Legend of the Three Moons

by Patricia Bernard

  Then his eyes lit up. `Heh! I can remember what we did yesterday.'

  `Me too,' Celeste said. `And Lem remembers the wolves. Can you remember anything before yesterday Chad?'

  Her brother put on his thinking-hard face and then relaxed. `No, just yesterday. What about you, Celeste? Can you remember what we did yesterday?'

  `We went swimming and ate peaches.'

  `Lem?'

  `We chased the ponies and Swift almost caught one.'

  `I did catch it. By its tail,' argued Swift.

  `So we remember yesterday but no further back,' concluded Lyla. `It must have something to do with the magic spell that our mothers put on the Forest. Do you think it's been broken?'

  The others looked at each other and shrugged.

  `So what about our gifts?' asked Chad. `I don't think I can do anything that I couldn't do yesterday. Can anyone else?'

  They stared at each other as if their gifts would show on their tanned faces. When they didn't, Lyla spoke up.

  `It's not magical and it's not a gift, it's just odd, but last night I had a dream and I never dream, never! I dreamt I was flying over a white and gold palace. Inside was a throne room hung with red and gold curtains and on a royal dais were five golden thrones. One was empty. On the others sat two queens and two kings.'

  Celeste edged closer. `What did they look like?'

  `They had no faces and their arms and feet were chained to their thrones.'

  `That's awful!'

  Lem, who loved listening to stories as much as telling them, edged closer. `What happened next?'

  `I woke up.'

  `Did you fly with bird wings or bat wings?' asked Swift, whose greatest joy was to pretend he was a bird and fly from tree to tree.

  `No wings. I just held my arms out and flew.' She showed them what she meant by stretching out her arms.

  `Dream flying might be your gift,' said Lem, while secretly thinking that his gift of talking to animals was a much better one. `But dreaming doesn't help us if the Forest is no longer safe.'

  `Unless we're supposed to find the palace I dreamed about before your precious wolves come back,' Lyla replied sharply.

  `And on the way we might find an oracle, elf-speaker, sand-reader or bone-diviner to tell us what the three moons' song means,' added Celeste who, being the peacemaker of the group, always knew what to say to stop an argument.

  It didn't take long for them to eat a cold breakfast, pack their ox-hide bags and choose their weapons. Then they took one last look at the cave that had been their home for longer than they could remember, stepped out into the clearing and pulled shut the ox-hide curtain for the last time.

  They stood in front of the broken moon dial, agreed they were doing the right thing, then set off for the river.

  `We could raft down it,' suggested Chad, as they walked single file along the path that, according to Celeste's diary, led to their favourite sandy beach.

  `Or swim down it,' said Celeste, who loved swimming more than anything.

  `Or build a boat and sail down it,' said Chad, whose efforts so far to build a boat had failed.

  But on reaching the beach they discovered they could do none of these things. The river was no longer a smooth waterway meandering past half-moon beaches and shaded by twain-nut trees. Instead it was a turbulent, log-filled torrent that had broken its banks and flooded the nearby meadows. Eyeing the debris spinning by they all agreed that entering it or floating on it would be too dangerous.

  `And it stinks,' complained Swift holding his nose against a powerful stench that hung over the water's surface.

  They were wading ankle-deep through an overflow when they saw something strange floating towards them. At first glance it looked like a log but as it came closer they saw that it had a row of yellow spikes running down its back to the tip of its long thin tail, a sharp tooth-filled bill and two beady black eyes. Swift was already fitting an arrow to his bow when Lyla pulled him out of the water and up onto the muddy bank out of reach of the advancing creature.

  `I think it's one of those scary things the wolves are afraid of,' she warned. `And there might be more of them.'

  `And it might not stay in the water,' added Chad, walking backwards so he could keep watch. Slimy things in water were not his favourite animals. In fact slimy things in water scared him half to death.

  The bank path was waterlogged and slippery to walk on. But after sighting more yellow-spiked movement they preferred sloshing along it than wading knee deep in the turgid overflow. Even so, there were times when they had no choice.

  So with Lyla in the lead, her spear held high, Celeste, Chad and Swift in the middle with their short swords, and Lem last, with his long sword held high and ready to slice off the head of any creature that attacked them, they stepped into the water and hurriedly splashed through it.

  Each time they reached the safety of an almost dry path they were sure they'd heard the snapping of teeth and the gurgling of regurgitated water snorted through bony nostrils coming from the river. By late afternoon they were tired of mud and slush and had begun searching for a tree to sleep in.

  `This is a good one,' said Swift, stroking the smooth red trunk of a tall twain nut tree. `It has nuts for us to eat and a stork's nest at the top big enough for us to sleep in.'

  Lem stared up at the tree's thick, leafy canopy. `How do you know there's a nest up there? I can't see one.'

  `I just know,' said Swift. He grabbed a branch and swung himself effortlessly into the tree's fork.

  Chad followed. Suddenly his eyes widened and he shouted down to the others. `Hurry. Climb up. Something is stalking us!'

  But Lem wouldn't hurry. `How do you know-'

  `Lem! Just do it for once,' ordered Lyla.

  `I was just ask-'

  `Lem!' shouted Lyla and Celeste together.

  Chad and Swift reached the nest first. Leaving their capes and bags inside it they climbed higher to see what was following them.

  `How long do we have to stay up so high?' whispered Celeste, as the slender, pink branches of her perch dipped and swayed dangerously.

  `Sssshhh!' hissed Swift.

  Above them the sky turned dark and menacing and the air in the tree's canopy hung heavy and fetid with the same stink they'd smelt by the river. Around them the Forest was abnormally still and eerily silent. Lem whispered that the animals were either afraid or the Forest was empty.

  Swift hushed him. From the direction of the river came a series of loud thuds, a howl of pain followed by a squishy sucking noise, and the scary sound of trees and bushes being crushed. Soon, whatever was making the thudding was so close that their tree shook from its roots to its uppermost branches. Lyla and Celeste stretched out and clasped hands.

  Then they saw it.

  It had an elongated, metal-grey body with a long tail, enormous trunk-like legs, huge feet and a weaving, serpentine neck supporting a smooth, eyeless head. Strapped into a metal saddle upon its back, crouched a humped-back rider wearing a spiked helmet, a metal facemask and leather armour. In one hand the rider carried a whip and in the other a light that lit up the branches.

  With ponderous precision the creature lifted and leant its enormous front feet against each tree trunk that it passed. Then, sliding its blunt blind head in and out of the tree's forks and branches, it snapped off branches with its neck or guillotined them with its dagger sharp teeth. All the time it was searching, its rider was urging it on with his cracking whip and his loud hoarse voice. At last the creature reached their tree.

  Swift and Chad, with terrified eyes, clung to their perches and held their breaths while the creature's long purple tongue with its dripping purple spit, stretched towards their crunched-up legs.

  If it finds them I will have to fight it, thought a horrified Lyla, wishing that instead of thrusting her spear into the back of her belt to make climbing easier, that she'd thrust it into the front where she could withdraw it faster.

  Unable to reach Swift, who had
shrunk himself into the smallest space, the slobbering creature moved on to Chad, who was so scared he had almost become part of the tree. The creature's slime-covered tongue missed his boots by a leaf's width, but then it smelt Lem and triumphantly changed direction and gurgled towards the older boy.

  Lem, with his back balanced against a branch and his long sword held aloft, was just about to stab the revolting smelly creature in the head, when it just swung right past him because of the noise Celeste's branch made as it dipped low under her weight.

  The girls were standing ready. Celeste was about to leap to another branch so Lyla could spear the creature when the rider grunted a loud order and cracked his whip. The creature's flicking tongue froze in front of Celeste, who froze too, not a muscle moving on her terrified face.

  A second whip crack cut into the creature's smooth, grey neck. With a squeal of pain, it swivelled around snapping Celeste's branch as its front legs dropped to the ground with an earth-shaking jolt.

  As the branch beneath her feet vanished and Celeste began to fall, Lyla stretched out her spear. Celeste grabbed it and swung her legs around a lower branch. `Thanks,' she mouthed.

  With faces as white as the silver-circled moon that had suddenly emerged from a bank of dark grey cloud, the children watched and waited until they could no longer see the creature or hear its footfalls. Then shrugging her stiff shoulders Lyla turned to Swift. `How did you know it was coming?'

  `The tree told me. When I touched it, it talked to me in my head the way the wolves talked to Lem.'

  Chad nodded. `It talked to me too.'

  `Can you hear it talking now?'

  Chad rested his cheek against his branch. `It says there are six more creatures like that one in the forest.'

  `I think talking to trees is our magic gift,' grinned Swift, patting the tree's trunk.

  `Talking about gifts,' said Celeste climbing onto Lem's branch. `Could you have talked to that creature, Lem?'

  `No. It isn't real.'

  `It looked real.'

  Swift wrinkled his nose up in disgust. `It stunk real too.'

  `Well it isn't. Splash says it wasn't born from an egg or a mother. That it was becamed by magic.'

  Celeste held up her snake and stared into its tiny, emerald green eyes. `What about its rider, Splash? Is he real?'

  Lem answered for the snake. `No. He was becamed too.'

  3

  Bats in the Palace

  The stork's nest was large enough for them to curl up in and soon all but Lem, who was on guard, were asleep. Two hours later it was Celeste's turn and then Chad's. During his watch the tree warned him the other six purple-tongued creatures were coming, so he woke the others.

  With their hair full of stork's feathers and their eyes full of sleep, they climbed higher than their original perches to balance on branches so thin that they feared they might break at any sudden movement.

  The dawn sky was the colour of raspberry juice and the pink moon was sliding beneath the horizon when they sighted the first long-necked creature. Behind it plodded five others, one behind the other. On their high backs sat their harsh-voiced, whip-whirling riders. These riders had removed their metal masks and the children could see their hairy faces and bulging eyes. Lem whispered that they were the ugliest of beings, and by the way they whipped their mounts, they were also the cruellest.

  `It's not that I like the smelly blind creatures,' he breathed as they watched two of them rear up and bite each other after being fiercely whipped. `It's just not right to hurt them for no reason.'

  `Perhaps the reason is that they haven't found us,' whispered Celeste.

  Her words silenced them all but they each quietly drew their weapons, ready to fight for their lives. The creatures moving closer and closer to the twain nut tree, but again they were lucky, not just because they were higher but because it seemed as if the creatures were taking less care.

  `Why are they looking for us, Cel?' whispered Swift, as the last of the grey monsters thudded out of sight.

  `I think it's the same reason the High Enchanter, or the Sender of Storms, sent the storms,' answered Celeste thoughtfully. `To stop us from finding out what was in the moon dial. Now he's sending his creatures to stop us from finding out what the three moons' song means.'

  `What does it mean?' yawned Chad, as they climbed back down to the nest.

  `That's what we are going to find out,' said Lyla covering him with her cape. `And don't get settled Swift. It's your turn to sit guard.'

  They hadn't meant to sleep late but the rocking of the branches lulled them so it was past middle day when they woke. Beside them slept Swift with his arms wrapped around the tree.

  `I couldn't keep my eyes open and the tree said it would wake me if the creatures returned,' he argued, after Lyla chastised him for being a bad guard.

  `You can't be sure about that!'

  `Yes he can,' said Chad, who always stuck up for Swift.

  With half the day gone they climbed down to the muddy path and continued following the river, travelling faster this time, because of the blind-headed creatures behind them. Foraging as they went they breakfasted on twain nuts that had to be broken with rocks, sour-berries that made their cheeks suck in, and water licked from the leaves of bushes, as the river no longer looked safe to drink from.

  By evening they had left the over-flow and the forest was thinning out when they heard a roaring noise coming from up ahead.

  `That reminds me,' said Lyla, pushing her dark curls behind her ears so she could hear the noise better. `I had another dream last night. That noise has just reminded me of it.'

  Lem and Celeste moved closer. Behind them Chad and Swift continued to drag their feet while arguing over who had the largest hunger pain.

  `I was flying over hills of sand until I reached a vast sea,' continued Lyla.

  `What's a vast sea?' asked Celeste.

  `Water that goes on forever. I flew along its edge until I reached the same white palace I dreamt of before.

  This time its gardens and fountains were brightly lit and its lakes were full of beautiful swan-shaped boats being rowed by laughing people holding red lanterns. I was swooping down for a closer look when Chad woke me to warn me about the creatures coming. But that noise up ahead sounds a lot like the vast sea in my dream.'

  `Does the vast sea have trees nearby to sleep in?'

  Lyla shook her head.

  `Does it have anything to eat in it?' demanded Swift clinging to Lyla's arm.

  Lyla tried to shake him free. `Fish. If you can catch them.'

  Swift was tired. His bag hurt his shoulders. The seeds, berries and nuts had not filled him, and now they were leaving the Forest to trudge over boot-clinging sand. He clung on tightly and whinged. `I'm hungry.'

  `I'm hungry too,' echoed Chad, bumping purposefully into Lem. `I wish Lem hadn't given the wolves our smoked meat.'

  Lem bumped back. `Would you rather have been eaten by them?'

  `Of course he wouldn't,' said Celeste putting a protective arm around her brother's shoulders. `Stop it both of you. We're all hungry.'

  `And thirsty,' complained Swift, pulling on Lyla again.

  With a sigh of frustration she took his bag and told him and Chad to scout up ahead. `But don't go too far in case we have to race back to the Forest.'

  Half an hour later when she and the other two climbed to the top of the highest sand dune they saw the boys, with their boots off, chasing each other along the wet sand of a vast sea, as if they didn't have a problem or a worry or even a hunger pain between them.

  That night they slept in a nest of sea grass. This time Lyla divided the watch between Celeste, Lem and herself so the younger two could sleep. Next morning they all had rumbling stomachs and dry throats and there wasn't a berry or a leaf in sight.

  Thinking that there might be something they could eat in the sea, perhaps like the mussels, cockles or edible seaweed they'd read in their books, Celeste suggested they go for a swim. Chad and
Swift raced into the waves before the others had pulled off their boots and Celeste could hide Splash in her shirt. Lyla yelled for them to watch out for things that could hurt them, but they were already shouting and rolling in the lacy froth of the incoming waves so they didn't hear her.

  Lyla, Lem and Celeste entered the sea more warily. Having bathed, fished and gathered shellfish in the river, they could swim well, but the waves buffeted them and dragged them out into deeper water. So although they could see Chad and Swift enjoying themselves in the shallows they were more worried about what lurked beneath their kicking feet.

  Celeste had just dived under to see what she could find when Swift started yelling and hopping around on one foot. Lyla asked Lem to wait for Celeste, then swam to shore as fast as she could.

  She discovered that Swift had trodden on a black ball of spikes which had punctured his foot and was very painful. She stroked Swift's swelling foot, told him he'd be fine and glanced back to where her brother and cousin were swimming. Lem waving frantically. She couldn't see Celeste.

  `Chad! Cut open the sting. Squeeze out the poison until the wound bleeds. Then bandage his foot with your scarf.'

  Lyla ran back down the beach and splashed into the water, swimming towards Lem.

  `Celeste has been under for ages,' he yelled.

  They dived repeatedly, each time searching deeper and having to kick harder to come up from the chilly depths to gulp in air. After awhile they were too exhausted to do anything more than tread water.

  `She's gone,' yelled Lem, searching the waves for any sign of Celeste's long blonde braids. `She's been washed away.'

  Lyla angrily slapped the surface of the sea. `No. She hasn't!'

  As if her slapping had been a magical command Celeste's head rose above a wave and she waved at them.

  With eyes full of righteous anger they swam towards her. `Where have you been?' demanded Lem. `We thought you'd drowned.'

  `We've been looking for you for ages,' accused Lyla.

  Celeste flicked her fringe off her face. `Sorry. I couldn't help it. I was taken out by a current and couldn't get back until I found a returning one.'