by Joni Sensel
Ariel didn’t sleep at all for a long while, though. She lay staring up at the sky. The moon could not have been more than a bright eyelash tonight, and by now it had already set. The silent stars winked like holes pricked in the night. Fingering her ebony bead, Ariel wondered again why Scarl had strung it into her necklace. It occurred to her that her beads all had holes more surely than either her map or the sky did, but that notion did not soothe her, either.
CHAPTER 16
Dog Moon and Secrets
When Ariel awoke, Sienna was sitting alongside her, stretching herself alert. Smiling, the Flame-Mage observed, “The stars fell on you last night.” Handfuls of tiny white flowers had been sprinkled across Ariel’s blanket.
“Oh, pretty,” Ariel said. “Thank you!”
“I didn’t do it,” Sienna replied. “Must have been Scarl.”
Startled, Ariel spied him tending Willow not far away. He’d never done anything like that before, but perhaps it was a final First Day surprise. She hated to scatter the blossoms, but reluctantly she got up.
Sienna lagged, replaiting her hair. “I feel like I’m braiding bugs into my hair,” she complained. “You sleep on the ground so much, I can see why you chop yours.”
“Scarl’s got a knife,” Ariel said. Sienna’s look of horror made her laugh.
Ariel’s smile lingered as she stuffed her feet into her boots and went to meet Scarl, who was returning from the horse. She didn’t initially notice his wrinkled brow.
“Thank you,” she told him shyly.
“For what?”
She gestured toward her blanket. “The flowers.”
He glanced that way and shrugged. “Don’t thank me. Sienna must have picked them for you. Tell me, though, Ariel—am I a bit mad? What does this look like to you?”
He showed her a dark knit cloth crushed in his hand.
“It’s a hat, isn’t it?” As the words left her lips, though, she realized why he frowned. “Oh—your cap? Your old one? I thought you lost that in the Drymere last year!”
His fingers kneaded it. Sand showered out. “I did. But it was in my bag this morning, alongside my socks. You’re not having me on, are you? Concealing it all this time?”
“No, not me. I—” She started. Her hand flew up to check her necklace for the third time in two minutes. Finding it safe, she looked again at the flowers. “Could Misha be back? Playing tricks on us both? I haven’t seen him since we found the Vault, but …”
Scarl shivered. Ariel considered Misha a friend, but the Finder had never been comfortable with the abbey’s teen ghost. “I might rather be mad. Did he ever bring physical objects before?”
Ariel shook her head. Yet she could think of no other explanation. The abbey’s Tree-Singers thought that once Misha’s work in the Vault had been found, his spirit had moved on. Perhaps they were wrong.
Uneasy, she opened her own pack to stuff in her blanket. A wad of yellow cloth inside caught her eye. Her heart swelled, blocking her voice. Although she felt as if she’d found something dead in her bag, she reached in and drew the cloth out.
“That’s a pretty skirt,” said Sienna from nearby. “You’re not going to wear it here in this muck, are you?”
“S-S-Scarl?” Ariel turned with the skirt held at arm’s length.
He didn’t recognize it. She had to remind him that he’d ripped up this skirt to bandage the wound on her arm that had so long since healed. Now here it was, whole and unbloodied, as if that day had never happened. Reeling, Ariel dropped the skirt to shove up her left sleeve. The familiar scar filled her with a perverse relief. The earth seemed to have whirled so that nothing could be trusted to remain in its place. But her own skin, at least, hadn’t changed.
Scarl gazed apprehensively into the empty air around them.
“Misha?” Ariel called. “Mark something with your handprint, will you? Please?” That was how the ghost had announced his presence before.
No answer came. Ariel put off Sienna’s questions and they quickly left camp. Over the older girl’s protests, Ariel left the skirt behind. It stirred old aches too much. Besides, it was too wrong to abide.
Later, as her shock faded and walking brought her calm, Ariel told her new friend about some of her encounters with Misha. At first, Sienna’s eyes widened, but Ariel recognized the moment her credulity snapped.
“You and Scarl both tell good tales,” said the Flame-Mage with a wink. Ariel did not bother to argue.
By midday they’d finally left swamp muck behind. They traveled through wooded uplands busy with birdlife and cooling breezes, the latter welcome after the stifling swamp. Now and then they glimpsed sweeping views that made Ariel’s heart soar and helped her forget the strange morning. Born near the wide sea, she always felt smothered in close habitats. In contrast, Sienna clutched Ariel’s arm the first time they paused on a hilltop overlooking a distance.
“It’s so… empty!” Sienna exclaimed. “I feel we could fall in and vanish! Is it like this everywhere?”
“Pretty much,” Ariel said. “I mean, sometimes there’s mountains or sand dunes or plains. The things growing are different. But almost all of it’s wild.”
“You’re even braver than I thought,” Sienna replied. “All this space, with no people…”
“Not many, at least,” Scarl said. “We rarely walk less than a week between villages.”
Ariel admired the swells in the land, listening to the wind’s swirling song. “I like it. No hint of Tattler, though.” Her feet pulled her along, but she asked to be sure. “You don’t think we’ve passed it, Scarl, do you?”
“No. I don’t think it’s close, but I can feel it ahead.”
“Honestly, Scarl?” asked Sienna. “I was sure Tattler was only made up.”
“I could be wrong,” he replied, “but unless Ariel changes course, I expect to find something. She never leads us to naught.”
Ariel jigged in excitement. It had to be the sender, at last!
Scarl misunderstood her squirm. “I don’t think we need to be nervous, though. Cautious, perhaps.”
“Oh, no,” said Sienna. “Not with you here to protect us.”
Ariel swallowed a snicker. With her feet drying and the sender finally within reach, she was in too bright a mood to tease Sienna for fawning. Instead, she peered ahead for some glimpse of her goal. If Tattler was truly a giant, they should be able to see it from afar.
Having chatted so much on the previous day, she and Sienna had exhausted the easiest talk. Accustomed to Scarl’s quiet company, Ariel didn’t mind swaths of silence, but Sienna grasped for topics. She told Ariel stories she knew, sighed about the dirt on her shift, and prodded the Farwalker into describing other places she’d been.
“Do you like secrets?” Sienna asked slyly, late in the day. They’d still seen nothing of Tattler. “I’ll tell you one if you’ll tell me one.”
Ariel mulled it, not sure she had any. She thought about the meadow with Nace, but chose something less risky.
“It’s not really a secret,” she told Sienna, “but you know how I said the Vault had been found? I’m the one who found it. We stopped saying so unless people ask, because lots don’t believe it. Since I’m just a girl.”
“You’re not ‘just a girl.’ But they think Scarl found it instead?”
Ariel nodded. “Or some other Finder. He gets mad either way. It’s easier just to skip that part.”
“You could say the Tree-Singers found it. People would believe that.”
“That’d be lying, though.”
Sienna didn’t seem particularly troubled.
“So what’s your secret?” Ariel prompted.
Sienna glanced sideways at Ariel and then over her shoulder to make sure Scarl wouldn’t hear. “Secret, now. Promise?”
Ariel nodded impatiently.
Tipping her head close, Sienna whispered, “I’m going to kiss Scarl the first chance I get. And I bet I can make him want to marry me, too.”
A
riel stopped in her tracks.
Sienna laughed. “See if I don’t.” She flipped her braid over her shoulder. “But don’t worry, I won’t take him from you. He can still act like your father. But I’ll be his wife. By the time we get to the next village, he won’t want to leave me. You and I can be friends forever!”
Ariel’s lungs refused to work until she glanced back at Scarl—her Scarl. His familiar form reassured her that nothing had changed except words in the air. She knew him. Sienna didn’t. The Flame-Mage was spouting nonsense.
“Who knows,” Sienna added, “maybe I’ll even meet your little ghost at the abbey.”
Her glib tone helped Ariel force her feet forward. Sienna hardly knew what was real and what wasn’t. Still, the older girl smiled like a cat with a mouthful of mouse, and Ariel fretted for the rest of the day.
Sienna’s secret was hardly a shock by itself. Ariel didn’t think Scarl was handsome, but she loved him. It wasn’t hard to imagine someone older wanting to marry him. What troubled her was the chance that Sienna’s scheme could succeed. Confidence oozed from the lovely young woman beside her, and the strange events of recent days seemed proof that Ariel didn’t understand the world as much as she thought.
Her eyes grew sharper on both her companions. She noticed details she hadn’t before—Sienna’s legs, for instance. The young woman’s shift, short enough to avoid mud in Skunk, here in the uplands simply looked daring. Moreover, it stayed mostly clean, and Ariel saw for the first time how dirty she let herself get. Sienna avoided splashes and smudges with a great deal more success, her longer limbs gliding while Ariel’s tromped.
Over the next several days, Sienna continued to be solicitous to her and Scarl both, cooking, washing dishes, and tending the fire, as she’d promised. But her skill with the fire began to look boastful, her every move crafted to earn attention. When Sienna let down her hair to brush it, Ariel suppressed a glare. The brushing took forever. Hidden meanings now lurked in other tasks, too. Did Sienna’s fingers linger when she handed Scarl his food? Did she bend closer when she took back his bowl, did her voice change when she asked him a question? Ariel thought so. And the sickle moon seemed to agree, its sly grin getting broader each evening as it dropped to the west.
Sienna kept trying to pretend that nothing had changed. Ariel sometimes forgot that it had, and they giggled together like they had on the first day. More often, their conversations were curt. Sienna’s company, once pleasant, annoyed Ariel. She could see in Sienna’s eyes that the older girl knew it and her feelings were hurt. Soon it was no wonder that Scarl received nearly all of the Flame-Mage’s smiles.
When she could, Ariel stayed near him—so near he tripped over her twice, the second time with a curse. Tattler, on the other hand, receded before her as though running away. Each dawn she arose full of hope that today they would meet it. Each evening that hope drained away, leaving chagrin in its wake. Scarl had to assure her so often that it still lay ahead that he finally told her not to ask him again. Ariel resented her feet for not knowing how far it would be, and she groused about the people in Skunk who had made it sound close.
Only one thing cheered Ariel’s days. Every morning, a handful of flowers lay strewn on her bed. At first she suspected Sienna of trying to earn back her friendship, perhaps picking blossoms in the middle of the night after waking up too full of water. Like Scarl, Sienna staunchly denied it. Ariel looked for Misha in her dreams, but the ghost never visited her there as he once had. Though the mystery seemed harmless enough, several times Scarl sat up late, trying to witness the elusive shower of blossoms, but he never managed to do so. Ariel tucked petals into her pockets and stopped mentioning it because she did not want it to end—and she awoke every morning to dread, afraid to see blossoms on Sienna’s blanket instead.
Her walk turned into a trudge. Too aware of the beauty walking beside her, Ariel didn’t notice her path or the scenery as much as she otherwise might. Then one afternoon, not long after they’d rounded the shoulder of a slope, Scarl tapped her and pointed. A patch of white gleamed on a ridge farther ahead and off to the side. Ariel shaded her eyes to gaze at it.
“It’s August,” she murmured. “That white spot can’t be snow.”
“Where? Oh!” Sienna stared, too.
Scarl said, “It’s too big for a cliff goat, and too smooth and bright to be daisies. Could be a sheer face of stone reflecting the late sun.”
“It could be,” Ariel replied. Her excitement simmered harder for being so long denied. “But it’s not.”
She led them on, faster, without mentioning a tiny doubt: why hadn’t Tattler appeared dead ahead? Ariel focused harder on her feet than she had for a while, but their preferences seemed muffled. Whether she stepped to the left or right of stumps and briar patches did not seem to matter as it usually did. Once the land’s humps and hollows obscured the far-off gleam she was sure must be Tattler, Ariel had to slow. Her feet tried her patience, contradicting themselves on what seemed to be a zigzagging route, first more to the south, then more east, back and forth. She would have preferred to climb out of the dells and follow the ridgelines, keeping that white patch in view, but she didn’t dare question her feet, which had saved her from cliffs and impassable slopes more than once.
When at last a fresh vista opened, a tall silhouette rose against the evening sky like a steeple stretching into the heavens. Ariel had once seen a Storian’s house with a tower and a bell hung inside it. This spire went much higher. The white patch they had seen from afar was some part jutting out near its top. The whole thing listed a bit to one side. Still far away but now directly ahead, it towered over the hillside, at least three trees tall.
“It almost looks like a snag, with most of the branches broken off,” said Sienna.
“Too big,” Ariel said. “It’s more like a ship’s mast with the rigging all tangled, but it’s way too tall for that, too.”
“I’d say we’ve spied Tattler,” Scarl said. “Do you suppose it’s spied us?”
Sienna fidgeted with her braid. A similar unease wormed through Ariel. The pale, round shape near the silhouette’s top resembled an eye more than a bell in a steeple.
She refused to acknowledge her fear. “If it is the sender,” she declared, “it probably knew we were coming. Let’s go find out.”
If they’d been birds, they might have reached it before dark. They weren’t. Reluctantly Ariel decided to camp. She wanted to sleep where she could gaze toward Tattler, but Sienna protested.
“I’m surprised it’s real,” said the Flame-Mage. “I still don’t believe it will eat us, but I don’t think I can sleep with it staring at me all night long, either.”
Scarl agreed. “We know nothing about it but threatening rumors,” he told Ariel when she grumbled. “It’s probably harmless, but we might as well shelter from it while we can.” He picked a campsite in the lee of a slope that blocked their view forward as well as any view Tattler had back toward them. Though his reasoning was sound, Ariel couldn’t overlook whose side he’d taken.
As far as she knew, the kiss Sienna wanted had not occurred, but she’d seen the young woman trying to bring it about. Noticing Scarl rubbing his bad foot one evening, Sienna had offered to do it for him. Though he’d refused, Ariel had braced herself for a time when he might accept.
Something even more upsetting took place the night they camped hidden from Tattler’s view. Ariel was darning a sock by the firelight when she happened to glance up. Sienna bustled nearby, draping damp clothes over a bush so they’d dry. The last time Ariel had noticed, Scarl had been admiring the stars. Now earthly beauty attracted his gaze: when Sienna turned her back, his eyes traveled the young woman’s form.
Ariel nearly let out a screech. She’d not seen Scarl ogle anyone like that, including Mirayna, whom he would have wed if she had not left the world.
As she fought to control a rush of dismay, Scarl shifted his focus to the fire, nudging a stray coal safely back to the middle. Obliviou
s, Sienna came to sit in the circle of light with her hairbrush. Scarl paid her no mind, but Ariel hadn’t imagined the subtle interest he’d shown a moment before. Sienna may not have earned a kiss yet, but she’d succeeded in attracting his attention in a way Ariel could not. She feared he wouldn’t—couldn’t—have enough for them both. And in a choice between one and the other, Ariel didn’t see how she could win.
Turning away from her companions, Ariel abandoned her darning and curled into her blanket without saying good night. Only holding her breath kept the tears in.
The moon, now having reached its first quarter, hadn’t spoken to her since before they’d left Skunk. But the advice it had last given her there—linger, gather—kept Ariel wakeful a long while that night. Sienna could not be what she’d needed to gather from Skunk, could she? The moon must have meant the knowledge Ariel had gleaned about Tattler, or, if not, perhaps the messages or gifts she’d received there were important. Certainly Ariel didn’t need Sienna, hair clips or no. She refused to believe that Scarl might.
CHAPTER 17
Dog Moon at First Quarter
Twice that night, Ariel was awakened by a burning throb in her left forearm, as though the limb had fallen asleep worse than usual. Each time, she checked her necklace—a new habit—and then cradled her arm to her belly and rubbed it until the pain faded. When at last her eyes opened on morning, a stripe of blood stained her sleeve.
Gasping, she shoved the fabric up to her elbow. She found no blood beneath; her scar creased her forearm, snugly healed if not smooth. She probed it to be sure and then slid her cuff back in place. The red swath, still damp, lay precisely over her scar.
“You must have had a nosebleed last night,” said Sienna, noticing from nearby. She wrinkled her own slender nose. “And wiped with your sleeve in your sleep.”
“I guess so,” said Ariel faintly. She touched the base of her nose but found no evidence there, nor on the sweater she’d used as a pillow. She ignored the alarming but unlikely idea that Tattler had somehow attacked her. The bloody sleeve seemed more akin to the eerie appearances of her old necklace and skirt—remnants from another journey that somehow underlay this and were themselves bleeding through.
