The Silver Moon Elm

by MaryJanice Davidson

  Of course, she noticed as she surveyed the destruction at the top of the crater, with no habitat or food, these snakes would probably die soon anyway.

  Xavier twitched in his sleep and gave out a long sigh. This had Goodwin up and flitting about, and after a moment Xavier opened his golden eyes.

  “So, do we have what we came for?” he asked. “Should we get moving?”

  “We could, if we actually had a plan,” Jennifer answered. “What is it, exactly, that the three of us are going to do? There’s an observatory behind Pinegrove High School. It looks like a headquarters, and we know that Tavia Saltin and Edmund Slider work at the school. Do we just storm the observatory and force whoever’s in there to change things back?”

  “It can’t be that simple,” Evangelina said through a mouthful of chewy snake.

  “It isn’t,” Seraphina confirmed. “Remember the rest of Sonakshi’s rhyme: You will need to ‘poison the poison,’ in order to heal the world.”

  Jennifer kicked idly at a rock. “That doesn’t make much sense.”

  Evangelina rooted around the stones for another snake. “Is there a place in your town where they store poisons? We could investigate.” It didn’t sound much like she cared if they did or didn’t.

  Suddenly, it all snapped into place for Jennifer. “Seraphina, you said the change in the universe happened as a sudden seizure, like the way some poisons affect the muscles of a body.”

  The cobra looked at her evenly, waiting for the logic to unfold.

  “Well,” Jennifer continued, “if a sorcery contracted those muscles, and that sorcery works like a poison, then if we wanted to ‘poison the poison,’ we’d need to find something that would relax those muscles. Something that would restore the natural position of the universe.”

  “It’s very likely the original sorcery required poison as part of the ritual,” Xavier said. “So if we knew what poison the Quadrivium used…”

  “…then we could figure out the right ingredient in a sorcery to reverse it,” Jennifer finished.

  Evangelina radiated waves of impatience. “This information will not help us unless we can figure out what poison they used, where to find it, and who can perform a reverse ritual. Then, of course, we have to convince them to reverse that ritual. All of these occurrences are unlikely.”

  “Not really. Black widow venom violently contracts muscles. Either that venom, or something like it, was probably used. And if that’s the case, we can use botulin toxin to gain a reverse effect. It’s a muscle relaxant.”

  “Where did you learn this?” Xavier asked.

  Jennifer straightened her spine and shoulders. “My high school chemistry class.”

  Evangelina began to chuckle, a completely patronizing sound. Jennifer ignored it. “And I’ll tell you something else,” she continued. “We can find both of those things at the high school, in the secured storage area. And we know at least two members of the Quadrivium—Edmund Slider and Tavia Saltin. Skip Wilson is also a likely member,” she threw on top of it all. She wasn’t sure about that last part, but the idea of putting the jerk on everyone’s hit list appealed to her.

  Evangelina kept chuckling, but Xavier and Seraphina seemed to take Jennifer’s ideas seriously. “Botulin would make sense,” Seraphina said. “I have heard of sorceries woven with this toxin before. But the obstacles before you are still large, Ancient Furnace. If your plan is to work—”

  “Plan? This is no plan!” Evangelina’s amusement bordered on outrage.

  “If this plan is to work, then you will have to make use of the element of surprise. You must acquire this toxin from the werachnid stores, find the Quadrivium, and force one or more of its members to cooperate, without giving them time to regroup and resist you. The strength of werachnids lies in their ability to plan. The strength of dragons lies in their ability to act.”

  “Clearly, my sister is not a werachnid.”

  “How droll. Did you know you have a black hole for a face?”

  Seraphina’s gaze left the two quarreling sisters and hovered somewhere in the distance. Her forked tongue extended far, over and over.

  Jennifer knew enough about reptiles to turn and look. “What do you smell?”

  The ancient cobra did not answer. Instead, she unfolded her feathered wings, pushed off with her coils, and sailed down the steep slope toward the rocky coast of her island.

  When the other three (four, counting Goodwin) joined her at the bottom, where the waves were beating the rocks into smaller stones and salty gravel slid through the open spaces, they saw a single creature washed ashore.

  It looked at first like a large blue crab, perhaps the size of a tricycle tire. On eight segmented legs, it scuttled from side to side, navigating the treacherous pull of the waves and finding purchase higher and higher on the beach. Its large pincers—Jennifer saw that it had three, instead of just two—clicked in anticipation.

  They barely had time to look the creature over and wonder at its purpose when Seraphina gave a short spitting sound. An instant later, the crab was on its back, legs shriveling, with a smoldering nine-inch fang sticking through the center of its body. Pieces of its carapace were already washing away.

  “Sonakshi’s strength is failing,” Seraphina observed. “However many lurkers still live in his waters, it will not be enough to stop this new onslaught. Ancient Furnace, they are coming for you. You must go.”

  “Go?” Evangelina shook her head. “But we have no real plan! I refuse to help a wretched girl who can’t even—Owww…”

  Seraphina reached into the darkness around Evangelina’s head and plucked out the fang she had just spat. It made a juicy pop as it exited. “You’ll do as your ancestors instruct, child. Or you will find this island a mere way station on a continuing journey downward.”

  “All right then,” said Xavier. “If we have to go, let’s go!”

  “One last gift for the Ancient Furnace,” the winged snake said. With a swift motion of her wing, she caught a flat, glimmering shape that had been riding the coastal winds. She approached Jennifer and offered it: a single leaf from the silver moon elm, a five-pointed firework caught in time.

  “For whatever else you may need on your journey, I lend you this.”

  The leaf draped over Jennifer’s wing claw like a silk scarf.

  “Hurry, Ancient Furnace. If we lose this island, we lose it for all time, no matter what you may recover elsewhere.”

  “How much time do we have?” Xavier took to the air and hovered anxiously. “I mean, how long can you hold them off?”

  Somewhere out to sea, a shrill cry penetrated the air. They looked out and saw a silhouette against the ocean’s flames, something that might have been a whale or a very large lobster, with countless legs and eye stalks.

  “If that’s the largest thing they have,” Seraphina answered thoughtfully, “a day or two.”

  Jennifer was impressed. “You have enough teeth in your machine-gun mouth to hold that off for forty-eight hours?”

  The winged cobra graced her with a faint smile. “Teeth,” she replied, “will be the least of their problems. Off you go. No, not the way you came! Through the crater now. It is a one-way portal that will take you back more quickly, and more safely.”

  Jennifer led the way, looking sadly upon the ashen remains of the silver moon elm as she crested the top of the volcanic crater, and then plummeted down the shaft into utter darkness. She just had to trust that there was something there, at the other end.

  To her surprise, they emerged from the lake near her grandfather’s cabin.

  “Neat trick,” she muttered as she headed for shore. Xavier was right behind her, with Evangelina lagging.

  The first two had just landed in the yard behind the aging cabin when Xavier started to groan. He fell on top of his wings and clutched his belly. Goodwin abandoned his rolling host and sought the safety of the cabin’s cinder-block foundation.

  “Xavier! Are you all right?”

 
He could not answer. His yellowed teeth began to crack and his wings were shriveling. Jennifer pieced it together just as Evangelina came up behind them and motioned to the sky.

  No crescent moon. He’s changing.

  Panic overwhelmed Jennifer. How could I be stupid enough to forget this?

  Once again, sister. Stellar plan. Really, I’m in awe.

  “Shut up, Hole.” She had an unkind thought about Xavier. What good is he to us, as an old man? It dissolved into horror as the elderly dasher writhed on the overgrown lawn. He might have been getting a bit smaller, she supposed, and his face was bulging. But he wasn’t actually changing shape. “Why isn’t anything happening?”

  His body does not remember how to change. It will take time. If he doesn’t die first from the shock.

  “But I don’t want him to change at all! He’s better off staying back in Crescent Valley. Let’s take him back, before he’s really hurt—”

  A shiny object at the tip of her wing—what she was holding—distracted her, and she immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Xavier, take this!” She handed the silver moon elm leaf to the dasher. With a wild motion, he grabbed it.

  It took a few moments, but he began to relax. His dark, robust scales regained their gleam, and the gold under his wings began to glitter again. “Thank you, Jennifer. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to hold onto this for a while.”

  “I think you’ll need to hold onto it for as long as we’re out here,” Jennifer replied. “The next crescent moon isn’t for a few days.”

  “Fair enough.” He sat up. “I’m feeling much better now. Goodwin, come back, boy! I promise not to crush you…”

  There’s something close.

  Hearing the echoing voice in her head, Jennifer turned to Evangelina. “Just because Seraphina isn’t around anymore doesn’t mean you can intrude on our minds.”

  Tough. My help, my terms.

  “Fine. We don’t want your help anymore. Go back to Seraphina and explain to her why you were such a stubborn ass. I’m sure she won’t be too busy fighting off the last outpost of our civilization to forgive you.”

  From the depths of shadow came a growl of frustration, and then her sister’s grating voice. “We can’t stay here long. There are minds and memories in this forest. They are too mixed and too far away to read well, and I can’t guarantee all are friendly.”

  “Fair enough.” Xavier regained his hind legs. “If we can do better than dead snakes, we could look for a bite to eat in this house, and then get moving.”

  Jennifer shrugged. “Go ahead and look around. I’ve already eaten at this joint. It sucks.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Saturday Afternoon

  They stayed a short time at the cabin, but the constant mumblings from Evangelina that there was “something out there” provoked Jennifer to the point where she finally snapped.

  “Maybe you’re sensing that moment in time when you slipped into a cabin just like this one and killed our grandfather,” she suggested.

  Her sister began sulking and to get her moving again Xavier suggested that they didn’t have infinite amounts of time to get everything done. By noon, they were up and flying. Jennifer was painfully aware that of the three, she was the only one capable of disguising herself in any kind of camouflage. But as they went farther south, the cloud cover increased and gave them a higher altitude where they could stay hidden.

  The cold wind whipping against Jennifer’s closed eyelids reminded her of the previous Saturday, and a ride with four friends she had taken in a Mustang convertible. She opened her eyes and took in the clouds below, and the tiny yellow sun that tried to warm them from a November distance.

  Up here, they can’t reach us. Nothing has changed.

  It was Evangelina who first gave the signal that Pinegrove was near. She sensed Jennifer’s lingering memory on the edge of town Tuesday morning, of Skip Wilson and a place gone horribly wrong.

  “Just how far does that little mind radar of yours work, anyway?” Jennifer asked as they began their descent.

  “Depends” came the grudging reply. “If the person is close to me, I can trace them from far away. There are exceptions…like you.”

  Once again, the specter rose of that night at Grandpa Crawford’s cabin where each of them had surprised the other.

  “I wonder why that is.”

  Evangelina shrugged, then turned over to dump the air from her wings. “Some minds are harder for me to read. Beaststalkers like your mother. Others are simply stronger and harder to read. Yours, for example, is stronger than most.”

  “Really?” It was the first compliment Jennifer had received from her sister. “You really think so?”

  A burst of resigned exasperation leaked through Evangelina’s telepathy before she answered. “Bear in mind, I still kicked your ass that night.”

  “You so completely did not.”

  They broke through the cloud cover and were surprised to find billions of heavy snowflakes dropping alongside them. Through the curtain of weather, they could make out the landscape of Pinegrove. From the thin sheen of white on the ground, it looked as though the storm had just beaten them here.

  “A little bit of good luck, then!” Xavier called out over the brisk winds. “I don’t think they’ll be able to see our approach in this weather.”

  The high school was easy to spot. They made for it, getting low as quickly as they could and keeping the strange observatory as far away as possible. Jennifer didn’t sense anything creepy about it. Perhaps the eyes within were sleeping or focused elsewhere.

  “Which entrance to get to the storage rooms?” Xavier asked.

  “Any should be fine,” Jennifer replied. She rebuked herself silently for not thinking ahead enough to plan a specific route, but then again, she wasn’t exactly sure where the storage area was, anyway…

  Basement level. Thirty yards from the west entrance and stairs. Your chemistry teacher is on the grounds, and she is easy to read.

  Her sister was surprisingly tender with her telepathy, and Jennifer sent back a grateful thought as she repeated the instruction aloud to Xavier.

  The school doors were locked, but Evangelina tore them down. Their sleek, monstrous shapes slipped down the stairwell and into the dark basement hallway.

  “Is Ms. Sloane in this part of the school?” Jennifer whispered to Evangelina.

  “No. Somewhere on the east side, with others.”

  “Near the gymnasium.” The big soccer game against Eveningstar was tonight. Jennifer briefly wondered whether they should have waited a day, or at least until evening—but then the thought of Seraphina holding off whatever hellish arachnid navy was emerging reminded her that the wait was not worth the risk. “Okay, so that looks like the storage area over there.”

  They could easily see the locked door in the dark, and pushing through it was not a problem. However, a quick glance into the room told them that dragon shapes would be more hindrance than help.

  “Xavier, keep watch. Evangelina and I will shift and go in.”

  The storage room had all sorts of supplies for all sorts of classes: paints and brushes, small animals in formaldehyde jars, old maps and Latin textbooks, and finally in the far corner, a huge fenced-in storage locker with jars upon labeled jars of chemicals and other poisonous substances, as well as a large steel refrigerator.

  “Jackpot,” Jennifer muttered as she kicked this door open herself. “All right, we’re looking for the botulin toxin. I don’t know if—”

  “In here.” Evangelina flipped back her dark hair and strode confidently to the refrigerator. “I can smell it.”

  They looked up and down and found a shelf of plastic containers marked Clostridium botulinum: Keep 2–4°C and small glass vials marked Botulinum A: Keep 2–8°C.

  “Which do we take? How much do we need? How’re we going to keep it cool enough?”

  Evangelina shrugged. “No idea.”

  Jennifer chewed
her tongue and scanned the locker. “All right. Over there.” She pointed and then picked up a small plastic cooler, which had a bit of dust in it but nothing else. “Let’s take one of the plastic containers and a few of the vials. If it’s not enough, one of us will have to come back and get more, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Evangelina’s smirk was not totally unkind as she located ice from the freezer compartment and filled the cooler. “You have an awful lot of faith in yourself, sister.”

  “I have faith in you. You’d be the one coming back. You’re the strongest. Okay, let’s get the poison in there. Make sure there’s ice all around it.”

  The older girl’s mouth twisted. “Hmmm. You were right about where the poison was. If you’re right about the observatory—”

  “Can you feel anything from over there? They’re pretty close.”

  Evangelina shook her head. “That building felt closed. Nothing in, nothing out.”

  “Can you feel Skip?” As soon as the question was out, Jennifer thought better of it. “Never mind. I don’t care. He can go—”

  “He’s been in the school recently. But that could mean anything.”

  “Ladies!” Xavier’s voice came from the doorway. He was trying to squeeze in. “We have company.”

  At least three of them, Jennifer guessed from the footsteps and voices echoing down the stairwell on the opposite end of the hallway from where they had entered. She closed the cooler, wondering if they should engage the newcomers or just run for it. Do they even know we’re here?

  They did not, it was immediately clear. The voices were giggling and whispering and shrieking, like teenagers trying to scurry away from some authority figure and do something ill-advised out of sight.