The Timekeeper's Moon

by Joni Sensel

  “Ow.”

  His fingers relaxed, but his stern face did not. As their eyes met, he repeated, “We’ll decide in the morning.” But he broke the gaze first to finish wrapping her feet.

  Relieved to have a plan, whether Scarl agreed yet or not, Ariel replied, “All right. We’ll see.” She refused to return to her bed, though, until he’d copied the mapstone. Quick with a brush, he complied without comment. Then they slept in what little was left of the night.

  The hours may have been short, but Ariel awoke refreshed for the first time in months. Still, her fingers trembled as she dressed. She knew which direction to go, but not who or what she would find, how far away—or whether the effort would silence the moon.

  Determined to start that morning, she gathered clothes for her pack. Glancing about for things she might need, she spied her broken knitting needle on the windowsill. It bore the marks from her telling dart, which she had carved there so she could have a copy. Ariel liked keeping it close, but she also feared losing it, so she usually left it safe at the abbey.

  Debating whether to take it this time, she was struck by a quirk of the marks. One spot had been left conspicuously blank.

  She rushed with it into the hall and found Scarl and Ash speaking in low tones together.

  “I had to help him in the outhouse and into his clothes,” Ash was saying. “He didn’t want me to tell you, but—”

  “Scarl!” Ariel hurried to them. “I think I might know what’s half done!”

  “Not breakfast.” Ash smiled. “It’s ready when you are.”

  “Thank you,” she said hastily, and in the same breath told Scarl, “The cherry warned of things being undone last night. And the moon talks of something half done, halves and wholes. There is one thing, in all that has happened, that seems kind of half done to me.” She raised her needle. “When I first found my telling dart, we didn’t know who it was meant for or where it had come from. Nobody knew there was a Farwalker left, or that the dart might have been sent to me. And the mark for whoever had sent it was blank. Now we know I was supposed to receive it. But the half that’s still undone—”

  “Who sent it.” The distance in Scarl’s eyes told Ariel he no longer saw her.

  “Maybe I need to find out.” She added the words she knew would convince him. “Whoever sent it might have more darts. Other goods from the past. Or even another whole Vault.”

  “Another Vault seems unlikely,” he said. “But the sender—”

  “Could be somebody old.” Pleased with that idea, Ariel nodded. “That’s why I need to hurry. So we can meet them, and learn from them, before they leave the world.”

  Scarl’s brow wrinkled in doubt. “The idea is tempting,” he said. “But your mapstone was created a long time ago. How could it lead to a sender living now?”

  Ash cleared his throat. “Your sender may not be human.”

  Scarl said, “A machine?”

  The Tree-Singer smiled. “I was thinking a tree. Even one of Zeke’s stones. But”—he turned to Ariel—“why would any of this make you hear a voice from the moon?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Unless I am going daft.”

  Scarl folded his arms and studied the floor between them. “I think, Ariel, it’s unwise to hope for too much. But I suppose we need to follow your feet and find out.” Over her hurrah, he added, “How are they feeling this morning?”

  “Fine,” she said, exaggerating. “I’m already half packed.”

  “I don’t suppose we could eat breakfast first?”

  “Guess we’d better,” she said. “It might be the best one we get for a while.”

  She returned to her room to stuff extra socks in her bag and pad the insoles of her boots with goose down. She tested the cushioning through different gaits as she followed her nose toward the warm smell of breakfast. Her legs might move slowly the first couple of days, and she was glad their packhorse could carry her gear, but her feet were not overly sore.

  Zeke skidded up behind her as she joined Scarl at the table. “You can’t go without me,” he said.

  Ariel hated her answer, but she pushed it out. “I’m sorry, Zeke, really. I’ll miss you. But we’ve gone without you before.” Unlike Scarl, Zeke often remained at the abbey, helping decipher the flagstones. Ariel always set out with less cheer when Zeke stayed behind, but their reunions made up for the loss.

  Zeke scowled. “This is different.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Zeke.” Pointedly Scarl eyed the boy’s bandaged hands.

  “I’ll be better tomorrow. Or the day after.” Zeke’s voice cracked, and Ariel winced.

  “I wish I could wait, Zeke,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

  “We’ll be all right without you,” Scarl added.

  Zeke’s eyes blazed. “Are you sure? I’m the one who woke you last night!”

  Taken aback, Scarl returned the boy’s stare. “I’ll do my best, Zeke.”

  “Will you keep her safe, though?”

  Ariel wanted to remind them she was still in the room. She asked, “Safe from what?” She had told them about the moon’s constant torment, but not everything it had said. Death, dwindle, die … Menacing words echoed in her mind.

  “Do you know something I don’t?” Scarl grabbed Zeke’s wrist. “Have the stones warned you?”

  Zeke dropped his gaze. He slumped onto the bench. “No. I already asked. They agree she should go. In fact…”

  “In fact what?” Scarl growled.

  “They told me I won’t be a Stone-Singer long if she stays.”

  Scarl released Zeke in surprise. Ariel recoiled, too.

  “Why not?” she asked. “They’d stop speaking to you?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it. It’s more like something would fail. You, I guess. I’m not sure.” Zeke groaned. “The more upset I get, the less I understand them. They said almost exactly what the cherry tree did, though: she’s had help enough. But I’m worried. For us both. Please wait so I can come, too.”

  Ariel and Scarl shared a glance. Scarl spoke for them jointly. “You’ve only convinced us not to delay, Zeke.”

  “Let me come now, then. I don’t need hands to walk.”

  “You can’t even put on your boots,” Ariel said.

  Scarl spoke more firmly. “No. Stay here and heal. You saved her from breaking bones last night. This time, that has to do.”

  Ariel rose to throw her arms around Zeke. “I’ll find a feather each day and puff it into the air when we camp,” she murmured into his neck. “When you see feathers here, you can pretend they’re from me.”

  “No, stones,” he said. “Throw a stone or stomp bedrock every single day. The vibration will travel, and I’ll ask them to keep track as you pass.”

  Ariel agreed, but her smile was forced. He had the advantage. The stones she trod on could indeed report to Zeke about her. She’d have no news of him until she returned home at last.

  Nor did she know how long that might take. When she thought of the map, her feet wanted to lead her, but they had never been able to tell her how far. The moon below the horizon remained quiet this morning. Its silence implied it approved of her plans.

  Still, she could not forget its recent threats: Hasten, hasten, heed both halves. Dally, dawdle … and die.

  CHAPTER 5

  Thunder Moon Waning

  Ariel knew she was treading the right path when the moon ceased to hound her. At first she caught up on lost sleep, curling into her wool blanket the moment she finished her supper. After a few days, she sat up with Scarl until moonrise, which came later each night. Gibbous and waning, July’s Thunder Moon seemed to melt in defeat.

  Her sense of victory faded the following week as Ariel realized what day approached. She couldn’t suppress a grumble when her fate became clear: she would pass her fourteenth birthday in a swamp.

  “I’m sorry, I had hoped we’d reach some village by today,” Scarl told her that evening in the water
logged twilight. “No way to celebrate your First Day here, I’m afraid. We’re lucky to have a dry place to sleep.” Stirring up the coals of their campfire, he added a few chunks of peat, the only fuel he had found. The weather was too hot and sticky for burning, but neither of them liked raw potatoes, and that was about all they had left.

  “It’s okay.” Ariel sighed. “I’m the one who led us this way.” They’d loaded their packhorse, Willow, and headed southeast from the abbey. Although she’d never ventured far in that direction before, any qualms about it had fled when she’d realized that the heaviest line on her map also pointed that way. Looking at it together over campfires at night, she and Scarl had decided the small mark at the tail of that line, which resembled the Tree-Singers’ trade mark, perhaps represented the abbey. In the fortnight since their departure, however, they’d encountered only one tiny village, and they’d left solid ground days ago. Fully healed, Ariel’s feet drew her relentlessly forward, despite stumbling through muck. But she was starting to wonder if the moon simply wanted to drown her.

  She poked their potatoes with a stick to see if either was soft yet. “It’s not such a bad First Day,” she said, with more cheer than she felt. “I don’t like mosquitoes singing the song in my ear, but being able to sleep is a pretty good gift.”

  The Finder sat back against a crumbling log and flicked one hand uselessly at the bugs. “I guess you won’t need the one I have for you, then?”

  A cry of surprise and delight escaped her. “Oh! Yes, I do! Please?”

  “I don’t know.” His amused eyes found hers through the smoke. “Perhaps we should wait until we can celebrate with poppers and a First Day pudding. Or even until we return to the abbey, so Zeke and the others can watch you open it, too.”

  At Zeke’s name, Ariel sagged. “Aw, you’re probably right.” She jabbed her stick into the coals. “I wish you hadn’t told me, though. I hate waiting.”

  A grin lit Scarl’s shadowy face. “Patience is not one of your virtues.”

  “Kindness is not one of yours.”

  He chuckled. “I didn’t know you thought I had any virtues at all. But Zeke has already seen it. I offered to wait, but he knows you pretty well. He said that letting you have it right away would be another present from him.”

  “As if he were with us,” Ariel murmured, wishing he were. She’d been careful to toss a stone for him at least once a day.

  “Exactly.” Scarl rummaged in his pack.

  Ariel flushed with gratitude for her friend and a prickly love for the Finder. Having helped, indirectly, to make her an orphan, Scarl had vowed to protect and accompany her for as long as she needed. But battles of will weren’t uncommon, and neither had expected the affection that had grown up between them.

  He pulled out a small packet wrapped in linen and tied with a frayed but familiar ribbon. Ariel couldn’t place it.

  “Happy First Day,” Scarl said as he presented the package to her. “Joy and discovery.”

  At the traditional sentiment, Ariel squirmed in excitement. She turned the bundle over, savoring its texture in her hands. Firm lumps shifted inside, tantalizing. She pulled off the ribbon.

  The gift had not one but two linen wrappings. The inside of the first bore three lines of symbols marked in brown paint.

  She glanced up at Scarl. He nodded. “You can read it.”

  She’d been learning basic symbols for more than a year, but they didn’t stick in her head as well as they might. Haltingly, she read aloud, “‘A girl with so many stories needs a few story beans.’”

  “Beads,” he corrected.

  “Oh! Especially since I lost mine!” she exclaimed. Some weeks ago, she’d misplaced the green glass bead she always wore as a necklace. She’d taken it off for a bath and forgotten to put it back on right away. It must have gotten mixed up with the laundry or rolled away into a crack. Ariel and her friends had scoured the abbey in vain. Even using his Finder’s glass, Scarl hadn’t been able to find it.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve failed,” he had told her. “But I’m very sorry to fail on something that means so much to you.”

  With a pang now for her lost treasure, Ariel bent to finish the note.

  “‘Happy First Day,’” she read. She faltered, unsure about the remaining two symbols. The very last looked enough like a Finder’s mark to be Scarl’s name. The one before that, , was pretty but unfamiliar.

  “I don’t know these,” she said. “This one looks like the symbols for ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ put together.”

  A twitch in Scarl’s face gave away a hint of discomfort. “The mark for love,” he murmured. “It says, ‘Happy First Day. With love, Scarl.’ ”

  Ariel almost didn’t need to open the rest of the package. He’d never before expressed such tenderness. Once or twice he had hugged her, but mostly the Finder focused on the practical matters of keeping her well fed and safe. He filled the roles of both trade master and parent better than Ariel would have expected. Still, the wounded corner of her heart that cried for her mother’s embrace or the doting care of a father had never fully healed. This unexpected sentiment from Scarl made it throb.

  Too overwhelmed even to smile—in fact, closer to tears—she crawled around the fire to nestle herself against her caretaker’s ribs. Despite the heat, he rested his arm loosely over her shoulders.

  “Open it,” he urged.

  Wanting to stretch the moment as long as she could, Ariel first folded the note and wrapped it with the ribbon. The ribbon’s faded color finally hit home: she’d worn it around her neck for a year.

  “Hey, is this—” She turned an accusing stare on him.

  He bit back a smile.

  She fumed. “You told me you’d never lie to me!”

  “First Day secrets don’t count.”

  With a dirty look, Ariel tore through the folds of fabric. Her green bead lay inside amid a small mound of glass and other materials.

  “You’re awful!” she cried. “I can’t believe you let me think this was lost! You must have stolen it in the first place.” She shoved away from his side, glaring.

  “No, I didn’t take it.” He chuckled. “I just didn’t return it right away when I found it.”

  “So you’re giving me a First Day present that’s already mine.” She sniffed. “That’s still pretty awful.”

  His face fell. “Well, I tried to improve it. I thought—I’m sorry.”

  His distress jabbed at her heart. Only then did her exasperation thin so she could clearly see what lay in the cloth. Ariel lifted the green bead from the others around it. Instead of being strung alone on a ribbon as before, it dangled from a fine satin lanyard. Along the cord on both sides hung smaller beads of ebony and pinewood, sea pearl and amber, dragon’s tooth, silver, and what Ariel suspected was gold. She gasped.

  “Forgive me,” Scarl said softly. “I didn’t mean to ruin it for you. Here, I’ll put it back on your ribbon.” He held out his hand for the bead.

  “No, no. I just didn’t get it at first.” She drew it beyond his grasp. Firelight glinted off the metals and shone through the glass. She’d never owned anything nearly so grand. “It’s fantastic, Scarl. Did you craft it yourself?”

  Warmth returned to his face. “I had help from Allcrafts in several places we’ve traveled. And opinions from Zeke. Don’t miss this, though.”

  He pointed. With the necklace removed, several sparkling chunks of glass remained in the linen. Broken shards from some old jar or vase, they gleamed in pale green and gold to echo her large bead.

  “A skilled Flame-Mage should be able to melt those into beads, too,” Scarl explained. “Or a bracelet, something to go with your necklace. And people in that last village shared rumors of Flame-Mages somewhere past the swamp. If we ever escape it.”

  Even fourteen thanks did not seem enough, but Scarl made Ariel stop there. Limp with amazement, she asked him to tie the satin cord around her neck before she rested against him once more. She fingere
d the new beads on her necklace.

  “Where did you get them all?”

  “Found the glass.” He hesitated. “The beads came from my grandfather’s story abacus.”

  Shared memories of hardship and sorrow slid over them both like a blanket. Scarl rarely spoke of the past, but Ariel knew that some of the losses they’d endured together had hurt him more than he let on. The limp he’d gained in an accident showed. Most of the other wounds didn’t.

  She brushed her cheek against the rough cloth of his shirt.

  “Do you know the beads’ stories?” she asked. When he nodded, she added, “Will you tell me one?”

  “Which would you like?”

  Ariel tucked her chin to study the beads. The oblong of ebony wood caught her eye.

  “How about this one?” she asked.

  Scarl regarded the bead and then looked back at the fire. “Perhaps not that one tonight. Second choice?”

  Ariel studied him. He could hold his face powerfully blank, though.

  “Any one. You choose.” She could pester him about the ebony bead’s story some other time.

  He told her the tale that belonged to the pearl. Although the words involved selkies and seawater, the pearl, round and white, drew Ariel’s thoughts back to the moon. No bright eye shone on them that night; the moon’s thin, waning sickle would not rise until nearly dawn. Even a slivered moon pulled on the sea, though, and perhaps that pull echoed in pearls. Long after they’d each retreated to their blankets and Scarl had fallen asleep, Ariel fingered her necklace and felt the moon tugging on it and on her.

  Once she even thought the pearl sang in response, a silvery chime tickling her skin. To her relief, it whispered no words—but it did seem to urge her to hurry.

  CHAPTER 6

  Thunder Moon Gone

  Ariel hated the feeling of slime between her toes. Scarl limped straight through the swamp water most of the time, sometimes probing ahead with his walking stick, but Ariel hopped between tussocks of grass when she could. The treacherous ground prevented them from riding the horse; it was too unpleasant to fall when he stumbled.