Opal Summerfield and The Battle of Fallmoon Gap

by Mark Caldwell Jones

  “Are you okay, Ellie?” Opal asked.

  “Fine,” Eltheon said. She turned to one of the junior Castellans guarding the gate. “Which one of you deployed those defenses?”

  “Deputy Warden, we thought those were your devices. We don’t have that tech here at this gate. Actually, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the young officer.

  “Interesting. Mechanical fireflies—steam powered. Maybe Tirian would know,” she said to Opal.

  “Whatever or whoever did that, saved our butts. We were about to become that howler’s lunch,” Opal cracked.

  “Indeed you were, Ms. Summerfield,” declared Fromm.

  Opal ignored him, but he kept going.

  “Was this an authorized mission, Deputy Warden?” Professor Fromm demanded.

  “No sir, just an impromptu scouting trip,” Eltheon said.

  “Hmm, please make sure you file a report about this immediately. Such narrow escapes must be documented. We must abide by the rules in such cases. Well, in all cases, right, Ms. Summerfield?” Fromm looked down his nose at Opal.

  “Of course, sir,” Opal said. “Anyway, that should be some great field research for my report, eh, professor?”

  Fromm just looked at her with a queer grimace.

  Eltheon was already running back to the cathedral. Opal raced off after her.

  77

  In a grove of crabapple trees, the Ranger dismounted his new firehorse and pulled out a spyglass. He saw the young riders escape the howler and ride into the safety of Fallmoon Gap. The gates closed behind them. The guards ran along the walls, calling back and forth to each other, pointing away into the wilderness.

  After awhile, when things seemed to have calmed down, he blew into a thin brass whistle and sounded a few high notes. Within minutes, he could hear Fig’s faulty fireflies returning through the forest. They flew right up to the man and hovered before him, buzzing in a tight swarm.

  “Well, that will have to be my good deed for the day,” he said.

  His horse whinnied in response. The Ranger patted him on the flank.

  “Hopefully that panther is long gone. It looks like it took a few fireflies with it.”

  He held out his hand and blew a new tune with the whistle. The fireflies folded in on themselves like dandelions closing at night. One by one, they collapsed into metal teacups and stacked themselves in the Ranger’s hand.

  “No matter, old Fig won’t mind that they’ve been sacrificed for a good cause—if he even notices that I stole them from his workshop. It would’ve been much worse if those girls had been eaten. And all my clandestine scouting would have gone to waste.”

  The Ranger put the fireflies away in his leather possibles bag and buckled the flap.

  “If I’m right, things are only getting worse. This city is nothing but a terrible trap. It’s going to take much more than some fancy gear-work to save that Summerfield kid when the conjurer attacks,” he said.

  He staked the firehorse and turned it out to graze.

  “The witch is obviously gearing up for something big. She’s bound to attack again soon. When she does, I’ll be ready. I just wish I could say that for the rest of Fallmoon Gap.”

  78

  Tirian, Eltheon, and Opal sat along one of the waterfall terraces. Opal and Tirian were in the middle of a slingshot contest. They shot acorns out over the wall, knocking pinecones from the loblolly trees that spread out down the rocky bluffs below.

  “You’re pretty good with that thing,” jeered Tirian.

  “You got that right!” Opal sassed.

  Eltheon was trying to finger a new chord on her dulcimer. She raked her nails across the four metal strings. It was far from melodic.

  Tirian said, “You’ve got to go see Professor Thomason.”

  “No way!”

  “But he’s the only one who would know why that howler attacked us. And he might give you more insight into the snawfus as well. That has to be a first. I’ve never heard of anyone getting that close to one,” Eltheon said.

  “Not even Stinky Jack?” asked Opal.

  “Not even!”

  “Okay, I’ll go—but you owe me big! Maybe Tirian has a smell blocking device?”

  “Actually, I do have something,” he said. He was trying to hit one more pinecone.

  The girls looked at each other and smiled.

  “This guy! He’s got all kinds of tricks up his sleeve,” Eltheon said. “Do you have a machine to play this dulcimer too, because I’m about to give up?”

  “Got an old autoharp, but it will cost you,” he said. “Opal, I’ll protect your nose for free.”

  He missed the pinecone by an inch and it wobbled in the breeze as if to taunt him.

  Opal nailed it with her last shot.

  He turned to Opal with a wide grin. “Impressive! Come on by the sappers’ workshop before you leave.”

  Opal did exactly what Tirian suggested and was very happy for it. Avoiding Jack’s Walliper, and timing Tirian’s honeysuckle perfume-pin to squirt in intervals, Opal found her second trip to the professor’s cabin to be much easier.

  “What’s this one called?” asked Opal. She was standing alongside Professor Thomason, flipping through some of his paintings. She inspected an illustration of a dinosaur-like creature that stood about five feet high.

  “I named that one Veiloraptor arcanesaur., And after I sketched it, I high-tailed it out of there.”

  “Did it come after you?”

  “It and its friends. It hunts in packs. They are deadly little guys, but I’ve managed to avoid them. Locally, they are called kingdoodles.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that name.” Opal’s pin squirted a dose of honeysuckle into the air.

  “This one,” he pulled out another painting for Opal, “is a lizard in its own distinct class. It’s most definitely a magical mutation. You can track it with the proper sapper equipment. It leaks Veil energy all over the place.”

  “This is unbelievable. Is this for real?”

  The creation was a dragon. It had webbed feet with curved claws and was over thirty-feet long. It was covered in green scales and had short horns protruding from its armored head. Its back was spiky, with nasty nodules like giant spear tips, and the tail was considerable in length. It curled about the creature and ended in what looked to be an ancient mace.

  “Yes, absolutely real, and one of my proudest discoveries. The Jeffercanus stegacertasaur!”

  “The Jeffercanus? You mean you named this one after yourself?”

  “If you discover it, you name it!” crowed Jack.

  Opal turned the painting to get a better look.

  “Most call it by its Ozark name: The gowrow. Don’t ask me why. I’ve yet to hear a good reason. How you get from a most obvious stegacertasaur to gowrow defies all logic. Nevertheless, that name has stuck. Even your fellow Wardens use it, in spite of the twenty or so letters I have written to the Council Prime requesting use of proper scientific classifications. They insist it’s much more culturally sensitive to let the natives have their silly ways. I think it’s pure idiocy. There is no need to kowtow to the ignorant,” grumbled Jack.

  “For you Jack, I’ll make the point to call it a Jeffercanus.”

  He smiled at Opal as he rushed over to his wood stove. His large vat of stew was gurgling and sloshing over the sides of pot. He pulled the hot lunch off the direct heat, added a few pinches of salt, and took a few careful slurps.

  “Yes, that’s going to be the best thing either of us have eaten in a long while. Now grab us a few clean bowls and spoons. Come on, make yourself useful. You’ve imposed yourself upon me, now you have to earn your keep.”

  “Well, at least you aren’t cooking me,” teased Opal.

  “Yes, try and remember that, won’t you,” he said. He pushed things from the table in a big sweep, then hooked a stool with his foot and scooted it over while juggling two steaming pots of stew. When everything was set, they began eating.

  “Th
e cryptids I’ve shown you are only the beginning of what actually exists,” said Jack. “Whole new taxonomies continue to develop. The rate is concerning. Something has changed. The rifts in the Veil are growing in some places, closing in others. I don’t consider myself an expert on the magic of it all, but I can see the effects within the animal population. It’s both fascinating and troubling. All animals seem effected on some level.

  “Do you think that’s the reason Eltheon and I were attacked by the howler?” Opal asked.

  “Perhaps. Look at this. Here is a page from a regular zoological compendium. You can see what a normal panther looks like,” Jack said. He slid the paper in front of Opal as she sucked up some stew.

  “Yeah, this is the animal I know from living in Grigg’s Landing,” Opal said.

  “But here is what you two encountered.”

  Jack spread out one of his beautiful paintings. A majestic dark green panther was posed among the limbs of a massive old oak.

  “That’s it alright!” exclaimed Opal.

  “Well, here’s the deal on this old cat—they are nocturnal, and they don’t give two cents about humans. Now if you walk right up on it, it may get a bit unfriendly. But you said the thing was stalking the two of you.”

  “And it chased us for a few miles. It was relentless,” Opal said.

  “Well y’all may have stirred it up with the scent of the snawfus. But more than likely, it was this,” Jack said.

  He set his food aside, pulled out a small burlap bag from under the table, and dumped the contents on top of the painting. Jack picked it up and stretched it out. It was a long piece of dark stained leather with a buckle at one end.

  “What in the heck is that?” Opal asked.

  “Well, honestly, it don’t make a bit of sense. It’s a collar, like some folks put on a dog. I found it down by the creek, close to where you said that howler left the trail. I wouldn’t have seen a connection if it weren’t so full of panther hair. Some very brave soul put this collar around that old cat,” he said, mystified. “Or it was placed there by magical means.”

  “Let me see,” Opal said.

  She quickly slurped up the rest of her lunch and then took the collar. She examined it very closely. Sure enough, she could see bits of evergreen fur pinched along the buckle strap. As she looked closer, she noticed something else. Several pieces of black onyx were sewn into the back of the collar, and they started glowing.

  “Well look at that,” Jack said. “Somebody’s put a spider in this biscuit.”

  He took the collar and walked across the full length of the house. He stood in a cluttered corner examining it. He walked back to Opal, then back to the far end of the house, then back to Opal.

  “If this doesn’t beat all. I’ve never seen a thing like it. This collar is a tracking collar,” he surmised.

  “You mean to track the howler?”

  “No, young lady. I hate to break it to you, but it’s set to track you!”

  Opal was stunned, but the old man was right. The gemstones were only acting up when Jack held it up to Opal—more specifically, her necklace.

  “Amina!” she snapped.

  “How do you know that name?”

  “She’s after my necklace! The Agama Stone.”

  “Well, young’un, if this is her doing, that means she wants more than the necklace; she wants you dead.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of old news professor. Seems like she has a bad case of the grudges. Some days I almost forget she’s after me. I sure as heck didn’t think the howler was a trap set up for me. That worries me. What other animals could she have collars on?” Opal wondered.

  The two looked around Jack’s cluttered shack. There were hundreds of illustrated creatures, great and small, some timid, some terrifying. Most of them were deadly to humans. The thought of Amina sending more rogue monsters after her made Opal shudder.

  “There are a lot of possibilities here,” Jack said.

  Opal sighed. “Yeah, none of them good.”

  79

  Erin Prismore tended the garden within the Courtyard of the Honored. Opal sat at a distance on a stone bench. She had been working on her report when Erin skipped in with a basket of gardening tools. Opal watched as the young girl clipped back plants that grew around the beautiful sandstone monuments lying throughout the garden.

  Each monument had a brilliant crystal disc one-third of the way down fixed in the stone. A marker fashioned from a plate of copper lay in the ground under each monument. When light hit the markers—whether it was the sun or moon—it was reflected up to the crystal disc, causing the inscriptions within the monuments to be illuminated. Each inscription was specific to the person it honored. Opal’s mother’s monument read:

  Sanura Windfar of Liberty Creek

  Respected Warden of the Protectorate

  Hero of The Battle of Fallmoon Gap

  Erin sheared the grass with a small handheld sickle and carefully plucked weeds with her fingers. When the grass beneath a grave was perfect, she laid a wreath of dogwood blossoms on it.

  As Erin turned to the next monument, she saw Opal.

  “Oh, hello Opal. It’s so good to see you,” she called out. “What are you doing on this glorious day?”

  “Just some studying. Not much fun really.”

  “I don’t know how you Wardens do it. It all seems so daunting.”

  “Are you in charge of the courtyard?”

  “I wish! It’s one of the most beautiful places in Fallmoon Gap. I would love to have that responsibility—but no, it’s a shared honor. I get to tend it every few months. I love every moment of it, especially cleaning the communion crystals. I never know who might grace my day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh dear, has no one shown you how they work? That is terrible. Oh please, let me. Come over here by one of the markers.”

  Erin led Opal to one that read:

  Rendell Pembrook of Cave Springs

  Builder Prime, Thorncrown Artisan’s Society

  Designer of the Fae Chapels

  “This is one of our most honored artisans,” Erin said. She trimmed up some of the ivy around his marker as she talked.

  “What are the Fae Chapels?” Opal asked.

  “They are the beautiful huts scattered across the rift tunnels. They were designed by Mr. Pembrook as places of meditation and refuge for travelers lost on this side of the Veil,” she explained.

  “I had to make use of several of those,” Opal recalled.

  “And that is what they are there for! If you really liked them, you can thank Mr. Pembrook,” she said.

  Erin took off a small quartz crystal necklace, laid it across the monument so that the stone hung down across the crystal disc in the center of the marker, and then stepped back.

  The light from the midday sun refracted through the adjoining crystals. With seeming ease, the spirit of Mr. Rendell Pembrook stepped from nowhere into their presence. He bowed from the waist and sat down on his own monument.

  He looked around the garden and smiled serenely. He looked like a light-draped phantom, and he shimmered as he moved, like a ghost sprinkled in diamond dust.

  Opal stepped back to give Mr. Pembrook some room.

  “These are the spirits of the honored. While they cannot speak with you, you may commune with their presence. It is a spiritual practice of sorts. A way of dealing with our loss, and a reminder that those who are gone are not really gone at all. We are all eternally connected,” she said.

  “Would this—I mean, can I do this with—” Opal stopped short of asking her question. She looked over her shoulder toward Sanura’s grave. The communion crystal Luka had placed in the monument was sparkling in the sunlight.

  “If you are asking whether you can do this with your mother’s monument, the answer is yes. But please understand, not everyone feels the same about communion crystals. Some find them very uplifting, while others prefer not to stir memories of the past. It is available i
f and when you desire the experience,” Erin said.

  Opal turned to Mr. Pembrook. “Thanks for your little huts, Mr. Pembrook. I wouldn’t have made it here without them,” she said.

  Mr. Pembrook smiled a wide, shimmering smile at Opal, placed one hand over his heart, and nodded his appreciation, as if to say, you are welcome.

  “Well, I’ll think about it. Thanks for showing me how a communion crystal works.”

  “Absolutely,” Erin said. She bowed to Mr. Pembrook, thanked him for his time, and gathered up her necklace.

  He smiled serenely at the two girls as he shimmered back into the Veil.

  Many yards away, in the corner of an alcove, half hidden behind a column of polished limestone, the Ranger watched as Erin Prismore and Opal Summerfield talked. He was angry to see how easily Fallmoon Gap had seduced the Summerfield girl.

  He held one man responsible above all others. Perhaps this had been Jane Willis’s intention all along. Her cryptic plea to protect the girl had led him here. Had she been aware of the dangers of Fallmoon Gap as well?

  The lies, the false piety, the power masked as religion. The Protectorate, the Council Prime, he knew their menacing web of lies only led to more problems.

  He set a new course in his mind. It would take careful planning, but the effort would be worth it.

  He would find Jakob Prismore and settle things for good.

  80

  One night, because she was feeling rather lonely, Opal pushed through her reluctance and finally went back to the courtyard to test her mother’s communion crystal.

  She marveled at the beauty of it for quite awhile. She traced her finger back and forth over her mother’s name on the little monument. She swallowed hard and activated the crystal just as Erin had shown her.

  Opal stepped back and waited expectantly, but after many long minutes, nothing happened. She tried adjusting the crystal differently, but she was disappointed again. She tried again using the Agama Stone. Even with that power, Sanura’s spirit did not emerge. Opal felt devastated. A feeling of abandonment consumed her. She was hurt and angry for even trying the stupid thing.