The Timekeeper's Moon

by Joni Sensel

  “Why’d you bring me here?”

  She was stunned to learn that they hadn’t. Though she’d walked a long way in the fog, the chimney behind the waterfall couldn’t possibly have emerged above the dead forest, nearly two days of travel away. Yet that’s where Ariel’s friends had found her, wandering aimlessly among the skeletal trees. They’d never seen any fog. So they’d remained on the spot, watching over her while she slept.

  “Next time we find a path marked with a Farwalker sign, I’m tying you with a leash, like old times,” Scarl said. “Don’t ever disappear like that on me again.”

  “How did you find me?” she wondered, resting in his arms.

  “Nace went wild almost as soon as you’d climbed out of sight,” Scarl told her. “He was sure you were dead, though we couldn’t see how. He tried to climb after you.”

  “Didn’t it hurt?”

  Nace ducked his face, but Scarl grabbed the boy’s good wrist and turned up the palm. An angry stripe slashed across it.

  “It would have been worse, but the moment he grabbed one and held it, the rungs pulled into the stone, like eels slipping into the sand. We spent a while trying to find another way up or around on the outside. I’m not sure why we’re alive. We both took desperate skids down that cliff.”

  Nace mimed a fall. Ariel had to look away.

  “When we gave up on climbing and got to the bottom, I kept trying to find you without feeling a thing.” Scarl’s voice dropped and he shuddered. “Not anything. I should have been able to locate your body, at least, when I stopped seeking you and instead sought your lifeless remains. Only the fact that I couldn’t do it let me hang on to hope.”

  “The ladder was—I don’t know—some kind of shortcut.” Ariel described what she’d found on the hilltop. Scarl listened intently. She did not mention the face of his corpse.

  When she told him how she’d dropped the darts into the well, he said, “Hmm. I have something to show you.” He unwound his arms from her to reach for her pack, which she’d left behind at their camp.

  “First tell me how you got here.” Insecure without somebody’s touch, she twined her fingers with Nace’s, mindful of his sore palm. A smile lifted the boy’s tired face.

  “Not long before dawn I finally caught a sense of you,” Scarl said. “It was hard to believe you’d gotten so far, but it was all we had. With my cursed foot, we’d still be a long way off if Nace hadn’t shouldered most of our gear and I hadn’t found Willow hock-deep in the river near where we’d left him. That horse ran an incredible way bearing us both when Nace asked him.”

  Ariel didn’t press for more details. Her friends’ faces told her they had traveled hard with no sleep. She embraced them again, too grateful their paths had reunited to feel nervous about hugging Nace.

  “But that reminds me,” Scarl said. “Willow’s bridle is back.”

  Ariel clapped a palm to her cheek. She shoved up her left sleeve. The creases in her skin stirred a wave of relief that threatened to spill into tears. They weren’t lovely, but those scars were hers, returned to their proper places and time.

  “That’s good, don’t you think?” she asked Scarl.

  “I do. And there’s this.” Scarl flapped a certain bit of linen before her. She goggled. The lines on her map had faded, and Ariel didn’t have to be at the abbey to guess that the mapstone itself was now blank, too.

  “Oh! Do you think the whole Vault’s disappeared?” She didn’t know how, but at least marks could vanish without an earthquake or landslide, so the abbey’s inhabitants might still be safe.

  “When I first noticed, I feared that.” He shook his head. “But after hearing that you are the sender, I’m sure it only means that the fail-safe is no longer needed. Its work—your work—is done. You’ve proven that the Vault’s discovery was not a mistake, so the fail-safe no longer exists.”

  Awed, Ariel said, “I had plenty of help.”

  “I’m sure cooperation was what the fail-safe intended. It’s a wonder the little you had was enough.”

  “Not so little,” she replied, thinking back on her path. It was littered with unwitting insights and information in shreds, yet the encouragement and knowledge she needed had all mounted up.

  She wanted more help right now, though, from Scarl and Nace. She ached to escape the bone woods. Its eerie breath on her face disturbed her, especially as the sun rolled toward home. But her companions and Willow all looked worn-out. Strung with guilt, she wondered aloud if they could bear just a little more travel.

  “Slowly, perhaps, if you’re up to it,” Scarl said. “The thought of a night under these trees makes my skin crawl.”

  When they began lurching downhill toward the river, she felt a clunk against her leg. She reached into her pocket. What she found froze her feet.

  “Scarl,” she said, choking, “remember how you gave me your glass? In two pieces?” She drew her hand from her pocket. His Finder’s glass lay on her palm, round and whole.

  Nace whistled. Scarl started, but then took it from her. The glass bore no hint of its days asunder.

  “How could it do that?” she mumbled. “And why?”

  Frowning, he gave no reply. They walked on. Scarl muttered, mostly to himself, about whether it had mended or never broken in the first place.

  After much thought, he said, “I’m only supposing, but suppose the fail-safe bent time in a loop.” He raised one of Willow’s reins so the end dropped toward the ground, and then he pinched a floppy circle from its length. “You copied the mapstone in that loop. My glass broke there, too, as we tried to understand the map.” He wiggled his free hand within the circle. “Both actions were linked to the cause of the loop. When you dropped the darts into the past”—his fingers released, the leather fell straight, and his free hand fluttered away—“the loop fell away and so did a few things that rested inside it, things that time no longer needed.”

  “And if I hadn’t,” Ariel said, “I’d still be trapped in the loop. You would never have found me.”

  “I suspect I would never have met you.” Scarl briefly folded the loop back into place, marking its extent with his fingers. “We’ve reached the leather at the end of the loop. If you’d not sent the darts, we may have come back to the start. We both might have awakened from a vivid dream of darts and the Vault. You’d still be living in Canberra Docks. I expect that’s why the stones told Zeke he would not be a Stone-Singer long if you failed. He would become Zeke Tree-Singer instead, as he’d planned. And you might have become a Healtouch after all.”

  “No.” She shook her head. Zeke may have kept his original trade as Scarl was suggesting, but Ariel was quite sure she’d be dead from a fall. A barb tore at her heart. “But my mother…”

  “Or perhaps not,” he added hastily. “The Tree-Singers would have us believe we cannot dodge our fates very long. If you hadn’t dropped the darts into the past—and our future—we may not have had one. All three of us may have fallen ill and died.”

  “Fallen,” Ariel agreed. “But not ill.” She shuddered.

  Nace rubbed the goose bumps from her arm. She shot him a grateful look before adding, “And I bet Nace and everyone else would have fallen asleep, tonight or tomorrow, to wake in a world where the Vault had never been found and none of them ever had met us.”

  “Likely,” Scarl told her. “Regardless, it’s done.”

  “Are you sure?” Though she’d slept safely enough just that day, the thought of closing her eyes again made her tense. She feared she would awaken in a circle of trees in the fog. “What if we’re going around and around in the loop and can’t get out?”

  Scarl mulled her words. “If so, I don’t think we’d know it. But where do your instincts call you now?”

  She inhaled, considered well, and smiled for the first time in two days. “To the abbey.”

  His brow furrowed. “To discover the Vault? Or to make sure it’s safe?”

  “Neither,” she replied. “Simply to see Zeke a
gain and relish the feeling of home.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Waning Moon, Waxing Hearts

  When they reached the river, Scarl called for a halt. Ariel yearned to push on upstream past the edge of the bony white forest. Nace suggested a third option: crossing the river.

  They studied the water. It wasn’t a torrent, but it was impossible to tell how deep it ran or what hazards might lie beneath. Reluctantly Scarl agreed, provided they remain on the horse.

  Carrying them all, Willow waded in, more willing to cross than to continue either direction along the shore. He faltered only when depth lifted him off his feet. Ignoring Scarl’s provision, Nace slipped off to hold the bridle and swim alongside the horse’s great head. Ariel clung madly as Willow’s legs thrust beneath her, but they were all carried downstream until his hooves found purchase again. The horse jumped out, stumbling on rocks but as eager for solid ground as his riders.

  Even the fading sun felt different on this side of the river. A breeze shushed through the dry grass. Nace whistled, long and loud, for the joy of the noise. A soaring hawk answered. Ariel spied a prairie dog hole.

  “I feel like we’re round again instead of flat!” she said. The first words in her mind, in fact, had been “living” and “dead,” but she didn’t want to say those aloud.

  “I still feel flat,” Scarl replied wearily. “Let’s camp here.”

  Nace stretched to dry in the waning sun and fell asleep immediately. Seated nearby, Ariel didn’t realize how openly she was studying him until Scarl spoke.

  “We pushed hard after you, harder than I’ve ever traveled,” he said, perhaps misinterpreting her gaze. “And he was terrified that we’d lost you. Fear is exhausting. I’m surprised you’re not asleep again yourself for the same reason.”

  She thought back over her own fearful moments, especially the scene in the well of her drowning. Clearly the future she’d seen had been false—or was it true until she changed it by sending the darts? The death she had seen in the face of the moon, though, was certain to pass eventually.

  “I’m too glad to be in the world to sleep yet.” Ariel’s mind shied from any more thoughts of the future. Instead it lurched to one of the well’s taunts from the past. In the circle of trees, it had spurred her defiance, but now the memory festered.

  “But, Scarl?” She turned to gain his full attention. “Don’t ever hit me again.”

  “What are you talking about? I wouldn’t hit you.”

  “You slapped me, hard. When I tried to escape.”

  “When you …” His frown deepened, then slid to regret. “Oh—in the beech wood that day with Elbert. I remember.” He canted his head. “What made you think of that, more than a year gone now?”

  “Why did you do it?”

  He met her eyes with unusual difficulty. “I could tell you I hoped it would stay Elbert from giving you a much sounder beating, but that would be a wobbly excuse. In truth? I was angry and worried, and you had proven beyond doubt that nothing was under my control. Including my temper, obviously. I rued it the moment I did it. It seems rather late to beg your forgiveness, but I will. Would you give it?”

  “No.” With the old scab ripped off, what lay under it hurt.

  Taken aback, Scarl rubbed his jaw. “Would you have some penance of me?”

  She considered but was too tired to think of anything fitting.

  In her silence, he said, “I’m sorry. It’s your right to begrudge it, I guess—but it happened a long while ago, and I hope I’ve proven myself better since. Why is it troubling you now?” When she still didn’t reply, he added quietly, “If I didn’t know better, Ariel, I’d think you were just trying to make us both feel bad.”

  Plunking her hands on her hips, she thrust her chin out to deny it. But his words struck a chord in her conscience. Her arms dropped.

  “Maybe I am,” she admitted.

  “Can I ask why?”

  Her mouth worked, empty. At the well, she’d been able to think of little but getting back to Scarl and Nace. Once she left the circle of trees, she would have walked until she met them or fell dead. Now she’d finally quenched the call of the map and the moon to return to a land of texture and sound. So why, indeed, pick a fight now?

  She had something to lose again, that’s why. She whispered, “I’m afraid to care about you too much.”

  His face cramped and he nodded. “It hurts terribly, doesn’t it? Losing people you love. Even for a short while.”

  “It’s not always a short while,” she said flatly. “It’s sometimes forever.”

  He rose and resettled awkwardly beside her to cradle her shoulders. “So it seems.”

  “How can you stand it?” she asked, not thinking of anyone in particular, just desperately needing the adult in her life to have an answer.

  He rested his chin on her head. “You can’t,” he whispered into her hair. “You can’t stand it, Ariel. You pretend, that’s all.”

  “But why?”

  “Because others are pretending, too, I suppose. You do it for them.”

  As she opened her mouth to question, he unsnarled a twig from her hair. The gesture made his point better than all argument.

  “You pretend for me and I’ll pretend for you?” she murmured.

  “Exactly.” He smiled unconvincingly. “And when one of us leaves the world, the other will find someone else to pretend for. That’s what people do. Because the world is pretend, Ariel, all of it. It’s one long and layered make-believe tale—just a bead on a very big abacus.”

  Ariel pondered his words. So much pretending seemed like a lot of trouble, and inside out, somehow. She could feel, too, that he was trying to skip over his own loneliness and doubt. That was what he meant, she supposed, by “pretending,” and the fact that he needed to do it hurt her, but it also showed that he loved her and was trying to comfort her. She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder, unaware of how much her motion comforted him.

  He touched the beads at her throat. “You have many stories to live yet, and plenty of people to love. Even if they aren’t here on your necklace today.”

  Her fingertips rose to her abacus, too. She recalled a Flame-Mage and bridges, dragon’s fire and lectrick. She saw a sheaf of brass flowers slipping into a well, seeds for the past. One of those darts would find her; it already had. If the world was only a story, as Scarl claimed—and she suspected his words contained truth—it was filled with genuine magic as well as pretending.

  That notion cheered her. She poked Scarl in the chest. “If I have to pretend anyway, I’d rather pretend not to like you.”

  He smiled. “As you will. Shall I slap you more often?”

  “You better not!”

  “Just trying to help.”

  They held their embrace in companionable silence until she slipped free a few moments later. The Finder rubbed his lame foot.

  “If I sleep, will you still be here when I wake up?” he wondered, not entirely joking.

  “Not if I find another ladder,” Ariel retorted, but she added, “I might lie down, too.”

  She stretched out but did not close her eyes. She wasn’t aware, exactly, that she was waiting for Scarl to drop off, but when she recognized the shift in his breathing, she sat up and crept closer to Nace. In sleep, his relaxed face looked young. Sitting cross-legged alongside him, Ariel gazed at his jaw, her fingers itching to feel the fine, soft start of a beard there. To stop them, she had to trap her hands in the crooks of her knees.

  The temptation to do something else, though, grew too great. Her heart began banging so loud she was sure he’d awaken anyway. Wishing with all of the throb in her chest for the magic of another old story, Ariel carefully bent forward to brush her lips against his—just in case he might awaken and speak.

  Nace woke, all right, jerking hard enough that their teeth bumped behind their lips. Ariel flinched back. He didn’t speak as she’d hoped, but merely blinked and offered her a groggy smile. He fingered his banged li
p. A bit of the softness slid from his face as he pieced together just how she’d roused him. His green eyes sharpened on her in a way that sent a tingle through Ariel’s core, and his hand rose from his lip to the back of her arm. With the slightest pressure of fingers, Nace asked her to bend her face close again.

  She obeyed. Neither of them could mistake this kiss for a simple token of good-bye or good luck. He tasted of river water and hunger and sunlight, and Ariel’s lips would burn for hours afterward with the rush.

  When she thought she’d die if she couldn’t stop feeling so much in a rather small part of her skin, she leaned back. Nace did not want to let her. His hand had slipped to the back of her neck, and in pulling against his reluctance Ariel flashed on Scarl’s warning about stepping into that enticing sea. Awash in a flood of sensation, she understood for the first time what he’d meant. She still felt in control, but she drew a quivering breath and looked forward to being swept off someday.

  For now, she curled up next to Nace and fell asleep with her cheek on his chest.

  Later, after they’d both had more sleep, Ariel took out the cloth that had once wrapped her necklace. Finally she had time—and enough sense of the future—to show Nace the symbols and explain what each meant. Grasping at once how he could use them, he immediately began pestering Scarl to teach more. The Finder obliged, and Nace became an apt student.

  Soon symbols in the dirt weren’t enough. When they stopped by Electron to check on Sienna, Nace bartered with her. He followed bees to a hive near the dam, returning with wax that the Flame-Mage could use to make candles. Excited to be plying her trade, she gave him charcoal-tipped sticks that would draw on a thin flake of slate. Before Ariel set off with her companions once more, she had also collected three young men who still wanted to be guided to Skunk. One of them joined Nace in learning the symbols, and they pushed one another. By the time they all reached the swamp, Ariel often had to ask Scarl to explain the marks Nace had drawn for her.