The Timekeeper's Moon

by Joni Sensel

  A gust shook the tree. Its limbs swayed and bent, swimming beneath her. Ariel’s body pitched toward her hands. One foot slipped and too much weight dropped on the other. Wood snapped. She fell.

  Flailing down past Zeke, Ariel grasped for a hold. She scraped along branches but only twisted herself awkwardly, now dropping nearly headfirst. The earth rushed to greet her. Through a roar in her head, she heard Zeke shout her name—or did that voice belong to somebody else?

  An image flashed into her mind. Everyone said your life flicked before your eyes as you left the world, but this view was not from her past. It was a man, a stranger whose name she nonetheless knew. His fingers held a shiny brass shaft. She’d never seen one, but she’d heard stories, so she thought it might be a telling dart. The device had once been used to send messages. And the man’s name—

  Ariel hit the ground. A spasm went through her body, but it was not caused by pain. The jolt felt more like slipping down two or three stairs when she’d meant to descend only one. It scattered her thoughts. She opened her eyes, but for a moment the colors and movement they showed her did not speak a language she knew. Only slowly did awareness reconnect out of chaos: Huh? Woods… Oh, the woods. Daytime. Alone. Leaves above, branches, sky… tree. And a fall.

  Once she’d earned back that fragile understanding, dread flowed back, too. Ariel remembered how she’d gotten there on the ground. The complete lack of pain scared her more than it reassured her. She tensed, expecting pain to answer from somewhere, and could feel nothing at all—no hurting, no movement, not even the earth beneath her. Instead, her effort to move stirred the leaves and sky overhead. They spun, blurred together, and faded away. Silence crushed her. It was not just the hush of a startled forest. She lay in a dead quiet, empty of her own breathing and heartbeat—empty of life.

  “Ariel! Ariel!”

  Although distant, the sound of her name gave her a fix in the blankness. She grasped at the low cry that followed. Two hands clutched at her torso and shook her. Surprised to feel them, so firm and close, she struggled anew to gain understanding. She was certain she’d been lying on her back, gazing up at the sky, but now the hands flopped her over and pulled the wrong way as if dragging her into the earth. That terrified her. Nothing good grabbed you from out of the earth.

  Ariel strained to fight, but her body remained limp, apparently broken beyond all response. As the hands tumbled her once more—or still—onto her back, a blur slid again into view, confirming that her eyes were open. She focused. Other than the blue of a blank sky, what she saw confused her yet more. The woods did not appear here at all. A man shook her. Now came the pain as she rattled in his grip. A strange boy crowded in at the man’s shoulder. The boy would have been cute if his face hadn’t been so twisted in horror. His hands reached to her… hands she knew. Hands she’d touched. She’d seen them on a rope and felt them on her fa—

  With a tangible snap, Ariel’s memories returned. She gasped. Her limbs jerked—she’d regained their control. Her stomach heaved at the shift. Through sheer will, she kept its contents inside. Swallowing hard, she flung herself forward against Scarl’s chest, her arms rising to clasp him.

  “It’s all right!” she cried. “I’m awake now. I’m here.”

  He crushed her in his embrace and then eased her back to examine her face. Tears stood in his eyes. “Bloody hell! I thought you were dead.”

  “No,” she said, her voice shaky. “Just stuck in a nightmare.”

  Scarl exhaled with a force that seemed to suck the bones from his body. “That was no sleep.” He gave her over to Nace, who brushed her hair back from her eyes. The tension in their features drained only slowly.

  “Your eyes were staring and blank,” Scarl added. “You were cold. I didn’t think you were breathing.”

  “I don’t think I was sleeping, either. Not really. More like… I don’t know …” She found herself distracted by Nace’s touch. “Like closing my eyes and opening them somewhere else.”

  Scarl drew Nace’s hand from her face, but without reproach. “Just a minute, Nace. Where?”

  “Home. Canberra Docks, I mean. I keep dreaming of the same day—the day I found my telling dart. Before then, though. And I keep falling.” Even the thought of that fall from Zeke’s maple sent her heart hammering. “It keeps getting more awful, Scarl. Harder to wake up. If I do it again, I’m pretty sure I won’t wake up here at all.”

  Scarl dragged one hand through his curls. A soft curse slid from him. Nace went back to petting Ariel’s hair.

  “Perhaps you’re just exhausted,” Scarl said faintly. “Or ill.”

  “I don’t think so.” Her queasy stomach had calmed. As she assessed how her other parts felt, she expected to stumble on last night’s despair. Instead, the desire to walk surged through her, stronger than ever. Her feet, at least, felt that time had not quite run out.

  “I’m not sick,” Ariel added. “Just late.” The sun throbbed on her shoulders. She glanced up, dismayed by how high it rode in the sky. Jostling Nace, she reached for her boots, slid her feet in, and rose. “We’d better go.”

  “Not so fast,” Scarl said.

  She whirled on him. “Yes! Fast! I don’t want to talk about not waking up next time! You wouldn’t let me keep going last night. This might be my last chance. Let’s go!”

  He stared, drew a hand over his mouth, and then turned to his own gear. Nace scrambled to follow suit and helped secure the load on the horse. Their task complete, Scarl gestured limply for Ariel to lead on, but without meeting her eyes.

  She softened. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s just … I don’t want that nightmare again. I have to escape it. Any way I can. Please help me.”

  Anguish twisted his face. “I’m trying. I don’t know what to do but follow.”

  “That’s enough.”

  She fled from one kind of fall and toward another until they reached a stream. It drained the uplands on their right into the river on their left. The wide streambed was littered with flood-wood and rocks, but now the water meandered at a summertime low. Ariel turned to climb alongside it, sure it flowed from the waterfall somewhere above.

  Willow refused to proceed.

  As Nace tried to coax him, Ariel bounced from one foot to the other. The sun roasted the top of her head through her hair. Around them, the forest had thickened, drapes of ghoulish moss cloaking the stillness. They couldn’t see far through the trees, but nothing tangible threatened. Still, Willow blew through splayed nostrils and locked all four legs, trembling.

  Miming, Nace suggested blindfolding the horse.

  “He’s not sure-footed enough on such rough ground,” Scarl said, “and it looks to get worse. Will we return this way, Ariel? I could hobble him here.”

  Ariel could no longer see past the going to imagine returning. Tomorrow and the day after were as distant and blank as the sky. When she tried to envision climbing back down this hill, her journey complete, what came instead were glimpses of tree branches, ground rushing too close, the sensation of falling.

  To cover a shudder, she said, “If anything wants to eat Willow, though, he won’t have a chance.”

  Nace snorted. She realized he was right, unless the stunted trees pulled up their roots to chase Willow. Nothing else lived here.

  The hobbled horse began stumping back the way they had come the moment Scarl released him. With an unhappy squint, the Finder watched Willow go.

  “We might not catch him, if he keeps that up. I hope this is worth it.”

  “Do you think Vi’s story was only a rant?” Ariel asked. “I might be as crazy as she is.”

  A wisp of a smile eased the strain on Scarl’s face. “Oh … you’ve been crazy before, and that worked out well. I’m counting on this being the same.”

  Although she plunged onward, she murmured, “It’s more frightening this time.” She wished Scarl would hold her hand while they walked. He’d probably oblige her, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask for
something so childish, not in front of Nace. Holding Nace’s hand wouldn’t feel childish, but that would cause a nervousness of its own.

  She thought of a third choice. “Could I carry your glass, Scarl? It would make me feel safer.”

  Confusion flickered over his features, but he immediately pulled out the pieces. “Don’t cut yourself.”

  Mindful of the raw edges, she curled her fingers around one piece in each hand. Although—or because—they were sharp, they made her feel more attached to both Scarl and the world, as well as the sparkling Essence she’d occasionally glimpsed in their depths. Clutching them, she stormed the hill.

  Since they now had to haul it themselves, it was fortunate their food stock had grown light. The companions scrambled over strewn logs and boulders, breathing hard and carving switchbacks on slopes too steep to climb straight up. Spring flood debris slid out from under their feet or thrust up to trip them.

  As she stumbled ahead, something hard clunked between Ariel’s anklebone and her boot. Shifting both halves of Scarl’s glass to one hand, she poked a finger into her boot top after the stone that must have slipped in.

  Her fingertip struck metal. She pinched it and pulled. A telling dart rose in her hand. The symbols on the brass shaft were familiar, as familiar as the idea of stashing it in her boot. She’d slid it there for safekeeping more than once last spring. The very first time had been the day she’d found it in Zeke’s tree.

  She wailed and recoiled, flinging it like a spider to the dirt.

  Looking puzzled, Nace bent to retrieve it. When he straightened and opened his palm, what lay there was a stick.

  “It was my dart!” Ariel cried. “The old one! Did you grab the wrong thing? I—” Her head whipped as her eyes scoured the uneven ground. No dart shone from among the wood litter, either.

  Scarl stopped her frantic search. “I think your first instinct was right. It doesn’t belong with you now, anyway.”

  Ariel stood trembling while Nace snapped the offending stick into pieces and tossed them away. Then she turned numbly uphill and continued.

  Her blood pounding, she descended into a daze almost like fever. A mantra began circling her mind in time with her labored breath: Cross one moon, follow many, climb more. It didn’t make sense, but it would not go away.

  Oblivious to scratches and scrapes, she soon pocketed the halves of Scarl’s glass so she could use her hands to pull herself along. Cross one moon, follow many, climb more. Ariel took shortcuts, ducking under or leaping across obstacles when it would have been safer to go around. Even with longer legs, her companions worked to keep up.

  Scarl stopped her when he spotted tears on her cheeks. She hadn’t known they were there until he pointed them out.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Her voice tightened as she held back a sob. “We’re almost there.”

  “We won’t make it at all if you break a leg,” he replied. “It hurts me to watch you. You’ve got to calm down and take more care.”

  Cross one moon, follow many, climb more. “I’ll be okay. Let me go.”

  Scarl did not release her arm. “Nace,” he asked, “if Ariel were an animal, could you do something to calm her?”

  After a startled pause, the Kincaller grinned. He raised his good hand and drew it downward, petting as though Ariel were beneath it.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Scarl said. “Never mind.”

  Nace’s grin drooped and he kicked his toes against a log. Then he raised his palm: Wait. He thrust his good hand behind his back and closed the distance between himself and Ariel. He stopped a few inches short and tapped his eye socket. Resisting an urge to lean forward against him, Ariel looked into his eyes. They caught her as surely as Scarl’s grip, which he now released.

  Nace inhaled deeply and exhaled hard, three times. A fourth. Acutely aware of his body as well as his breath, Ariel found herself following his pattern. He nodded and smiled. His eyelids closed.

  She followed suit.

  Nace opened his own eyes again, concentration replacing his smile. His deep breaths rolled on, drawing hers. With fingers splayed briefly toward Scarl to stay him, he reached to lift Ariel’s hands. He slid them under the edge of his sling to press against his heart.

  Ariel’s breathing lurched and her eyelids threatened to open. Nace tsked gently, squeezing her hands.

  From behind the red-black veil of her lids, Ariel could feel him before her like a roaring fire. She tried to listen for his voice in her mind, for a flash of the connection she’d felt yesterday. It was impossible to think of anything but his chest, taut and warm beneath his shift. At first that sensation made Ariel’s heart flutter, but soon she noticed the steadier beat under her hands. Gradually his heart’s patient rhythm anchored her own and slowed it. Tension melted from her limbs.

  She wasn’t sure how long they stood motionless, their blood pulsing and breath twining together, before Nace’s fingers stroked the backs of her hands. Ariel’s skin wanted to jump off her body, perhaps onto his, but a drowsy warmth made the rest of her sway.

  “That’ll do, Nace,” Scarl said softly.

  The boy gave Ariel a few chirps that rang with regret. Then he released her hands and stepped back. She lingered a moment in bliss before she opened her eyes.

  Nace couldn’t meet them. He turned away.

  Scarl caught his arm and leaned in. If the forest had not been so unnaturally silent, Ariel would never have picked up what he said.

  “You’ve earned my respect twice,” he murmured to Nace. “Once as a Kincaller. Once as a man. I’m sure that wasn’t easy for you.”

  Nace shrugged off Scarl’s praise along with his grip. Ariel followed him with her gaze. If her heart hadn’t already been lost, it was now.

  With effort, Scarl got her attention, tilting his head up the slope. “Continue more gently?”

  She sighed, feeling as though her last breath were leaving her lungs, but such a good breath that she didn’t mind. She nodded.

  Her tranquillity stretched until late afternoon, when they pushed through clinging tree boughs and finally emerged at the base of the waterfall she had known would be there. It looked exactly as Ariel had envisioned, except that a jumble of boulders and storm-ravaged trees speared into the ground at its base, preventing too close an approach. Dripping slime on the cliff suggested that during most of the year the flow raged much wider and with ten times the force. Despite this proof of fury, the water fell with unnerving quiet, much like the muffled river below.

  The travelers gazed upward while mist collected on their faces. No thunder clapped. No Noah stepped out to greet them; no flood worthy of his name burst forth to drown them. Nothing marked their arrival at all.

  “Timekeeper?” Scarl asked.

  “Time waster, maybe.” Ariel slumped. At long last, her feet wanted only to rest. But she had no idea what to do next.

  CHAPTER 37

  Dog Moon, Spilled

  I expected something to happen,” Ariel admitted. The endless welling of nothing but water bewildered her. “Maybe we’re supposed to go up it,” she added, without feeling much impulse to do so.

  A choked sound escaped Scarl. “Look at it, dear one! A mountain goat couldn’t scale that cliff.” When she opened her mouth to debate, he continued more harshly. “What’s not slick is sharp, and one misstep will break every bone. I’ll not do it, and I’ll not let you try. Not this time.”

  Nace wagged his head in agreement.

  “Don’t forget ‘The Enchanted Gazelle,’ ” Scarl said more kindly. “If you think we need to get to the top, we’ll have to backtrack and find some way around.”

  She shook her head and sank to a damp, mossy rock. Spray condensed on her cheeks like weak tears. Backtracking wasn’t the answer.

  “I won’t let you sleep tonight, either,” Scarl added, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  She started, wondering if he knew, somehow, that the longer they’d traveled upstream, the more each step
had echoed to her not of mounting a slope but of climbing a treacherous tree.

  “We’ll stay up with your accursed moon, and you can sleep when dawn breaks,” he explained. “I’ll watch over you then. So I can snap you awake if you so much as whimper.”

  Nace assured her that he would help, too. Ariel still feared no sunrise would come.

  While Scarl worked to find supper, Nace clambered to the base of the waterfall. Ariel watched, flipping half of Scarl’s glass in her palm like a worry stone. Cross one moon, follow many, climb more. She’d crossed one moon at the dam, and certainly followed the urging of many. But where were the rest?

  After the Finder had moved out of sight, Nace explored a few places that might yield a path up. Ariel tensed as he jumped for handholds and scrabbled with his feet, yet ached each time he dropped back. At last he gave up. If Nace, agile as a cat, couldn’t do it, she and her gimpy guardian certainly could not. The tiny wood violet the boy brought her didn’t make her feel any better.

  Night swirled around the fall. Scarl struggled in the damp to catch a small fire for roasting the fungus he’d found. Though he assured his companions that he’d eaten the same thing before with no ill effect, it was too slimy and ugly to choke down raw. They dried chunks on a stick until Ariel could pretend she was eating ill-shaped but nutty cookies.

  Once their bellies were full, Scarl let the sickly flames die. They all thought of Sienna.

  The spilled moon, a day past full, drifted over the tops of the trees to peer down. Ariel glared back. The right edge, nibbled barely out of round, mocked her.

  Scarl asked to see her map. Listless, she handed it over, but as he mulled it, a flare of frustration moved her tongue.

  “Don’t you know that hideous thing by heart?” she demanded. “Cross the bridge over the lake where it looks like a slug’s horns and follow the river from there. The broken line is the falls, or the stream flowing into the river. There’s nothing beyond that but wintertime moons. We’ve missed the full Dog Moon. Too late.”