Red Moon Rising (5 page)

9

I WANT TO DRINK THE
air. The cooling flats gleam in the light of the suns, throwing a blue haze against the ever-present Red Crescent. I feel like I can breathe all the way to my toes. Something about the flats doesn't just cool the air, but quiets the winds, too. Each lungful of air is equal to ten dusty gasps on the homestead. If only we could bottle the air of the cooling flats, I wouldn't need any more of the breathing drops.

Thankfully, even after the excitement of the lone dactyl, we all got a decent rest last night. Or at least I did. And we only had to travel a few hours this morning before arriving. It's nice that we made it without any of us falling out of a gum one-man or getting eaten by a dactyl or choking on
our own lungs. It makes one's spirit much lighter to be alive after a trip across the prairie.

We have hiked over the first of the flats, where the min­erals mingle with the scrub and dust. Papa is right to head straight to the center. We can find the purest crystals there, the ones that will last the longest.

“Quickly,” Papa says. “We leave as soon as we can. And don't grab everything from one place. It must look as if we've never been here.”

I drop the hitch of the cart and begin untying the boxes and other vessels. My arms burn from having pulled the thing this far, but even though we are technically poaching, we know better than to drive a one-man through the flats. That would be a crime against nature, which I think can sometimes be worse than a crime against humans.

“Look sharp!” I call out to Boone, tossing a box at him. He catches it easily and grins. The waves of coolness are making us giddy. I toss a box to Papa, and even he smiles. My ears are chilled and this makes me grab Temple so I can hold one of them up against her flushed cheek until she squeals. She takes a box, too, and we all head out in separate directions to make our poaching less obvious.

The smaller crystals are easy. I just grab them from the surface and toss them into the box, feeling the metal of the container getting cooler and cooler the fuller it gets. Boone is off in the distance, on his hands and knees working at
something. I can hear the clink of his chisel and I hope he's not tearing away at a big one.

“Gentle!” I yell toward him. “They work longer if they haven't been mangled!”

Boone looks up and makes an ugly hand gesture at me, which makes me laugh. Even with a lame ear he still heard me from this distance. There is magic at the cooling flats.

I'm tying down the first wave of full boxes when I hear it. Another dactyl screams. Boone, Papa, Temple, and I are so spread out on the flats now, I can only see the others as specks in the distance in front and to the sides of me. But by the way the specks all stand as still as shadows I can tell they heard the shriek, too.

The Red Crescent is low in the sky now and the clearness of the cool air shows off the swirls and curls of the white clouds on the planet. I think I can even make out some green on the surface. Then, coming over the horizon, blocking out the swirls of the Red Crescent's clouds is a swarm of pink. At first I think it's a dust storm, but there's no wind. Then the swarm gets larger and comes into focus.

More dactyls than I've ever seen in one place. In a formation of some sort. They are coming at us in a V shape, cutting through the air like a blade.

The specks that are Boone, Temple, and Papa all start running toward me and the cart. I grab the hitch of the cart and begin hauling it as fast as I can toward the edge of the flats. Toward the one-man. Toward escape.

We are not fast enough.

The dactyls are upon us before we are even together again.

The first scream I hear is Temple's and my breath lurches in my lungs. I drop the cart and swing around just in time to see her form as it is lifted from the flats and hurled into the sky. She floats free for a moment, like a girl-shaped piece of dust caught in a swirling wind. Then another dactyl catches her with its talons and she screams again.

My breath is coming in jagged bursts. My chest is caving in on itself. Even in the cool air of the flats I can't breathe. Whether it's a breathing attack or from fright, I can't guess. But I know I will pass out if I don't calm down.

The second scream is Papa's. A low yell, full of swearing. He is jerked into the sky, but when the dactyl releases him another does not catch him. I watch in terror and disbelief as he falls to the flats, a black smudge against the blue crystals.

I start running toward the fray now, despite the fact that my handbow is nowhere to be found (where did I leave the gum thing?!) and despite the tightness in my chest and despite those gum stupid stars that flutter before me. The air is filled with shrieks and screams and it's hard for me to tell what is animal and what is human and what is Cheese, because yes. I see them now. Their face paint glitters in the light.

It is a raiding party.

The stars have almost completely taken over my vision. I stop and fumble at my skirts, but realize suddenly I'm not wearing my apron. The bottle of medicine from a few days ago is not with me.

Panic upon panic.

The dactyls are swooping and screaming. The Cheese are also doing that vibrating whistle they do. Temple screams in the distance. I have lost all sight of Boone.

And then.

And then my feet are off the ground. The blue crystals shrink as I blink over and over, trying to understand what's happening.

My shoulders are wet and I don't understand until I see the blood running down my arms, the talons puncturing my shoulder blades and chest. Then, just as quickly as they grabbed me, the talons let go and I am falling. The blue crystals zoom up toward me faster and faster and then I am caught. Not by the ground, but by pink scales, a rough arm.

I'm sliding off the side of a dactyl and I kick out, not knowing if I'm kicking to stay on or kicking to escape. Just instinct. Just lashing out. I am screaming, “Fist is supposed to keep us safe! Fist! Fist! FIST!” The rough arm squeezes my waist. The Cheese screams at me in words I don't understand. His face is furious, painted, sweat dripping from his scaly temples, and as he screams at me drops of sweaty paint fly into the air around his face like golden flecks of light. The oval ear skins on the sides of
his head tighten then bulge as he yells. His ropes of hair slash through the wind.

It is no wonder he is not responding to my shouts of “Fist! Fist! Fist!” Because this
is
Fist. Papa's acquaintance. He is angry. So angry.

He wears a necklace of ears.

Fist grips the dactyl with his knees and swivels his torso to grab me with both hands. His nails are long and dark as claws. Maybe they
are
claws. It strikes me—in the middle of everything—how much the Cheese and the dactyls are alike.

I am sprawled on my back, like an overturned beetle, sideways across the back of the beast. I kick and slap Fist's hands away, losing purchase, sliding off the monster. He spits in my face, startling me. This gives him enough time to yank me into a sitting position behind him, scratching my neck in the process. He twists back around and grabs a long stretch of rope that is like a set of reins, but huge. He throws the reins around my waist and his own so we are tied together, and tied to the beast. He makes a noise that I can feel more than hear and kicks the beast, which flies straight up into the sky like a flare.

My eyes roll back in my head and I am fainting not from breathing troubles but from no breath at all. I am afraid the dactyl is flying us straight into space and the Red Crescent beyond.

I can't breathe.

We are so high.

One-two-three-four-five . . .

But that's as far as I get. My head lolls to the side, I catch a glimpse of the half-full cart sitting on the cooling flats like a dead beetle, and then there's nothing.

10

THERE IS YELLING, BUT I
can't understand the words or sounds. Wind is beating my face with such ferocity I can barely open my eyes. I'm still tethered to Fist and the dactyl, but Fist has a hand gripping my knee. He's shouting at me over his shoulder but nothing makes sense. I can't decipher the vibrating words, but I can hear—and feel—the urgency behind them. I can see that in his squinting eyes and rapidly moving mouth he's trying to impart something important. Maybe he's warning me that we are about to crash into the Red Crescent, for it looms so immense in the sky I can see nothing else. The swirl of clouds on the enormous planet mimics my racing thoughts.

I tear my eyes from the Red Crescent and look down. Dunes fly by. They're as red as the blood that still flows
freely down my arms and from my chest. The dunes look small enough to be night beetle nests. We are so high. I swallow and tighten my knees against the beast. We cannot be flying to the Red Crescent. That is impossible. I have not had rigorous study, but I do know humans cannot live in space. And I know there is space—however little—between this godsforsaken rock and that massive glittering expanse in the sky.

It is somewhat calming to know we will not race into the vacuum that is surely only meters away. But where
are
we heading? Where is Temple? Is she hurt? And what of Boone? Is Papa dead? How long have we been flying? In what direction? Why can't I see the other dactyls? I hazard another look down and see no homesteads, either. No blue glow of the cooling flats.

I close my eyes against the brutal, slicing wind and for the first time feel the deep aching of my wounds. Or maybe it's something else. Beneath my closed eyes I see Rory's face. I see her pain from the shine tree needle, I see her trying to fight. I see the Cheese dragging her by one leg behind a horse.

No.

No.

No.

Rae. Do not think of Rory.

I whip my eyes open, and water streams from them, but it is only from the howling wind, I tell myself. Only from the wind.

Settling on the easiest of the questions racing through my head, I decide to determine where we are exactly. It would help to know how long I lost consciousness. It would help if I knew anything about the gum moon other than that it is smaller than the Red Crescent and that most lands on it are forbidden to
Origin
homesteaders.

I look back down and only now do I realize why the dunes are so dark red, why the wind is whipping tears from my eyes and streaming them straight across my cheeks and into my ears.

A storm is coming.

No, not coming. A storm is
here
.

It is dangerous to be anywhere outside when an electrical storm hits. Even being inside offers little safety during the worst storms. Being
in the sky
during one is unthinkable.

I feel a tingle scuttle across my arms, see Fist's long hair reach out to the sky, even in the harsh wind, and then the light is blinding. The crash is so gum loud I think it has surely made my ears bleed. The dactyl banks and suddenly the bloodred dunes are to my side instead of below me. My stomach lurches, and even though I can barely wrap my feeble mind around whatever is happening here, I am very thankful—at the moment—to be tethered to both the beast and Fist, who appears to be a very skilled rider.

Fist shouts to me again and I shout back, “I don't understand!” but the wind steals my words and throws them behind me like scrub in a whirling devil spiral. The dactyl
rights itself. There's another blinding bolt, another crash. The dactyl screams in protest and Fist screams something to it in return.

Another flash.

Another deafening boom.

I remember that my gogs are hanging around my neck and I struggle to pull them up over my eyes so I can see through the slicing wind. In the distance is the gorge. The gorge! I have a moment of lunacy where I think of leaping from the beast and following the edge of the gorge home. But before I can figure out how to untie myself and survive a fall from the sky, the dactyl banks again and the compass in my gogs spins. We are now heading away from the gorge at a rapid pace.

The creature aims its nose straight into the glow of the Red Crescent, which breaks through the storm clouds, and begins to climb yet higher. We are going
into
the storm, which doesn't seem the wisest move, but I am not an expert on flying scaled creatures through electrical storms. I can only hope that Fist wants to keep himself alive, and thus me alive, as I am tethered to him. And yet, this seems like madness.

Electrical bolts fly in every direction around us, making even the tiniest hairs on my neck stand tall. Wisps of gray clouds scurry past us as if they, too, are trying to escape. I can feel the thunderous booms deep in my chest, which I discover is still bleeding, but not as much as before.

We climb and climb and I wonder if maybe Fist is try
ing to take us above the clouds. That would be smart, but the storm clouds appear to be endless. The bolts are coming faster and faster, until there is more time spent dodging them than flying straight. Fist must realize the futility of his attempt because he barks an order and kicks the beast and we descend in a dive that I fear will rip my clothes off and send them sailing out behind me into the sky.

We emerge from the middle of the storm, and as the dactyl darts and dives to avoid more bolts I catch a glimpse of the ground beneath us. It is Old Settlement.

Fist shouts orders and thumps the dactyl's flank, not ungently, but with purpose. The creature swerves and darts away from the bolts and finally lands in a skidding plume of dust and scrub. The storm still rages around us, but we are on the ground again, and for that I am grateful.

Fist quickly unties us and yanks me off the back of the beast. The dactyl screams in what sounds like fury and takes back to the sparking, fiery sky. Fist tightens his hand around my arm, so that it feels fairly glued there by sticky blood, and drags me behind a string of attached and abandoned Old Settlement buildings. This is not how I imagined learning about this place—at the hands of a murderous Cheese. I shiver despite the heat. If there are ghosts here, I pray that they are more merciful than Fist.

Just as a bolt lands behind us and a crash rattles my teeth, Fist twists a knob and pushes open a door. He thrusts me inside a building, then follows, wrestling with the open door against the wind and then pushing it shut behind us.

All is dark, except for what I can see illuminated from the flashes of the bolts.

Oh, gods.

I am trespassing on sacred ground. I am bleeding. I have been taken by the Cheese. But what I see before me is worse than all of those gum things put together.