The Crescent Stone

by Matt Mikalatos

  “Then I will be dead, and you will soon join me.” She laughed at the look on his face. “But at least the lion cub lives!”

  She spun back, staff in hand, and shouted a high-pitched, ululating war cry. Jason counted out the twenty steps, then turned left and ran full speed.

  The sand stung his face. He lifted his hands, trying to shield his eyes. The wind howled, and in the distance he heard the wylna raise an answering howl. Cries and the sound of battle came from behind, and then he couldn’t see more than a step or two ahead.

  Baileya appeared beside him, took his hand, and corrected his course. The sand lifted for a moment, and he saw the Scim, not far behind. He saw the lion cub between them and the Scim. Or no, it wasn’t the lion cub at all, it was a young girl, limping in front of the Scim, as if she could stop them herself. The girl glanced at Jason and smiled.

  She held up her arms and shouted something, and a curtain of sand lowered over the Scim, eventually obscuring the girl as well.

  In the cover provided by the howling sandstorm, Baileya pulled Jason up a series of solid stones jutting out of the sand. She found a cleft in the rock, pushed him in, and followed after. She loosened her belt—more of a sash, really—carefully unfolding it until it was almost the size of a bedsheet. She lifted it so it kept out the sand, tucking it into the clefts of the rock to form a makeshift tent. They settled side by side, panting, and listened to the static of sand on stone.

  31

  THE WASTED LANDS

  Do not cry in the darkness, but follow the small bright star.

  FROM A TRADITIONAL SCIM LULLABY

  They flew for a while in sunlight. Madeline loved the blue sky studded with white clouds. She even saw, off to the west, the sparkling expanse of the sea. The Ginian Sea, according to Darius, the home of the Zhanin, the shark people. As they continued southward, she saw an impossibly large forest, with trees as high as thin mountains. She asked Darius about it, but he pointed instead toward the southeast.

  “The Wasted Lands,” he said in his harsh Skull voice.

  It rose up like an angry, dark cloud or a tidal wave. Somehow the sunlight didn’t penetrate the column of darkness that towered over that place. Campfires and torches dotted the distant landscape. The owl descended in lazy, looping arcs as they fell toward the northern edge of the blackness. They landed in a strange twilight where bright daylight shone at their backs and full night stood before them.

  Darius slid off the owl. He offered Madeline his gloved hand, a motion both familiar coming from Darius and foreign coming from a Black Skull. She took his hand and slipped down. “We will walk a short distance into the darkness,” Darius said.

  “Can you take that helmet off? I’d rather be with Darius than with a Black Skull.”

  The horned head tilted for a moment before Darius reached up and removed the helmet. “Of course,” he said and took off his gloves, too. “You don’t have to cover up now,” Darius said. “Only the Elenil require no skin to show.”

  She pulled her gloves off. “Why did you cover up, then? For the sake of the Elenil?”

  Darius grinned. “Scim magic might have protected me from wounds as a Black Skull, but I couldn’t get over the idea that I would lose the magic and be standing around with bare arms and no gloves. I wanted protection.”

  “Scim magic?”

  Darius nodded. “It’s the same as Elenil magic, really. If I’m wounded in battle, a Scim takes the wound. A team of Scim stay back for each Black Skull, and healers work to try to save as many of them as they can. It’s a new technique, and one of the few that has given us an upper hand against those monsters.” He saw the look on her face, raised his hands, and said, “Against the Elenil.”

  “But why have humans be the Skulls? Why not other Scim? And how is that different than the way the Elenil are using the Scim?”

  “It’s different because the Scim are in control.” He looked her in the eyes. “And it’s humans because the Scim insisted I be the first Black Skull. Because the whole thing was my idea.”

  Madeline, stunned, started to ask him another question, but he shook his head. “We should start moving.” He led her into the darkness. After a few minutes, he reached out and took her hand. It felt natural, but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about him being a Black Skull, kidnapping Shula, almost killing Jason. Or even just the fact that she had broken up with him. But she had broken up with him because of her breathing, a problem that had been solved by the Elenil. Or, at least, mostly solved. Despite all those things she still wanted to be with him. He was the only one who had stood by her after she got sick. That Darius and this one were somehow the same man.

  The Wasted Lands smelled of garbage and sulfur. They walked along a sickly stream of foul water. Refuse stood in random piles. When Darius took them too close to one pile, a mangy rat bared its teeth and hissed.

  Madeline found herself clutching Darius’s arm with her free hand. Something about this place felt unsafe. She had felt this way before, in the “bad part of town,” only here there was no town . . . just garbage and rats and the occasional stunted bush. Nothing healthy grew here. She shivered. After the temperate warmth of Far Seeing, the cold of the Wasted Lands took her by surprise. Darius noticed and, without asking, unfastened his cloak and spread it over her shoulders. They trudged on through the dark. When she had warmed herself a little, she took his hand again.

  “We’re here,” Darius said gently.

  He led her to a broken-down hut made of mud and discarded wood. It was shaped like a half-melted scoop of ice cream. The door stood crooked in the doorway. A window with no glass had been dug out of the space beside the door.

  Drifting from the hovel was a woman’s voice, singing. “Do not cry in the darkness,” she sang, “but follow the small bright star.” Madeline wanted to get closer, to see the woman in the hut. Her voice, so clear and bright, was the first beautiful thing in this wasted place. Madeline moved quietly to the window. The woman’s silver hair was pulled back from a lined, pleasant face. Black tattoos curled around her wiry arms, and as she sang, she dipped a dirty rag in a bowl of grey water. The only light came from a candle—at least Madeline thought it was a candle—about the size of a softball. A tiny wick stood out of it, and a pungent odor came from it.

  The woman dabbed water on a young girl’s forehead. The girl, too, had black tattoos covering her arms, as well as her neck and face. She wore a pale-green nightshirt, soaked in sweat and stuck to her stick-thin body.

  “Who are they?” Madeline whispered.

  Darius leaned against her back, whispering in her ear. “Look at her nightshirt,” he said. “Look carefully.”

  It was a thin material, maybe cotton. A V-neck. It was stained, as though someone had done their best to wash out mud or old, dried blood, or both.

  The child broke into severe coughing—coughing so extreme Madeline’s hand moved unconsciously to her own chest. The woman lifted the coughing girl’s head and shoulders from the bed and held her. She didn’t stop singing, even when the child’s coughing drowned her out completely. Madeline recognized that sort of coughing. A pang of sympathy pierced her. Madeline knew what it was like to lie in bed perfectly aware there was nothing anyone could do for you.

  Confusion washed over her. “Are these . . . Scim?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Darius said, but he didn’t elaborate, didn’t explain the answer to her question, which she was sure he must anticipate.

  “Why aren’t they . . . ?” She stopped herself from asking the question that burned in her mind. It seemed disrespectful. But the fact remained: they didn’t have monstrous muscles or wide, frog-like mouths. Their hair was not in greasy knots, and they didn’t have tusklike teeth. The best word she could think of to describe them was graceful. The mother’s hair shone with a lustrous light, and although the daughter was not well, a vibrant aura radiated from her.

  “Why aren’t they ugly?” Darius asked, no hint of warmth in his voice.
>
  Madeline’s ears went hot. It was her question, yes, but the way he said it only reinforced how ugly the question itself was. “They don’t look like any Scim I’ve ever seen.”

  “What you’ve seen,” Darius said, “is their war skin. Before going to battle they transform themselves to intimidate, to cause fear, to make it clear they shouldn’t be messed with. You’ve never seen a Scim before, not really. You’ve seen a people at war, not the people themselves.”

  Living in this terrible, corrupted place . . . Madeline was amazed these people could show any sign of weakness, ever. A moment of vulnerability, a minute of dropping their guard, could be the difference between life and death. She didn’t know them, not at all. Yet she had signed away a year of her life to fight them . . . to destroy them. “I want to meet them,” Madeline said.

  “That’s not a good idea,” Darius said.

  Madeline turned on him, whispering fiercely, “I thought your whole point was that I didn’t know them. So let me learn.”

  Darius deflated. “At least let me put my helmet on.”

  Madeline crossed her arms. “Why?”

  “So they know my position. So they know you’re with me.”

  She didn’t understand what that meant. “Fine.”

  Once the helmet settled on his head, they stood together in front of the broken wooden door. Darius rapped on it and called out in his altered voice, “Open!”

  “Who is there?”

  “A Black Skull and his honored guest.”

  The door flew open. A man stood before them, thin but strong. He glanced at the skull, following the long line of the horns with his eyes before bowing his head. “Sir,” he said, “please sit and sup with us.”

  The Black Skull bowed his head so he could enter the low-ceilinged hovel. He sat at a short table near a makeshift hearth. A small kettle hung over the fire. The girl did not turn to look at them. She stared, her eyes half-lidded, at the dirt ceiling. The mother hurried to Madeline, guiding her to the table. She took Madeline’s hand to seat her. Something startled the woman, and she gasped.

  “What is it?” Madeline asked.

  “N-n-nothing, miss.” She poured a small portion of gruel from the pot and set it in front of Madeline. A second portion went to the Black Skull. A third to her husband.

  “Sit and eat with us,” Madeline said.

  The woman blushed. “There are but three bowls.”

  Madeline said to Darius, “Do you have a bowl, or a cup, on the owl?”

  The Black Skull stared at her, unmoving. The woman said not to bother themselves, and her husband’s face turned red too. Darius, his voice rough, said, “This is all their food, Madeline. Do not embarrass them further.”

  Now Madeline blushed. She held the bowl up to the woman. “Please. I’m not hungry.”

  The woman’s dark eyes widened as if she had never heard such a thing. Darius put his hand on hers. “Eat, Madeline.”

  His voice carried the unmistakable tone of someone correcting a child. She had been rude somehow. Maybe in this culture you couldn’t refuse food. She lifted the bowl to her lips. She had been among the Elenil long enough that this seemed a strange intimacy, to eat with her hands uncovered. The simple gruel warmed her as she sipped from it. As she tipped the bowl away from her face she noticed that the network of tattoos had moved onto her right hand now. It seemed to be moving faster, like ivy covering a tree.

  The girl coughed and called for her mother. The mother stayed near her guests, hovering beside them. “Go to your child,” the Black Skull said. “We will call if we have needs.”

  The woman bowed her head in a curt, thankful nod and rushed to her daughter’s side, scooping her up in her arms. Madeline watched, her heart breaking for the poor girl. “Can we help?” Madeline asked. “Does she need medicine?”

  The Scim man looked to the Black Skull, seeming embarrassed. When the Black Skull didn’t speak, he turned again to Madeline and said, “Medicine will not help her.”

  “What is her name?” Madeline asked.

  “She is called Yenil. Her mother is Fera. I am Inrif.”

  “I’m Madeline.”

  “We know you, Madeline Oliver.” Inrif looked down at his bowl. He had not taken even a sip. “You are our benefactor.”

  “Your benefactor?”

  “Yes. We are honored to have you in our home.”

  What was he talking about? She looked more carefully around their hut. There were a few clean rags, like the kind the Elenil used instead of toilet paper. Some clothes were hung near a small window. There was only the one narrow bed. Inrif and Fera must sleep beside the fire, she decided.

  Yenil coughed harder, hacking. Her mother cried out and bit her own knuckle. Madeline couldn’t take it any longer. She swept across to the girl and propped her up. “Sometimes sitting up helps with the breathing,” she said. “It lets the lungs expand.”

  Yenil said, “Thank . . . you . . . miss.”

  This close to her, Madeline could see the green nightshirt better on the small girl. In fact, it looked surprisingly like hospital scrubs. But how would they get those, here in the Sunlit Lands?

  Or, she corrected herself, here in the Wasted Lands?

  Unless.

  No.

  The scrubs were too large for Yenil.

  No, no.

  Madeline saw the swirling black tattoos on Yenil’s left arm. She saw the way they branched up her arm and crept across her clavicle. They came out again on her right arm, nearly to her wrist. Oh no.

  Madeline put her left arm alongside Yenil’s. The patterns and whorls matched. Precisely. Every leaf, every branch.

  Yenil’s breathing grew faster, shallow and erratic. She coughed, trying to get a breath. A tendril of black tattoo crept up from her right hand, encircling her pinky. Madeline held up her own right hand. Her silver tattoo curled around her pinky too.

  A rush of understanding coursed through her.

  “No,” she whispered.

  The nightshirt . . . It was a pair of scrubs. Her scrubs. The ones she had thrown away once she made it to the Sunlit Lands. Somehow they had come here, to this family. The cough—that racking, awful cough—that was hers too. It all fell into place with a terrible, grinding finality. She could breathe. She could run and jump and sing and shout and dance, and all it cost was a year of service to the Elenil.

  Or so she thought.

  She knew—she knew!—that the magic of the Sunlit Lands worked by taking something from one person and giving it to another. Jason received the skills and abilities of a warrior by taking them from someone else. He took the skills of an archer from a true archer, and during that time the Elenil archer could no more fire an arrow than Jason had been able to from the top of Westwind.

  Which meant her breath . . . Of course. She hadn’t stopped to think about it, hadn’t spent a single moment considering that maybe for her to breathe someone else would not be able to. Her heart clenched in her chest. She felt dizzy and nauseated. She had to get out of this place. The walls were too close, the fire too warm, the smoke in the air too thick. How could they keep Yenil in here? Wasn’t it obvious it wasn’t a good situation for her? A furious anger rose in her chest.

  Tears burst from her eyes, and she ran from the hut. She didn’t know where she was going, didn’t look at the ground, she just ran and ran and felt the breath filling her lungs. A sob tore from her, and even that wasn’t her own, it was borrowed from Yenil. Stolen from a child.

  She fell on the ground, sobbing.

  What would she do?

  Deep, racking sobs shook her body.

  “M-M-Madeline?”

  A hand rested lightly on her shoulder. Madeline wiped at the tears on her face. It was Fera, the girl’s mother.

  “It is for the best,” she said, “you being our benefactor.”

  Madeline stared at the pulsing silver tattoo on her arm. She wanted to rip it off. The bracelet if she could, her whole arm if she couldn’t. “I’m go
ing to destroy it,” she said.

  Fera gasped. “No!”

  Madeline couldn’t believe it. Why would Yenil’s mother argue against getting her daughter back? “Your daughter can’t breathe.”

  Fera turned her face away, as if ashamed. “The Elenil pay us. Every month. So that Yenil will continue to share her breath with you. We agreed to the terms so that we can feed her and ourselves.”

  “How could you do that?” Madeline said.

  “They also send us the things you discard. We are . . .” Fera struggled for the right words. “Our neighbors are jealous.”

  Madeline snatched a rock and began to beat it against her wrist where the bracelet lay beneath her skin. Fera covered Madeline’s arm with her own and cried, “No! Please, no!”

  “She’ll die,” Madeline said.

  Fera’s face set into stone. “Without this we will have no food. Yenil will die anyway. Then I. Then her father.”

  “How can you do this?” Madeline asked. “She’s your daughter. Don’t you understand?”

  “It is you who do not understand. Yenil has made her choice. It is I who lie beside her in the night and wipe the sweat from her face. I who bore her, who rubs her back as she sends her breath to the sunlit corners where you live.” A fierce anger came into her eyes. “It is I who holds her while you run. While you jump or dance and Yenil’s breath comes harder and harder. It is I who cradles her body and weeps while you sing with your friends.”

  Madeline burst into tears again. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know the cost.”

  Fera studied her. “You did not know because you did not think to ask. You did not wonder what the cost of this magic would be, to yourself or others. But such is the way of those who have never paid for much.”

  Fera stood and walked, her back straight, to the horrible dilapidated hovel she called home, leaving Madeline to weep in the darkness.

  32

  THE MEETING OF THE SPHERES

  Let us turn our faces from this place,