Lunav

by Jenn Polish

  My fingers feel empty.

  I lean my head against the bars of the cage behind me as Grovians blaze patterns along with the songs rising up from all the edges of the Gathering. All around me, faeries and centaurs twirl and twist and sing. Even Aon is smiling reluctantly now as Mama moves ridiculously in front of him. They flow like one liquid creature around the cage the Controller placed in the center of us all.

  My swiveling gaze finds the infirmary tent; Jax has thrust open the flap, and repositioned Blaze’s cot so que can see out into the Gathering without moving much. Quer first Lunamez.

  And quer last.

  I blink hard, and my face feels wet.

  As the dancing crescendos into a veritable mess of bodies, of young ones’ yelps and growns’ laughter, centaur calls rise. Lerian even dances her way toward me, her eyes hard but sparkling. Aon looks nervous, and I gesture for him to pull me to my feet. He grabs one hand, and Lerian lets a hand down to grab my other one. Aon and I both look up at her, bewildered, and she shrugs as she yanks me up.

  “It’s Lunamez.” Her tone is softer than usual, even though she’s shouting to be heard above the din. “And it’s time to call them!”

  I grin and nudge Aon. “Here goes,” I tell him and his gaze shifts to the infirmary.

  As the centaur calls rise higher and higher, all the faeries who can twist the Energies become still in response. Most of our eyes flutter closed, and Lerian flinches slightly as she prepares for so many of us to summon the Energies at once. The Hands tense, but it looks like they’ve been warned about this part of the celebrations, because they do nothing.

  My own eyes finally drift closed as the message starts to build in the core of feeling underneath my belly, my insides glowing. I feel distinctly every Energy wave in my body, can trace the ways the other faeries are summoning an identical spell to mine, radiating out from our middles. I curl in on myself as I concentrate the melding of the Energies into the enchanted message we’re all building to the dragons. I send up a silent prayer to Lunara that she’ll keep them safe, that this Lunamez will be noteworthy for nothing more than being a great holiday.

  It is, after all, the dragons’ holiday as much as it is ours. Maybe even more so.

  Like a frozen wave bursting out of its shell after a long and deep cold, warm and soothing magic shoots through my insides. My tightly muscled arms shudder a bit right before midday yellow and sunset orange waves of contorted Energies billow out of my fingertips. They ripple, along with those being sent up by the faeries around me, up into the cloudless sky and explode in fluorescent aquas and lavenders.

  A hushed silence falls on the Gathering as even the youngest of the young ones simply watch the signal we’ve sent above us; or, more accurately, watch for the response to the signal we’ve sent.

  And sure enough, within minutes, shouts rise up amongst those flying higher than others, those with the best sight.

  “Hands!” comes Richard’s clipped voice above the excited tumult. “Dragons approaching!” At his warning, nearly every Hand in the Gathering loads their bows and point them at the sky.

  They are preparing for another massacre.

  Chapter Seventeen

  BUT BEFORE WE can all surge forward, Evelyn emerges from who-knows-where, and she’s at Richard’s side next to the cage, calling off his attack.

  “And just what did you expect when I briefed you as to the nature of these celebrations? We trained for it. And we agreed to let the Grovians have their holiday unimpeded unless a greater threat was presented.”

  He does not let down his bow, and somehow, though she’s talking softly, everyone in the Gathering is bristling, keenly aware of their conversation.

  “With respect, ma’am, no one agreed, just you and that girl—”

  “Iema outranks everyone here except you, and I outrank you tenfold, Richard. Now put down your weapon, or so help me—”

  “What? You’ll tell your joiner on us?”

  My stomach lurches and Evelyn’s eyes flash dangerously.

  “I have no joiner,” she says, deathly soft. “Disarm. Now. This is not a suggestion.”

  He hesitates for only one more moment and then releases the tension in his bow, slinging his arrow messily back into its quiver.

  “Stand down!” Evelyn calls to the other Hands. “Let them come.” Her other soldiers obey her reluctantly.

  Just in time too.

  Because the dragons are casting shadows directly above the Gathering now, flying in traditional Lunamez formation, with the youngest dragons, like Zaylam and Semad, ensconced in the middle of an undulating wave of elder and grown dragons, like Archa, Harlenikal, and Gimla. They sweep patterns around each other, their tails unfurling into the fins they become in the Flowing, as the lower half of the dragons move their bodies like dolphins, swimming through the air, while the upper half swoop like hawks, cutting through the air with powerful wings and deep harmonies to the melodies of the lower dragons. They sift between each other seamlessly, so that each dragon takes on each role. I try to track Zaylam with my eyes, but keep losing her relatively tiny body in the midst of all the others.

  Lerian nudges me and jerks her head towards Aon. His eyes are narrow and hard, watching faeries and their dragons spinning in their hatchling greetings. Without warning, he wrenches his hand from mine, leaving Lerian’s arms alone to support me. He flies up and away from the reverie, his arms locked tightly around his torso.

  “Aon!” The effort of shouting after him makes my head throb.

  “Let him go.” Lerian sighs. “Of course he’s gonna be jealous. Angry. He should be.”

  Aon slips into the infirmary tent with Blaze, and judging from his glowering expression, it looks like it’s hit him that without Dreaming, he and Banion will never have their hatchling dragon.

  He’s not the only one in our family who aren’t exactly thrilled to see the dragons. Even as Mom speeds toward her hatchling dragon, Gimla, and even as Zaylam sings down to me, I reach out for Mama’s hand, trying to catch her downcast eyes with mine. Her hatchling dragon, Xamamlee, was killed in the first massacre. Mama doesn’t look at me, and I swipe my thumb across the back of her hand. She squeezes slightly.

  Then a single, solemn deer call erupts from the southwest edge of the Gathering. The dancing, the singing, and the hatchling greetings all fade to a stop. The dragons, of course, are the last to quiet their songs, gradually tapering out into low hums in the bases of their throats.

  When the last of their humming finally peters out, I open my eyes—I didn’t realize I’d closed them—and find Lerian’s hand still in mine, and Mama’s. They both help me move as everyone in the Gathering flutters, trots, slithers, crawls, and wheels into formation. We never coordinate this part of our Lunamez celebration, but even the Forest creatures come out for it, and it always seems to come together. Sure enough, Osley leaps up to rub against my ankle. Together.

  The threading.

  When we account for all we’ve grown and lost since the last Lunamez celebration.

  Zaylam and the other dragons fly so high above the Gathering that I wonder if the nons can distinguish who is who. An assortment of other winged creatures are swarming out of the Forest, so many that the Hands again try to raise their bows before the Controller gestures for them to stay their shots. The air is thick with the rustling of wings of all stripes: leathery, feathery, thin and translucent, wide and narrow and everything in between. We faeries wait for the Forest birds to settle into endless formations between the dragons and the treetops surrounding the Gathering—then we follow. Mom has cajoled Aon out of the infirmary, and Lerian gives Mom my hand so she and Mama can help fly me up with the others. Below, groundlings like Lerian and Osley shuffle into their own positions on the Gathering grounds. I don’t have to look down to know that Os will arrange querself below me, but I do check to see where Lerian is. She’s below me too, giving me an irritated look that says, “Whatever, it’s Lunamez. You’re still a traitor.”
r />   My heart rises and sinks at the same time.

  An anticipatory humming fills the air. I look up at a winged friend of mine, Zaem, who sometimes plays lookout for me on my spy missions. Her little wings are keeping her steady near my right wingtip. She offers a chirp, and I raise the side of my mouth at her. We wait.

  It’s too dangerous for the dragons to extend the thin, ropelike, sunup colored threads of Energies directly into the Plains, as they would in Lunamezes past. Now, the nons would surely try to trace the connections to locate their hidden home, to dismantle the Barrier. So they send their threads, emanating from the tips of their wings and their furry underbellies, down to the canopies of local Forest trees, who extend them back through their roots across the entire Forest and Underland, through into the Plains.

  Already, there are gaps in the Energies that the threading bends, trees we’ve been forced to chop down since last Lunamez, those who have evacuated their souls from their bodies preemptively, to avoid the torture of the axe. We wait for the threads to pass through us.

  Undulating soundlessly through the air, an Energy thread that tastes like Zaylam’s songs swims into my chest. I welcome it. I’m both warm and freezing in my core where it joins me, as it makes its way through my wings before spreading out of the tips into those I love best. More pass through me and more are spread. I keenly feel Mama and Aon connecting to my threads, and the sharp, bitter taste of my current connection with Lerian. Osley’s thread slips up through my left foot and I grin.

  The entire air above the Gathering is crisscrossed with golds and reds and fire oranges as threads made of woven ropes of the Energies pass through more and more of us, in more and more combinations. When mine connects with P’Tal, I almost fall out of the sky from the depth of his sadness. Mom and Mama increase their grip on me. When I connect with Blaze, it feels almost too weak to notice, too faint to exist. Que is fading. I push more effort into my thread with quer.

  We all hold each other through the connections. The threading part of Lunamez makes physical the connections we’ve forged with each other since last Lunamez, and I’m reminded uncomfortably of that now as E’rix extends an orange thread my way. It reminds us—makes sure we don’t forget—those lost by anger, by death, by betrayal. Because those we hate send threads through us too; my tug on Tacon is pretty strong and tastes like decay. But it also tastes like sorrow; I wonder if he’s sending that to me.

  Because that’s the other thing the threading does. It allows us to communicate feelings unspoken, connections otherwise forgotten, otherwise sidelined, otherwise dismissed as uncomplicated.

  All of us are bathed in the glow of the threads we’ve made; they extend way out into the rest of the Grove and into the Flowing, I know, but I’m not flying high enough to see them dip into the waves. I know Zaylam is, and I am eager for her to tell me what it looks like. I glance over at Kashat, hovering near the nestling; his eyes are fixed on the breakages in the threads, the places where death has left them with no soul to latch on to. His face is made of steel. I tug on the thread I have running through his chest, and he looks at me and winks. I grimace and wonder why he’s so nervous about the Accounting.

  When the dragons sing again, we let go of the threads. They become thinner and thinner, dimmer and dimmer, until they are restored to the usual translucence of the Energies. The threading doesn’t create things that weren’t already there; it just makes visible things we tend to forget in our daily lives.

  As most of the birds and insects, and all manner of groundlings, flit and scamper back to their goings on. They usually don’t share our traditions, but the threading draws them in because we are all, after all, creatures of Lunav. Watching them scatter, Mom and Mama fly with Aon and me, back to the infirmary, where I can lie with Blaze and get a good, head-safe view of the nestling.

  Centaurs and faeries across the Gathering settle in for Kashat and the others’ accounting performance. The dragons have slipped back to the Plains under the cover of the swarms of creatures returning to the Forest and Underland.

  Jax puts a gentle hand behind my head as my growns lay me down on my cot, positioning me so that I, like Blaze—who seems to be awake now, but barely—can look out in the Gathering and have a good view of the nestling. We can’t actually see the performers from our spots; the bucket-like edges just allow us to see what they want us to. As the anticipatory hush rises across the Gathering, I get a glimpse of Kashat’s wings, fluttering their tips up above the nestling as he helps the younger faeries and centaurs manage their magic and puppets. I settle back and feel Mom’s hand running through my hair. Blaze coughs and Aon sniffs.

  Kashat’s voice, booming with the help of whatever spell he’s twisted the Energies into, makes me jump slightly.

  The accounting has begun.

  “The beginnings of Lunav,” he proclaims. A large puppet of a Lunavad tree rises from the nestling—I can’t tell which centaur is controlling the puppet, but I don’t have time to think about it because one of the faeries then conjures up a misty, green map of Lunav’s connected lands, above and around the tree puppet. More whispy images overlay the map and interact with the puppets the centaurs are operating, weaving the origin story the Accounting always gives. Kashat’s voice settles in over the tale they’re painting in the air.

  “It is said that on the eve of the birth of Lunav, a single tree—a Dragon Spawn sapling, a sapling of who we today call Lunavad trees—burst forth from the first tear of rain, emerging so excitedly that the tree’s roots split the ground of Lunav into the many regions that now make up our cracked land.” A roar like thunder booms from the nestling as the misted map of Lunav is ripped asunder, one round landmass breaking out into a few smaller ones.

  “This tree towered over all of Lunav, so high that the vast expanse of its flattened canopy covered all of the land in dark, impenetrable shadow, covering the entire land, even beyond the edges of Lunav itself.” A deep gloom settles over the entire Gathering, and I meet Jax’s eye and grin. Kashat’s outdoing himself.

  “The tree, known by the name of our land itself—Lunav, Lunav, Lunav—absorbed all the sun and rain que needed, but the land remained parched and lifeless underneath quer.” A new narrator, an elder whose voice I vaguely recognize but can’t place, carries on the story.

  “Lunav wanted companionship, for the richness of many lives, but knew the permanently sheltered land could not bear more life. From quer spindly, tactile leaves, que wove and breathed life into a single, giant spider—Lunara—and explained to her quer idea.”

  From the leaves of the vast tree puppet itself weaves a smoky figure, jet-black with orange tips on each of her eight spindly legs. Her eight unblinking eyes glisten through the shadows the performers have created. She flexes her sharply bent, tall legs experimentally like she’s a real being just emerged from the depths of pre-life. As vast as Lunav’s circular canopy, their puppet version of Lunara looks uncannily alive. A small swarm of flies and bees who’ve stayed for the performance fly backward, away from the nestling. Blaze raises a shaky hand toward the outside, inviting the flies and bees to play.

  “Born knowing of webs and of weaving, Lunara contemplated Lunav’s request. As Lunav asked, Lunara took the tree’s soul into her own body. The first soul keeper.” Aon and Blaze exchange an excited look at that, and for a moment, it’s like que’s not sick at all. Like que’s not dying.

  I remember pleading for my growns to call a soul keeper after Idrisim died. I wonder if Aon will do the same when Blaze’s rattled breath stops. It won’t be long now.

  Jax catches me staring at the two of them and shakes his head slightly at me. Mom’s rhythmic fingers continue massaging my head. I swivel my gaze back to the performance.

  “The spider glowed”—sure enough, an intense golden glow emanates from the nestling—“with the essence of two lives inside her, her own and the tree’s, as she unwound the intricate connections of what had been Lunav’s body into millions and millions of life-givi
ng tendrils.” The tree puppet is being unspun, like unweaving a length of rope, splitting into smaller threads as the elder speaks. I think about Jorbam’s trunk being unwoven like that and shudder.

  “These tendrils, Lunara scattered about the various lands of Lunav, and made sure to sow the tree’s tender leaves and strong trunk branches into the trenches that are now rivers across the lands. A strong wind blew—” And, right on cue, a mighty gust rushes through the Gathering, ticking my face with the scent of the grasses beneath us—“and most of the leaves were carried to the northwest, where today lies the impenetrable wall of soft, lush greenery that borders all of Lunav’s limits.” The Borderland’s unapproachable moss of forestry whisps into being on the map of Lunav above the nestling. “Blown herself by this wind, Lunara overbalanced, letting the biggest, strongest threat of Lunav’s trunk fall to the south, cracking open several lands, expanding the trenches that have become today’s ocean—the Flowing—and all its provinces.” Salty water rains down on the Gathering in a soft mist as the wispy map of Lunav splits according to the narration. Murmurs and shouts of approval flutter through the Gathering. I glance at the Controller, and she looks equal parts bewildered and absorbed. I grin in spite of myself.

  Kashat picks up the tale. “The tree no longer standing, but scattered in pieces across the land, Lunav the tree had given life to Lunav the land. The rivers and oceans began to fill. Lunara laughed heartily as the earth below warmed and seemed to glow with pleasure, anticipating what would happen next. Lunara, the first soul keeper, tenderly breathed out, the luminescence that was Lunav’s soul inside her leaving her body.” The enchanted spider figure flexes her jointed, arched legs as Lunara’s earth-colored soul undulates out of her pincers, mixed intimately with the golden tendrils of her soul keeping magic.