Legend of the Three Moons

by Patricia Bernard

  Edith's shack was just big enough for Edith, the children and fifteen dogs to sit around a fire of fence palings. Paid for, so she said, by her last customer, a Missen Bee woman whose missing husband had gone to Belem to sell the cat masks she had sewn, and never returned. `And probably won't.'

  `You didn't tell her that did you?' asked a shocked Celeste.

  `No. I told her that he'd come back when he was ready, but without the money he'd earned from selling the masks. Now sit down and sing me your song.'

  Lyla, Celeste, Chad and Swift squashed up on a bench in front of rows of baskets full of dried herbs, weeds and thistles. Edith sat close to the fire with her favourite white, one-eyed bull terrier's head on her lap. Lem remained standing beneath a row of bags labelled red back spider webs, bat wing grease, green frog's toe fungus and rats' toenails.

  When everyone was settled Lem began to sing.

  `Three moons to save three Princesses born,

  Five journeys to save a land that's torn,

  One journey to find the dragon mocked,

  One journey to find the merwoman locked,

  One journey to find the poisoned tree,

  One journey to set a chained eagle free,

  Five journeymen to find the cage that swings,

  Five journeys to free five Queens and Kings.'

  Lyla asked Edith what she thought the song meant.

  Edith stared at each of them in turn. `This is what I think. I have before me two travellers who pretend to be boys, three travellers who are, a green snake that can unlock doors and a patch-eyed pup that's worth more than the lot of you. What will you pay if I decipher it? Will you give me the pup?'

  `No, not the pup. He belongs to me,' said Lem quickly, picking up Nutty. `But we'll give you enough meat for you and your dogs to eat for two days.'

  `Done!'

  They watched the old woman search through her many bookshelves, cupboards and drawers but she found nothing mentioning the moons' song. She then threw a handful of ivory bones onto her dirt floor but the bones predicted nothing. She took a metal wand and drew squiggles in the dirt. Again nothing. Next she poured a blue liquid from a goatskin into a silver bowl, dropped a silver thread into it and swirled it around while studying the ripples.

  Finally, a smile of triumph crossed her wrinkled face and she glanced at Lem. `If I can decipher only one line, which line would you choose?'

  He didn't hesitate. `The line about the dragon mocked.'

  Edith nodded as if this was the right answer, then she spoke. `Only the one that speaks to animals can enter the ice mountain. Only he can accept the ice dragon's talisman, which is the first of five talismans that will free the Queens and Kings.'

  Lem stared at the blue water and saw nothing, `Where will I find this ice dragon?'

  Edith stopped stirring. `The bowl doesn't say. Perhaps the crystals will.'

  She rummaged through her belongings until she found a silk bag which she emptied into her lap. Out rolled a collection of crystals some as big as chicken eggs, others as small as peas, some as round as oranges, some square or pyramid-shaped.

  She held each one to her ear in turn, listened and then discarded it until the only one left was a blue pyramid with a scarlet eyelash inside it. `A sphinx's eyelash,' she told them and held the pyramid to her ear.

  Her eyes lit up. `The ice dragon is imprisoned inside Tartik Mountain on Tartik Island. It is in great pain and can only be spoken to when shown its reflection in a mirror.'

  Lem leant forward. `Where is Tartik Island?'

  `So far west that if you miss it you will fall off the edge of the known world. That is all I can tell you.'

  Lyla handed over the cloth containing the meat and bread. Edith looked surprised at its weight. `You have paid me well,' she said and began wandering around picking up small leather packets from her baskets. `So I have something extra for you.'

  She gave a packet to Celeste. `These are honeysuckle seeds. Chew them when you wish to hide in darkness.'

  She moved on to Chad. `Inside are eight Finders Keepers petals. Place them on your eyes to find the hidden way.'

  She stopped in front of Swift and handed him a tiny packet. `This is lavender mixed with repulsata. Chew it when you wish to repulse someone.'

  Reaching Lyla she handed her a blue packet. `This is peppermint root. If you chew it, it will make you as light as a feather.'

  Finally she reached Lem and gave him a packet of dried buds, a small round mirror and a large ball of red string. `Snapdragon buds will protect you against unwanted magic. The string will find your way out of darkness and the mirror is to hold up to the ice dragon while reciting the spell, ecco narcisso dragonucus attractivae. Please repeat the spell.'

  `Ecco narcisso dragonucus attractivae,' repeated Lem.

  `Good. Now be on your way. I am tired and need to sleep.'

  `Don't you get lonely?' asked Swift, as Edith led them back through the graves to the gate.

  `I have my dogs, they are enough. I also have four more things to say, especially to you little tree talker. Do not bring me an unwanted present. The visitors I had earlier, are waiting at the crossroads. Find the sack you hid behind deadman's tree, cross the fields and collect what you buried near the barn. Turn right at the road beneath the plateau, this will take you to Mussel Cove where you will find a boat.'

  They were half way along Marsh Pond Lane, when Swift asked Lem what he thought Edith meant by no unwanted presents.

  `Or what she meant about Splash being able to unlock doors,' added Celeste.

  `Or how she knew that Swift could speak to trees or that we hid the food sack and buried the casket,' said Chad.

  `Oracles know everything,' announced Swift, who'd decided he liked the old woman and wouldn't mind visiting her again.

  Lyla shook her head. `Not everything. She didn't know what the rest of the song was about.'

  They found the food sack and crossed the fields to where Lyla had buried the casket. Here they waited while she wriggled over to dig it up and wriggled back. `I heard voices in the barn,' she told them.

  It was still night when they reached Mussel Cove Road. As there was no one in sight and they couldn't hear any wagons they walked along it until Nutty warned them that a vehicle was coming from the direction of Wartstoe Village. With only empty fields to their right and a bare hill to their left they were searching for somewhere to hide when Nutty found them a newly-vacated groundhog burrow. Hidden in the smelly hole they listened as the sounds of a horse and voices came towards them.

  They hid twice more before dawn. Once when a caped and hooded horseman galloped by and once when a gang of tatty-looking bandits, bent on mischief, crossed the road. When morning came they slept in another burrow.

  `It doesn't smell so bad if it's been empty for awhile,' said Lyla, laying her head on the food sack. She wasn't feeling well and wished she hadn't eaten the greasy meat. During the day she left the burrow three times to be sick. That evening, when the others awoke, they found her yellow-skinned, bilious and thirsty. She handed the food sack to Celeste. `Here. I can't eat anything.'

  Nutty gobbled up the meat but the others only ate the potatoes.

  By the time it was dark enough to travel Celeste and Swift were also complaining of churning stomachs. They walked slowly and rested often so it was morning before they reached the outskirts of Mussel Cove.

  They lay in the long grass on one of the five hills that overlooked the fishing town and surveyed its rows of white windmills, the large market place already set up for the day, the curved sea wall and its five wharves crowded with fishing boats. Anchored out in the bay were two merchant banquettes and four trading junks, each one surrounded by a bevy of rowboats all vying to take crews ashore to visit the market or the drinking inns that ringed the harbour.

  `What do you think of that?' Swift pointed to the hill opposite.

  The hill, which was higher than their own, was crowded with round white tents. At its top stood 10 large c
age-like enclosures each containing five or more long-necked Goch.

  `I think Edith forgot to mention that Mussel Cove is a Raiders' garrison town,' said Chad. Then he turned to Lyla. `So what's our plan?'

  Lyla closed her eyes against the bright sunlight reflecting off the town's brass roofs. Her stomach felt better but she was tired and had a bad headache. The last thing she wanted to do was make a plan, but she had to. `Two of us will go into the town and buy or rent a boat. But it can't be Lem, because he was seen in Wartstoe Inn, and it can't be Celeste or Swift because they're sick, so it has to be Chad and me. The rest of you can find somewhere to hide.'

  Lem argued that he could disguise himself but Lyla argued back that she was the oldest and that was that. So with her hair tied back to look like a boy and with a jewel and two cheeses to barter for a boat, she and Chad set off. Both had a dagger hidden in their waistbands and both went barefooted because of Nutty's warning that the fishermen might steal their boots.

  Lem waited until they were half way down the hill then he sent Nutty after them.

  8

  Clarissa the Girl on Stilts

  The seaside town was so crowded with tartan-clad locals, foreign sailors with strange faces and six-fingered Belemites, that Lyla and Chad's leather capes and britches went unnoticed.

  As they headed for the wharves they passed the row of inns already full of sailors, travellers and gambling Mussel Cove fishermen. Opposite the noisy inns was a string of stalls tended by loud-voiced fishwives selling crab soup and steaming shellfish. Chad's stomach rumbled as he sniffed their delicious aroma but Lyla's stomach did a sickening flip and she made a face at the thought of eating.

  They walked along the first wharf they came to and discovered that all the boats, dinghies and skiffs were chained to bollards and that many of the boats had fishermen living on board.

  Chad gestured to a man mending a fishing-net. `Will I ask him about renting or buying a boat?'

  When Lyla nodded, he asked `Excuse me, Master fisherman. Do you know anyone who rents out boats? Just a small boat. To rent or even sell.'

  The man grunted a reply. `We don't rent nor sell our boats. We use them.'

  `Aren't there any old fishermen who no longer fish?' asked Lyla as politely as she could considering the man had spoken so rudely to Chad.

  The fisherman closed one eye and examined her with the other. `Their sons use their boats. And how would an honest fisherman know if his boat wasn't being stolen by someone claiming to rent it? Stealing a boat is a crime worthy of being cut up and fed to the fish. So be off with you and take your dog with you. Dogs are bad luck around boats.'

  `Finding a boat might be harder than we thought,' muttered Chad, as they left the fifth wharf having received similar answers from every fisherman they'd approached.

  `Perhaps someone in the market will know of a boat,' suggested Lyla, stepping aside for a rickshaw that had jostled her off the road.

  The men pulling the rickshaw wore pink knee-length tunics and leather eye-blinkers, while a third, similarly dressed, held a pink umbrella over the heads of two pink-clad women sitting inside.

  `Pink!' mouthed Lyla to Chad while rolling her eyes to the sky. Pink was her least favourite colour and the idea of being clad completely in it made her almost forget her headache.

  They followed the rickshaw all the way to the market where they lost it amongst the many stalls selling fresh, fried, boiled or pickled fish, spun toffee animals on sticks, freshly baked cinnamon cakes, fortune-telling birds and `cure-all' medicines.

  Beside the stalls, with their wares displayed on mats, were travellers selling dancing toads, singing beetles and all manner of musical instruments. Others invited the crowd to partake in various sorts of gambling games, such as: throw the ring around the cat's neck; catch the flying fish; and guess which of the three mugs has the pea.

  `The middle one,' hissed Chad, after they'd watched a mug-shuffler shuffling his mugs so fast that his hands were a blur.

  `Don't point or you'll have to bet on it,' warned a voice from over their heads.

  They turned and looked up to see a girl on stilts smiling down at them.

  `I'm Clarissa,' she said, swishing back and forth her long red-satin dress with its many frilly petticoats decorated with ribbons. Then with a twinkle in her pansy-brown eyes, and to the jingling of her ankle and wrist-bell bracelets and with a clash of her tambourine, she danced away as nimbly as if she were balanced on her toes.

  Chad dragged his eyes away from her in time to see a sly-looking Belemite place a bag of wheat in front of the middle mug. Up came the mug with no pea under it. The mug-shuffler snatched away the wheat and Lyla and Chad moved on.

  They followed the crowd and soon discovered a roped-off area surrounded by enthusiastic gamblers watching six pairs of wrestlers. To the shouts and yells of the audience the six winners then wrestled each other until only two bare-chested men remained, one much larger than the other. Suddenly the smaller wrestler threw the larger wrestler and the contest was over.

  Those who'd bet their money on the larger wrestler surged forward to argue with those who'd won. Shoulders were prodded and noses punched and in the melee Chad and Nutty were separated from Lyla.

  As he searched for her amongst the heaving bodies, twisted red faces and raised fists, Chad was jolted against a stage containing five jugglers balanced on each other's shoulders. The jugglers, and what they juggled, crashed to the floor and for some reason the sour smell of Goch became so strong that Chad and Nutty ducked under the stage to escape from it.

  All Chad could see were the feet of the brawlers but he felt safer until someone else hiding under the stage grabbed his bag.

  With a growl Nutty flew at the thief's face and Chad unsheathed his dagger which was more than enough to make the thief back off. Chad scurried back out into the market square but had to jump out of the way of the two huge Goch herding the brawlers into a corner.

  `They will be locked up for the next fifteen days,' said a familiar voice. `My Uncle Bengg is amongst them so there'll be no fishing and no fish to sell.'

  She was interrupted by a shouting man wearing even higher stilts than hers. `Get dancing, Clarissa! That's what you're paid to do. Dance or you'll end up in prison with your uncle.'

  Clarissa the stilt-girl flashed Chad a goodbye smile and whirled away calling for everyone to dance with her. Chad ran after her. `Can you see a black-haired boy wearing a cape like mine?'

  Clarrisa danced in a circle searching the crowd, but said she couldn't see anyone like that. As the man on stilts stamped towards them again she danced off.

  Afraid that Lyla had been herded up with the disgruntled gamblers, Chad headed to where the two Goch were using their tails and necks to surround the subdued men. Lyla wasn't amongst the frightened men but, just as Chad turned back to the market, the closest Goch lunged its blind head at him and stretched its probing purple tongue towards his startled face.

  Nutty attacked the Goch's front legs nipping and biting at its smooth grey skin. With a loud boom, it swung its eyeless head away from Chad and down to its leg in search of what was annoying him. Chad escaped into the retreating crowd and a minute later a tail-wagging Nutty joined him.

  Behind them a Gochmaster's whip bit into the Goch's neck causing it to rear back and crush a fisherman who was too slow in moving away.

  After losing Chad, Lyla wriggled through the fighting gamblers to a safe place between a stall selling fried octopus and another selling a purple drink. Her headache was almost gone but she was hungry and thirsty. With nothing to barter with, all she could do was stare as the people handed over tickets in exchange for food and drink.

  `What be you staring at?' demanded the drink woman, whose bright flower-print dress and scarf showed that she was not from Mussel Cove.

  `I'm wondering where people get their tickets from?'

  `They exchange their fish and produce at the Bartering Hall for tickets. When the market is over I take my tic
kets to the Bartering Hall and choose the goods I want for my tickets. It's just another way the Raiders tax us.' The woman's eyes turned crafty. `Unless you have something you want to barter privately.'

  Lyla shook her head. `I have nothing but as you are so busy I could wash your cups in return for a drink?'

  `A boy who washes cups! Now there's a miracle! So how many cups will you wash up for one cup of purpleberry juice?'

  `At least one hundred,' Lyla answered, hoping that by then Chad would have passed the drink booth.

  `It's a bargain. Climb under the bunting and take off your cape.'

  Lyla washed two hundred cups and had two cups of fizzy purpleberry waiting to be drunk when she saw Chad carrying Nutty. She held up a cup and called out, `Tree! Over here, I have a drink for you.'

  `Heh,' yelled the drink woman. `I'll thank you not to take away my customers. I've come all the way from Mizzen Bee to sell here. I'll wash my own cups from now on.'

  Lyla and Chad sat down on a kerb to drink their juice and were discussing the delicious taste of the purpleberry when they noticed the stilt girl again. She was arguing with the stilt man.

  `If you think I am going to pay for a whole day, then you're mistaken,' the man shouted. `Half a day is all you're worth. And give me back my costume and stilts.'

  `But I have danced since sun up,' Clarissa argued. `You always do this, Arnolt Beetlehead. You always find an excuse not to pay me the full amount.'

  `Then don't work for me,' snarled the stilt man. `Only you will, because I'm the only fool who'll employ a Raider's reject. Especially one who can't dance.'

  At this last insult Chad jumped to his feet. `Clarissa is the best stilt dancer I've ever seen!'

  `You again,' hissed Arnolt Beetlehead, swinging his right stilt at Chad. He missed him and hit Clarissa's stilts instead. The crowd moved aside as Clarissa began to fall and, thinking this was all part of the show, the pink-clad women in their rickshaw applauded loudly.

  Worried that Clarissa would crack her head on the kerb, Lyla and Chad ran to catch her.