Lunav

by Jenn Polish

  “Mama, does that mean they hurt our people? The ones who took them out of the Plains? Kashat and Lerian, Mama!”

  We both stare at Aon and take a simultaneous deep breath.

  “Sadie, if you want to keep your people safe, I have to return to mine,—to the king. Now, and lead him off of your trail, make him believe that you died in a struggle with the Mach, that I’ve been loyal to him all along…”

  “No.” I cut her off, my voice thick with fluid. “Stay. Evelyn, we can protect each other, like you said we could.”

  “I couldn’t protect Fiora, what makes you think I can protect you?”

  Her shout is sudden, anguished, her voice torn, so unexpected that I jump back from her.

  “Evelyn—”

  “Sadie, he murdered Fiora because he saw her with me. He murdered Blaze because I defied him in front of his enemies. What do you think he’ll do to you? To your family? Now that he’s seen me fight alongside you?”

  I look around wildly, at the Grovians streaming in from the Forest, all bearing warnings that the Mach have awoken from the Freeze, that they’re heading back to the Plains. We don’t have much time. The Energies are too strained to try another freeze spell so soon.

  “You don’t have to protect us, Evelyn, we’ve always protected ourselves, and we can protect you. And Iema, we—”

  “Sadie, Xavier’s never ever going to stop, not until he’s satisfied that you are no longer a threat to him.” Her eyes bore into mine, and I almost drown. “Not until he’s satisfied that I’m no longer yours.”

  My breath hitches. I lick my lips. I taste like my own blood, and soot. “Mom and Mama will think of something.”

  “No. Sadie, go into hiding. I still have people in Izla, they’ll keep you safe, you and Zaylam, and Aon. Go on Zaylam’s back, my people will find you on the coast, above Qathram. You can’t protect me, Sadie, but I’m still the queen; I can protect you.”

  Her head is tilted slightly to the side, tears streaming down her face but her mouth slipped into a sad smile, a broken smile. Her eyes refuse to leave mine.

  Our faces are just flutters apart. My hands find her waist, and her fingertips, my face. I am about to say something, anything, to object, to come up with a brilliant plan so she won’t have to go back to him.

  But then we hear them. Storming through the breach in the barrier.

  The soldiers.

  Led by Reve. So the shouts are true. They must have woken and escaped from those who’d been carrying them away. Lerian, Kashat. Aora, P’Tal, Zeel. Tamzel. E’rix. Are they all dead?

  Because here, now, are people there shouldn’t be. Mach soldiers.

  Speeding through the Plains. Toward us. I hear Aon, barely with life back in his body, trying to twist the Energies defensively as Jax and my moms encircle him and curve the Energies into spells that send two of the Mach spiraling off their feet. My growns call my name, Iema screams Evelyn’s. They’re forming a wall between the soldiers and us, blocking us from their view, from their spells. The soldiers can’t see us yet, but my family can’t keep this wall up for long. Even with help from whoever’s come back from the Forest, Aon’s still weak, and there are so many injured to protect—Zaylam, Zaylam among them—that’s more than they can take at once.

  Evelyn’s eyes widen and hold mine harder than they ever have, blazing deeply.

  She pulls my face forward. Touches her forehead to mine. I feel like we’re being caught up in one of those massive waves of water our touch created earlier. Are we doing that again? We might be.

  And then her lips meet mine.

  I taste sorrow and I taste promise. I taste the first moment I laid eyes on her, and I taste last night. Last night? Wasn’t it eons ago?

  I flutter my wings so our bodies are flush against each other, and she wraps her arms around my neck. I deepen our kiss. I feel her smile softly. A tear drips from her face onto mine.

  “Sadie. I’m not going to grieve. Because I’m not losing you. Not for good.”

  “Evelyn, stay, we can—”

  She shakes her head, her hands framing my face, the amber ring in her eyes glowing.

  “But if I did ever lose you, Sadie?”

  The shouts get louder, Iema is calling for Evelyn to leave, to leave now.

  “I would grieve.”

  She’s kissing me again, and I forget everything but her lips, the smooth warmth of her skin, the skyflower tang of her breath.

  “I would grieve you too,” I hope my body tells her. I hope it tells her, because now I’m stumbling on empty air as the Energies rent through me. Painful, but not enough to really hurt me.

  She’s gone.

  Reve, Iema, the other soldiers are gone too.

  “What in Lunav happened?” Aon’s shouting. “Where’d they all go?”

  “Evelyn,” I call out.

  Mama reaches her fingers into the air, into the Energies, around us. They’ve bent so hard the entire Plains smells metallic, now. No magic will come to the Plains for quite some time. “Feels like a snap spell. She must have snapped them all away.”

  Snapped them all away, and absorbed most of the pain of such an immense job into her own body.

  “She saved us, then. All of us, not just me.”

  No one responds to Aon. Everyone just stares at me.

  Her snap spell, so strong I double over like I’ve been hit in the gut, must have saved us all. With that snap spell, taking herself and all the Mach away, she used our last moment together to kiss me, to say goodbye, because she’s saved the Plains, like Aon said. But at the cost of giving herself up to a life with a man she didn’t choose. She doesn’t love the king, but she loves…

  Me.

  A pair of solid hands catch me before I stumble to the ground. Lerian’s.

  I sink into her torso and she curls her arm under my drooping wings.

  A soft wind blows across the Plains, and gentle humming from where Zaylam lies sweetens our ears.

  Aon’s arm meets Lerian’s on the other side of my body, and they hoist me up between them.

  “Come on, faerie. You can cry all those lovesick tears about your joiner later. We’ve got a lot of healing to do right now.”

  “You getting all metaphorical on me now, Ler?” My voice sounds like I haven’t used it in harvests.

  Aon snorts and Lerian rolls her eyes as we set off toward Zaylam. “Maybe I am. I’m full of surprises.”

  The sound of her axe clinking above a sword aimed at Evelyn’s body rings in my memory. Evelyn.

  That wind flutters past again, and it’s laced, somehow, amidst the metallic musk, with the tang of skyflower fruit. Evelyn.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we all are, huh?”

  I don’t hear what Aon and Ler carry on about as we trudge through the still-smoking Plains. I glance toward the Forest, in the direction of the Highlands.

  In the direction of the biggest surprise I’ve ever had, the one I know I’ll see whenever I close my eyes.

  Until, one day, she’s in front of my open eyes again.

  Glossary

  Age-mate: A Grovian faeric term that indicates when people are of the same age; this gets complicated because faeries age faster than humans during childhood, but their growth evens out in teenage years.

  Dream: In Lunav, Dreams are real; when one magical creature is asleep, their Energies can lock with another creature’s that is awake, and the Dreamer will experience the other creature’s waking perspective.

  Energies: The threads of magical potential that enables spell-creation in Lunav.

  The Flowing: The Lunavic ocean, consisting of several provinces, including Qathram, where Plains dragons swam to each year before the Kinzemna massacre.

  The Gathering: The central community space in the Grovian Forest.

  Grove: A Lunavic province consisting of the Forest, the Plains, and the Underland.

  Grown (food): Food that has never been alive, but rather is magicked into existence by centaur and faerie Gr
owers.

  Growns (people): A Lunavic term for parents.

  Hands: A term for human soldiers that work for the human monarch.

  Hatchling mates: Before Slicings destroyed faeries’ ability to Dream, a Lunavad tree from the Plains would have two hatchling mates: one faerie and one dragon. The faerie would Dream the dragon as que was being developed from the tree’s sap, in a bulb on the tree’s branches; this bond will remain between the three of the hatchling mates (the tree, the dragon, and the faerie) throughout their lives.

  Highland: A province of Lunav in which mostly humans (now) live; the seat of the monarchy’s power is in the Highlands.

  Izla: A Grovian province located across the Flowing from the Grove, the Samp, and the Highlands.

  Joiners: A Lunavic term for romantic partners.

  Kinzemna: A Grovian celebration for the dragons that live in the Plains; this holiday marks the departure of the dragons into the Flowing for two seasons each year, where they journey to Qathram (a province in the Flowing).

  Kinzemna massacre: An attack orchestrated by the human monarchy designed to destroy dragons’ ability to live both in the Flowing and in the air/on land; its other motive was to bleed the dragons for their valued blood.

  Lunamez: A Grovian holiday celebrating Lunavic history and origin stories.

  Lunav: A land full of magical creatures and humans, which includes five major provinces: the Highlands, the Flowing, the Grove, the Samp, and Izla.

  Lunavic blood plague: A plague that infects humans, faeries, and centaurs alike; it began after the human monarchy started development projects across Lunav. The plague is only contagious after death, and is allegedly prevented by Slicings.

  Nears: A Lunavic term for teenagers.

  Non: A faeric term for human (has negative connotations).

  The Plains: The most sacred part of the Grove, where Lunavad trees live and where dragons are hatched; since the human monarchy began attacking dragons, the Lunavad trees erected an invisible magical barrier to protect the Plains from invasion.

  The Pits: An underground prison network in the Highlands, notorious in the Grove for disappearing dissidents like Dreamers and soul keepers.

  Que/quer/quer’s: Genderqueer/nonbinary pronouns used in Lunav.

  Soul keepers: Magical creatures (most often, humans, but sometimes faeries or centaurs as well) who can temporarily host the souls of other Lunavic creatures, combining their Energies with the other’s, often to heal them, even bring them back to life, or transfer their soul to another consent-giving body.

  Slicing: A surgical procedure forced on magical newly borns (faeric, human, and centaur) that destroys the ability to Dream. The human government calls Slicings “Initiations” and claims that they eliminate susceptibility to the Lunavic blood plague.

  Tread: A path in the Forest that winds through the Grove, out into the provinces of the Samp, as well as into the human-populated province of Lethe.

  Underland: A Grovian province bordering the Flowing; the major magical creatures that live in the Underland are centaurs.

  Acknowledgements

  Girls who love girls deserve faerie tales about girls who love girls (who will live their happy endings together, even if it takes some obstacle-laden middles). Also dragons. You, reading this, deserve to be friends with dragons. The entire world of this novel springs from that need, from the kinds of stories that we don’t get enough of. But I promise, you deserve them. All of them. So my first thank-you is to LGBTQA+ fandom, to those who have the courage to create and read pieces of the worlds we want to live in. Keep being you, always.

  Jason Bradley, my editor at NineStar: you know the drill by now. You make me a better writer, etcetera. But you also did something so profound: you believed in Sadie and her adventures and love story. You took a chance on singing dragons, and on me, and I will never be able to thank you enough for that. And Beth Phelan, with your #DVpit amazingness: you make publishing—and therefore the world—so much better every day. Thank you doesn’t cover it.

  Marcos, you’ve read pretty much every draft of this thing. You’ve listened to me cry about it, and you’ve been the best cheerleader that Sunnydale High has ever seen (sorry, Cordelia). This time, it’s NOT a trap!! Katie, you enthusiastically endured Sadie’s rambling notes, tied together and called a first draft. Your unwavering support—for my gay disaster characters and my gay disaster self—is something that will glow in my heart forever. Jason, my Nemo, if I’d never FOUND you, I’d have never found enough of myself to write this book. Thank you. Kaysi, Josh, James: from bitmojis and hand-holding to first-times-coming-out and panic-attack-talk-downs, I am so much better because you exist and because (for some reason), you always love me.

  Mom, for library trips, bedtime cuddles, and unwavering love. Dad, for storytelling and memories while looking out over Ostego Lake (and getting soaked while searching for deer). Sis, for feeding ants chocolate and showing me how beautiful spiders are. Aunt Jamie, for telling me that thing about looking at my own eyes in the mirror and one day loving who I see (I remember things!).

  And my angel: I was going to propose to you with the dedication of this book, but alas, the timing was off (and our engagement was still pretty great, huh?). Erika, you are my soul keeper and you are my first kiss amongst the fireflies. You are dragon flights and life-giving tree sap. You are, my darling, everything. Truly: thank you.

  About the Author

  Jenn Polish is the author of two young adult books, Lunav and Lost Boy, Found Boy. Their debut novella, Lost Boy, Found Boy, is a scifi re-telling of Peter Pan in which Neverland is a holomatrix, Hook is a bisexual cyborg, and Tink is an asexual lesbian computer interface. Their debut novel, Lunav, a lesbian faerie tale, features dragons that grow on trees and friendship amongst rebellion. They teach Theater and English in the CUNY system, where they are also a doctoral candidate in English. They live in New York with their fiancée and their fantasies of having multiple puppies.

  Twitter: @jpolishwrites

  Website: www.jpolish.com

  Other books by this author

  Lost Boy, Found Boy

  Also Available from NineStar Press

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