A Lament of Moonlight (12 page)

Chapter Twelve

Melvin was beginning to wonder if they would make it to
Cailleach Bheur
before the night was out when the spiders found them.

They were larger than any spider Melvin had ever seen or imagined, and that meant it was large for he had nightmares of giant spiders. Still they were not any larger than himself, but that was rather large for an arachnid.

The spiders, sped on by their eight legs were quickly on the group, and even with the agility of the mannikins the battle went slowly for they were at a great disadvantage given the dexterity of the spiders.

Melvin looked up once from his frantic battle for his very life to see the sea of spiders scoring the snow covered ground.

He fought hard beside the mannikins, and he tried with all his might to will the force back into the hammer that it had seemed to bear before, but the shivering shudder was
nowhere
to be found. It was hopeless, he would have to fight like normal people.

There seemed no hope though, twenty minutes into the fight they were
losing
horribly, and already large spider webs were being woven seemingly in
midair
and silk swabbed mannikins being lifted to their horror.

Melvin
thought they were going to be overrun
when the moon itself flashed with a livid light. He wasn’t sure if the energy that coursed through the air that night was lightning or if it was some other malignant beam from the moon, but where the pearly white light scorched the
ground
spiders died in troves.

When the light of the flashing
moon cleared
the
glowing form of Samarra stood
in the rising smoke
. Moments later the
spiders tried overtaking her. She raised something in the air, Abigail thought it could have been a scepter, though she wielded it more like a club, and when she brought it down, her face as serene as she could possibly make it, more moon-lightning flashed, and spiders were blown back.

“Follow me or you will never make it,” her voice carried softly across the tundra, and they obeyed, wearily, fighting off spiders that tried to attack them behind Samarra’s fury. Melvin
didn’t see what the
Lunarian was doing any longer, for he was focused on the flood of spiders rearing up behind them, and the threat they posed. He went with the surge of mannikins though in the wake of Samarra, her front being fought with unearthly light that brightened up the night all around them to near daylight.

In time the spiders began to retreat and they were all drawing to a halt, the flashing from Samarra
was
no longer present, though her voice rang out across the darkened night saying: “We are here,” and though it was said pleasantly the rest of them could not help but feel as though her proclamation were a death sentence.

Chapter Thirteen

They weren’t precisely sure where “here” was, because for a moment they could not see anything no matter how they tried. It wasn’t until Melvin looked around the slightly forbidding figure of Samarra that he noticed she was staring ahead of them through another fog bank that created something like a large circle in the air. It w
as then Melvin realized they were at the tear Samarra spoke of earlier, and it was another fogbank like the one into the lime tree grove
.

Melvin noticed with heart pounding awe that it was day where they were to be traveling, and the oblong space before Samarra, into which she stared like a grand looking glass, was shimmering and shinning like a beacon in the gloomy night. He wondered how they had not seen it before.

“The
Eget Row
is not on O?” Melvin asked a sudden thrill going through him that he couldn’t quite explain. He was anxious, though he wasn’t sure if for good or bad. He would be leaving behind him the world he knew in moments and entering another. The younger part of him, the part still caught in childhood didn’t want to enter the portal for that meant he would be an untold distance from home, yet the adult part of him wanted to enter the portal for it was a greater adventure. He was afraid suddenly, and didn’t want to continue on the journey no matter what that implied. He looked up at Samarra then as he remembered her words from before, her grave message that saving O from this darkness was up to them.

“Not the part of Eget Row we are going to. There are three levels of Eget Row: One that resides here in the realm of man, one that resides in the ether with the well, and one that resides in the Ever After with the Goddess. We are going into the ether, where the well is.”

She gestured with the scepter, and couldn’t help noticing how they all watched the glowing stave.

“This is not supposed to be here,” she told
them of the scepter.
“I could not let it remain where it was, however, for it would have been in grave danger.” But she would say no more on the topic when pressed.

The scepter itself appeared to be made of ivory, but Melvin wasn’t sure if that was exactly true, for it was most certainly not from O which meant it could have been made of anything. The top of it was decorated with a crescent moon laying with its points up almost as if the scepter ended in prongs. In the air between the two points that didn’t quite touch there glimmered a light so silvery white that Melvin didn’t doubt it was moonlight.

“Time runs differently where we are going. What would be a day here would be closer to a month there. Time goes very fast, though it will appear t
o run no differently than here.”
She finally broke contact with the portal and looked to each of them in turn, and the look in her eyes was enough to make them shudder. “
S
o without any further disruptions let’s leave here.” As Samarra said the last she cast her glance to the distant horizon where, at any moment, the sun would crest and their time would be up.

With ease Samarra stepped down through the fog ban
k into the sunlit world. The surface of the tear
shifted like water
as she entered it. S
he took a few steps down into the new world the liquid surface of the portal reverberated like a pond after having a pebble dropped in it. Samarra turned to look back at them from this foreign land.
She knew
this was the first time the youths were leaving O. It had been many years since she had started traveling through space to other worlds, but she could still remember the first time she left home. It was not something to
be rushed, but
they had precious little time to wait.

Melvin gazed down what appeared to be a hill wreathed in fog, but he knew there was no hill here, instead they were about to climb down into another world, one that would take them out of O and into the land of legends and myths that somehow had been forcing its will upon reality.

Overhead the lightning flashed, making all of them jump. At any moment the vicious storm would break. The mannikins behind them all churned anxiously for they knew how little time the youngsters had to save the woods of their home.

“I will travel with you, for one of my kind is respected by the lower shadkin that would try to impede your way. It is best if you take me to your meeting with
Cailleach Bheur
though it is not I that can do her harm.”

Samarra smiled at this but it didn’t touch her eyes. She seemed much more troubled than when they saw her
earlier that night.
Abigail wondered what could have her in such a state of distress.

Melvin followed Samarra and felt how the fog clung to his legs like something other than fog, something that was more like hands trying to stay his progression more than fog or mist. He then felt the fissure between his world and the next slip over him like a dry liquid, as it had with Samarra.

There was a moment of nothingness, where Melvin could see nothing of either worlds, but instead struggled through darkness so complete that he felt he must surely lose himself in it. He couldn’t
breathe
, he tried, but it
felt
as though he
was
underwater, the air around him was so dense and compressing. He struggled a long time, and fought the urge to spin around. He knew that he had been traveling straight when he entered the portal, and if he started thrashing about now he might get lost in this void for good.

Then he realized where he found himself as pinpricks of light began to bloom into existence around him. The fact that the stars between O and
Eget Row
were beginning to dawn on his vision represented a danger that he could not begin to fathom. Howeve
r, a sense of urgency compelled
him, and Melvin wasted no time in watching the stars, instead he continued further. Finally the space that existed between the
portals
gave way, and he coul
d once more see the sunny land of Eget Row
ahead of him.

Samarra smiled and nodded to him, and when he looked back he saw the worried looks on the faces of his siblings. When Abigail came through after him he realized why, for just as the space behind her bubbled and tossed with her passing and before she came through on his side she completely vanished faster than he could blink. He made to go to her, but Samarra stopped him.

Melvin was not sure if this was a test or not, but eventually Abigail came through gasping for breath and smiling a smile that only one who has danced among the stars can smile.

Eventually Ruby also fought her way through the fog and stood in the clear crisp day of the world beyond the fog. The air was sharp and chilling to them, the type of cold that froze the hairs in their nose with each breath and made their head reel with a clarity that only the extreme cold could bring.

More than anything they wanted to go home, but they figured that they could not go home until this was done, or rather they could go home but it would not be the same, there would always be a darkness encroaching on their woods that would not leave by merely turning their backs on the thought.

“It is day!” Ruby exclaimed.

“So?” Abigail asked.

“We had to defeat her before day came!” Melvin gasped but Samarra smiled and pointed behind them, and they gazed through the crystallized air behind them to see the portal through which they had come. On the other side it was still dark, it was still night. The mannikins were not following them, and instead waved merrily at them when they looked back. They had turned back in time to watch Luna flutter through, and Mama Coon to slip through the fog. She stopped and sneezed a few times flicking her head and scratching at her ears before she trudged through the snow toward them.

“It is still night where night counts.” Samarra turned and led them down the hill, but none of them could readily tell where they were going.

“Where are we going?” Ruby as
ked.

“To the base of the Evyndelle,
” Samarra said hefting her mo
on scepter and looking around. H
er soft Lunarian features and permanent
glow were
insubstantial in such bright surroundings. They continued to trudge on not sure precisely where they were going, but soon they saw what they believed to be the remnants of a river, only it had been frozen for so long that they doubted it was a river any longer. “The place to which we travel is split into quarters by four rivers,” Samarra said, her musical voice finding little purchase in the cold, dead air.

“It is much different than what it once was. Many humans believe that Eget Row is a place on O, wh
ich is not completely true
. First man and first woman existed on
another plane, in the upper bows of the tree where the Ever After resides;
it wasn’t until they
went against the will of the Goddess
that they were condemned to the Middle Garden, what some call O.”

“Why, it isn’t a garden at all,” Ruby said gazing around her at all the desolate tundra obviously not having heard what Samarra had just said.

“No, this is Eget Row, the Garden at Eget Row is where we travel to, but I don’t suppose that
you will recognize that either.”

That gave them all more than enou
gh to think about, and
they cast their eyes around looking to find the fabled ent
rance to the Garden at Eget Row
.

Me
lvin, however, was distracted from the prattle
for he looked instead straight ahead over the next hill to where the outline of the tree could be seen.
Before the tree stood a giant white archway that stretched delicately to the clouds. He knew through that gateway stood the Garden at Eget Row.

As time wore on and they traveled
further through the tundra
yet another sun rose to match the large yellow one in the sky. This sun, however, was not yellow or orange or even red, instead it was a bright blue color. The blue sun was much smaller than the yellow sun and the two of them bathed the land in a strange color that was a cross between the sunlight they knew and a blue that they found completely alien yet incredibly beautiful.

This made them start looking around for yet more wonders that they might behold of Eget Row, but there was none to have, only endless miles of white bathed in yellow
and blue light. It was
disheartening, but they figured the desolate land w
as a product of the
Cailleach Bheur
and her necrotic staff
.

“If the shadkin now hold sway here, who tends to the tree?” Melvin asked.

“
No one, the wyrd that sustains it is now tainted, and the tree is dying
.”

“But that means we will die as well!” Abigail said. “If the lives of man is inscribed on the roots, then our futures are being poisoned.”

“Yes,” Samarra answered simply. “Now you are beginning to understand the reason you must do what you have come for.”

“How do we cleanse it?” Melvin asked.

“By killing
Cailleach Bheur
. Only with her gone can the well be cleansed.”