Moon

by Aaron Ehasz

  He kicked his knees up in the air and crossed his arms out in front of him. He made funny faces too, which had been his idea back when Ezran and he made the deal about this silly dance being used to resolve their deepest conflicts. The faces really took things to another level.

  The giant spider resumed screaming and Ezran laughed. “It’s Callum’s Famous Jerkface Dance!” he called to the others. Callum hammed it up even more.

  Rayla, Ellis, and Ava came out of hiding and took in both the spider and Callum’s moves.

  “I’m not sure which is more terrifying,” Rayla said. “But if the spider is fake, then what is it? And what’s it doing here?”

  Ezran cheered. “I think the spider wants more dancing—knees higher! Knees higher!”

  Callum danced until his stomach hurt from laughing.

  With lighter hearts and high hopes, the group left the fake spider behind. They arrived at the base of the hollow tree a few minutes later. The trunk was as large as a small cottage and rose what had to be at least one hundred feet into the night sky.

  “This is it!” Ellis said. “We were hiding in that tree when the miracle healer found us. It was the only shelter I could find from all the snow and monsters. Remember this place, girl?” Ava licked Ellis’s face. “This way, guys.” Ellis led the group into the hollow of the tree through a small triangular space, like the opening to a tent. Inside the hollow was a cavelike expanse covered in moss and fungi.

  “So, now what?” Callum asked, pacing around the perimeter. “Do we just call for her? Miracle Healer! Hello. We’re here.” He started waving his hands in the air.

  “I don’t know. I just showed up, and then she showed up,” Ellis said.

  “Yeah, I don’t see why that shouldn’t work,” Callum said.

  But as soon as Callum had closed his mouth, a soft glow began to light the hollow.

  Rayla turned toward the light, which was coming from just outside the tree. “Actually, I think it is working,” she said. She pointed to the moon as the gang piled out of the tree hollow.

  A figure seemed to emerge as if from the moon, getting larger as it approached the tree. Rayla could make out wings so broad they appeared as wide as the moon itself.

  She shielded her eyes as the animal got closer, and it glided to a stop near the tree.

  “It’s a moon phoenix,” Rayla said. She hadn’t seen one since she was a small child. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “I thought the moon phoenix was just a myth,” Callum said.

  “Not the first time you’ve been wrong today, buddy,” Rayla replied.

  Fair enough, Callum thought. He took in the bird’s dazzling plumage. Streaks of blue and purple highlighted its thick dark feathers, which appeared iridescent and magical in the moonlight. He resisted the urge to pull out his sketchbook and begin drawing the luminous creature right then and there.

  Callum watched as the phoenix knelt and a passenger dismounted. The woman sprang lightly from the bird’s back. She wore a long blue cloak covered with crystals. Her snow-white hair was wound up in a knot on top of her head, and two braided plaits hung in front of her ears. Her very presence seemed to calm Callum’s racing heart.

  But Rayla’s reaction was not calming.

  “Ez was right,” Rayla suddenly burst out. “That’s no miracle healer. She’s a fake.”

  “What? How do you know?” Callum asked. He’d never met a healer before, but this woman seemed gentle, like he imagined a healer would.

  “She’s a Moon mage, an illusionist,” Rayla explained. “She can’t heal anything.”

  It’s true,” the Moon mage said. She placed her hand on her chest. “I am no healer. I am Lujanne, Guardian of the Moon Nexus.”

  Oohh, Callum thought. Then he realized he had no idea what a Moon Nexus was.

  “I’m such an idiot!” Rayla said. “I should have figured it out. None of those monsters were real; they were all illusions.”

  “Yes,” Lujanne said. “They were just to scare you. That’s how I protect the Nexus.”

  “But … I don’t understand,” Ellis said. “If you’re not a real healer, how did you save Ava’s leg?” She placed her gloved hand on Ava’s fourth leg.

  Callum had been wondering the same thing. Sort of. Honestly, it was a lot to follow.

  Lujanne smiled. She walked over to Ava and caressed the wolf’s head. “I remember you and that little cub, both so frightened and sad,” she said to Ellis. “I saw she had lost her leg. And I understood that humans would have trouble accepting her. But I knew her spirit was strong, and that was all that really mattered. To help you, I created an illusion: a leg that others would see, even though it wasn’t real. I enchanted the Moonstone collar to hold the spell.”

  Lujanne knelt beside Ava, who was panting happily. She carefully removed the Moonstone collar. Within a few seconds, the spell cast by the collar faded and Ava’s fourth leg disappeared in a twinkling yellow light. There she stood, on her three strong legs. The wolf continued to pant happily.

  “She never needed that fourth leg to be happy. Everyone else did,” Lujanne said.

  Callum smiled. Even though Lujanne couldn’t heal Ava’s leg, she had helped in the way she could, and it had made all the difference to Ellis and Ava these last few years.

  “But the help we need is real,” Ezran suddenly said. “An illusion won’t help us.” He walked over to Lujanne and set down his backpack. Slowly, he lifted the flap of the bag and revealed the dragon egg. It flickered weakly.

  Rayla stepped forward. “It’s the egg of the Dragon Prince. It was stolen, but we saved it.” She winced, realizing that even with all their efforts the egg might die after all. “I mean, we were trying to save it and return it to its mother. But there was a terrible accident—”

  Lujanne interrupted Rayla with a wave of her hand. She touched the egg’s shell lightly and then sighed. “Its life is fading quickly. The only chance of saving it now would be to hatch it.” She frowned. “But that won’t be possible. Sky dragons can only be born in the eye of a storm.” She gestured around them. “The weather is clear for miles.”

  Rayla gazed up at the sky, her heart growing heavier by the second. There wasn’t a single cloud; the moon and stars shone brightly.

  “No, that can’t be,” Ezran said. “There has to be a way to save it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lujanne said.

  Rayla and the others watched, crestfallen, as the dimly glowing egg finally went dark, the last of their hope fading with its light and life.

  Rayla suddenly felt like she was suffocating. “I dropped the egg through the ice—this is all my fault,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

  “No, this is not your fault,” Callum said. He couldn’t let Rayla carry that burden alone. “I should have trusted you. Things only went wrong because we kept fighting.”

  “I let you both down,” Rayla said. Tears continued to pour from her violet eyes. “I let the world down.”

  “You tried, Rayla,” Ezran said, wrapping his arms around her. He was crying too. “You’re so good and brave.”

  Callum took a deep breath, a lump rising in his throat. They had come all this way for nothing. The egg would die. The elves and humans would continue their war. There would never be peace.

  A wave of grief washed over him. The feeling was familiar from the days following his mother’s death, and with the thought of Queen Sarai, Callum’s sadness grew; she would have been so proud if Callum and Ezran had made things right. But there was nothing Callum could do for the egg now, just as there had been nothing he could do for his mother back then. Maybe if I were a powerful mage, he thought, or knew more spells to do with the primal stone—

  “Wait a minute,” he said. Sky dragons can only be born in the eye of a storm.

  A sense of certainty unlike any Callum had ever felt welled up inside him. “I know what I have to do,” he announced.

  He pulled the primal stone from his bag and lifted it high in the air,
clouds swirling and lightning crackling within. A day ago—an hour ago, even—this orb had seemed all important to him.

  But none of that mattered now.

  In one swift motion, Callum smashed the stone on the ground. The orb shattered, releasing the storm it had long contained. Wind surged upward with torrential force. Blue lightning zoomed into the sky and gray storm clouds rose into the night air.

  Down on the ground, the wind whirled around faster and faster, strong as a hurricane. Everyone crouched down and gripped rocks and tree roots to resist being blown off the caldera.

  But the only thing protecting the dragon egg was Ezran’s backpack. A strong gust blew the precious egg from the ground, sending it somersaulting toward the edge of the cliff.

  “Nooo!!” Ezran cried, reaching out his arm toward the egg.

  Rayla knew this was her time to act. The egg had nearly died once because of her; she wouldn’t let it happen again. She pushed herself forward, straining against the violent winds. She battled through the storm in the direction of the egg, her head down.

  She was only feet away when a gust pushed the egg to the very edge of the cliff. She dove and grabbed it with her injured arm, then clutched it against her chest.

  But as Rayla tried to return to safer ground, the winds picked up, hurling branches and rocks directly at her and the egg. She ducked and stayed low, covering the egg as well as she could to protect it, but the debris crashed into her arms and legs, loosening her grip on the ground. The force of the storm was punishing; she’d have to do more to stay on the mountain.

  She grabbed her blade with her good hand and spiked it into the ground like a stake. The powerful winds lifted her whole body aloft, the blade the only thing keeping her from blowing away.

  “Hold on, Rayla,” Callum called out.

  Rayla gritted her teeth as she strained against the wind. The pain in her injured arm was worse than she had ever felt in her life, but she was determined that no force in this world would remove the egg from her protection. She closed her eyes and found the quiet place in her mind like Runaan had taught her.

  Finally, finally, Rayla felt a break in the wind. She glanced above her—the eye of the storm had started to open.

  A few moments later, the winds died down to create a calm space within the storm. Rayla’s body came back to the ground, and Callum, Ezran, and the others were able to stand and move around, the spiraling walls of the storm rising all around them.

  Above them, cracks of lightning sparked in the clouds, occasionally crossing through the eye of the storm. It wasn’t long before stray lightning found contact with the egg, which was still in Rayla’s arms. She saw the electricity linger within the egg, and then something began to change.

  Ezran watched Rayla set the egg down carefully as it began to glow again. It grew brighter and brighter, attracting more and more lightning bolts. At first the lightning was white, like Ezran had seen many times in his life, but as the storm interacted with the egg, forks of gold and pink and teal began to appear. The egg slowly rose off the ground.

  And then, to Ezran’s amazement, the entire storm came alive in a spectacular rainbow of colors. He stared in awe at the wonder in the clouds, hope growing in his chest, then turned his attention back to the egg.

  Crack. The sound was barely audible above the roar of the storm. A crack appeared on the egg, then another, then many more. Ezran’s heart beat faster.

  The cracks widened, sending beams of light streaming out into the sky. Ezran felt like he himself might burst.

  Then all at once, the storm went still. The light from the egg faded, and it came to rest on the ground.

  One second passed, then two. Ezran hardly dared breathe. Five seconds, six. The egg remained still. Ten seconds, twelve. When Ezran could stand it no longer, he scooped up Bait and tiptoed to the egg, afraid of what he might see—or not see.

  Pop. A piece of the egg fell away. Ezran broke into a huge grin and leaned in.

  A tiny blue creature strained to push its head out into the world. It yawned the cutest yawn Ezran had ever seen and broke free of the shell. Its eyes were still sealed shut and it took a few clumsy steps with its oversized paws.

  “Come on, Bait, help him! His eyes are stuck,” Ezran said. He nudged Bait toward the baby dragon.

  Bait looked back at Ezran, utterly mortified. He had never liked baby creatures, and Ezran knew it.

  “You need to lick his eyes open,” Ezran insisted.

  Bait begrudgingly licked the baby dragon’s eyes, and in a few seconds, they started to unseal and open up.

  The dragon leaped at Bait, licking him like a happy puppy, then made an affectionate sound that Ezran was pretty sure meant “Mama?” in baby Draconic.

  Then the dragon hopped over to Ezran, making little dragon squeals. Ezran scooped him up and put his ear to its mouth, hardly believing he was about to communicate with a dragon.

  “You know your own name!” he said a moment later. “It’s Azymondias? We’ll call you ‘Zym.’ ” He turned the dragon to face Rayla, who looked relieved but was nursing her injured hand. Zym stared at her with curiosity.

  “That’s Rayla,” Ezran said to Zym. “You almost blew off this mountain, but Rayla saved you.” Hearing Ezran’s words, Rayla began to weep with joy and relief.

  The baby dragon bounded over to Rayla and nuzzled her injured arm. He seemed sad to see her constricted hand.

  “Aw, it’s okay little one,” Rayla said. She scratched Zym underneath his chin. “The important thing is you—one miracle is enough for me today.”

  But Zym took hold of her binding between his small, nubby teeth. He tugged at it a few times, then bit down hard and pulled with all his strength. The binding snapped and the baby dragon tumbled backward.

  Where magic swords, elven blades, and the sun’s undying heat had been useless, the blunt teeth of this newborn dragon severed Rayla’s binding.

  Rayla massaged her hand, hardly believing it when life returned to her fingers. Zym pressed his cheek against hers as she wiped tears from her eyes.

  Claudia and Soren ditched their horses when they hit icy ground near the top of Mount Kalik and trekked the rest of the way to the peak on foot. Claudia took a moment to survey the amazing vista, then began setting up her tracking spell on a snow-covered boulder. She unfurled a parchment map and set the jar of faintly glimmering wisps on top of it. She placed a mortar and pestle with the elf’s severed braid beside the jar.

  Soren watched Claudia at work, using his arms to warm himself and stop his shivering. “Couldn’t you do this someplace warmer?” he asked.

  “No,” Claudia said, without taking her eyes off her work. “But if you like, I can use these rare components to conjure a magical blanket for you, instead of using them to locate the lost princes. You would be insanely comfortable.”

  “Fine. I’ll suffer,” Soren said.

  Claudia took a flint from her pocket and lit a spark that incinerated the braid. She began chanting and purple energy seeped out of the burning hair into her fingertips. Soon, her eyes were glowing purple as well.

  Claudia wrapped her hands around the jar and chanted some more, transferring the energy from her hands to the wisps. The creatures turned purple and glowed brighter. They started buzzing rapidly within the jar, with so much growing energy and intensity it seemed the jar might explode.

  With a flick of her wrist, Claudia uncorked the jar and the supercharged wisps streaked out. They arced like a purple meteor across the sky, shooting off into the distance. Meanwhile, a purple line appeared on the parchment, tracing a path from Mount Kalik … to the Cursed Caldera.

  “There! That’s where we’ll find them,” Claudia said.

  Her eyes faded to a vacant black.

  Rayla, Callum, and Ezran (and Bait), along with their new friends, Ellis and Ava, sat down in a circle and watched Zym learn to walk and play. The newborn bounded around, testing out his brand-new legs, tripping over his own wings, and sniffing the co
ol mountain air.

  As Zym played, an unusual purple light rose in the sky and shone down on the caldera.

  “Look. What is it?” Ezran asked, pointing to the purple arc.

  When the meteor reached a zenith above them, it burst like a firework, and thousands of tiny lights dispersed in every direction. The group danced around in the purple glow, laughing and giggling.

  One of the unusual lights landed on Rayla’s hand and she smiled. It was unlike any creature she’d ever seen. “They’re gentle—they even tickle a little,” she said. She blew the delicate creature off her hand, and Zym batted at it in the air.

  Another one landed on Bait’s nose and he crossed his eyes in a grumpy stare. Then he flicked his tongue out and swallowed the creature … only to burp it back up a moment later. Everyone laughed.

  Lujanne observed the merriment but didn’t join in. She looked back at where the meteor had originated and furrowed her brow. The birth of the Dragon Prince had been a great miracle, but danger and darkness would soon come.

  Aaron Ehasz grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied philosophy in college with the obvious goal of one day making cartoons and video games. Aaron was the head writer of the beloved series Avatar: The Last Airbender and is co-creator of The Dragon Prince.

  Melanie McGanney Ehasz grew up in New York City, surrounded by books and tall buildings, and has a master’s degree in English literature.

  Aaron and Melanie live with three children and two fur children in Santa Monica, California, where they are surrounded by books and palm trees.

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