The Timekeeper's Moon

by Joni Sensel

  Scarl awaited her decision. She shrugged. “We might as well hear Vi’s story. And give her some decent food. I don’t want to sleep here tonight, though.”

  “Neither do I,” said Sienna. “Tattler’s whining is creepy. Not to mention all the dead snakes. I am hungry, though. I’ll start a fire and cook something better than rattler.”

  While Sienna worked, Scarl poked around Tattler’s fallen eyeballs and ears and collected small parts to take back to the abbey for study. He tried to ask Vi’s permission beforehand, but returned after peeking in through the doorway.

  “She’s asleep,” he reported. “Snoring like a bear.”

  “It wears you out to be crazy,” said Ariel. “I know.”

  Rousing herself, she climbed a ways up one of Tattler’s legs. In some ways it was easier than climbing a tree because the pegs and the lattice were all the same distance apart. The view was lovely, and she could imagine Vi watching them approach and concluding that travelers meant a Farwalker led them. In that way, Tattler truly had spied them from afar. With its metal warm from the sun, Ariel also would have liked to sit and gaze for a while. But nothing about Tattler’s sharp edges was comfortable, so she didn’t linger.

  As she started back down, dizziness overcame her. She clamped her hands tight. The metal thrummed and flexed under her hands. It had to be the wind—had to be—but in a moment of panic she feared Tattler was not as dead as it appeared. Her whole body tensed and she pressed every limb to the lattice.

  Scarl called her name in alarm. His voice drifted distantly up from the ground. Blue sky pivoted around her. Was she falling? Yet she could still feel the metal pinching her palms, pressed to her body, and biting the soles of her boots.

  Ariel shut her eyes, hoping to stem the vertigo. The voices calling her name came from above, below, and then behind her, proving, it seemed, she was tumbling. The whining of the wind through the lattice softened to the shush of tree boughs in wind, and Ariel would have sworn that one of the voices calling along with Scarl’s was Zeke’s.

  Then, just as Zeke had done on the day she’d climbed his tree, a hand clamped on Ariel’s ankle.

  CHAPTER 19

  Dog Moon Over Tattler

  Zeke! He’d grabbed her, but how? Ariel’s eyes flew open once more, but she saw neither Zeke nor a tree. Vi’s wrinkled face peered aslant into hers.

  “No, no,” Vi scolded. “You ain’t known Tattler so long as I have. You don’t know which joints are weak and will bend.”

  Barely daring to breathe, Ariel turned her head. She hung upside down, clinging to a section of lattice that had sprung free and sagged toward the ground.

  “Come this way. I gotcha.” Tugging and nudging, Vi helped her reach a sturdier section. Ashamed of being rescued by such an old woman, but grateful, Ariel tried not to lean on her much.

  Once her balance had been recovered, she hurried down, careful to follow Vi’s winding lead. Scarl awaited not far from the ground, his face tight. He backed away as they approached and Vi began shooting him suspicious looks.

  “That was too nearly a fall,” he said when Ariel’s feet at last touched the earth.

  Vi shook her finger at him. “You oughtn’ta chased her up there, that’s all.”

  “I’m okay.” Dizziness still pulled at Ariel, though. She held her eyes wide against it, unblinking, and sagged against Tattler’s frame.

  Waving Scarl off, Vi scurried around her. “Come, come, Tattler’s sorry. Old and broken, but sorry. Didn’t mean to give you a scare. We can’t help our bad bones, none of us. Oh! I know. Tattler’s got a present for you.” She sniffed the air like a dog. “Is that food?”

  On wobbly knees, Ariel followed the old woman to Sienna’s small fire. “Rice with cattail root,” the Flame-Mage announced.

  Ariel ate only a few bites, but Vi eagerly took the remains of her share and a goodly portion of Scarl’s. Vi’s manners had not improved in her solitude, that was certain. Rice flew from the gaps in her teeth. As they ate, Scarl asked gentle questions about Tattler, but direct answers were rare. Vi talked mostly of it singing to her under moonlight, winking at her with one eye, and calling the snakes, keeping them lulled so she didn’t get bitten or starve.

  “And treasures,” Vi announced. “Tattler helps me find treasures from back-when. I’ll show you. And give you one, too.” She trundled off to her shack and returned, cupping a collection of junk at her chest. She laid it in the dust at their feet.

  Ariel scrambled to her knees when she spied the tail of a telling dart. She slumped back to a seat soon enough. Vi had pieces of several, but none whole.

  “Do you have so many here because Tattler sent them?” Ariel asked with a flicker of hope.

  “Tattler? Ah, ha ha ha!” Vi slapped one hand to her cheek and tipped her head up to share the joke with the giant. “Your master ain’t teaching you right,” she said, “and I’m too old to take an apprentice. But even a young ’un like you ought to know that only folks could send darts. Like arrows, they needed a bow to shoot off from. And the bowstring is inside your head.” She pressed a grimy fingertip to Ariel’s forehead and nudged. “A purposeful thought, that’s what sends ’em. No brainbox, no darts. Tattler’s got eyes and ears, and sings pretty good, too, but I live in his brainbox. I can tell ya, it’s empty.”

  “You, then,” Ariel pressed. “Have you ever sent some?”

  “How old you think I am? Two hundred or so? No darts flying in my lifetime, Storian girl. My master saw one, or that’s what he said, but he was prone to fish tales. His master, more likely. But here. You take this.” She tucked a dirt-crusted dart missing its tail into Ariel’s hand. “Tell your master to learn you better about the back-whens.” She paused. “Oh. You don’t got a master. Tsk, tsk.” She shook her head. “It’s worse than I thought. Well, you come back when you’re done with the Farwalker, and I’ll try to help.”

  Ariel looked down at her lap to hide her disappointment, which seemed deeper alongside her brief moment of hope.

  “Now, Brilla, this one’s for you.” Vi reached into her pile and drew out a corroded metal disc that appeared to be murky glass on one side. She presented it to Sienna.

  “Thank you. It’s very, uh, pretty.” Sienna held it so Ariel could see.

  Ariel exclaimed and Scarl did, too. On the round, pale face beneath the scratched glass, notches marked the four winds. Three dark lines, one an arrow, lay in the circle. The combination reminded Ariel vaguely of her map. As Sienna turned it, the pointers skittered and shifted inside, loose.

  “Is it a toy?” Sienna asked. “You jiggle it to line up the arrows?”

  “No, no,” Vi said. “Timepiece.”

  “Like a sundial,” Scarl explained, “but much more precise. We’ve a diagram of one at the abbey. The arrows are supposed to be fixed in the center. If it weren’t broken, they would track the hour of the day.”

  “No. That’s wrong,” declared Vi. Scarl gave her a startled look, but she only plucked the timepiece from Sienna’s fingers. “Not you.” She passed it to Scarl. “You. Man or not, you’re a help to the Farwalker, and Tattler says she has a timekeeper already.”

  “I do?” Ariel asked.

  “I… I do?” Sienna echoed, trying to help.

  Vi only nudged her and cackled as if they were sharing a joke. Ariel wondered if the old woman meant the moon.

  “I’m grateful,” Scarl told her. “Perhaps with help I can get it working again. But are you sure you want to part with it?”

  “Bah,” Vi told him. “It’s nothing. Is it time for the story?”

  “Don’t I get a present?” Sienna asked.

  Vi shook her head. “You get the story.”

  “Now would be good,” Ariel said grimly. “We need to go before dark.” Sooner would be even better.

  “Yes, yes, can’t keep you long. My Farwalker’s got to get moving. But this is important. The first time I heard it, I knew my daughter would need it. You’d be the one, yes golly, none too s
oon.” She patted Sienna’s knee. “Not here, though.” Her head whirled as if she were checking for eavesdroppers. “The brainbox. We should go hide in there. There are some who would crush out this story.”

  Ariel’s first thought was for the Forgetting, a time in which people worked to get rid of all trace of the old days and ways. Tattler itself had likely survived only because it stood so remote from known villages. Indeed, the frightful legends about it may have been attempts to discourage interest. As she pondered this, though, Ariel’s eyes reminded her that Vi was half crazy. Who knew whether anything she said could be trusted?

  The old woman led them all to her shack. Reluctant to enter, Ariel paused at the doorway. Except for rock rubble and a mound of snake skulls, the shack was as Vi had said: empty.

  “Yes, this’ll do,” said Vi. “Sit here, sit here. We can pretend we’re all inside the Vault.”

  With a sharp intake of breath, Ariel rushed to obey.

  Vi stood in the center, folded her gnarled hands, and looked down at her feet. “This story is called Noah’s Fail-Safe,” she warbled, “and I’ve lost the bead I had for it. My girl Brilla wore it sewn on her dress when they buried—” She shook her head impatiently. “Noah’s Fail-Safe,” she repeated. “But I call it Brilla’s Proof. You’ll see why.”

  Raising her head, Vi scanned her audience, her gaze coming to rest on Sienna. When she continued, her voice held a rousing vigor that took Ariel aback.

  “There once was a wise man named Noah, before the Blind War. Noah liked to poke about in the swamp, and on one of those pokes he heard a voice out of nowhere. Noah wasn’t a Tree-Singer, mind you. The trees never spoke to people before the blindness, but he heard a voice just the same.”

  “I know a story about Noah,” Ariel whispered to Scarl, “but it’s different from this.”

  “Shh. Later.”

  Vi narrowed her eyes to hush them. “The voice might have been trees. Or Tattler. Or my friend the moon.” She shot Ariel a sly smile. “You hear the moon, too. Tattler says so.”

  Ariel stared back, disturbed that a madwoman knew such things about her and even more chilled to hear she and Vi had something in common.

  Vi cackled. “Anyhow,” she continued, “the voice said destruction was coming. And Noah was doomed. But he could help ease the doom for some others. He could put all he knew, or as much as would fit, in a Vault. It had to be simple, because the most learned folk might not survive. It had to be hidden, and he had to work fast. But most important, Noah needed to make sure his Vault couldn’t be found until it was safe—not before. Not before the destruction and fighting were over. Not before folks could work together again and do right with what it contained. And it couldn’t be found just by accident, either.” She looked from one listener to the next. “The voice told him how.”

  “How?” Ariel asked, when Vi didn’t go on.

  Pleased, the Storian nodded. “Ah, but nobody knows. That’s how Noah made his Vault mistake-proof. Wise as he was, even he didn’t understand all he did. But the folks back-when were clever in the ways of the Essence, and the voice guided him, too. They say the Vault can’t be found … until it is found. You probably heard that and thought it was just a mind teaser, like the one about the sound of a single hand clapping.”

  Not having heard either saying, Ariel glanced at her companions. Only Scarl murmured agreement.

  “It’s no mind teaser, that. All of us have to show that we’re ready to find the Vault first. But the proof, don’t you know, is hidden away in the Vault. So even if it’s found by good luck and chance, there’s more to be done. Because good luck and bad luck are not that far apart. That’s another way Noah was clever. His fail-safe used the power of the number thirteen—good luck or bad, right or wrong, renewal or death. All or nothing, that is. If we don’t prove we’re ready, the thirteen will flip and the Vault will be hidden again.”

  Vi clasped her hands and gave Sienna a smug smile. “And my Brilla will prove it. Or find it. Or both. I’ve known it since the night of her birth. Plus, any fool can see the Vault’s been lost much too long. If we don’t find it soon, we’ll never understand what it holds anyhow. It won’t speak any language still cousin to ours.”

  “But …” Sienna glanced to Ariel for guidance. “The Vault’s already been found.”

  Vi’s satisfied look dropped. “Has it? By you?”

  “Um, not exactly,” said Sienna while Ariel bit her tongue.

  Barely waiting for her answer, Vi said, “You must be off on the proof, then! Heavens.” She paced, pulling a wisp of hair to her teeth to gnaw it. “Hard to tell what it is, ’cept it ain’t visiting me. You’d best go to the Vault first. Some help will be there.”

  Ariel and Scarl exchanged a look. She reached into her pocket before she realized the map was folded away in her pack.

  Vi flapped her hands at them and then yanked a snakeskin from her body to flick it like a whip. Its rattle buzzed. “Go, go! If you’re proving, there’s no time to waste! No daughter of mine is going to fail the proof! Find more help, if you need it! Storians, Judges, men! Oh, if only I weren’t so old. Or had friends! Or if Brilla… if only I’d kept Brilla safe.” She sank to her knees. Dully, she added, “Or we aren’t ready yet, and we won’t be. Them men driving me out like a rat surely weren’t. I was so certain that girl was special… was fated… The Essence was on her like stink.” Vi covered her face with her hands. “Now I only have Tattler. Only Tattler and me. And busted back-whens. It’s all broken.”

  Tattler’s keening rose and fell overhead. Sienna extended a comforting hand. “Poor Vi—”

  At her touch, the old woman shrieked. “Not you! No! Brilla!” She dashed out.

  Stunned into silence, the others followed, expecting to find her nearby. When she didn’t appear shortly, they searched. Ariel considered venturing up Tattler just a short way to spot her from above. That’s when they finally spied her: Vi had climbed up to the giant’s remaining eye. She slumped there like rags among whatever rigging kept the eye suspended. No amount of shouting drew her attention. Neither did waving the map. Despite the daunting height, Ariel suggested she take it to Vi, but Scarl was too worried she’d fall. So was she. He contemplated it briefly himself, but Ariel doubted his limp would allow it, and they both feared that a man approaching might upset Vi even more.

  The sun dropped near the horizon without the slightest stir from the old woman. The half-moon appeared over Tattler, too. The sight of it convinced Ariel they needed to leave.

  “Perhaps we should wait until morning,” Scarl said. “Dawn might bring her down.”

  “It might not,” Ariel fretted, “and we’ll have lost that much more time.” After hearing Vi’s story, nonsense or not, she was more frightened than ever of dallying, and her feet jittered to be on their way.

  “You said we wouldn’t sleep here,” said Sienna. “I won’t be able to. Please?”

  Scarl rubbed his forehead. “She may not have been much help with the map, anyhow. No other Storians have been.”

  As they gathered their gear and the horse, Ariel asked, “You think she’ll be all right?”

  “She has been for long years before us,” Scarl replied. “And if not, the bridge out of the world may actually bring her more peace.”

  Nonetheless, he left half their food and his blanket behind. When Sienna questioned the wisdom of such generosity, he assured her he could find more to eat and sleep wrapped in his coat.

  “You can share my blanket, then, if you like,” Sienna told him. Ariel choked, but Scarl replied that since it was summer, he’d be comfortable enough.

  Eager to change the subject, Ariel asked him what he thought of Vi’s astonishing story. They’d barely had a chance to discuss it.

  “There are many legends about the creation and location of the Vault,” he said as they tramped down the hill into the dusk. “I thought I knew them all, and none turned out to be true. But I’ve never heard that one.”

  “She migh
t have made it all up,” said Sienna. “In the Noah story I learned in Skunk, Noah’s a Tree-Singer and what he saves is tree seeds from the flood that created our swamp.”

  “My Noah was a Kincaller,” Ariel said, “but he had a flood, too. He got away with animals on a boat. He did a mistake-proof thing, too, though. The only creature he let loose at first was a bird, and he didn’t free the rest until the bird showed him that the land was safe and growing again.”

  “The name Noah may be stuck to anyone who protects valuable items from harm,” Scarl told them.

  Ariel laughed without humor. “Maybe he sent the darts, like he sent out his bird. But if so, I don’t think we’ll find him alive.”

  “The rest of what Vi said interests me more,” Scarl said. “The idea of a fail-safe, proving our worth. Especially given your sense that you need to hurry.”

  “What if it’s true?” With movement now soothing Ariel’s antsy feet, she wondered if the decision to leave had been right.

  Scarl blew a long breath. “It’s hard to imagine how the Vault could become hidden again—a great earthquake or landslide? I suppose it could happen.”

  Ariel gulped, imagining an avalanche crushing the abbey and everyone in it.

  “A story can’t cause an earthquake,” said Sienna.

  “Other forces can,” Scarl replied, “and it would not be the first time the world has concerned itself with a Farwalker’s business.”

  Ariel moaned. “I wish it would help more! How can I prove anything when I don’t even know where we’re going or what we’ll find when we get there?”

  Scarl’s look of sympathy made her feel worse. “The same way you found the Vault in the first place, I suppose. Trust the powers behind you and follow your feet.”

  Easy for him to say, Ariel thought. He didn’t know how the weight of worry numbed her feet in her boots.