Below the Moon

by Alexis Marie Chute

  Tuggeron rubs together the palms of his callused grey hands. “But since we have this helpful little girl”—Tuggeron kicks Xlea to her knees, which scratch on the stone stage and begin to weep blood—“we don’t need to obey the usual rules. Like the Steffanus race themselves, possessing both human attributes and Naiu, we can move smoothly between the worlds. And you all know what that means!”

  The Bangols roar.

  “Right! We travel to the Star, harness it to our will, and own every sunset that will ever be!”

  Archie’s limbs are weak. He slouches where he squats, feeling altogether overwhelmed and out of his depth. Then Zeno advances. The Bangol does not see Archie, Lillium, or Luggie as he slips by. The hairs on Archie’s arms stand at attention.

  Zeno, all four feet of him, slinks along in shadow. He scurries up one of the stone pillars that flank the amphitheater, unseen by the king Bangol, and creeps onto the band shell above the crumbling throne. He collects a stone, rubs it between his palms, then chucks it down, connecting squarely with Tuggeron’s head.

  Archie covers his mouth. On the journey the first company had taken, Zeno refused to leave Archie’s side. On their rest breaks, the Bangol taught Duggie-Sky how to throw a clay ball, without much luck by the boy. “He really does have good aim!” Archie whispers to himself. Luggie scowls.

  Tuggeron blinks, though no pain or confusion flash across his sneering face. He bends down and collects the shattered pieces of the blood-tinged rock scattered around his hairy grey toes that peek through his boots. He grinds the rock in his thick grip, then picks up his broken head-stone that a moment before joined with others in a crude rocky crown.

  Tuggeron’s words are deep, humorless, calculated. “Who did this?”

  All bright yellow eyes shoot upward, even those of Tuggeron, who says snidely, “Welcome home, Zeno.”

  A hush rolls across the stone-wielders, those on the earth and those on the stage, like morning fog, sending a chill down every back. Archie’s hands stay cupped over his mouth and Lillium dives again into hiding within his breast pocket.

  With a proud, menacing snarl, Zeno grins down at Tuggeron from his perch. Archie knows the expression well, yet now it is fully delivered and drips with loathing. Zeno calls forth a dozen stones that meet his feet as he climbs from the band shell and western pillar onto the stage to face Tuggeron.

  “You murdered the true king, my father,” Zeno begins. Many Bangols in the audience growl, unaware of the truth. “You imprisoned my brother, Winzun, and me, in a cell on the eastern shore, torturing us with Naiu, which was never intended for such brutality.” He takes a step toward Tuggeron. “Then you banished me and Winzun to Jarr’s pitiful derivative.” Another step. “And when Winzun found his way back here, you slaughtered him, too.” Zeno is now within arm’s reach of the king.

  “Guards!” Tuggeron calls, but there is no answer. No feet scuffle across the rocky earth to his aid.

  “How,” continues Zeno, “would you like me to repay your kindness, Tuggeron?”

  The stone king is silent but for the grinding of his teeth. Tuggeron narrows his buttery eyes and scans the faces of the Bangols below the stage. “I am going to lead you to the Star!” he bellows, as if their lust equals his own. Still, no grey-skinned beings advance or even flinch. Archie recognizes faces in the crowd: Bangols Zeno made eye contact with before confronting the king.

  Tuggeron roars, grabs his stone mallet, and wields it. Before the weapon can come down on Zeno, a storm that has begun to rage overhead crashes deafeningly. Zeno raises his fingers, calling forth the power of Naiu that makes up every cell in his body—his earth, clay, water, and stone—and rages. Again, a rumbling resounds through Jarr-Wya, bringing with it the unstable scratch of granite against quartz and the crack of separating shale.

  The weapon falls, as does Tuggeron, in the downpour of pebbles, carved stones, and one final boulder, which ends the life of the Bangol king. Tiny trickles of putrid blood slip between cracks in the new ten-foot-tall mound of rocks. Zeno is unharmed, only peppered with dust.

  Archie turns to Luggie. No child should watch their parent die, Archie thinks. Even if that father is Tuggeron.

  The crouching Bangol wears an expression Archie cannot read. Luggie’s lips curl in anger, his sharp teeth bared, and a low snarl emanates from his locked jaw. His eyes, however, betray the well of heartache.

  It must be hard to love a father who doesn’t love you in return, reflects Archie sadly, and his death seals off all possibility of reconciliation or even the words, “I’m sorry.”

  Archie thinks of the Steffanus Laken and her confession to him on the floating rock of Baluurwa in a different time. He wonders how the 29th Lord of Olearon can manifest himself through the 30th. Archie spent his lifetime knowing neither the love of a father nor his rebuke. He slips down to sit beside Luggie on the ungiving earth and loops his arm around the Bangol’s shoulders. Luggie does not pull away as tears plunge from his great, glowing yellow eyes.

  Chapter 22

  Tessa

  The shellarks swim lazily, pacing the line between the elevated sea and the trembling island as the tidal wave closes in on the Great Tree and the Fairy Vineyard. Drowned wyverns, the underwater dragons, wind around the shellarks. The wyverns, barely visible except for their ghost-like, glossy, charcoal scales, have strong hind legs and sweeping wing fins. They have no forearms. Webbing connects their toes, the curves of their wings, and even where strong joints bend as they tread the water. The drowned wyverns whip barbed serpent tails. As they turn, their grey scales flash yellow, defining their monstrous forms.

  “We call them drowned,” says Azkar in a rumbling voice, “but the wyverns are very much alive.”

  Tessa fumbles to retrieve the weapon she had been given in the glass city before they set off. This is her first time drawing any weapon, let alone a glass one. She had accepted it hesitantly from Ardenal, who told her he would always protect her as he did Ella and hoped she would never have a use for the blade.

  Tessa mirrors Nate and many of the others in the company, biting down on her knife. Her tongue barely grazes the glass dagger, and she feels it slice the top layer of her skin. The bitter taste of blood fills her mouth. She wraps herself around the tree as tightly as she can, with Nate holding her close.

  The wave cracks through the first branches on the farthest edge of the Great Tree.

  Leaves are torn from stems, and branches bow. Many break as they pierce the water and lacerate the smooth wave. All at once, the sea splashes out from where the branches have punctured, opening passages between wet and dry and fatally mixing the two. In the last moment before the wave slaps Tessa’s face, she can hear Junin’s battle scream, which sends heat through her limbs. It bolsters her belief, however irrational, that the company and the sprites will indeed survive the flood.

  The water’s affront is brutally intentional, and Tessa feels Nate’s nails dig into her as he holds her tightly. She blinks away the soupy water, which temporarily blinds her, to look up to where Ardenal’s head butts the wave like a battering ram. His hands do not slip from the branch where his fingers have burned deeply into the blue bark. Ella’s head is thrust against his chest and bubbles float out from her mouth as she cries, though Tessa hears nothing. It is as if the entire world of Jarr has been muted, muffled beneath the flood. A small flock of green birds drown as soon as they are birthed from Ella’s pale lips.

  Ella opens her eyes. She and Tessa watch each other as the wave fully submerges them, and they are no longer pushed by its force but pulled in its current. Tessa can feel her tongue again rub up against the glass dagger. More blood trickles down her throat, the metallic taste mixing with the water that floods her nostrils. She swallows it all, feeling bloated and out of breath.

  Still, Tessa and Ella watch each other.

  Mom, I’m scared.

  Me, too, Ell.

  Mom! Look out! A shel—

  Tessa turns as Nate releases her, grabs
his knife, and jams the blade into one reflective eye. The shellark lets out a rumbling growl that makes the water quiver in radiating ripples. It lifts one leg, retracts its claws, and scratches four long cuts across Nate’s upper arm. He chokes on water, pain creasing his swollen face. His features are ethereal in the light of the thwarted sun, which sends weak, haunting beams through the floating debris of leaves, sand, and swirls of mud. Nate’s blood leaks into the water and surrounds him and Tessa in a murky cloud of crimson.

  Mom, get away! Swim to me!

  I can’t see where to go—it’s so thick. I’m choking.

  My mind is going black! Mom …

  Ella?!

  In the same moment that Tessa feels too swollen with water and blood to move, or even continue thinking—her stomach bulging, air gone from her lungs, her body surrendering to the cradle of the wave—she is poked sharply in the ribs. Then she receives a jab to her leg. In her blackening vision she catches sight of a crab scuttling through the water, appearing like an apparition through Nate’s curling blood.

  The crab turns to her and smiles. It will be okay, strange one. It places the thought into Tessa’s mind. I am a blamala crab. Blll-aaa-maaaalll-aaa! The blamala smiles again.

  Its azure shell is enormous, like a small car. It continues to poke Tessa until it has a firm grip on her with two of its legs, covered in its exoskeleton. The blamala’s oversized claws begin to move frantically, as if knitting a blanket before its droopy pearl eyes. Tessa studies the creature in her last coherent moments: its quirky smile, its barnacle-covered shell, and the blanket it creates. But, wait! she thinks. It is not a blanket at all, but a bubble!

  The bubble grows between the points of the crab’s claws, and, finally, when the creature has judged it large enough, it sets Tessa and Nate inside. Tessa gasps and inhales deeply, throwing up water and replacing it with air.

  With her first breath, she wheezes and sputters. “My daughter, please, she’s four branches up, that way.” Tessa points. She leans against the bubble, pressing her face to its tacky, sour-smelling film, watching. She is reminded of how she peered through the glass partition at the hospital, viewing Ella’s failing radiation treatments. The beam was directed at the soft pink skin on the back of Ella’s neck. Tessa was as helpless then—with the fear of the newly discovered cancer, the weariness of the endless exams, with failing hope—as she is now.

  The blamala rockets its crab-like body from Tessa’s bubble toward Ella and Ardenal, though in its speed it tumbles awkwardly. Turning to Nate, Tessa blows air into his lungs and beats his chest as she had seen Ardenal do to Nameris not long before the wave overtook them. Nate comes to with a jerk and a wince of pain. He reaches for his bleeding arm. Tessa rips a piece of her skirt from her tattered dress and ties it around the wound.

  “I’m supposed to be the one protecting you, not the other way around,” says the trembling sea captain with a bashful grin. Tessa laughs and kisses him quickly before she returns to watch the blamala.

  When the blue crab nears Ella and Ardenal, its legs outstretched, a shellark appears through the debris. It dives down on the blamala and tears off one azure claw in a merciless bite. Tessa stumbles back in the bubble. Nate steadies her. Suddenly, from behind the shellark, a drowned wyvern approaches. It drops its jaw and releases red breath—not fire as Tessa expects, but boiling water. The wounded blamala points with its remaining pincer, and another crab-like creature swoops in and begins to weave a bubble for Ella and Ardenal. The boiling water encircles the wounded blamala, cooking it. Its shell morphs from blue to electric violet. Its body grows still and it floats to the water’s surface, where it floats belly up.

  When the second blamala has formed its air bubble, it shoves in the two unresponsive bodies. Wake up! Tessa screams in her mind, using her power to pry into her daughter’s subconscious. Ella, you must breathe! Ella? Can you hear me? Tessa presses her fingers to her temple. Bulging veins throb in angry lines across her forehead.

  Mmm. Aaawww. Mmmmm … Ella’s voice is drawn out, and heavy like soggy bread.

  Ella! Oh, thank God! Do CPR on your dad! Hurry!

  Ella moves slowly, vomits slimy water, then hustles to help him. To Tessa’s relief, Ardenal is revived quickly.

  Junin floats motionless in a nearby bubble, rocking within the wave beyond Tessa’s reach. Through the murky water, Tessa spots other blamala crabs swimming around the Great Tree, weaving bubbles for the company and the sprites. The blamalas also battle the shellarks, cutting off their heads and legs with their lethal claws before the shellarks can retract them inside their shells.

  Tessa jams her hand against the wall of their bubble. It shivers and bounces her arm back with equal force. She takes a deep breath and thrusts both hands forward, fingers fanned out. This time, her hands pass through, but the bubble does not pop. Her reaching arms are inches shy of Junin’s limp red body. Tessa pulls back.

  “Nate, can you help?” The pale man nods. Together they shift to the far side of the bubble, a mere five steps, and then sprint forward, throwing their weight against the tacky surface. The bubble jerks forward through the water a measly distance. Tessa and Nate keep pushing until Nate needs to sit and apply pressure to his wound, but Tessa continues—until her hands reach through one bubble and into another. She clutches the drenched warrior garb and with all her strength pulls Junin through both bubbles’ walls.

  The stoic Olearon is unusually quiet, her motherly expression wiped from her face and replaced with green ocean algae. Tessa flips Junin onto her back, repeatedly pumps the Olearon’s chest, and blows air down her waterlogged throat. Finally, Junin belches—uncharacteristic of one with her polished demeanor—and water spills out of the corners of her colorless lips.

  “Thank you, Tessa Wellsley.” Junin’s voice is a scratch.

  “The giant crabs,” Tessa begins, brushing off the gratitude, “they’re making bubbles, saving us, and fighting the shellarks, though they’re no match for the drowned wyverns.”

  “The blamala have long been friends to the Olearon. Where’s Ella? Ardenal?” asks Junin, sensing Tessa’s worry. Tessa points.

  “We need to get to them!” Nate says from behind the women. “Now!” He dashes to the far edge of the bubble, preparing to hit the other side. Tessa joins him, beaming. She feels a flutter of gratitude despite the fear coursing through her skin. Ella is not Nate’s daughter, yet he has made her safety as important as his own. Tessa tucks the appreciation in the back of her mind, saving it to express later.

  “If we run and shove the bubble, we’ll get there.” Tessa shows Junin. “With our weight combined, we’ll move faster.”

  With thirty pushes the three bounce up against Ella and Ardenal. Nate and Tessa pry their fingers through their bubble, Ella and her father doing the same. They pinch together the edges of both gummy capsules, forming the two into one large peanut-shaped bubble. Ella falls into Tessa’s arms. As they embrace, the wetness of their clothing squishes out between mother and daughter and pools at their feet.

  Ella takes Tessa’s shoulders, fear marking her face. Mom, another shellark!

  Nate orders, “Everyone, thrust your weapons through. Carefully now. We must wound it before it punctures our ride!”

  Ardenal, Tessa, and Junin slash the water with glass weapons, and Nate with the blade from his boot with its hilt carved in nautical symbols matching the black tattoos that ink his arms. Together they shred the face of the nearest shellark. The creature wails with trembling vibrations, causing the five to tumble back onto the sticky bubble. The shellark retracts its head into its shell, and with its meaty legs swims blindly away. It bashes against other shellarks, spinning them off course.

  Nate and Tessa spot Lady Sophia, who sits timidly in a round bubble. Her body is hidden under the crinoline of her ball gown, and she nibbles her chipped ruby-painted nails. Then Azkar and Nameris drift into view, also surrounded by a bubble of tacky blamala crab saliva. The company all push their bubbles, which connect t
o the others, forming one large, lopsided sphere.

  “You saved me!” Lady Sophia beams at Tessa, who coordinates the hunt to collect stragglers in their cramped, lonely capsules. “Muchas gracias mi querido!” Pink rushes back into the singer’s cheeks.

  The amalgamated bubble now has enough buoyancy to lift the company swiftly toward the surface. Ardenal, Tessa, Nate, Nameris, Ella, Azkar, Junin, and Lady Sophia reach out of the tacky barrier as they rise. They grab the palm-sized air pockets containing the sprites, pulling their tiny bodies into the sour air of their sticky bubble.

  Petite voices surround the company. The sprites cheer and encourage them, flapping water from their wings and stirring the dank air. They also weep for their vineyard and the Great Tree, which floats limply in broken pieces on the surface above them, mixed with the vivid purple blamala crabs drifting on the deathly sea. Under the debris and below the company’s rising bubble, the living azure blamalas battle shellarks and dodge drowned wyverns, tangling through a swirl of leafy vines and drunken, wilting ohmi grapes.

  “We must direct our bubble,” Junin hollers. “See there? The wave has crashed against the side of Baluurwa. The water is retreating now, but not swiftly enough.”

  “You are right,” says Nameris. “If our bubble reaches the surface, it will pop, and we will have to swim a great distance to safety. Surely the shellarks will return when they see us helplessly treading water.”

  Lady Sophia gulps. “Let’s hurry for the mountain!”

  Junin nods as she withdraws to the farthest edge of the bubble. The company follows her but for the sprites who waft overhead, keeping out of the way. The company charges the opposite wall of the bubble, turning at the last moment to smash its smooth surface with their backs. The bubble shivers, lurches, and thankfully does not pop. It moves in a jerky fashion through the wave, dragging against the suck of the sea, which pulls its soupy water back from where it came along the northwestern coast. The company continue, undeterred though tiring.