a year or two old,” Sienna said. “See the saplings?” Alder sprouts pushed through the ash.