The Silver Moon Elm (24 page)

The thought of an ancient dragon breathing somewhere in the deep earth to provide warmth for an entire world comforted Jennifer, even though she knew intellectually that such a thing was impossible.

Xavier was not around, but Goodwin was back, staring at her. Jennifer stared back, stretching her wings.

“So what’s your story?” she finally asked. “You the same little guy I left back home in his terrarium, or what?”

Goodwin’s tail twitched.

“Hmm. Not exactly a decisive statement.” She craned her neck and caught sight of a cluster of cobwebs, far above in the branches of a nearby moon elm. The dew on them had frozen, and the gentle wind blew the crystallized strands like ghost’s hair. “Okay, how about this? Lick your left eye three times if you’re part of the secret plot to screw up my life.”

Neither his tongue nor his eyes moved. Jennifer realized he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking over her right wing.

Tail twitching…looking behind me…uh-oh.

In half a second, Jennifer shrank back into the shape of a girl, which caused the black spider the size of a soccer ball to miss as it jumped at her. The hairs on its legs brushed her ear, and it landed with a piercing scream on the ground in front of her.

It was more than a spider, she saw now: twelve legs, four with clicking claws. It had quills on its bloated abdomen, and its mandibles opened wide to reveal a blue forked tongue.

Picking up one of the flat, heavy stones spread throughout their camp, Jennifer raised it over her head with both hands and brought it down hard. Though the results were spectacular, she immediately regretted the move.

Ick. Mutant spider guts all over my nightie!

“Jennifer!” She looked up to see Xavier sailing above, coming from the direction the spider had. “I’m afraid we have to move on. I’ve been scouting. They’ve definitely gathered in numbers to find us. You have awakened something violent in them, I think. Can you fly, or do you need to ride?”

“I can fly. Just needed a quick change to pick up a rock. Come on, Goodwin!”

The gecko scrambled up her leg as she shifted shape again and set to the air. From above, she could see a black mass of creatures approaching from the southwest. “Wow, it didn’t take long for them to find us. Where do we go now? Can Goodwin find us another place that’s safe?”

“Of course,” Xavier answered. “But he’s been doing that for decades. I think it’s time for something different. Follow me!” He appeared quite pleased with himself, and even began to hum as the infested landscape below disappeared under sunlit clouds.

While she found this charming, Jennifer was not content to let the matter rest. “Um, Longtail? If you’ve got a plan, I’d like to hear it.”

“All in good time—”

“Uh, no.” She pulled up short and hovered impatiently, forcing him to pull up himself. “Dude, I know yesterday and today probably rate as a high point in the last several years for you, but for me, this week sucks dead horse eyeballs. I’ve lost my friends, my family, and everyone else I’ve ever known. Every place I go is like a nightmare reflection of itself. And those freaking things”—she pointed as another screaming black missile tried, and failed, to reach them in the sky—“are driving me nuts. What the fuck are they, anyway? Never mind—I want them gone. I want the whole thing gone. No offense, I want you gone. I want the cranky Xavier Longtail back, with the niece who hates me and my parents because they did horrible things in the past, but it’s my parents and our past, and I want that all back, too. I want Winoka instead of Pinegrove, Catherine instead of Nakia, and Susan…instead of nothing at all! I want it all back, do you hear me? And I want to know how you’re going to help me do it. Right now!”

He watched her for a while as they both dangled up and down in the sky, like self-propelled reptilian marionettes. His yellowed teeth were presented as something between a smile and a sneer. It was very old-world Xavier, Jennifer thought. A bit of perception, and a bit more of contempt.

“Well, my little princess,” he finally said. “It sounds like you have quite a performance to put on, and very few volunteers around who can satisfy your high standards. If you don’t think I’m dancing fast enough, I’ll just collect Goodwin, say good-bye, turn tail, and take my chances with our arachnid neighbors. I’ve led a long life—not necessarily a happy one, but certainly unique. I can last a little longer on my own. And I certainly don’t want to be a burden to the Ancient Furnace!”

She didn’t reply, so he went on.

“Or you can trust me and give the signal for us to get moving. Your choice, kid.”

Chewing her tongue in frustration and wretchedness, she finally relented. “I want to change things back. But I don’t know how. If you have a way to get me help, I could really use some. P-pl-please.” She felt her eyes get wet. Again! Cripes! I can’t believe I have any tears left!

He cocked his head and groaned. “Aw, hell, girl, don’t cry on my account. I haven’t had much company for the past twenty years, and I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of my social skills. Look, we’re kinda going out on a limb, and I just didn’t want you to worry. About the only lead I can think to follow is a scrap of a story my mother taught me before Eveningstar.”

“Wh-what’s that?” She sniffled.

“There’s a creature named Sonakshi,” he told her. “According to dragon legend, he’s a prophet. He might have clues to steer us right.”

Jennifer waited for more, but when Xavier began flying again, she had no choice but to follow. “He might have clues? What kind of clues? Does he have any powers? Can he help us fight?”

“He’s not a fighter, he’s a prophet. If he exists at all.”

“What good will a prophet do?” Jennifer tried to sound inquisitive, rather than upset. She was sure Xavier was doing his best; but this hardly seemed helpful. “I mean, a prophet just tells the future. We’re not trying to change the future; we’re trying to change the past back the way it was.”

“My mother once told me,” came the answer as the lands began to thin and the water became more plentiful below, “that a prophet is not someone who can tell the future. A prophet is someone who can see the change in the present.”

“Okay, that might be useful. We’ll have to see exactly what’s changed, I suppose, if we’re going to change it back. But will this Sonnyshack—”

“Sonakshi.”

“Will this Sonakshi be able to tell us how we can make things right again?”

“No idea,” he called back as he increased speed. The air was decidedly cooler now, and the growing shimmer beneath them suggested to Jennifer that they were totally above water, with at most a few lingering strips of land flung out into the mysterious expanse.

“One more question. Where is this Sonakshi?”

His long, black head craned back. Jennifer could just make out the tiny form of Goodwin perched upon his elderly skull. His tone was very old-school Xavier as he nodded down at the glistening surface. “Where do you think?”

They were riding chilled air currents over the ocean for over two hours before Jennifer thought up another question she thought Xavier would tolerate. “So, is this Sonakshi supposed to be a dragon?”

“Nobody really knows what he is,” the dasher admitted. “The most frequent explanation is that he’s the most ancient of the lurkers.”

“Lurkers?”

“Yes, lurkers.”

She pulled up next to him. “You’re losing me. Like, sea monsters?”

His expression suggested he didn’t believe her ignorance. “No, lurker as in the dragon type.”

Since she was too embarrassed to say anything, he continued. “You’re the Ancient Furnace, Jennifer. You have all dragon types in you—dasher, creeper, trampler, and lurker. How can you not know about lurkers?”

“Um, I know…that they, um. Lurk.”

“Great oceans, Goodwin,” she caught him mumbling. “We get saved by the Ancient Furnace, and it turns out she’s an ignorant twit—

“—Ow!” he exclaimed with a grin after she rattled his skull with a flip of her tail. “And a pretty good shot, too. At least that’s something: You know dasher skills.”

“Skills?” The plural confused her.

He let slip a wary hum. “Yes, skills. You know more than tailwork, don’t you?”

“Well, I know lizard-calling, and camouflage.” Suddenly, she felt inadequate. His reaction didn’t make her feel any better.

“But what of the Elder skills?”

The phrase did trigger the memory of her confrontation with Ember Longtail. “Oh, like calling up a swarm of insects! Yeah, I guess I can do that.”

“And how about meteor diving?”

“No. It sounds painful.”

“It’s the dasher Elder skill,” he explained. “Great fun, especially over the ocean.”

“Why would someone want to meteor dive?”

“It’s a good way to make a little room,” he answered with a wink. “You just hold your breath, curl your tail so the prongs are up by your head, start dropping…and then sneeze through your ears. You really have to see it to…Here, I’ll just show you!”

Before she could ask him what sneezing through ears entailed, he had curled into a ball and dropped like a stone. As his velocity increased, a faint burn enveloped him, and then right before he hit the surface of the ocean…

KAPOW!

At first, Jennifer thought he had exploded in a massive fireball, and she screamed. But then she saw the splash right below the expanding fire cloud. He had ignited right above the surface, it seemed, and then dropped into the ocean.

Poor Goodwin, she thought. But then again, Goodwin seemed the sturdy type.

“Try it!” His voice came up faintly from the dark, sparkling water. “Don’t forget to sneeze through your ears!”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll sneeze through my ears, you crazy old fart,” she muttered, and then held her breath and pulled her tail up so the prongs scratched her chin. Like that, she stopped flying and started falling.

How am I going to sneeze through my ears how am I going to sneeze through my ears omigod the ocean is coming up really fast and am I catching fire how am I going to—

Just before she hit the water, she stopped thinking and just did it, forcing as much air as she could through her aural canals.

The results were spectacular. She had never been inside an explosion before. An orange and purple starburst coursed over the ocean as she dropped into the water with a glorious splash.

“Wow!” she heard Xavier say nearby as she regained the surface. “That was pretty damn good for a first try!”

“Thanks.” She really was grateful for the diversion. It was the first time she had actually done something fun in days. After lifting themselves out of the water, shaking themselves off, and making sure Goodwin was still firmly attached to Xavier’s wing, they continued.

“What other skills have I missed?” she wondered aloud as they climbed back into the sky.

“Not too many,” he admitted. “Of course, the legend of the Ancient Furnace suggests that in addition to Elder skills of the four types, there are unique powers that no other dragon has.”

“Huh.” She decided she didn’t like this turn in the conversation. She didn’t want to disappoint her new friend any further. “So if there are such things as lurkers, have you ever seen any? Did they help you fight? Are they all gone?”

“I’ve never had the chance to find out before today. The legend of Sonakshi is such that the lurkers never show themselves without their chieftain. And I’ve never been able to summon him on my own. We couldn’t do it twenty years ago, either.”

He answered her question before she even asked, with a short verse:

Far from the shores where other dragons be,

Where moonlight shines upon the blackened sea,

Spill stalker’s blood with ancient tooth,

To summon forth the court of Sonakshi.

“Ancient tooth,” Jennifer repeated. “You mean, my tooth. The tooth of the Ancient Furnace.”

“That’s right.”

“And stalker’s blood?”

A quick cough escaped Xavier. “That’s where I think we might run out of luck. Beaststalkers aren’t exactly plentiful anymore. I was thinking you could just, you know, take a bite out of me. Maybe my blood will do.”

She stared at him, and he misinterpreted her look.

“Dammit, Jennifer, we don’t have a lot of choices! If you know where we can go to find a nice, juicy beaststalker, now would be a good time to—”

“It’s okay, Xavier.” She began to laugh. “I’m a beaststalker.”

“You’re a—” He almost fell out of the air. “Is that a joke?”

“What, you have a problem with that?” A memory reemerged of Xavier Longtail in Blaze, smashing rock with his tail and proclaiming her an abomination to all who could hear.

“Hell, no!” he shouted. “Jennifer, if I could find twenty beaststalkers to join us, I would! We could have used them as friends, before the end came.”

“You get one,” she told him. “That’s going to have to be enough.”

“Let’s get out a little farther and try our luck!”

As it always seemed to be for adult men who were in charge of driving during a trip, “a little farther” meant about three hours. Jennifer could see no difference in the black, sparkling surface that stretched out beneath them now, and the one in which they had practiced meteor diving.

“We should try it here,” he called out to her as they gently descended into hovering position about twenty feet above the calm, rippling expanse. “So if you’ll just, um. Bite yourself.”

She rolled her eyes as she scanned herself for a good spot to take a chomp. Tail? Too narrow. Wing? Need it to fly. Flank? Too painful…

Finally, after Xavier began clicking his tongue impatiently, she decided upon the fleshy part of her hind leg, above the knee. She arched her neck down, opened her jaws, and—

“YEOUCH!” she bellowed into her thigh.

With a mix of satisfaction and irritation, she noticed right away that she had really nailed an artery. Blood streamed down her leg and dribbled into the water.

“Nice job!” Xavier encouraged her. “Now I can initiate the ritual call!”

“Terrific. Everyone has a role to play.”

But he wasn’t listening to her. He was flapping his wings hard and calling out to the ocean. “Sonakshi! Sonakshi!”

“That’s the ritual call?” she asked, trying to staunch the flow of her blood. “ ‘Sonakshi, Sonakshi?’ Cripes, I could have done that, while you gnawed on your own leg, old man…”