Beneath the Thirteen Moons

by Kathryne Kennedy

He frowned. “So what were you thinking?”

  “When?”

  “When you were undressing me with your eyes.”

  “How do you know… by-the-moons you’re conceited.” Mahri stood so abruptly she rocked the boat. “If you must know, I was thinking of the best way to gut the fish Jaja’s caught.”

  She turned her back on the arrogant man and snapped at Jaja to let go of the line. That fish wouldn’t go anywhere, the line lay secured to the boat, but her pet seemed determined to haul the trask in himself. He’d heave it up, the fish would yank, and overboard Jaja flew, to crawl up and do it again.

  With a snort of disgust Mahri flung the fish on the deck and whacked it with her staff. She pulled her knife from her belt and began to gut the thing, her annoyance at Korl causing her to make a fine mess of it.

  That evening they anchored and she hauled her fire shell to the tree shore—like any water-rat reluctant to have a flame on her boat—and they ate tender, grilled trask.

  “Fit for a king,” announced Korl, his smile lighting up the night. When the sky darkened and Mahri had removed the blindfold, he’d blinked at her like a man starved for the light of the sun. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her since, and when they went back to the boat she immediately crawled into the privacy of the tent. She wouldn’t admit to the goose bumps that his own stare kept raising on her skin.

  The next morning the sun had barely trickled through the canopy when Mahri demanded that he put back on the blindfold. She sighed with relief when it lay firmly in place and her spirits rose as she poled through the narrow channel. Moss hung in great sweeps of lavender-blue from every limb, like scarves of fine silk adorning the massive sea trees. She poled around and through the maze of them, reluctant to tear the beautiful stuff.

  She glanced at Korl. The palace couldn’t compare to her own home and it was high time she proved it to him. With a grunt of determination, Mahri channel-hopped, taking them in a new direction. The tidal draw of the planet’s thirteen moons made the direction of each channel of running water different, so that even parallel waterways could move in opposite directions. But even then they could change and only experienced water-rats could hope to predict their ways.

  Toward dusk she stopped poling, rolling her shoulders to remove the soreness. A bit of root to augment her strength and See into the water and she’d made it just in time. Mahri stepped behind Korl, who sat with his back to stern and his sightless face held up to the wind. She untied the strip of octopi skin.

  He blinked. “It isn’t dark yet.”

  “Aya. Keep your eyes closed for just a bit.”

  He obeyed as she hunkered down beside him and when she brushed against him she could swear she felt each individual hair on his arm tickle her skin.

  “What’s going…” he started to ask, then his voice rose to be heard. “By-the-thirteen-moons, what’s that racket?”

  Mahri smiled at his use of her favorite oath. They’d spent too much time together. “Open your eyes.”

  He did. And they continued to open wider, and wider. She snickered at his expression, but not unkindly. She knew what he felt.

  The channel widened before them into a small cove, with nothing but sky for a ceiling, allowing the birds that roosted here unhindered access. Parrots, parakeets, shakaans; every type of bird that possessed brilliant-colored plumage seemed to settle here. Feathers of color that boggled the imagination—ruby red, deep purple, screaming yellow, bright orange—graced thousands of wings and tails and crowns. Flocks of birds flew from tree to tree, swooped down to circle just above the water, huddling in groups among the branches until it seemed that the entire world was one huge, moving kaleidoscope of color.

  And sound. Birds shrieked and squawked and cawed. Mahri covered her ears and stared, saw Korl do the same. Their boat drifted through the cove, feathers floating down to cover the deck with a blanket of clashing hue. The birds preened and displayed their plumage, fully aware of the watching intruders, yet secure in the force of their own numbers. A few curious groups swooped down to inspect the boat, a wave of blues and pinks and scarlets, and caused Jaja to make his own dive into the tent.

  As the boat left the cove the sky darkened to full night, yet Mahri and Korl continued to stare blindly forward, their minds full of color, ears still ringing from the clamor.

  His arm had snaked around her waist, Mahri wasn’t sure when, nor how she’d managed to wind up half in his lap. When she tensed to move, his hold tightened with implied stubbornness so she snuggled closer and just let herself feel him.

  His hand played with the curls of her hair. “Why’d you take me there?”

  She slapped his hand. “Stop it. I… I’m not sure.”

  He continued to play with her hair. And waited.

  “Oh, all right. Maybe to prove to you that my world’s just as good as yours. Better even.” Mahri could feel him grinning. Arrogant man.

  “Why would you care what your enemy thinks? That’s what I am, right? Your enemy. Someone you can’t trust. Yet you show me all of your secret places, Mahri Zin. Why is that?”

  She turned her face to his and watched the moonlight play in his hair.

  “You’ll always be my enemy,” she whispered. “Not that it seems to matter.”

  And this time when her hand crept forward to brush the hair away from his forehead she didn’t stop herself. Felt the softness of the strands against the back of her hand, the silky slide of it between her fingers. Curled her palm around the back of his neck and brought his lips to hers, smooth warmth that hardened into demanding, wet hunger.

  He allowed her to lead, and when she pulled away he allowed that too. “Tomorrow, there’s another secret place I want to show you. Does the Great One wish to see it?”

  Korl smiled at her sarcasm. Actually smiled. “The man who loves the woman would like nothing more. But the prince who loves the Wilding…”

  Mahri gritted her teeth. She wished he’d stop talking about love when he couldn’t possibly understand the depth of it.

  “A Bond is above the laws of man,” he recited, “acknowledged by all and denied by none. Even a Royal.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Even a King.”

  “Korl, if you don’t speak plainly, I’ll dump you over the side.” Mahri felt for her pouch. “Where’s my zabba?”

  He laughed, a full-throated sound that echoed through the dark trees, set a few night creatures to squawking. “You make me laugh, water-rat. Perhaps that’s why I love you.”

  “Would you stop prattling on about love as if you know what you’re talking about?” she snapped.

  His face grew serious, the angles harsh and grim. His voice vibrated low and controlled. “That’s the second time you’ve accused me of not understanding what love is. So, why don’t you enlighten me, Wilding?”

  It doesn’t matter, Mahri scolded herself. After a couple of days she’d never see him again anyway. Would it hurt him to keep his illusions? Why did she have to say anything? But the words were out and his nonchalant attitude about his feelings infuriated her.

  “You want to know what love is?” Now that she’d started talking, the anger took control. Her eyes flashed fire, a fire more brilliant than any root Power could produce, and her dark red hair danced around her face in a fury. Mahri knew what a sight she looked when truly angry.

  Korl stared at her as if mesmerized.

  “Love is giving all of yourself until there’s nothing left to hold onto, doing for another day after day, feeling their aches and joys as if they were your own. It’s entwining your life with another’s until there’s no separating them.” Mahri rose to her feet and towered above him. “It’s a loss of freedom. It… It’s soul-crushing agony when it… when it dies.”

  Mahri looked wildly around. No place to go, nowhere to hide. She’d told this man more in that one burst than she’d ever told Caria in her months of grilling. Why could this man do this to her? Why’d she let him? She backed awa
y in horror, watching the changes of expression on his face.

  Korl held out his hand to her and she backed up. He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “So, that’s how it is,” he murmured.

  Mahri felt like she teetered on the edge of an abyss, any wrong move and she’d fall. And keep falling.

  Korl looked up at her and smiled, that rakish half-grin that made her chest flutter every time. “I like my definition better,” he said into the silence.

  Mahri’s mouth dropped open in disbelief, and then she slowly, almost painfully, began to laugh.

  Korl sat in the stern, his knuckles white where they gripped the sides of the craft. “I command you to let me take off this blindfold.”

  Mahri grinned and had to shout to be heard over the roar of water. “All right, but remember, you asked to see this.”

  They’d almost reached her most secret place, the place that she thought of as all her own, where she’d taken no one else before. Not even Brez. But in order to get there she’d had to chew zabba and pole with her utmost skill, and even then they’d still almost capsized in the rough waters.

  Mahri danced from one side of the boat to the other, red hair sodden from spray and whipping around her face, muscles tense and rippling as she pushed against one obstacle after another. Humps of seashell, backs of wide-mouth skulkers, dead limbs and gnarled roots threatened her small craft and yet allowed her to pole against them to change direction. She didn’t have time to hold on, the water flung them through the wide channel with a speed that made her skin tingle. The deck bucked and dropped beneath her feet so that at times she hung suspended in air, nothing but her bone pole to hang onto, nothing but skill and timing allowing her to stay in the boat.

  She whooped and hollered while she fought the current. Such terror, such excitement… such fun!

  Korl stared at her as if she were a madwoman. Jaja shrieked from somewhere beneath the collapsed tent. Mahri ignored them both, ready for what came next.

  The boat shot over the edge of a drop off, hung suspended for a split second of infinity, then plopped back into the water with a gut-wrenching splash.

  Mahri glanced around and sighed with relief. It hadn’t changed.

  The roar of white water could still be heard above them, yet somehow muted now by the gentle waterfalls that surrounded this small pool of calm. Insects skittered along the mirror-like surface, purfrogs basked in the sun atop pallets of green moss pads, and swanies paddled gracefully along, stretching their long necks and singing their “tra-lee-lee” songs to each other.

  Korl blinked. “How?” he managed to ask.

  Mahri shrugged. “The only thing I can figure is that this entire channel is over one large tree root, or maybe a collection of dead ones. So there are dips that create these pools and we’re below the surface of the natural sea right now. Of course, I’m just an ignorant water-rat, so I can only guess.”

  Korl raised his chin and gave her a look that said he felt the barb but it was beneath his dignity to respond to it. “The sea is flat, so there aren’t many places that could produce these magnificent waterfalls. We have fountains in the palace gardens, though, that create the same effect.”

  Mahri flushed. He knew how to deliver a backhanded compliment, all right. “What about flutterflies?”

  “My cousin has a collection he’s quite vain of.” Korl shrugged. “But they’re common enough insects. Why?”

  “The swamps have their own kinds of gardens.” Mahri sat on the collapsed narwhal tent, cradled Jaja in her lap. “I’m bushed from fighting the white water. Would the Great One mind paddling for a while?”

  He stretched his arms. “Where to?”

  “Beneath that waterfall, second on the right.”

  “Beneath?”

  “Aya.”

  Korl paddled while Mahri admired the way his muscles bunched and spread through his back. Why hadn’t he put his vest on today? His bare torso would drive her to distraction. His skin glistened in the sunlight, as if tiny crystals lay embedded in every pore. Over the past few weeks his pale complexion had darkened to a light gold, his hair now had pure white strands running through it. He’d been muscular before but now they bulged at the shoulders and rippled along his spine.

  A deluge of cold water doused the fire building within her and made her splutter from the force of it. They’d drifted beneath the waterfall and Mahri tensed in anticipation while Korl looked around quizzically.

  “Which way?” he asked.

  “Let the current guide us through the tunnel to the other side.”

  “Interesting place,” muttered Korl, peering into dry tunnels that water had carved eons ago. “Like a maze through the roots. Have you ever explored where these led?”

  “Some,” admitted Mahri. “But not all. It’s easy to get lost in them and things live back there in the dark,” she shuddered, “that I’d rather not see closer.”

  Their pupils had adjusted to the dusk of the tunnel so that when they emerged into the bright sunlight they both squinted and blinked. Mahri scanned the open sky above. No canopy sheltered them from winged predators here; a vista of open water stretched before them, unusual for Sea Forest, unless one ventured into the open sea. She knew it bothered Korl too, from the way he hunched his shoulders.

  But Mahri knew from experience it’d be worth the risk. “The water’s shallow here. I can pole.” So she pushed from the stern and he paddled from the bow, through a meadow of grass that grew up through the still water.

  “The grass is moving by itself,” hissed Korl.

  She grinned and turned to Jaja, nodded her head. He winked at her and strutted to the bow, scurried up the side until he sat on the front vee of the boat, pounded his little chest, and let forth an ear-numbing shriek.

  Korl jerked backward as the field of grass erupted. Little brown birds chirped angrily and flew from their nests, rustling the grass with the beat of their wings. Hoppers as big as a fist jumped into the air and bounced across the deck of the boat. Snakes of all colors slithered forth to land with plops into the water, and for a few moments he became occupied with batting a few away from the boat with his paddle.

  “Now, Korl, watch,” demanded Mahri.

  He flicked the last snake from the boat, a lethal looking variety that sported bright crimson spots of color along its skin. Korl looked at her a moment, his eyes meeting her own. She felt his annoyance at her—he must not like snakes—but it faded into that soul-searching gaze that made her heart skip over and her knees go weak. His stare traveled to her flushed cheeks, across her breasts and down the length of her legs.

  He saw her excitement and responded to it.

  Mahri shook her head at him, told herself to remember to breathe. Either she must be careful not to annoy him, or to contain her excitement. It did peculiar things to both of them.

  Jaja hopped on Korl’s shoulder and slapped him upside the head. The man shook the hair from his face and grinned sheepishly, caught movement from the corner of his eye and his mouth dropped open.

  The field convulsed in one giant heave, threw half of itself upward, and left naked stalks of greenish-brown. The fluff in the air swirled and undulated and although Mahri knew what to expect she still sighed when it happened.

  A cloud moved toward them, close enough to see that what had looked like one mass actually contained thousands of flutterflies. Some with wings larger than an open hand, others as tiny as her fingernail, all of them colored in shades of rose, with either spots of gold or purple, brown and yellow.

  They eventually settled back in their grassy homes, but some stayed to twirl around their heads, alight like breaths of air on her boat and across her shoulders. Mahri held out her arms until she had her own wings of flutterflies.

  She looked at Korl and giggled. He had a crown of flutterflies in his hair. One had settled on the end of that tipped nose, fanning its elegant wings in graceful homage. He slid the insect onto his finger and stared at it a long time.


  “You have a crown, my prince,” laughed Mahri.

  He grinned crookedly and she knew the image of him surrounded by wings of softness would stay in her mind forever. He executed a courtly bow, barely rocking the boat, losing only a few of his winged passengers from atop his head, and pierced her with his gaze once again.

  “No better one,” he replied, “could I ever hope to wear, my lady.”

  Mahri thought for a moment that she’d swallowed some of the flutterflies, her insides trembled so softly.

  And then she knew she’d take him to one other place.

  Chapter 12

  MAHRI WATCHED KORL’S MOUTH DROP OPEN WHEN they emerged from beneath yet another waterfall, and she nodded with satisfaction. She’d heard of the wonders of the Palace Tree, the many rooms filled with skillfully crafted treasures. But nothing could match the creations of nature.

  The boat traveled through a narrow channel of water surrounded on all sides by crystal coral that had somehow been sculpted over the eons into massive towers of lace. It glittered in the sun with multiple prisms of fractured color and in places joined over the canal to form delicate bridges.

  “Do you know how rare crystal coral is?” asked Korl in stunned amazement.

  “Aya.” Mahri imagined the Seers taking the coral, using the Power to shape it into their own man-made trinkets. “But I’d die before I’d let anyone destroy this for their own profit—or pleasure.”

  Korl studied her with scepticism, and then smiled. “I believe you would.”

  Mahri shrugged and scanned the way ahead, looking for a particular shape of crystal, then anchored onto the coral shore when they reached the bubble-like structure. She grabbed a satchel and stepped out of the boat. Jaja bounded ahead and disappeared into the maze of lace.

  “Careful,” warned Mahri when Korl hastened to follow her. “The soles of your feet aren’t as tough as mine.”

  He reached out and stroked the side of the translucent stuff, felt the pitted but smooth surface warm beneath his fingers. Then took a step and winced.

  “When it breaks it’s sharp as a razor,” she explained, pointing at the shards littering their path.