The Silver Moon Elm (21 page)

There were no beehives.

There were no wildflowers.

There were no sheep, no horses, and certainly no dragons to be seen.

All there was, in the midst of rugged prairie land and the occasional copse of trees, was a small cabin, maybe one-third the size her grandfather had built, and a familiar-looking barn.

She slowed down, landed softly on the gravel driveway, and assumed a dark camouflage pattern before daring to go any farther. There didn’t appear to be anyone about, and there were no vehicles of any kind parked outside.

Abandoned, she told herself as she got to the entrance of the barn. The wide doors were flung open, smacking the barn walls at the whim of the November winds. Inside was nothing but a few frayed horse blankets and the distant smell of manure embedded years ago into the woodwork.

She thought she heard a rustling in the woods behind her. Her head snapped around and she squinted her keen dragon eyes. Nothing was there—at least, nothing larger than a raccoon.

Leaving the barn, she went around the east side and surveyed the yard between cabin and lake. The clearing here was overgrown with tall grasses and weeds. Bit by bit, the land was returning to its natural prairie state. But Jennifer didn’t know enough about botany or geography to know how long this growth had taken to emerge—ten years? Twenty? Five? A few months?

She glanced briefly at the spot where she and her mother had erected a gravestone for Grandpa Crawford. It wasn’t there, of course.

Is that good news or bad?

Again, there was a noise—but this was farther off. It was a cry of sorts, perhaps an eagle. Or perhaps something pretending to sound like an eagle.

Whatever it was, it was less likely to find her inside, than outside.

Entering the house, which she knew must have been as much of the cabin as her grandfather finished before things went horribly wrong, gave Jennifer a surreal feeling. Yes, there was the kitchen where it belonged, but the appliances were unfamiliar and rusting. Yes, there was a photo of young Crawford and Caroline Scales over the mantel—but little else, and certainly nothing of anyone else she knew. The wallpaper in the hallway was yellow burlap instead of the elegant flower print she expected, and there was no library or patio facing the lake.

Down at the end of the hall was the master bedroom—the only bedroom. Jennifer had known it as her grandfather’s study. Once upon a time, she had stored some charcoal sketches there. The dresser (which belonged upstairs, which in turn didn’t exist) was scarred maple.

She opened the first few drawers, which were empty. In the bottom drawer, she found an old flannel nightgown with a blueberry and daisy print, and a few small holes near the knees. This she quickly put on. The closets were bare, except for hangers, plastic dry cleaning bags, and Styrofoam pellets.

Going back to the kitchen, she scoured the cupboards. There was a can of cheese soup with rust around the edges, and some tea bags. She found a pot and kettle, used a dragon claw to crack open the soup can, and then flinched at what first came out of the faucet. Eventually, the water looked drinkable, and a fire was easy to set in the fireplace. She nestled both the kettle with water and the pot with soup in between the logs. In a few minutes, dinner was ready.

There was no spoon, she then discovered. Or cups, or bowls, or anything else beyond a painted metal serving tray and a broken toaster.

Muttering, she reverted to dragon form and poured the soup down her throat. It was quite hot and reminded her of the day about a year ago she had tried a ritual drink her grandfather had prepared. Oh, well, her innards didn’t mind. Then she tore open the tea bags, poured the contents on her forked tongue, and upended the whistling kettle over her open mouth.

That hurt. She swallowed the pain down deep and chucked the kettle into the kitchen behind her, where it rolled back and forth over the moldy linoleum for a while.

Still better than anything Mom could have made, she told herself with a stubborn snort.

And then she felt tears fogging her eyes. She kept herself in dragon skin, because the scales made them harder to feel as they streamed down her cheeks.

Her nap—if she could even call it that—was short and fitful. Whether it was in her dream or in the forest nearby, she kept hearing ominous sounds. There was the rustling of leaves, and the far-off shrieks of dying things. The carpet in the master bedroom smelled bad, not unlike the sewer in Pinegrove. Were there eyes in the window? Voices on the air? Footsteps in the hallway?

She grumbled at herself, unsure of what to do. Yes, she wanted to be fully rested when she entered Crescent Valley and faced whatever truth was there. But this sleep-deprivation torture was sapping what little strength she had left.

Finally, after unsuccessfully trying different rooms to sleep in (the kitchen linoleum was slippery with mildew, and the hallway carpet was no better than what was in the bedroom), Jennifer decided enough was enough. She braced herself with a deep breath, burst out of the farmhouse, sailed over the lake for as long as she dared, and then plunged into the water.

She emerged a minute later, on the other side.

Some things were still here: the heavy air slowly moving like an ancient breath over her face, the forested shore far away where the moon elms were losing their November leaves, and, of course, the brightly shining crescent moon that kept eternal watch over this world.

But other things were not here, that should have been. There was no sound of insects, she realized. The small water mantises that normally skimmed the lake’s surface were gone. So was the gentle, cellolike strum of fire hornets. And the crescent moon seemed more stark for its lack of welcoming fire—the circular signal the spirits of Elders would send to arrivals.

No venerables? She sank a bit back into the water. Where did they go?

Even worse, there were things here that definitely should not have been. Even from this distance, she could make out shimmering lattices that spread from the tops of bare moon elm branches. These delicate shrouds linked the enormous plants into large, unfriendly clusters. Little would pass from above to below, or vice versa.

Webs.

She ducked back under the icy water, letting only her eyes and snout stay above the surface. Had anyone seen her?

Her wings and body slowly propelled her, and she slunk across the lake like a miserable crocodile. The initial panic at the prospect of discovery now gave away to a more lasting despair.

There is no help. Nowhere else to go! Why are you swimming toward the shore? Go back!

But she didn’t. After all, what was there to go back to? She had to stay, at least for a little while, and find out more.

The swim was long and tiring. She saw no movement on the shore as she approached. In fact, it didn’t seem as if anything had lived here but the moon elms themselves, for some time. The webs upon the nearest trees, she saw better now, were blowing in the wind, untended and unkempt. Maybe the dragons drove them back, she told herself as she caught the crimson glow of lichen from deep within the forest. Maybe they’re still fighting.

She finally reached the shore and let her skin shift into a rough bark-and-dirt pattern as she skittered over the narrow beach and into the foliage. Dead moon elm leaves crinkled as she curled up into a ball and shivered herself dry under folded wings.

This is not happening, she assured herself as she began to sniffle. This is not happening. This is not…

“Jennifer!”

The sound of Skip’s voice startled her. He was running up the lake shore from the south, in nothing but a Windbreaker and some gloves. His bluish-green eyes were slanted in concern, and sweat fixed his chocolate bangs to his forehead.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” she asked in a quaking voice.

“You said you were coming here. I didn’t want to leave things the way we left them. It’s not right. We should go back, talk things over.”

“I need to find them.”

“Who?” He waved his arms in exasperation. “Jennifer, who do you think is here? Look around! This place isn’t safe for you! The spiders who are here are dangerous. They don’t come through the portals often. Some of them have even renounced their human shapes. They could kill both of us!”

She didn’t answer. She stared at him.

“Come on.” He motioned with a gloved hand. “Let’s go back, before someone finds us.”

She stared at him some more. And at his gloves.

His dry gloves.

“Skip, how did you get here?”

He sighed impatiently and stepped toward her. “There’s a cave about a mile south of here,” he explained. “The lake isn’t the only way into this world, Jennifer. There are several doorways, at least. They’re pretty easy to find, once you know where to look.”

Once you know where to look, she repeated to herself.

“Jennifer, come on!” He was still several feet away, but held out his hand for her to take. “The Quadrivium used sorcery to create awful things out here. Stuff even we wouldn’t recognize. You don’t want to run into any of it!”

The Quadrivium. She thought about it for some time, slowly unwinding herself out of dragon shape and flexing her arms. The wind billowed her nightgown and the air was cold on her November skin, but she knew she had to hold this form for a bit. He stomped his foot when she did not move any farther.

“Jennifer, we’ve got to go!” He took another step or two.

Close enough for her to reach him.

She slapped him, hard.

The smack reverberated across the beach and the lake. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds. Then Skip rubbed his chin and nodded solemnly.

“I don’t—”

She slapped him again, harder. This time his head snapped around all the way and he staggered back.

He turned to face her as she closed the distance herself this time. His hands were up and blood trickled out of his nose.

“Jennifer, I get that you—”

She did not hear him. The fire burned in her ears louder than a dragon’s howl. She felt the bones within shift, wanting to change shape, but she willed them quiet. It would be better to do this as she was.

With her bare hands.

She knocked him down effortlessly and then fell upon him, hammering his pretty face with furious fists. He tried to shelter himself with his arms, but they did no good. Her blows were too fast and too powerful. She slowed down as she finally began to speak, one word with every strike.

“You. LYING. Piece. Of. Shit. You. Sold. Us. OUT. And. Now. They’re. GONE!”

The reality of what she said hit her, and she yelled in anguish. She couldn’t help it—the dragon was coming. Her nose horn was breaking through the skin and her spine was churning. Dimly, she wondered why Skip didn’t change, too.

His restraint made her swallow hard and try to end the turmoil inside her. Holding herself like that, half-human, half-beast, took great effort. What if she got too tired? She couldn’t rest here.

“What’s the Quadrivium, skip? Who are they?” She could see immediately from his expression that he would never tell her. There was only one thing to do. She slammed her crested forehead into his temple.

Disoriented, he was unable to defend himself as she resumed pounding him. He coughed and sputtered, she slammed and snarled. It felt better and worse at once, the more she did it. Piece by piece, she felt her humanity disintegrate, until it was her wings battering him and her double-pronged tail wrapped firmly around his gullet.

What finally made her stop? It might have been the way his eyeballs bulged with the escape of air. It might have been how her blows began to glance off his slippery face. Or it might have been the last shred of her compassion, tapping her scaled shoulder in a gentle reminder before it slipped away.

When she did stumble off of him, she gave him a last kick with a powerful hind leg. Skip groaned and rolled over.

“Never again, Skip.” She wiped her bloody wings against her tearstained face. “Never.”

He raised his head and tried to say something, but instead a battery of coughs convulsed him. One hand came up to his swollen throat, the other began to drag his body down the beach, back toward whatever cave lay to the south.

She breathed in the air of desolation around them, and resisted the impulse to kick him again. “Crawl back under your rock, you spider! You monster! I hope you die! I hope you ALL die for what you’ve done!”

The roar came from within. She could not have stopped it if she had wanted. It cracked the twilit sky open and made the stars shudder. Skip screamed and held his hands against his misshapen ears.

When she was done, she heard an answering sound from far away. It was not a hot roar of passion; it was a cold shriek of alarm. A chill wind blew down from the crescent moon and pressed upon her back.

Another cry went up, and then another, and another. Soon the screams came in distant waves—communicating, alerting each other to the intruder.

She looked over at Skip’s creeping form and remembered what he said: They’ve used sorcery to create awful things.

The ground trembled. Whipping her head around in the direction of the sound, Jennifer barely had time to spread her wings before the trees to the east gave way to a shape—a single brown cylinder, longer than five moon elms laid end to end.

It was a leg.

It slammed into the ground under her as she rose on startled wings. She traced it back—across two highly placed joints with dark bands—until she finally found the body. A cobalt blue egg the size of a mansion hung suspended by this leg and seven others just like it. While there may have been eyes on top, Jennifer couldn’t be sure—the entire northern hemisphere of the body loomed out of sight. Best she could tell, this thing could stand above five or six soccer matches going at once, and never know the scores.

Without another thought for the boy, she darted away from the enormous creature. A biology lecture from Ms. Graf last year echoed in her mind:

“Harvestmen are sometimes called ‘daddy longlegs.’ But in truth, class, most of them don’t have disproportionately long legs—nor could all of them possibly be male, of course! Some people think they’re venomous, but that’s just a myth. They don’t even have fangs to deliver any sort of poison.”