The Timekeeper's Moon Read online

  He folded the cloth. “We don’t even know Dog Moon is on here, not really. The idea of Lunasa made sense to me, but we’re going on nothing but speculation and instinct. We might be mistaken, wildly so. Don’t feel so bad. I’m not sure what we’ll find on our return to the abbey—”

  Unable to stop herself from imagining destruction and death, Ariel cringed.

  “—but even the loss of the Vault would not bring the world to an end.” Scarl said it firmly, defying disaster. “You’ve made new friends in intriguing places. And Electron may teach us a lot, once Sienna shows them that visitors aren’t always a threat. We’ll stay here a few days, if I can find enough to eat, to make sure we’re not missing something. We can try again next summer, too, if you like, starting sooner and taking more time.”

  “No, we can’t.” She rested her chin on her bent knees. “Look at the map. There are two big circles of seasons, one inside the other. Two Augusts. Two chances. We found it last June, and remember what the stone said to Zeke? It told us to leave. We didn’t understand soon enough. We should have come then, right away, but we didn’t. That’s why my dart said, ‘No later than Beltane,’ Scarl. We only had so long to get here. We got one second chance, one more Lunasa. This is our last chance.”

  Unable to argue, Scarl stroked her hair. “We’ll try anyhow. You might be wrong.”

  He and Nace built a shelter of dead boughs against the waterfall’s spray. Ariel ignored it, preferring to shiver. Dread hung on her, pinned down with exhaustion. She feared falling asleep despite her companions’ best efforts. Once dreaming, she’d need only a moment to fall out of a tree. If she did it again, she didn’t expect to survive—not in this time and place, and not in the other.

  She might have found the solution herself if she hadn’t been so discouraged. Nace wandered away briefly, probably to add his body’s own waste to the damp rot all around. He returned quickly. Though he was pinching a moonflower in two fingers, he didn’t give it to Ariel. He only thrust it under her nose, tugged on Scarl’s sleeve, and gestured for them both to follow.

  Eager for any distraction, Ariel got to her feet.

  Scarl groaned. “I’m tired, Nace. What is it?”

  Nace twirled the flower. He didn’t attempt any other answer, but he wouldn’t let Scarl stay behind, either. They picked along the cliff, aided by moonshine. They’d almost left sight of the falls when Nace pointed out a patch of moonflowers at the base of the bluff. Near the end of their short lives, some blossoms had wilted. But enough tattered petals remained to faintly glow in the moonlight.

  Scarl took one look, managed a perfunctory nod, and turned back toward their shelter.

  “Pretty, Nace.” Ariel sighed. She took a step closer—and saw. She lunged after Scarl.

  By the time she turned him around, Nace was standing over their heads on the side of the cliff. He’d followed a sparse path paved in moonflowers. It twisted up the rumpled stone, barely wide enough to accommodate feet.

  “It’s the way up!” Ariel cried. “Cross one moon, follow many …” From where she stood, the trail seemed to disappear above into sheer rock and moss, but it reemerged each time, always trending up and back toward the top of the falls. A missing piece of her heart settled back into place. She knew again what to do. “We’ve got to follow and see what’s up there.”

  Ariel expected Scarl to mutter about breaking their necks. He merely dropped his forehead into his hand.

  “You told me last night I had to let you walk the path once you found it,” he said. “This must be what you meant. It goes against all my judgment, Ariel, but I can’t stand against the forces behind you.”

  He raised his gaze. “You can do it, Nace, but can she? Would you risk her life up there?”

  Nace snapped his fingers: Easy. He scrambled down to them and back up right away, though the path was already fading where he’d trampled the flowers. He extended his hand to Ariel.

  His face grim, Scarl waved for her to proceed.

  The moonflower staircase was neither smooth nor straightforward, but nobody stumbled. Nace led, gripping Ariel’s hand and helping her balance. Hindered by his bad foot, Scarl sometimes lagged, but he always seemed to be right behind whenever she needed another steadying touch. Remembering Mo’s remark about following moonflowers out of the world, Ariel could only promise herself she wouldn’t pick any. Turning back was out of the question.

  The path grew more treacherous, and they slowed as they reached a slick area where water must have gushed most of the year. Even in August, rain might have stopped them. As it was, a sheet of falling water soon cut off their path. Both the top of the falls and the bottom were lost in shimmering mist. The trio pressed against the rock face, exposed. Their trail seemed to have ended.

  Then Ariel spotted a glimmer behind the curtain of water. Sidling around Nace, she plunged her free hand into the icy blast. Not stone but cool air met her touch.

  “Hang on to me, Nace.” Before anyone could protest, she doused her head and shoulders into the downpour and past it.

  Roaring assaulted her ears. The falls thundered here, their noise more stunning for the hush on the other side. Gasping at the cold flood down her back, Ariel blinked until she could make out the source of the gleam. A stone alcove hid there behind the waterfall, glowing moonflowers coating its walls. It looked like the inside of a sunlit seashell.

  Ariel stepped forward—and yanked up short. Nace held her too tightly. She spluttered back through the deluge to urge her friends in behind her.

  They all pushed through the gushing water. At the rear of the alcove, the ceiling disappeared upward. Except for the flower-glow and the moss-scented air, Ariel felt as if she’d crept into a fireplace to stare up the chimney. Fresh air floated down and moonlight gleamed on the close walls above, so clearly the breach opened to the sky. Half circles of gnarled root thrust from the wall below, forming curved ladder rungs in the stone. They led up.

  “Look!” Ariel shouted over the roar of the falls. “More moons, for climbing. I’ve got to go up.” She gripped a rung—and only then noticed the moss clinging to the stone just below. The moss grew in no random patch but a symbol, yellow-green against the black rock. Though drawn oddly backward, the Farwalker symbol sent a thrill of recognition through her.

  Scarl reached to slow her. A tiny, bright jag of lightning passed between them at the touch. It stung. They both flinched.

  “Did you feel that?” he hollered.

  “Like winter shock!”

  As she spoke, the hairs on her arms and neck lifted. Soon her bangs also stuck out from her head. Nace grinned, reaching intentionally to give her that startling zing.

  Impatient with his teasing, she lifted one foot onto the rungs in the wall.

  “Wait,” Scarl yelled. “Those may not hold weight.” He grabbed the rung over her head to test it. With a curse, he jerked back so fast his forearm smacked Ariel’s head.

  “It bit me!” He shook his pained hand. “Like the winter shock, but—” Realizing that she was already gripping the next lower rung, he reached alongside her hand. He swore louder at the second nasty shock.

  “I don’t feel anything,” she said. “But look.” She toed the Farwalker symbol near her knees.

  Nace moved forward to try.

  “Don’t, Nace—,” Scarl began. The boy also yanked back his fingers and thrust their tips into his mouth.

  “I don’t think you can come with me,” Ariel said.

  “Let me go back for a rope,” Scarl replied. “We’ll tie it around you. When you get to the top you can—”

  “No. You can’t help me with this.”

  Scowling, Scarl smoothed the raised hairs on the back of his neck. He didn’t like it, but he knew she was right.

  Ariel let go of the ladder long enough to throw her arms around him. They both ignored the resulting zap.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said into his shirt, almost certain he wouldn’t hear it over the noise of the fall. “Wait f
or me.”

  “Slow down,” he said. “Let’s—”

  “No. This is right.” Releasing him, she turned to Nace. She meant to give him more than a hug, but when their eyes locked, she lost her nerve.

  Nace took it up for her. He extended his hands. They both flinched at the small shock when she put her fingers in his. He drew her forward, the thin space between them melting sweetly. His lips met hers without either of them seeming to cause it.

  A jolt considerably more potent than winter shock coursed through her. Ariel recoiled, needing to see into Nace’s eyes at his thoughts. His lips chased hers for an instant before he straightened his neck and let her go. Unable to draw in a breath, she stared at the wild glint in his gaze. One corner of his mouth pulled into a crooked smile, softening an intensity that weakened her legs.

  She leaned forward again, their lips not quite matching in an awkward but breathtaking way. Then she stepped back before the roar in her head could drown all thoughts of the moon-shaped rungs that awaited.

  “Wait for me.” She added a sweet-name she hadn’t known until Scarl had applied it to her earlier: “Dear ones.”

  She was most of the way up the ladder before her thoughts connected one to the next well enough for her to recall the confusing soft-and-hardness of Nace’s lips or the spicy scent of his damp skin. By then, Ariel was no longer in the same world as the boy she’d just kissed.

  CHAPTER 38

  Moon in the Well

  Ariel pulled herself up through the tight space, staring only at the next higher rung. At first she feared that if she glanced down, the sight of upturned faces might squash her intention and she’d descend, too scared to leave Scarl and Nace. After a few moments of climbing, she supposed that if she peeked down at all, her body would realize how far she could fall. Her arms and knees would start shaking, and a nightmare might wrench loose her grip.

  She reached the moonbeam in the chimney. It cast shadows of her hands on the stone. The hole yawned a goodly way farther up, though. Swallowing hard, Ariel clasped the next grip. She wished she’d thought to count rungs. Her palms and fingers grew sore.

  The echo of her panting made her feel alone. She decided to pretend her friends were following behind her so she’d have someone else to help bear her tension.

  “Almost there,” she told them.

  Her forearms ached by the time she poked her head into clear air. In the last few yards of her climb, the stone had curved, smooth, as though hands and not nature had shaped it. When she broke into moonlight, she saw why. Though she’d begun in a crack through the bedrock, she’d emerged from a mortared stone ring like the mouth of a well.

  Gripping it, she pulled herself out. Once her feet felt solid ground, a spurt of adrenaline left her dizzy and weak. She leaned on the rocks.

  “That was a long way to climb,” she said to her absent companions. “Way taller than a tree.”

  A circle of standing stones guarded the well, each rising over her head. Beyond those loomed a row of evenly spaced but dead trees. Although their skeletal branches clawed at stars in the clear sky overhead, mist rose between them to swirl at Ariel’s knees. Stepping past the sentinel stones and two trees, Ariel could see only a cottony blanket of fog in the moonshine. The abrupt downward slope under her feet told her the trees stood atop a sharp hill. Only its peak breached the fog. No sound rose from below. The waterfall must lie somewhere down to her left, but she couldn’t hear it through the chimney or spy any spray.

  “Now what?” She stepped back toward the well stones to hail Scarl and Nace, if her voice would carry that far.

  Looking down, Ariel yelped in surprise. Dark water filled the hole to within a foot of the rim.

  Her chest tightened. The chimney couldn’t possibly have filled with water behind her. No amount of sudden rain could have filled the crack in the stone, the alcove, and the whole land below it. Other than its rock rim, the well she gazed into now bore no connection to the place where she’d climbed. The moon reflected in water that lay still and stagnant; scum clung against the stone on one side. With a skittering heart, Ariel remembered the wet smell of the map.

  She touched the water to make sure it was real. The reflected moon rippled. She knelt, gritted her teeth, and plunged her arm in to her shoulder, feeling for the first rung. All the way around, her hand met nothing but water and rock. She drew it out, dripping.

  “Guess I’m not going back that way.”

  Trying to swallow the lump in her throat, Ariel scowled at the water. As it stilled, she noticed her reflection. She bent closer. Her hand rose to one cheek, then both. The skin there was smooth. With a grunt of confusion, she shoved up her wet sleeve. No scar marred her left forearm, either. Her fingertips coursed back and forth between her elbow and wrist as though they might find what her eyes couldn’t.

  She looked up to the moon, wondering if its light were playing some trick. It gleamed as bright as the pearl on her necklace. Yet now that she studied it, this moon was wrong. An hour ago, the waning moon in the sky had shown a crumbling edge. This moon shone perfectly full.

  Ariel slumped against the side of the well, clutching the arm that had long borne a scar and staring at that wrongly round moon. After a while, another disturbing fact worked its way through her thoughts. This moon didn’t move. Her viewpoint placed it near the silhouette of a tree branch, but the moon never drew farther away from that branch. Certain she must be mistaken, she rested her cheek on the edge of the well to keep herself still and recited the multiplication of numbers from one to fifteen. It took her nearly ten minutes, and the moon should have rolled its whole width farther along in the sky. Instead, it was frozen. A chill rattled Ariel’s core. If she wasn’t in the land of the dead, she had climbed outside of time.

  “Scarl?” She couldn’t repress the whine in her voice. The thought of him helped, though. She gripped the lip of the well with both hands and tried to slow her uneven breathing. If he were here, what would he do? She imagined it very carefully to keep the panic away. He would wander the circle of stones and the larger circle of trees, looking for hints as to what they should do. He would rub the stubble on his jaw while he considered. He might drop a hand on her shoulder to shush the tremble in her breathing. Then he would tell her, she supposed, to stop thinking and let her instincts guide her.

  Ariel rose. Her knees wobbled. She pressed her feet into the ground to stop the weakness and walked toward the nearest tree. Its bark glistened as though speckled with frost in the moonlight. With one finger, she touched it.

  The branches of several trees swayed overhead, clacking and rubbing together. Ariel jumped back, half expecting one to reach down and swat her. No hint of wind disturbed the fog near her feet.

  “So the moon doesn’t move, but the trees do?” She shuddered with them.

  The trees stilled. Their sound stopped. Then one tree alone trembled and hissed with a noise like a breeze through invisible leaves. Another scraped two creaking branches together. Ariel got the distinct sense they were speaking to her.

  “I’m not a Tree-Singer,” she called. “I can’t understand you.”

  The trees stilled and the silence returned, empty even of a slithering wind. Ariel waited, and when no more trees moved, she slowly traversed them. For a moment, she’d felt less alone in this bewildering place. But now the trees seemed to stare.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m trying.”

  She turned her attention instead to the standing stones nearer the well. These, too, made her wish she weren’t here alone. Surely Zeke Stone-Singer could have helped her right now. The imposing slabs all stood silent, each as tall and wide as a great door. Though they appeared to be uncut, they were so well matched they made Ariel think too much of headstones or coffins. She tried shoving one over simply to see what might happen. She couldn’t budge it.

  In the eerie silence, a sound caught her attention. It seemed to come from the well. She approached and bent over its rim.

  Voices
echoed from its watery depths, low but rising. Her heart leaped as she thought she heard Scarl and Nace. Then she frowned. The next voice, overlapping, belonged to her mother. A louder call she recognized with a sickening jolt: it belonged to her dead enemy, Elbert. The echoes were so thick and distorted, she could make out no more than a few words from each, but the voices themselves came through clearly. Tears sprang to her eyes when she heard Zeke plea for her to come down from the roof.

  Her heart begged to respond, but she knew those voices burbled up from her past. There was nobody down there to answer.

  Still, the sounds drifting upward reminded her that a bead in her necklace carried a story of a well. With new confidence and purpose, Ariel bent backward over the rim, the rocks scraping her back and her hair dunking in the water. That stilled the voices. She cranked her neck sideways to eye the wavering reflection of the moon.

  It hadn’t been in Scarl’s story, but she recited a rhyme that she knew:

  Here I dangle in the well;

  Show what only time will tell.

  Her strained position made her struggle to breathe, but her discomfort vanished when the moonface wavered and twisted. Ariel watched it reshape itself into the open throat of a well. She saw herself there beside it, but the girl in the reflection didn’t arch backward, headfirst. Instead she sat on the edge, threw her feet over, and slipped soundlessly into the water.

  Ariel stared. Perhaps some friendly well sprite was showing her how to get back to her friends. But the girl in the well merely sank like a stone. Ariel held her own breath. After an ominous absence, the girl bobbed back to the surface, her neck limp, her eyes closed, and her face bloated in death.

  With a cry, Ariel flung herself up and away from the image of drowning. Landing hard alongside the well, she curled her legs to her chest. Could that be her true future?

  Sobs rose from the water. Mockery followed.

  “April Fool!”

  “Scarface.”

  “You’re lazy enough, and a goof, too.”

  No longer thinking, Ariel clapped her hands over her ears, jumped up, and fled toward the trees. She aimed past them. The fog tricked her. Where freedom had beckoned, dead branches clawed her. She fought them, only to collide with trunks and stumble over uneven ground. A root hidden by mist sent her sprawling. Picking herself up, she backtracked and crossed the circle to try the far side instead.