The Silver Moon Elm

by MaryJanice Davidson

  “Jennifer.” Catherine’s voice quivered with despair. “Please tell me this isn’t true!”

  “Catherine, I didn’t know until last night…”

  “We-we’re moving into Winoka,” the young trampler stammered. “That was the surprise I hinted at Sunday afternoon. We close on our new house this week. Jennifer, Grammie wanted to move because she believed in—”

  “Granddaughter!” The earth shook, and the water bubbled near Winona’s wings. Large coils moved through the water, but Jennifer could not make out if it was one creature or ten slithering over each other.

  Without another word, Catherine followed her grandmother as they heaved their large bodies into the air and made their way over the lake. Whatever Winona had summoned disappeared under the surface.

  “Catherine?” Jennifer knew her friend couldn’t hear her, but she could not believe she was gone. Again.

  Her mother’s hand on her wing comforted her, and she even accepted an apologetic look from her father. He didn’t know, she told herself. He had no idea the tramplers attacking his girlfriend were parents. No idea their daughter would grow up to be my friend. No idea Winona would walk away from this family, after all these years.

  Gautierre got up to leave.

  “Sit down.”

  Gautierre sat down with an exclamation of protest. Jennifer stared at Xavier Longtail. The Elder dasher had not moved from his position by the fire.

  “Uncle X, they murdered Catherine’s parents! Shouldn’t we go?”

  “We’re not leaving just yet.”

  Jonathan gave him a weary glance as he sat down across the fire from the dragons. “You want to fight instead, like your niece? Go ahead, Xavier. Take your shot. I’m not going to stop you.”

  “I will,” Jennifer warned them.

  Xavier’s black-scaled features broadened into an ironic grin. “Frankly, my friends, I find myself unable to go. The violence and drama surrounding your family is fascinating. I simply must stay and see what horrific revelation comes next.” He turned to his great-nephew, who was impatiently twitching a triple-pronged tail. “Who knows, Gautierre? With a little luck, we may be the next victims!”

  “Longtail, I’m not in the mood for—”

  Xavier raised an apologetic wing claw. “My gallows humor. Yes, very well. But I would like to stay, Jonathan. If you and your wife don’t mind. You see, I also have something to share.”

  “You’re going to tell them?” Gautierre huffed as he stood again. “But shouldn’t we tell Mother first—”

  “Your mother,” the Elder dasher said through sharp, gritted teeth, “does not always have the most rational perspective. Sit down, kid.”

  “Where is your niece, anyway?” Elizabeth’s tone was understandably anxious, Jennifer observed.

  “Back in Crescent Valley. She is—how can I put this?—unaware we are here. I felt her presence would only be disruptive.”

  That’s kind of funny coming from you. Jennifer congratulated herself for not saying it aloud, but Xavier seemed to read it in her face anyway. His next comments were to her. “Since you and your parents left Crescent Valley, Ms. Scales, my niece has become obsessed with you. Worse, she seems intent on taking some sort of vengeance upon you.”

  Jennifer felt her mother move to her side and look up in the air. Eddie took up position on her other side, and Jonathan scrambled to his feet. In response, Gautierre sat up on his haunches and curled his wings.

  Alone among them all, Xavier sat still and breathed in the smoky fumes from the barbeque pit. “This is not an attack. Had I agreed with my niece, I would hardly have put you on your guard. Not exactly my style.”

  “No, your style is to fly up behind people and smack them on the back of their head,” Jennifer recalled.

  “Xavier, you said you came to tell us something.” Jonathan dared to sit back down again, which made the others relax. “Perhaps you could get to it.”

  “We received your summons early this morning,” Xavier began. “Gautierre and I were patrolling the ocean far to the north. At first, I intended to leave my grand-nephew in Crescent Valley and come here alone. But on our way back to our lair, we passed a sight I have never seen before. The very sight convinced me to bring him here.”

  “What was it?” Jennifer asked.

  The dasher licked his teeth. “If you trust me, Ms. Scales, I would like to show you.”

  She didn’t need to think about it for long—just long enough to remember the dragon who had saved her from a suicidal last stand, who had shown her the deeper power of the Ancient Furnace, and who ultimately had given his life to help her.

  She stepped forward. “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Jennifer!” Elizabeth tried to hold onto her daughter’s shoulder. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. Ready when you are, Longtail.”

  Elizabeth and Eddie went through with them all, and clung to their rides—Jonathan and Jennifer—with shivering cold hands as they emerged into Crescent Valley. Jennifer almost cheered when she saw the venerables’ fire signal around the crescent moon, but then she thought of Evangelina, which made her think of Dianna Wilson again.

  She pulled in close formation with her father as they sped north, the Longtails leading the way. “Dad, do you think of Dianna Wilson much?”

  “Jennifer, you may not have noticed, but my wife is hanging onto my back right now, and she’s got long fingernails.”

  “I don’t mean that! I mean, now that we know she’s alive…do you think we’ll see her again?”

  Jonathan exhaled mist into the frosty air. “Given what you’ve told us about what she’s done, I would expect so. The only question is when.”

  “What she started…Dad, I don’t know if we can stop someone like her if she tries again. Even Seraphina knew her island wouldn’t last long.”

  “Do you know if she lasted long enough?” Elizabeth asked. “Seraphina, I mean. You said she was already under attack when you left.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” Jennifer admitted. “I had no way to find out. And with the venerables still here in Crescent Valley, there won’t be any fire on the ocean. I don’t think we can ever stumble on the portal there again.”

  “So the island may have been overrun by the time you were able to face the Quadrivium,” said Elizabeth.

  “Yeah.” Jennifer hadn’t thought too much about Seraphina since she had succeeded in setting everything straight. But now with an everlasting crescent moon over her head again, she wondered what sort of creature was left standing on that island, once all else had changed back.

  Nearly an hour later, she felt closer to an answer.

  They came in low above the treetops, taking in the scent of pine. Jennifer guessed by now they were headed for the stone plateau. But why go there? What could possibly be…Oh!

  She saw it first as a faint light over the horizon, and then a shining peak, and then a growing mass of greenish-gray movement. The paradise tree snakes, she told herself. And the butterflies.

  The silver moon elm grew larger as they approached, as alive and strong as it ever had been on Seraphina’s Isle. Jennifer felt a fresh tear at the corner of her eye. They went over the edge of the stone formation. The top was beautifully smooth and empty of any funeral carvings. The trunk of the moon elm pierced an unmarked portion of the surface as if it had been thrown down like a javelin by the venerables themselves, and its roots gripped the stone depths.

  “This was here when you passed over this morning?” Jonathan asked Xavier. They pulled up to land on the rock just a few steps from its outmost branches. Snakes and butterflies rained down around them and chased each other back toward the tree’s trunk.

  “Yes. I don’t know when it showed up. We Longtails are among the very few dragon families who come out here when there isn’t a funeral.”

  “If it hasn’t moved by now, I wonder if it is here to stay.”

  “It is,” Jennifer said. She walked under the canopy of bran
ches until she was next to the massive trunk. Her fingertips traced swirls on the bark. “It’s been here since last night, and it won’t move from here.”

  “Who put it here?” Gautierre asked.

  She reached up and plucked two leaves from a nearby branch, remembering the last line from Sonakshi’s verse. Set the moon elm’s roots in stone, forever deeper. “Seraphina did it. I don’t think she could come stay here with it, but she’s still alive.”

  “So why put it here?” Xavier wondered. “Why not keep it on her island, where it’s safer?”

  Handing each of the Longtails a leaf, she replied, “Because she wants us to use it.”

  The moment each of them took the leaf in their wing claw, the transformation began. Xavier’s face betrayed some fear at what was happening to him, but Gautierre seemed more calm. Jennifer thought back to Xavier’s struggle behind the farmhouse after twenty years of holding a dragon shape, but this was nothing like that.

  In a few seconds, all seven of them were on human feet under the moon elm. Xavier Longtail was an older man with tanned Gallic features. His wrinkled eyes and stern nose were framed by dyed-black hair, pulled back into a triple-braided ponytail. He rubbed his stern chin with a couple of well-manicured fingers, each of which held a thick gold ring with dozens of tiny diamond chips.

  His grand-nephew was even more striking, with charcoal hair pulled back into three braids like his grand-uncle. But unlike Xavier, he had neither a tan nor jewelry. His well-defined muscles were his only decoration.

  “Wow,” Jennifer said after she spent some time staring into the boy’s pretty face. Then her eyes strayed downward. “Wow.”

  With an edgy sigh, Xavier reached forward to pull the moon elm leaf out of his great-nephew’s hand. Then he dropped them both, and their bodies reverted to dragon shape. “An interesting trick, Ms. Scales. But I would prefer my grand-nephew and I maintain our dignity while we talk about this phenomenon. You say Seraphina wants us to use this tree. How? Other than letting us lose our powerful dragon shapes, what possible benefit can it have?”

  “It’s not just for changing from dragon to human,” Jennifer explained. “If you’re under a different moon, it gets you from human to dragon.”

  Xavier licked his teeth. “So why put it here?”

  “It would be too obvious in a place like Winoka,” Eddie supposed. “Or even by the lake. But here in your refuge, it’s safe.”

  “Out here,” Jonathan added, “we can grow enough leaves to unchain every dragon from the moon’s phases. We can decide when we will change, and for how long.”

  Xavier looked up at the elm, and then at them. “And who will decide who gets these special leaves, and who does not? Is the spirit of Seraphina here in this tree, to guard the prize and separate the worthy from the unworthy?”

  “No separating!” Jennifer was adamant. “Xavier, this should be something any dragon can enjoy. It belongs to all of us.”

  “Another noble sentiment from the ambassador.” He sniffed. “You might change your mind once Winona Brandfire decides to use these leaves to hide the next wave of assassins who’ll come after your mother. Or your father, this time.”

  “And would you happen to be one of those assassins?” Elizabeth asked, with her typical stoic expression.

  The Elder dasher flared his nostrils and faced the beaststalker. “I wondered, Doctor, when you would finally have the courage to address me again. No, I am not an assassin. I am a warrior, like you.”

  “Not like me,” she replied with a stiff lip. “It’s not who I am. I haven’t fought since the day I met your brother. He changed me.”

  “And it only cost him his life.” Xavier flexed his wings and stretched his neck, but it was not a threatening gesture. Instead, he sighed at Elizabeth. “What did my brother change you into, exactly?”

  “Something better.”

  “Just like you,” Jennifer added. “When I was…when the Quadrivium…” She stalled, trying to explain it properly. “When we were in another place together. You were different. You were a hero.”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out Geddy. The gecko had made the trip quietly and with his usual silent grace. “He belongs to you. You asked me to watch over him, until we met again.”

  “I never…” He let the green and red lizard crawl from Jennifer’s hand to his wing. Geddy worked his way up Xavier’s shoulder and settled upon the dragon’s head—right where Jennifer had seen Goodwin settle in for a long flight.

  “Mr. Longtail.” Elizabeth stepped forward again and reached out for his wing claw. “I’ve spent my life since I was fifteen years old trying to do penance for your brother’s death. I’ll spend every day I have left doing the same. If you require anything else of me—”

  “Doctor.” He winced as he took her hand. “Come with me.”

  The two walked together, the others following, past the tree and onto an area on the plateau where the swirls of strange dragon-writing were thick. Jennifer wished she could read what they all said. There were so many lives recorded here, each carving a path to the venerables’ ceaseless flight around the crescent moon. Who were they? What had they done in life? How had each died?

  “This one here,” Xavier finally said. He tugged Elizabeth’s arm until she stumbled to her knees in front of a patch of worn stone. “Read it.”

  She looked at the arcane whorls and markings. “I can’t read this writing.”

  “You can.” He grabbed her hand again, put his other wing claw on the text, and then breathed fire over the stone pattern. “Read it aloud, so the others can understand.”

  Touching the dragon that breathed fire over his brother’s grave, Elizabeth began to translate the strange inscription:

  “CHARLES LOUIS LONGTAIL. FIRST SON OF JACQUES AND MARTHA LONGUEQUEUE. IMMIGRANT CHILD, ORPHANED SHORTLY AFTER HIS FIRST MORPH. ADVOCATE FOR PEACE. DOCTOR AT WHITE LAKE AND EVENINGSTAR. BELOVED BROTHER. HEALER. DIPLOMAT.”

  “A healer and a diplomat,” Jonathan murmured.

  “I wonder,” Xavier said with his raspy voice close to Elizabeth’s ear, “if you see anything familiar in this obituary. Anything you can relate to.”

  “You know I can.”

  “Good. Because my forgiveness and tolerance, to the extent you want it, will only last as long as you can do so.”

  Elizabeth nodded. Then she saw something else in the swirls still hot with dragon’s breath. “Wait! There’s more written here.”

  Fire is death.

  Fire tests us.

  Fire strengthens us.

  Fire is life.

  Jennifer’s jaw dropped, but Xavier’s reaction was cooler. “Yes, those are words my brother taught me when we were young. Character-building nonsense, I considered them for many years. But he always was the wiser one of the two of us.”

  He turned to Jennifer. “So you bring your repentant mother to me, and this new boyfriend of yours”—he motioned to Eddie—“and you give me a pet lizard, and you believe we will be best buddies, Ambassador Scales?”

  “No,” she answered immediately and honestly. “But we both know we’re better people with the other one around. And we both value the same thing.”

  Through a crooked smile, he sniffed. “And that is?”

  “Honesty.”

  His bark was almost a laugh. “True enough! Since you revealed your dual nature to us a few months ago, you have not lied once to me…”

  “Though I have let you know what a jerk you are.”

  “…and perhaps you could have been less blunt, at times.” He said this with a glance askew at Gautierre, who could not stifle a juvenile snort.

  “What about Ember?” asked Jonathan. “Will honesty be enough for her?”

  “I doubt it. I will have to tell her what has happened, because I will not lie to her. But I expect she will try to prevent Gautierre from seeing much of me, for as long as I do not seek the same revenge she does.”

  “And do I have to obey her?” Gautierre as
ked with an offended air. “If you trust this girl, then why shouldn’t I? And why shouldn’t Mother?”

  “Good questions, Gautierre. Each dragon will have to come up with their own answer. I will support you in finding your own. All I ask is that you remain honest with your mother. We will not keep secrets from her.”

  “A good policy,” Jennifer agreed, with a meaningful look at her own parents.

  Gautierre gave Jennifer a piercing stare. “I want to learn from the Ancient Furnace. I want to see a new and different world.”

  Be careful what you wish for, Jennifer thought with wry humor. She returned Xavier’s skeptical look, while Eddie cleared his throat and stepped up close enough to her to take her hand.

  Standing up from the grave markings of Charles Longtail, Elizabeth nodded at Xavier. “If your Eldest will not receive our family anymore, Eddie Blacktooth and I will bring those beaststalkers we can find to seek audience with you. You and my husband will need to convince the Blaze to follow through with Winona Brandfire’s original plan. Maybe if we can pull together enough from both people, we can regain her trust.”

  The black dragon stretched his neck to the heavens. “Brother Charles. I hope I am doing the right thing. I would like to join you someday, on the endless flight.”

  “You will,” said Jonathan with a grin, “just like I’ll join my father.”

  “Enough of that!” Jennifer cut in. “Let’s all stay down here for a while!”

  They agreed, and then sat on the rock together for some time, watching the crescent slowly roll over the silver moon elm, listening to the snakes rustle after the butterflies, and talking in hopeful tones about the days to come.