All there was, in the midst of rugged prairie land and the occasional copse of trees, was a small cabin, maybe one-third the size her grandfather had built, and a familiar-looking barn.
She slowed down, landed softly on the gravel driveway, and assumed a dark camouflage pattern before daring to go any farther. There didn’t appear to be anyone about, and there were no vehicles of any kind parked outside.
Abandoned, she told herself as she got to the entrance of the barn. The wide doors were flung open, smacking the barn walls at the whim of the November winds. Inside was nothing but a few frayed horse blankets and the distant smell of manure embedded years ago into the woodwork.
She thought she heard a rustling in the woods behind her. Her head snapped around and she squinted her keen dragon eyes. Nothing was there—at least, nothing larger than a raccoon.
Leaving the barn, she went around the east side and surveyed the yard between cabin and lake. The clearing here was overgrown with tall grasses and weeds. Bit by bit, the land was returning to its natural prairie state. But Jennifer didn’t know enough about botany or geography to know how long this growth had taken to emerge—ten years? Twenty? Five? A few months?
She glanced briefly at the spot where she and her mother had erected a gravestone for Grandpa Crawford. It wasn’t there, of course.
Is that good news or bad?
Again, there was a noise—but this was farther off. It was a cry of sorts, perhaps an eagle. Or perhaps something pretending to sound like an eagle.
Whatever it was, it was less likely to find her inside, than outside.
Entering the house, which she knew must have been as much of the cabin as her grandfather finished before things went horribly wrong, gave Jennifer a surreal feeling. Yes, there was the kitchen where it belonged, but the appliances were unfamiliar and rusting. Yes, there was a photo of young Crawford and Caroline Scales over the mantel—but little else, and certainly nothing of anyone else she knew. The wallpaper in the hallway was yellow burlap instead of the elegant flower print she expected, and there was no library or patio facing the lake.
Down at the end of the hall was the master bedroom—the only bedroom. Jennifer had known it as her grandfather’s study. Once upon a time, she had stored some charcoal sketches there. The dresser (which belonged upstairs, which in turn didn’t exist) was scarred maple.
She opened the first few drawers, which were empty. In the bottom drawer, she found an old flannel nightgown with a blueberry and daisy print, and a few small holes near the knees. This she quickly put on. The closets were bare, except for hangers, plastic dry cleaning bags, and Styrofoam pellets.
Going back to the kitchen, she scoured the cupboards. There was a can of cheese soup with rust around the edges, and some tea bags. She found a pot and kettle, used a dragon claw to crack open the soup can, and then flinched at what first came out of the faucet. Eventually, the water looked drinkable, and a fire was easy to set in the fireplace. She nestled both the kettle with water and the pot with soup in between the logs. In a few minutes, dinner was ready.
There was no spoon, she then discovered. Or cups, or bowls, or anything else beyond a painted metal serving tray and a broken toaster.
Muttering, she reverted to dragon form and poured the soup down her throat. It was quite hot and reminded her of the day about a year ago she had tried a ritual drink her grandfather had prepared. Oh, well, her innards didn’t mind. Then she tore open the tea bags, poured the contents on her forked tongue, and upended the whistling kettle over her open mouth.
That hurt. She swallowed the pain down deep and chucked the kettle into the kitchen behind her, where it rolled back and forth over the moldy linoleum for a while.
Still better than anything Mom could have made, she told herself with a stubborn snort.
And then she felt tears fogging her eyes. She kept herself in dragon skin, because the scales made them harder to feel as they streamed down her cheeks.
Her nap—if she could even call it that—was short and fitful. Whether it was in her dream or in the forest nearby, she kept hearing ominous sounds. There was the rustling of leaves, and the far-off shrieks of dying things. The carpet in the master bedroom smelled bad, not unlike the sewer in Pinegrove. Were there eyes in the window? Voices on the air? Footsteps in the hallway?
She grumbled at herself, unsure of what to do. Yes, she wanted to be fully rested when she entered Crescent Valley and faced whatever truth was there. But this sleep-deprivation torture was sapping what little strength she had left.
Finally, after unsuccessfully trying different rooms to sleep in (the kitchen linoleum was slippery with mildew, and the hallway carpet was no better than what was in the bedroom), Jennifer decided enough was enough. She braced herself with a deep breath, burst out of the farmhouse, sailed over the lake for as long as she dared, and then plunged into the water.
She emerged a minute later, on the other side.
Some things were still here: the heavy air slowly moving like an ancient breath over her face, the forested shore far away where the moon elms were losing their November leaves, and, of course, the brightly shining crescent moon that kept eternal watch over this world.
But other things were not here, that should have been. There was no sound of insects, she realized. The small water mantises that normally skimmed the lake’s surface were gone. So was the gentle, cellolike strum of fire hornets. And the crescent moon seemed more stark for its lack of welcoming fire—the circular signal the spirits of Elders would send to arrivals.
No venerables? She sank a bit back into the water. Where did they go?
Even worse, there were things here that definitely should not have been. Even from this distance, she could make out shimmering lattices that spread from the tops of bare moon elm branches. These delicate shrouds linked the enormous plants into large, unfriendly clusters. Little would pass from above to below, or vice versa.
Webs.
She ducked back under the icy water, letting only her eyes and snout stay above the surface. Had anyone seen her?
Her wings and body slowly propelled her, and she slunk across the lake like a miserable crocodile. The initial panic at the prospect of discovery now gave away to a more lasting despair.
There is no help. Nowhere else to go! Why are you swimming toward the shore? Go back!
But she didn’t. After all, what was there to go back to? She had to stay, at least for a little while, and find out more.
The swim was long and tiring. She saw no movement on the shore as she approached. In fact, it didn’t seem as if anything had lived here but the moon elms themselves, for some time. The webs upon the nearest trees, she saw better now, were blowing in the wind, untended and unkempt. Maybe the dragons drove them back, she told herself as she caught the crimson glow of lichen from deep within the forest. Maybe they’re still fighting.
She finally reached the shore and let her skin shift into a rough bark-and-dirt pattern as she skittered over the narrow beach and into the foliage. Dead moon elm leaves crinkled as she curled up into a ball and shivered herself dry under folded wings.
This is not happening, she assured herself as she began to sniffle. This is not happening. This is not…
“Jennifer!”
The sound of Skip’s voice startled her. He was running up the lake shore from the south, in nothing but a Windbreaker and some gloves. His bluish-green eyes were slanted in concern, and sweat fixed his chocolate bangs to his forehead.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” she asked in a quaking voice.
“You said you were coming here. I didn’t want to leave things the way we left them. It’s not right. We should go back, talk things over.”
“I need to find them.”
“Who?” He waved his arms in exasperation. “Jennifer, who do you think is here? Look around! This place isn’t safe for you! The spiders who are here are dangerous. They don’t come through the portals often. Some of them have even renounced their hu
man shapes. They could kill both of us!”
She didn’t answer. She stared at him.
“Come on.” He motioned with a gloved hand. “Let’s go back, before someone finds us.”
She stared at him some more. And at his gloves.
His dry gloves.
“Skip, how did you get here?”
He sighed impatiently and stepped toward her. “There’s a cave about a mile south of here,” he explained. “The lake isn’t the only way into this world, Jennifer. There are several doorways, at least. They’re pretty easy to find, once you know where to look.”
Once you know where to look, she repeated to herself.
“Jennifer, come on!” He was still several feet away, but held out his hand for her to take. “The Quadrivium used sorcery to create awful things out here. Stuff even we wouldn’t recognize. You don’t want to run into any of it!”
The Quadrivium. She thought about it for some time, slowly unwinding herself out of dragon shape and flexing her arms. The wind billowed her nightgown and the air was cold on her November skin, but she knew she had to hold this form for a bit. He stomped his foot when she did not move any farther.
“Jennifer, we’ve got to go!” He took another step or two.
Close enough for her to reach him.
She slapped him, hard.
The smack reverberated across the beach and the lake. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds. Then Skip rubbed his chin and nodded solemnly.
“I don’t—”
She slapped him again, harder. This time his head snapped around all the way and he staggered back.
He turned to face her as she closed the distance herself this time. His hands were up and blood trickled out of his nose.
“Jennifer, I get that you—”
She did not hear him. The fire burned in her ears louder than a dragon’s howl. She felt the bones within shift, wanting to change shape, but she willed them quiet. It would be better to do this as she was.
With her bare hands.
She knocked him down effortlessly and then fell upon him, hammering his pretty face with furious fists. He tried to shelter himself with his arms, but they did no good. Her blows were too fast and too powerful. She slowed down as she finally began to speak, one word with every strike.
“You. LYING. Piece. Of. Shit. You. Sold. Us. OUT. And. Now. They’re. GONE!”
The reality of what she said hit her, and she yelled in anguish. She couldn’t help it—the dragon was coming. Her nose horn was breaking through the skin and her spine was churning. Dimly, she wondered why Skip didn’t change, too.
His restraint made her swallow hard and try to end the turmoil inside her. Holding herself like that, half-human, half-beast, took great effort. What if she got too tired? She couldn’t rest here.
“What’s the Quadrivium, skip? Who are they?” She could see immediately from his expression that he would never tell her. There was only one thing to do. She slammed her crested forehead into his temple.
Disoriented, he was unable to defend himself as she resumed pounding him. He coughed and sputtered, she slammed and snarled. It felt better and worse at once, the more she did it. Piece by piece, she felt her humanity disintegrate, until it was her wings battering him and her double-pronged tail wrapped firmly around his gullet.
What finally made her stop? It might have been the way his eyeballs bulged with the escape of air. It might have been how her blows began to glance off his slippery face. Or it might have been the last shred of her compassion, tapping her scaled shoulder in a gentle reminder before it slipped away.
When she did stumble off of him, she gave him a last kick with a powerful hind leg. Skip groaned and rolled over.
“Never again, Skip.” She wiped her bloody wings against her tearstained face. “Never.”
He raised his head and tried to say something, but instead a battery of coughs convulsed him. One hand came up to his swollen throat, the other began to drag his body down the beach, back toward whatever cave lay to the south.
She breathed in the air of desolation around them, and resisted the impulse to kick him again. “Crawl back under your rock, you spider! You monster! I hope you die! I hope you ALL die for what you’ve done!”
The roar came from within. She could not have stopped it if she had wanted. It cracked the twilit sky open and made the stars shudder. Skip screamed and held his hands against his misshapen ears.
When she was done, she heard an answering sound from far away. It was not a hot roar of passion; it was a cold shriek of alarm. A chill wind blew down from the crescent moon and pressed upon her back.
Another cry went up, and then another, and another. Soon the screams came in distant waves—communicating, alerting each other to the intruder.
She looked over at Skip’s creeping form and remembered what he said: They’ve used sorcery to create awful things.
The ground trembled. Whipping her head around in the direction of the sound, Jennifer barely had time to spread her wings before the trees to the east gave way to a shape—a single brown cylinder, longer than five moon elms laid end to end.
It was a leg.
It slammed into the ground under her as she rose on startled wings. She traced it back—across two highly placed joints with dark bands—until she finally found the body. A cobalt blue egg the size of a mansion hung suspended by this leg and seven others just like it. While there may have been eyes on top, Jennifer couldn’t be sure—the entire northern hemisphere of the body loomed out of sight. Best she could tell, this thing could stand above five or six soccer matches going at once, and never know the scores.
Without another thought for the boy, she darted away from the enormous creature. A biology lecture from Ms. Graf last year echoed in her mind:
“Harvestmen are sometimes called ‘daddy longlegs.’ But in truth, class, most of them don’t have disproportionately long legs—nor could all of them possibly be male, of course! Some people think they’re venomous, but that’s just a myth. They don’t even have fangs to deliver any sort of poison.”
Poison seems beside the point, Jennifer reflected grimly as she ducked under another leg that had groped blindly for her before smashing into the lake below. Realizing the only safety was far above, she twisted her body and pushed herself higher and higher into the indigo sky. The air cooled rapidly around her, and the thumping of the thing below became more distant.
She looked down and saw the entire harvestman. More like ten soccer matches, she guessed now. Triple-jointed legs plied the earth fruitlessly in search of prey. There were lumps on top of its body that suggested a place for eyes. Is it smart enough to look up here? she wondered.
A small, black, screaming missile abruptly shoved those thoughts aside. It came from the north, maybe the northeast, and it might have hit Jennifer had its shadow not briefly come between her and the moon above.
“Jyeh!” She flipped herself out of the way just in time. The leaping thing—whatever it was—sailed by her and fell back to the earth, landing with a distant sploosh in the lake.
Farther upward she went. How far can they jump? She couldn’t possibly know, and she didn’t want to find out the hard way. By the time she looked back down again, the harvestman was down to a respectable size from her perspective—and only a jet would be able to reach her.
Far off to the west, Jennifer could make out the mountainous shapes where her people—the creepers, the dashers, the tramplers—had once made refuge. Where they had hunted alongside the mysterious newolves, and held Blaze in their giant amphitheater.
Not anymore, she told herself. She noticed the patchworks of webs topping clusters of trees as far as she could see, and she knew no newolf or fire hornet would have survived this place. The werachnids here might have kept some herds of oreams alive for food, she supposed. But there would be nothing recognizable left in this world. Nothing except the most basic of topographical features, like mountains and…
Stay as strong
as stone. Stay as beautiful as fire.
The words from her father’s note suddenly made sense. Her father had left her a message!
She made for the north immediately. Stone would survive the change. And we used dragon fire to write messages in the stone.
What will the stone plateau tell me, she wondered as the moon followed her north to find out. Will it tell me where to find anyone else? Will it tell me what to do next? The excitement of piecing together her father’s hidden message consumed her. Dad hadn’t trusted Skip either! He knew, that’s why he spoke in code like that! He might even be there, at the stone!
What a fool she was for not thinking of this earlier! How much time and pain she could have saved had she understood her father and come here right away!
She flattened her features and increased her speed. The moonlit air gave way around her, as if clearing a path free of wind resistance. They could be fighting these things right now, she realized. They need my help! I’m the Ancient Furnace, and I can help! Every last one of us counts!
After about an hour’s flight, she saw it: the great rock plateau that sprang from the forest like an enormous stone tree stump. Dragons used it for funeral ceremonies, including her grandfather’s, just last month.
Images of strange swirls carved into molten rock pricked her memory. If she remembered right, those whorls marked up a bit less than half the plateau’s surface. Would she be able to read what was there? Who might still be left to help her? How would she learn anything if she couldn’t read the Elder language? And how long would she have to make sense of any of it?
While the treetop webs lessened in frequency closer to the rock formation, Jennifer could tell the forest was still tainted by their presence on all sides. No dragon was immediately apparent—though of course, they would probably be in hiding. She thought briefly of calling out, but then decided against it. Even if the werachnids and pets who met her at the lake could not travel as fast as she could fly, they doubtless had cousins nearby.
She dared a landing—at least she had to see what was written!—and found herself stricken with disbelief the moment her claws touched down.
The Silver Moon Elm Page 17