The Silver Moon Elm (27 page)

Jennifer couldn’t help it. She reached out, grabbed the bitch by the shoulders, and hugged her.

CHAPTER 14
Saturday

«
^
»

While Seraphina slithered over the rocky surface of her isle, surveying the remains of the moon elm and tallying the few surviving creatures, Jennifer and Xavier tried to get some sleep under the dubious watch of Evangelina. It had been days since Jennifer had slept without jitters or horrific dreams, but she finally did so here, where she felt nothing bad could reach her.

Well, there was the half-sister who had tried to kill her. But other than that.

The sleep was deep but short. She woke up before Xavier did, to see Evangelina and Seraphina huddled over something. Their two black, scaly shapes seemed to fit together, as if one were the descendant of the other.

And she is, isn’t she? She’s Dad’s daughter, just like me. And if I’m an Ancient Furnace, and Seraphina gave birth to the first Ancient Furnace, then she’s our great-great-great-hundreds-of-times-over-grandmother.

They were talking, the two of them. Jennifer sharpened her ears and began to track the topic, which appeared to be on the ground in front of them.

“And you call it what again?” Evangelina’s voice was still gravelly and impatient.

“Paradise tree snake,” came the smooth reply. “My favorite, really, from my old travels through Southeast Asia. They’re friendly, observant, and wonderful conversationalists. Handy if you’ve secluded yourself on a magically remote island for thousands of years. And it gives me peace, to watch them glide from tree to air to land.”

“And they land on top of…” Evangelina trailed off. “What? People?” Clearly, she was not as charmed by the species.

Again, Seraphina’s mysterious hiss preceded her answer. “They are only dangerous to the butterflies, and perhaps to the gentleman’s gecko.”

Jennifer quickly checked over the sleeping form of Xavier. Fortunately, Goodwin was alive, asleep, and tightly tucked inside his master’s wing.

“I don’t trust them,” Evangelina’s voice grated. “Snakes don’t fly.”

“She didn’t say they flew,” Jennifer corrected her sister as she walked up to them. “She said they glided. And is your voice ever going to get better?”

“I’m only using it because I have to,” Evangelina spat. She motioned to Seraphina without taking her gaze off of the wounded paradise tree snake that struggled to return to the splintered trunk of the silver elm. “I can’t enter her mind.”

Seraphina’s hood rippled, and Jennifer thought she caught a small rise at the corner of the giant cobra’s mouth. “My mind is not a playground for your amusement, child. You will need to save your talents for the other world, where they will help your sister.”

“Fine.” Evangelina turned, and while Jennifer couldn’t see the face inside that dark cloud, she was sure the expression was a bit nasty. She, of course, heard her sister’s telepathic jab loudly and clearly.

FINE
.

She ignored the provocation. “So where are your brothers? You look like you have their qualities in this shape, but they didn’t show up when you took human form last night.”

The shroud around Evangelina’s head and shoulders fell a bit, revealing an outline of sadness. “None of them were strong enough on their own to endure as venerables. To persist at all, they had to join with me one last time on our way to the crescent moon.”

That’s a shame
, Jennifer thought. One of the brothers had been rather cute and had seemed to have a thing for Susan Elmsmith. But Jennifer supposed that match was never going to work, anyway. “So what’s it like up there?”

Evangelina snorted. “You were just there.”

“It felt cold.”

“It is next to the moon.”

“Is every conversation with you going to be like this?”

“No. Most will be shorter, and quieter.” Evangelina’s shadow extended again, and her body turned toward Seraphina. “I’m hungry. What do you have down here to eat?”

Seraphina motioned to the wounded tree snake. “It will die soon, anyway. Better to serve as nourishment.”

“It’s young.” Evangelina’s comment gave Jennifer goose bumps. It had been the unearthly hunger for young prey that had tested her half-sister’s sanity in the inhospitable dimension where she grew up. “Are there more?”

“Help yourself.” Seraphina’s detached voice surprised Jennifer. Weren’t these snakes her companions? She couldn’t imagine summoning a bunch of black mambas just for food. If they weren’t going to show up to help her fight in Pinegrove, they certainly weren’t going to show up to serve as hors d’oeuvres on her crazy sister’s buffet.

Of course, she noticed as she surveyed the destruction at the top of the crater, with no habitat or food, these snakes would probably die soon anyway.

Xavier twitched in his sleep and gave out a long sigh. This had Goodwin up and flitting about, and after a moment Xavier opened his golden eyes.

“So, do we have what we came for?” he asked. “Should we get moving?”

“We could, if we actually had a plan,” Jennifer answered. “What is it, exactly, that the three of us are going to do? There’s an observatory behind Pinegrove High School. It looks like a headquarters, and we know that Tavia Saltin and Edmund Slider work at the school. Do we just storm the observatory and force whoever’s in there to change things back?”

“It can’t be that simple,” Evangelina said through a mouthful of chewy snake.

“It isn’t,” Seraphina confirmed. “Remember the rest of Sonakshi’s rhyme: You will need to ‘poison the poison,’ in order to heal the world.”

Jennifer kicked idly at a rock. “That doesn’t make much sense.”

Evangelina rooted around the stones for another snake. “Is there a place in your town where they store poisons? We could investigate.” It didn’t sound much like she cared if they did or didn’t.

Suddenly, it all snapped into place for Jennifer. “Seraphina, you said the change in the universe happened as a sudden seizure, like the way some poisons affect the muscles of a body.”

The cobra looked at her evenly, waiting for the logic to unfold.

“Well,” Jennifer continued, “if a sorcery contracted those muscles, and that sorcery works like a poison, then if we wanted to ‘poison the poison,’ we’d need to find something that would relax those muscles. Something that would restore the natural position of the universe.”

“It’s very likely the original sorcery required poison as part of the ritual,” Xavier said. “So if we knew what poison the Quadrivium used…”

“…then we could figure out the right ingredient in a sorcery to reverse it,” Jennifer finished.

Evangelina radiated waves of impatience. “This information will not help us unless we can figure out what poison they used, where to find it, and who can perform a reverse ritual. Then, of course, we have to convince them to reverse that ritual. All of these occurrences are unlikely.”

“Not really. Black widow venom violently contracts muscles. Either that venom, or something like it, was probably used. And if that’s the case, we can use botulin toxin to gain a reverse effect. It’s a muscle relaxant.”

“Where did you learn this?” Xavier asked.

Jennifer straightened her spine and shoulders. “My high school chemistry class.”

Evangelina began to chuckle, a completely patronizing sound. Jennifer ignored it. “And I’ll tell you something else,” she continued. “We can find both of those things at the high school, in the secured storage area. And we know at least two members of the Quadrivium—Edmund Slider and Tavia Saltin. Skip Wilson is also a likely member,” she threw on top of it all. She wasn’t sure about that last part, but the idea of putting the jerk on everyone’s hit list appealed to her.

Evangelina kept chuckling, but Xavier and Seraphina seemed to take Jennifer’s ideas seriously. “Botulin would make sense,” Seraphina said. “I have heard of sorceries woven with this toxin before. But the obstacles before you are still large, Ancient Furnace. If your plan is to work—”

“Plan? This is no plan!” Evangelina’s amusement bordered on outrage.

“If this plan is to work, then you will have to make use of the element of surprise. You must acquire this toxin from the werachnid stores, find the Quadrivium, and force one or more of its members to cooperate, without giving them time to regroup and resist you. The strength of werachnids lies in their ability to plan. The strength of dragons lies in their ability to act.”

“Clearly, my sister is not a werachnid.”

“How droll. Did you know you have a black hole for a face?”

Seraphina’s gaze left the two quarreling sisters and hovered somewhere in the distance. Her forked tongue extended far, over and over.

Jennifer knew enough about reptiles to turn and look. “What do you smell?”

The ancient cobra did not answer. Instead, she unfolded her feathered wings, pushed off with her coils, and sailed down the steep slope toward the rocky coast of her island.

When the other three (four, counting Goodwin) joined her at the bottom, where the waves were beating the rocks into smaller stones and salty gravel slid through the open spaces, they saw a single creature washed ashore.

It looked at first like a large blue crab, perhaps the size of a tricycle tire. On eight segmented legs, it scuttled from side to side, navigating the treacherous pull of the waves and finding purchase higher and higher on the beach. Its large pincers—Jennifer saw that it had three, instead of just two—clicked in anticipation.

They barely had time to look the creature over and wonder at its purpose when Seraphina gave a short spitting sound. An instant later, the crab was on its back, legs shriveling, with a smoldering nine-inch fang sticking through the center of its body. Pieces of its carapace were already washing away.

“Sonakshi’s strength is failing,” Seraphina observed. “However many lurkers still live in his waters, it will not be enough to stop this new onslaught. Ancient Furnace, they are coming for you. You must go.”

“Go?” Evangelina shook her head. “But we have no real plan! I refuse to help a wretched girl who can’t even—Owww…”

Seraphina reached into the darkness around Evangelina’s head and plucked out the fang she had just spat. It made a juicy pop as it exited. “You’ll do as your ancestors instruct, child. Or you will find this island a mere way station on a continuing journey downward.”

“All right then,” said Xavier. “If we have to go, let’s go!”

“One last gift for the Ancient Furnace,” the winged snake said. With a swift motion of her wing, she caught a flat, glimmering shape that had been riding the coastal winds. She approached Jennifer and offered it: a single leaf from the silver moon elm, a five-pointed firework caught in time.

“For whatever else you may need on your journey, I lend you this.”

The leaf draped over Jennifer’s wing claw like a silk scarf.

“Hurry, Ancient Furnace. If we lose this island, we lose it for all time, no matter what you may recover elsewhere.”

“How much time do we have?” Xavier took to the air and hovered anxiously. “I mean, how long can you hold them off?”

Somewhere out to sea, a shrill cry penetrated the air. They looked out and saw a silhouette against the ocean’s flames, something that might have been a whale or a very large lobster, with countless legs and eye stalks.

“If that’s the largest thing they have,” Seraphina answered thoughtfully, “a day or two.”

Jennifer was impressed. “You have enough teeth in your machine-gun mouth to hold that off for forty-eight hours?”

The winged cobra graced her with a faint smile. “Teeth,” she replied, “will be the least of their problems. Off you go. No, not the way you came! Through the crater now. It is a one-way portal that will take you back more quickly, and more safely.”

Jennifer led the way, looking sadly upon the ashen remains of the silver moon elm as she crested the top of the volcanic crater, and then plummeted down the shaft into utter darkness. She just had to trust that there was something there, at the other end.

To her surprise, they emerged from the lake near her grandfather’s cabin.

“Neat trick,” she muttered as she headed for shore. Xavier was right behind her, with Evangelina lagging.

The first two had just landed in the yard behind the aging cabin when Xavier started to groan. He fell on top of his wings and clutched his belly. Goodwin abandoned his rolling host and sought the safety of the cabin’s cinder-block foundation.

“Xavier! Are you all right?”

He could not answer. His yellowed teeth began to crack and his wings were shriveling. Jennifer pieced it together just as Evangelina came up behind them and motioned to the sky.

No crescent moon. He’s changing
.

Panic overwhelmed Jennifer.
How could I be stupid enough to forget this
?

Once again, sister. Stellar plan. Really, I’m in awe
.

“Shut up, Hole.” She had an unkind thought about Xavier. What good is he to us, as an old man? It dissolved into horror as the elderly dasher writhed on the overgrown lawn. He might have been getting a bit smaller, she supposed, and his face was bulging. But he wasn’t actually changing shape. “Why isn’t anything happening?”

His body does not remember how to change. It will take time. If he doesn’t die first from the shock
.

“But I don’t want him to change at all! He’s better off staying back in Crescent Valley. Let’s take him back, before he’s really hurt—”

A shiny object at the tip of her wing—what she was holding—distracted her, and she immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

“Xavier, take this!” She handed the silver moon elm leaf to the dasher. With a wild motion, he grabbed it.

It took a few moments, but he began to relax. His dark, robust scales regained their gleam, and the gold under his wings began to glitter again. “Thank you, Jennifer. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to hold onto this for a while.”

“I think you’ll need to hold onto it for as long as we’re out here,” Jennifer replied. “The next crescent moon isn’t for a few days.”