Moonshadow

by Krystina Coles

  “They called you the Lost One—the only one of the Morkoa to never come of age and lead her people.” She replied solemnly, furrowing her brow in confusion when she saw the look on my face. “You don’t know?” I shook my head no, and she patted Norrie on the back and spoke. “Xeanora, you know which book to take, yes?” The little girl nodded and slid off of her mother’s lap to pull a rather large tome from the shelf of a bookcase that replaced the wall to my right.

  There were so many of them—I could spend a year in this room and still not finish them all.

  “Beautiful name.” I commented before she returned.

  “She was blessed with all three gifts of this city. I thought it only fit to honor the one of the Thirteen who made it so.” She glanced at me and then back to the child who placed the book on the table between us.

  “The Thirteen?” She smiled, amused at my question, and set her hand on the leather binding.

  “You have a lot to learn.” I stole a glimpse of the cover of the book before she began to flip through its pages.

  What the Gods Have Given

  Those golden words appeared to have lasted a great deal of time, evident through the worn leather and yellowed parchment tucked inside. She paused at a page with the word that she had spoken before written in calligraphy.

  “Read this.” She encouraged me, turning the book over so I could read it.

  “The Morkoa: the first twenty-eight children born from the Rytaronea, or Great Rift, believed to have been the most powerful beings to exist in this world in exception to the Thirteen Gods of Old.” I started, in awe of the first sentence that I read aloud. “With dominion over all forms of magic, they governed the cities of Xaijena, the most notable the seven born to the cities of the elements and Rift: the purest of magic—and the most chaotic. Though not among the ranks of Cerelene Haberath the Invincible and Kaliveia Endymor the Gentle, the name of Elynea Torrowin the Lost is known in every city, due to the mystery surrounding her existence. Rumored to have been born to the Torrowin family in late 1827, she disappeared not long after, leaving her descendants with no Legacy to call their own. Her gift, which can only be assumed to have been over the moon itself, has since never been discovered.” I lifted my eyes up from the page when I was finished, left with almost no words to say. “This is me?”

  Why hadn’t my grandfather told me this? But then, if he had, I would have found a way here sooner.

  “The Morkoa were like gods in their time—endowed with great power. When they passed from this life, their descendants were able to draw from them when in need of a strength that they couldn’t possess themselves. That’s why we have Rathon.” She gestured to the young man sitting far too close to the flames, and I noticed that the heat didn’t seem to bother him at all. “The city of Jaza has been sending soldiers to protect the Torrowin family for two hundred years.”

  “So you…” She nodded her head before I could ask her the question.

  “Paia Torrowin—her father,” she looked back at the fireplace where Norrie had joined Rathon; and he reached his hand into the fire to retrieve a finch with iron feathers that took flight around the room, “Alyus, and her brother Mysric are travelling to the capitol to convene with representatives from the other governing families; but they should be returning in the next few days.”

  It suddenly came to me, and I wondered why I hadn’t realized it before. I had wished to be with the only family I had left—and found myself here.

  “Do you know…what happened to my parents?” She gazed at me sadly, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know anymore.

  “Legend speaks of a monster that feared your connection to Kana’ti. It believed your partnership would mean the end of many of the evil spirits that roamed these lands. But when it came to murder you in your crib, you were already gone.” She sighed.

  “So it killed my family instead…” My eyes burned as I spoke, and I lowered them to stare at the rings in the wooden table. “That’s why you have Rathon.”

  “Few escaped—only by the combination of their power of earth and water—through tunnels that they created under this house and throughout the city. One of them being your aunt Halaei—an ancestor of ours.” I looked up at the sound of her name.

  I would have given so much to meet her. Hear her voice—and listen to the stories about my mother.

  “What were my parents’ names?” I couldn’t keep myself from asking. I wanted to know. More than anything.

  She smiled.

  “Lyrand and Nyanna.” They sounded so familiar—so safe. Like the very names wrapped themselves around me and held me close. “You can stay here—if that’s what you want.” I grinned at the thought of it: staying in Rynmoor. But I couldn’t.

  “I came here to find my friend. She was taken from the world I grew up in almost a year ago. Do you know how I might be able to find her?” I inquired, and her kind brown eyes showed me that she understood.

  “You came to us through the reflecting pool?” She laughed a little at the face I made. “I followed the trail of water. The gift you have—it’s not uncommon; but it is difficult to control. Master that, and you can transform any body of water into a door to what you seek.” She paused. “It may take a while, but I can show you.”

  “Thank you.” My vision began to blur—Paia’s face and the countless books behind her head bled together before my sight. And I couldn’t determine if it was from exhaustion or the tears that must have gathered in my eyes. But there were no tears. Only the heaviness that pervaded the muscles in my limbs.

  “Come with me.” She insisted, standing; and I pushed back in my seat to rise with her. But my knees weakened, and I reached out my hand to steady myself against the table—only for my fingers to collide with the stem of the empty goblet and send it rolling onto floor.

  “Sorry.” I exhaled, feeling the heat of the blood rushing to my cheeks. My ears. My head. And I crouched down to rescue the vessel from where it had landed. But the last of my strength gave way to the numbness that overwhelmed my senses—held my body for ransom; and my hand slipped from the surface of the polished wood.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the Other Side of the Door

  I opened my eyes to darkness, to nothing but a black expanse unending around me; and the paralyzing fear that I was dead took hold and couldn’t be dispelled. But I was breathing. I could feel my chest rise and fall as the air filled my lungs. And a dull ache seized my body as I returned to consciousness, and I knew.

  This wasn’t Death.

  “Paia?” My voice cracked in my throat as I called her name into the void. “Paia?” I waited in the quiet for an answer. But there was none. I squinted, hoping that my eyes would adjust to the dark; but no object came into focus. No outlines sharpened to set themselves apart from the all-consuming shadows. And I fought to recall what had brought me here.

  The smell of old paper and ink. The flicker of embers on a sparrow’s wings. Warm apples and toffee.

  It was the last thing that I remembered, and yet—the taste had turned bitter on my tongue.

  I pushed myself up from where I had been lying to discover that my hands sank into the material beneath me, and something soft slipped away from my shoulders to expose my skin.

  Connor’s jacket.

  I half expected to hear his laugh—blink and find myself sitting alone in his car in Kellyville. But that reality was gone.

  I held my fingers before my face and shook them gently in an attempt to light them like a match, and they sparkled briefly before falling dim once again.

  “Come on. Come on.” I muttered underneath my breath. “Your power is literally in your name.” I bit my lip as I reclaimed my focus and directed it into both of my hands, the muscles wrapped around my bones warming as the gift I called to life began to rise inside me. My mouth ran dry as the heat intensified, burning white hot at my fingertips. And five bursts of moonlight erupted like fireworks into the darkness. It illuminated the room in an instant, d
ipped the walls and bedposts in silver; and I examined my surroundings before the light dimmed into a moderate glow.

  I’d been here before. The ivory bureaus, the pale blue canopy, the stars that shimmered faintly overhead—the memory of them was fresh in my mind, but a feeling of some deeper familiarity refused to abandon me.

  I’d seen this place long before tonight.

  An object to my right caught the light I had conjured and reflected it just within the boundaries of my sight, and I brought my hand over the bedside table to dissolve the shadows. It was an elaborate tube of silver securing a roll of parchment. Reliefs of twin horses underneath a full moon appeared to race into life from the confines of the metal. Their muzzles met in a sapphire kiss, the gem glittering like a drop of water on a mirror. Succumbing to my curiosity, I liberated the paper from its safeguard and unfurled it to gaze at the words scrawled almost frantically in a troubling message; and my lips formed the phrases silently before speaking the last aloud.

  Explosion at Governors’ Summit. Lord Torrowin unharmed. Young Lord Mysric transported to Wylsaere for surgery.

  “Prosthetist also en route…” I lowered the memorandum from my eyes, my heart sinking with it.

  “This is your legacy.” I couldn’t keep myself from jumping at the sudden break in the quietness.

  No door had betrayed her with a labored groan. No light had spilled in from the hallway and saturated the floor with gold and shadow.

  She’d always been there—and had merely chosen this moment to announce her presence.

  “The courier came this morning. Xeanora has yet to know.” Paia’s face emerged from the blackness, sallow and near emotionless in what was left of the moonlight I’d summoned. She sat upright in a chair on the far side of the room as she stared in my direction. But her eyes never sought or met mine.

  “I’m sorry.” It seemed pointless—childish, even—apologizing.

  “This is what you left behind.” She responded, continuing. “The Torrowins are the only governing family without a claim reinforced by their ancestor’s Legacy. We don’t have Rathon to defend us from monsters. We have Rathon to guard us from the people who don’t believe we should be in power.”

  “But I’m here now.” I started, leaning forward as I shoved the sheets aside to free my legs and rose to my feet. But the workings of my mind were still in a deluge, and dark spots stole fragments of my sight. “I can show them who I am. I exist.”

  “And how would that help us?” She snapped when our eyes finally met, and I found myself drowning in the boundless cold emanating from the ones that had only recently accompanied a smile. “We still can’t protect ourselves. Norrie—and Mysric can’t protect themselves.” Her voice broke—gave itself to anger, then anguish, then anger again. And the surrounding air seemed to chill in its wake. I pieced the flashes of memory together, grasped at the recollection of a room with books instead of walls.

  Apples and toffee.

  “Did you poison me?” My stomach churned as I gave voice to my fear; and standing, she surrendered her words to the silence to lend thought to her response.

  “Your mother did what she could for you.” She gazed at me, solemn. “I’m only doing the same for mine.” With nothing left to be said, she crossed the bedroom floor and quickened her pace when she caught sight of my eyes darting between her face and the door. I held my breath as I pushed against the nearest bedpost to launch myself forward; but my legs couldn’t carry me far enough, and I screamed in frustration as she pulled the door closed behind her.

  “No!” I pounded the wood with open hands until I was sure my fingers would burst. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” I shouted to her, and the click of a key turning in a lock resonated through my insides as I slumped to my knees against the door.

  “Maybe not.” Her answer was barely audible from the other side. “But I’m willing to take that risk.” I listened for a moment—for anything other than the silence that followed her words. But that was all it was, and I shrieked into the darkness again as I wrapped my arms around myself and crumpled onto the floor.

  “Elynea?” I lifted my head from the ground, peeled my cheek from the intricate arrangement of tiles that no doubt left an impression on my skin, and slowly opened my eyes at my name.

  I had no sense of time—no way to tell how much had passed. No moonlight breached the curtains drawn over the windows, and I suspected there would be no more calling any forth. I was confined to blindness once more. And waiting.

  For whichever death suited Paia’s purposes.

  “Elynea?” It came again, in a slightly clearer whisper than the last.

  I’d grown accustomed to the quiet—to the sound of my own shallow breaths as they poured from my mouth and onto the mosaic of blue, silver, and black. The edges were undefined, melting together in a disorienting kaleidoscope; and simply lying still felt like sinking into water. But slipping was easy. And I let each tide wash over me as I forfeited my body to the crawling oblivion and laid my head back down to rest on the floor.

  “Elynea?” It was louder this time, and I was no longer certain that it was only occurring in my mind. “Elynea, it’s me—Xeanora.”

  “Norrie?” I scrambled onto my knees to reach out my hand and press my fingertips against the door. “Norrie, you have to let me out.”

  “I—I can’t unlock it without the key.” She called to me, stuttering in a hushed voice. “But maybe you can.”

  “What do you mean?” I knit my eyebrows together at her suggestion, but I listened.

  “You’re one of the Morkoa.” She said. “You can do anything.” It was a sobering thought—one I’d just barely begun to understand. But her belief was all I needed. “Use the moonlight.” I glanced over my shoulder at the darkened windows.

  “The moon only ever shines in the darkness...” I murmured my mother’s words to myself and stole another look to align both of the hands that I raised outstretched to face the window and the place where the two doors met. “I don’t think this is what she had in mind.” I grimaced, focusing on my palms and nothing else.

  This wouldn’t be like levitating droplets of water or creating light.

  I searched for the moon in the black field of night, let my consciousness roam the dreamlike world outside; and when I found it, a feeling I couldn’t master took hold of me. It was overwhelming—like being caught in the waters of a distant memory.

  Drowning in a deeper part of myself.

  I shuddered at the hands of a sudden rush of cool air as the window bent inward and cracked, the iron frame wailing its death knell as it gave way with a crash. “Step back!” I warned. Glass and metal exploded across the floor. Glimmering shards sizzled over my head in a shower of apparent stars. And a bolt of moonlight burst through the tattered remnants of the drapes and into my body. It threaded itself through the conduit I’d improvised with my arms, and I gritted my teeth as I struggled to direct it by my will alone. I buried my face in my chest as a blinding light left my fingers to bore into the wood like a flaming sword—and shut my eyes as it dispelled the darkness entirely. And as day returned to night, I lifted my head from its refuge behind my arm and stared at the wreckage of splintered wood and broken glass.

  The doors had been blown open, handles and hinges all but completely torn from place. What little remained of them still swayed back and forth, unable to abandon their purpose even with their life at an end. The carnage extended into the hall like the ruins of a cyclone, but Norrie was nowhere to be seen.

  “Norrie?” The notion of digging for her body crushed beneath the rubble made me nauseous, and I strained to cast the thought aside. “I didn’t kill her.” I repeated the words in my head a thousand times in the hope that it would be true. “I didn’t kill her.”

  But what if I had? No one could have survived it. Not if they were in the way.

  My heart settled when two hazel eyes peeked out from the corridor, and Xeanora held out her hands to steady herself as she
stepped through the debris strewn around her feet. Her bobble accelerated into a run when she caught sight of me; and before I could stand, she threw her arms around my neck.

  “I’m so sorry.” She squeezed me tighter. “I didn’t know she would hurt you.”

  “It’s okay.” I breathed in reassurance as she let go, but she sat and gazed at me silently before reaching out a hand just inches from my face.

  “Hold still.” Norrie instructed when I flinched, and I held my breath as I obliged. She narrowed her eyes intently and moved her hand in a circular motion, as if she were swirling her fingers in a pool of water; and something rose inside me with the rhythm of her movements to follow her hand like a wave bowing to the pull of the moon. My heartbeat slowed in my chest, the extent of what she could possibly do occurring to me far too late for me to stop her.

  But my trust wasn’t misplaced.

  She was drawing something out—I could feel it beading on my skin and running down my cheeks. And as the poison siphoned from my bloodstream and leaked out through my pores, the clouds that cluttered my tired mind began to clear. “That should do it.”

  “Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked when she lowered her hand into her lap; and she shrugged, nonchalant.

  “School.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t help but let my thoughts wander to what other lessons I’d missed.

  “Almost everyone from Rynmmor eventually goes to Renasmere in Wenn’s Reach.” She went on as she helped me stagger to my feet. “Except the Wonders.” She added. “They go to the Fallaore Academy.”

  “Are you…” I paused when I realized I’d already forgotten the word. “…one of those?”