The Silver Moon Elm (22 page)

Poison seems beside the point, Jennifer reflected grimly as she ducked under another leg that had groped blindly for her before smashing into the lake below. Realizing the only safety was far above, she twisted her body and pushed herself higher and higher into the indigo sky. The air cooled rapidly around her, and the thumping of the thing below became more distant.

She looked down and saw the entire harvestman. More like ten soccer matches, she guessed now. Triple-jointed legs plied the earth fruitlessly in search of prey. There were lumps on top of its body that suggested a place for eyes. Is it smart enough to look up here? she wondered.

A small, black, screaming missile abruptly shoved those thoughts aside. It came from the north, maybe the northeast, and it might have hit Jennifer had its shadow not briefly come between her and the moon above.

“Jyeh!” She flipped herself out of the way just in time. The leaping thing—whatever it was—sailed by her and fell back to the earth, landing with a distant sploosh in the lake.

Farther upward she went. How far can they jump? She couldn’t possibly know, and she didn’t want to find out the hard way. By the time she looked back down again, the harvestman was down to a respectable size from her perspective—and only a jet would be able to reach her.

Far off to the west, Jennifer could make out the mountainous shapes where her people—the creepers, the dashers, the tramplers—had once made refuge. Where they had hunted alongside the mysterious newolves, and held Blaze in their giant amphitheater.

Not anymore, she told herself. She noticed the patchworks of webs topping clusters of trees as far as she could see, and she knew no newolf or fire hornet would have survived this place. The werachnids here might have kept some herds of oreams alive for food, she supposed. But there would be nothing recognizable left in this world. Nothing except the most basic of topographical features, like mountains and…

Stay as strong as stone. Stay as beautiful as fire.

The words from her father’s note suddenly made sense. Her father had left her a message!

She made for the north immediately. Stone would survive the change. And we used dragon fire to write messages in the stone.

What will the stone plateau tell me, she wondered as the moon followed her north to find out. Will it tell me where to find anyone else? Will it tell me what to do next? The excitement of piecing together her father’s hidden message consumed her. Dad hadn’t trusted Skip either! He knew, that’s why he spoke in code like that! He might even be there, at the stone!

What a fool she was for not thinking of this earlier! How much time and pain she could have saved had she understood her father and come here right away!

She flattened her features and increased her speed. The moonlit air gave way around her, as if clearing a path free of wind resistance. They could be fighting these things right now, she realized. They need my help! I’m the Ancient Furnace, and I can help! Every last one of us counts!

After about an hour’s flight, she saw it: the great rock plateau that sprang from the forest like an enormous stone tree stump. Dragons used it for funeral ceremonies, including her grandfather’s, just last month.

Images of strange swirls carved into molten rock pricked her memory. If she remembered right, those whorls marked up a bit less than half the plateau’s surface. Would she be able to read what was there? Who might still be left to help her? How would she learn anything if she couldn’t read the Elder language? And how long would she have to make sense of any of it?

While the treetop webs lessened in frequency closer to the rock formation, Jennifer could tell the forest was still tainted by their presence on all sides. No dragon was immediately apparent—though of course, they would probably be in hiding. She thought briefly of calling out, but then decided against it. Even if the werachnids and pets who met her at the lake could not travel as fast as she could fly, they doubtless had cousins nearby.

She dared a landing—at least she had to see what was written!—and found herself stricken with disbelief the moment her claws touched down.

There was no spot on the entire surface that was free of carvings. Where she stood—about where her grandfather had been buried, near the center of the plateau—was only the halfway point in a relentless story of death, carved in a language she didn’t need to read to understand.

She walked in every direction, skittered along the perimeter of the formation. It was all the same. Swirl after swirl, whorl after whorl, name after name. Some parts of the plateau were raised with bony ridges—the carbonized remains, she supposed, of a carcass too quickly disposed of. One or more funerals had doubtless suffered interruption.

How many in all?

Jennifer remembered the rough size of her grandfather’s grave markings. They had taken up space roughly equal to a large desktop. By that reckoning, she estimated the small, tenyard radius around her contained several hundred markers. She drifted queasily on her wings, slowly expanding the radius.

Hundreds…thousands…tens of thousands…hundreds of thousands…

Gasping increasingly shorter breaths, Jennifer suddenly realized she had always counted on finding someone: maybe another beaststalker trapped at Pinegrove or Catherine (not Nakia!) Brandfire or some weredragon at the farm or in this world. She had assumed there would be help somewhere.

She had thought she couldn’t possibly be alone.

Finally, on the last patch of flat rock she could find, she landed in front of carvings of a different kind. These were not deep swirls embedded in once molten rock. They were scratches, hastily made in English, by a last author.

There is no one else left
, they began. Jennifer couldn’t hold back a whimper, but she read on.

There is no one else left. I am the last. All of the others have died
.

Those who just died, at our final stand not far from here, count in the dozens. I will name them. No one will be left to name me. It is enough to have been their loyal friend
.

Matthew and Melinda Hotwing
.

Grace Ann Coals
.

Ned Brownfoot
.

Stephen and Atheen Whisperwind
.

Crawford and Caroline Scales, and their brave young son Jonathan
.

The list went on, but she couldn’t bear to read anymore. Falling to her knees, she collapsed upon her father’s name and began to cry.

She had no idea how long she lay there—a few seconds, several minutes, even hours. What did it matter? Lying on her belly and sobbing, she only wanted to die.

The noises she had heard before—the shrieks from the lakeside—gently entered her consciousness. They had found her. They were closing in, she had no doubt. Maybe a minute left before the end.

There was no place else to go.

Her tear-filled gaze went up to the crescent moon. She cursed it under her breath. So much pain had come into her life since she had discovered its power.

She released herself from dragon form, for what she knew would be the last time. Back in the shape of a fifteen-year-old girl, she felt around with her hands for a sharp fragment of stone. Lifting a small, jagged rock in her hand, she thought wistfully of her beautiful daggers. She had lost them, in that other world. She had lost everything.

Holding the stone firmly in her right hand, she held out her left wrist. She flexed her fingers and watched the blue veins shudder under her starlit skin.

I miss you so much, Mom. You, too, Dad
.

The noises in the forest were closer. She could make out movement in a few of the taller trees. They would be upon her in seconds.

She pressed the edge against the skin, saw some blood seep out…and then abruptly stopped. Gritting her teeth, she removed the rock from her wrist and stood up. Not like that, she promised herself. I won’t do it for them.

“Come on!” she screamed out to her predators in the dark. The stone felt fierce in her hand. “Come on!”

She did not see the attack come from behind.

There were three of them that took the first leap together—the bravest of the creatures that faced this intruder.

They were the first to die.

Jennifer felt the shadow ripple over her—she could tell it had wings—and then heard three simultaneous crackles of electricity. She whipped around in time to see the follow-through of an enormous, triple-pronged tail as it sent a trio of burning corpses sailing back into the shadowy forest.

The newcomer descended to the plateau next to Jennifer and looked at her with a mixture of alarm and wonder. She looked back with nothing but an open mouth. Can anything possibly be this shape anymore? she wondered.

“Let’s go!” the dragon shouted at her, offering its back. “Get on!”

Suddenly, the voice registered in her memory. She took in the dark scales, the golden pattern on the underside of the wings…and the triple-pronged tail that had once viciously knocked her unconscious, back in a happier, friendlier Crescent Valley.

It can’t be!

“Girl!” The large dasher’s voice betrayed some familiar impatience as it rose above the gathering buzz of predators. “You need help! It’s available for about another two seconds. Get on or die!”

She got on.

They were up in the air in time to see hundreds of hog-sized spiders land upon the edges of the plateau, each shrieking a bitter siren. The surrounding moon elms shook with the force of larger legs pushing aside trunks, and eight-legged shapes of all sizes were leaping from treetop to closer treetop.

“Hang on hard!” he told her, just before going completely vertical.

She closed her eyes and dug her hands into the joints where wings met spine, as he rocketed straight up and left an angry fountain of darkness leaping and dancing beneath them. In no time, the plateau was a small stone far below, and they were safe in the embrace of the crescent moon.

Or at least one of them was.

“Level out! Level out!” Jennifer gasped, kicking the open air as her fingertips cramped with pain. “I can’t hold on!”

“Right,” he agreed, and in an instant the dragon was horizontal again, soaring among the few wisps of clouds that laced the autumn landscape.

Jennifer blinked a few times, trying to move her mind from the despair and fatalism she had just felt to the shock of what—who, actually—had just rescued her.

“Xavier Longtail!” she managed, which was still nearly enough to surprise him out of the sky.

“How did you know my name, girl?”

“You’re—I—we’ve met.” It was all Jennifer could think to say.

“Hmph. I can’t imagine how. You’re not a spider, are you?”

“No!”

“No, I didn’t think so.” There was a long pause as Xavier plainly thought of how he wanted to ask his next question. “I don’t suppose you would know anything about that roar I heard a while ago, would you? It sounded like it came from about where the old lake portal was. That’s what got me out of hiding and looking around.”

Jennifer bit her lip. She didn’t know why she hesitated. Maybe she wasn’t ready yet to trust again.

“You know about the lake portal, of course. Don’t you?”

She chewed her tongue.

“I could just tip over and let you go, girl, couldn’t I? You wouldn’t mind one bit.”

And just like that, he did.

She slid off his suddenly pitching body, shifted right into dragon shape, and spread her light blue and silver wings. From a few feet above her, she heard the strangest and most wonderful sound.

Xavier Longtail was laughing—not a cruel or cynical laugh, but a genuine laugh of surprise and joy. “I thought so!” he chuckled, and descended just enough to fly alongside her. “It seems I haven’t forgotten what one of us looks like, after all. Though I suppose it’s possible I’m dreaming. Or insane. My noodle”—he pointed to his skull with a crooked wing claw—“is not quite as sharp as it used to be.”

“How can you be here?” she asked.

“I might ask you the same question! But let’s start with your name.”

“I’m Jennifer Sc—Um…” She realized he probably wouldn’t believe her if she told him her family name right away. How could he possibly accept that? He buried my father at the plateau.

“Jennifer Scum? I suppose I’ve heard worse. Still, you might consider taking your husband’s surname if you ever get married, modern times or no…”

“Just Jennifer will be fine. My family told me a lot about you.”

He shook his head sadly. “I just don’t see how that’s possible. I haven’t seen a dragon since…since…”

“Since you wrote that message down on the plateau.”

His golden eyes wavered. “Yes. Since I wrote that message on the plateau. More than twenty years ago.”

“But how—”

“Give us a moment,” he interrupted her. “We should find a place to land. Then we can talk.”

“Okay. Um, how do we find a place that’s safe?”

“He’ll take care of it.” Xavier’s head motioned to his left shoulder. From under his wing, the most unlikely creature emerged, clinging to his host’s skin with a silly reptilian grin.

The red and green markings on its back were unmistakable.

“Geddy?”

The gecko stared at her from his winged perch, and licked his eyeball with a spoon-shaped tongue.

“I’m afraid I don’t know any Geddy,” Xavier told her without looking at her. “But Goodwin here’s the only friend I’ve had for years. He’ll help us find a good landing spot.”

Geddy—or Goodwin—turned away from Jennifer and skittered up Xavier’s shoulders and skull, until he was right between the dasher’s eyes. From there, he twitched his tail in what looked like random fashion, until Jennifer realized the Elder dragon was using the small lizard’s motion to steer.

“You’re letting the gecko drive?”

Again, the genuineness of Xavier’s laugh surprised her. “It may sound a bit strange,” he admitted. “But Goodwin’s not an ordinary lizard.”

“I’ll bet he’s not.”

“He knows where they aren’t. Has a sixth sense or something about spiders. I wouldn’t have survived all these years without him. Yep, Goodwin, you’re right. That looks like a good patch down there.”