“You are high-born Valforian, are you not?” Eye asked.

  “I am,” the girl answered.

  “And your family, they shared secrets with you did they not? Novelties only told to those of noble blood?”

  “… I suppose so.”

  If crows’ mouths could water, the world would have drowned then-there.

  “Secrets of the things long buried beneath the Sword Tower. Secrets of the world before it was fire burned and green swallowed. Secrets known only to rocks and rotting folk and the rare handful bequeathed that inheritance.”

  She said nothing, for no question was asked.

  She said nothing because, while she had heard the odd rumor or the strange fact she shouldn’t have, her parents never whispered to her about secluded secrets of dead years. Usually they’d read her small children’s tales, things to help little ones sleep.

  Dhorena didn’t much think Blaez was fixed on fables, but more ferocious things.

  “What I want,” the crow raved on with ravenous eyes, “is the most earth spoiling secret in your skull.”

  First she lied. “If you have a question, I’ll happily tell you the answer.” Then she told the truth. “I don’t think I know the worst secret I know.”

  Eye took flight, circling Dhorena. “You don’t have to think a thing to know it. I can dig and draw it out of you. When I’m done, you won’t even mind what I’ve mined.”

  “I won’t remember whatever secret you take?”

  “Sounds like you don’t much remember it now, eh?”

  “But—but after that … you’ll reunite me with my brother and mother?”

  “As I said, so it shall be.”

  The wizard motioned for her to follow deeper into the unnatural abode.

  A thousand voices told her “no” and “don’t” and “run” and “stop” and “kill” and fearful idlings of every ilk. Yet in the center of that swirl of fight and flight was a single, terrible solace: “maybe.”

  Maybe the wizard will hold true to promise. Maybe I will see my mother and brother again. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe everything can be all right.

  Ain’t a one of you can tell me you haven’t had a day where a “maybe” was all you needed in your ear to be willing to stake your own soul.

  So—with a “maybe” in her mind—she walked behind Blaez, deep into that den which even Death feared to enter.

  “We should have found her by now.” That was less than the sum of it. The two men had been looking for seven suns and hadn’t found proof or print of the girl’s fleeing. “How good a tracker are you really?” Red wondered.

  Knalc had gone to doubling back and turning over leaves to spot any lost footprint, but couldn’t find nothing. He wasn’t a tracker by trade—but any Wilderfolk who can chew their meat can find evidence of a Valfling’s ramble bluster through the Wilderlands.

  “Can’t find what the Wilderlands is hiding from me,” Knalc spat.

  They’d spent the first days looking only for Dhorena but ran dry on food in quick time. They then took to hunting and scavenging to keep themselves alive as they linger-looked.

  They found some squirrels and hares and woodwarblers to snack on and the pair hauled some water from a southern stream where they nearly nicked a ram-cow that skedaddled as soon as it sniffed them out—those beasts is impossible to fall without arrow and bow.

  All-done, they got enough to get ‘em by, and in getting by they turned back to tracking the girl. They had a mite less luck in that.

  “What do you want to do if we can’t find her?”

  “Nothing,” Red said. “I failed her mother. I failed her brother. If she is dead, then I will have fully failed in my duty. We find her, or nothing.”

  Knalc nodded. “What if we do find her? What if we find a body?”

  Red stopped in his tracks. His hand went to the knife—the mother’s knife—‘round his belt. He didn’t draw or brandish it, just nudged Knalc’s noggin to the truth that it was there. “Are you keeping anything from me, Wildman?”

  Knalc smiled. “Less than you think. But more than you’d like.”

  Red just waited.

  “No,” Knalc said. “Not keeping anything. If I knew or thought the girl dead, I’d tell you. She’s gone. Simple as sin.”

  Red sighed. “Then we keep looking until we find something.”

  Without else to do, they did—but they were finding more bruises and bug bites than worthful stuff. They were losing blood and time and they’d already lost a lot of both when they’d started. Red and Knalc searched past the setting of the sun—letting sky and earth go cold around them.

  Mamma Moon was full-faced that night, pale and imperfect—Knalc looked up at her as they stopped to eat by the light of moon and stars.

  Knalc didn’t much care for recalling tales, but sitting in moonlight eating in silence with a man he had—and might yet—aim to kill, made him go soft and somber-headed.

  “What do Valforians say about the Moon?”

  Red ripped into some rabbit meat and chewed long afore answering. “Moon’s the moon.”

  “I know the Moon’s the fucking Moon. Any stories about it?”

  Again, Red ripped into his meat and thought some on it. “They say the moon was made by men long ago. Long before the Wilderlands rampaged over the earth. Men made the moon to get away from the Wilderlands—they threw it up into the heavens and Aprheus, in his wisdom, didn’t strike it down. So then men flung themselves up there once the Wilderlands started getting overgrown, to escape. Those that are up there are Aprheus’s chosen few. All of us down here on earth are left to prove ourselves of worth to Him, or else be gobbled by the Goat-Below. All of those who got away from the end of the world get to live and die and know their souls are safe. We have trials here to test us. Trials that happen all through our lives. The more trials we pass and the more good we do, the lighter our souls become, making it easier for Pearlaphine to fling them to salvation.

  “If our souls are light enough, they reach the realm of Aprheus. But if our souls are heavy, mired by sin and wretchedness, Pearlaphine flings them only to watch them drop like a rock to the Goat-Below; the heavier the soul, the more it fills his belly and the stronger he becomes. One day he’ll gobble so much he’ll be able to break free and march on the moon. When that day comes, we’ve got to pray there have been more strength of number in good souls than wicked ones. The Goat-Below will either be thrown back down, or he’ll gobble all our souls and sit, bloated, upon the throne of the earth.”

  Knalc drank in these words long and silent, then he spat. “Shit story.”

  Red got a bit rustled by that. “What?”

  “You heard. Shit story.”

  He huffed. “Yeah? And how do you figure that?”

  “How you throw yourself?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said men threw themselves up there.” Knalc held up his arms—calloused, swollen, scarred, muscular. “I couldn’t throw anything that far, so how’d they throw themselves up there to the Moon?”

  “Probably with a catapult of some sort.”

  “You’re making words up! I don’t know what a catapult is, but what I do know is I couldn’t throw myself no matter how hard I tried.”

  Red sighed. “They had … more back then than we do now.”

  Knalc wasn’t having none of it. “Sure, sure. But how did they throw that far? Even if they threw really well, they’d have to throw a mite better than me. And I’m mean at throwing.”

  “Fine,” Red chewed on his final meal scraps. “What do Wilderfolk think of the moon then?”

  “First,” Knalc said, “we know the Moon ain’t a place. Moon is a goddess, one of the oldest. That’s how she pulls wind and water. That’s how she has that silver luster.”

  “There’s only three gods, Wildman,” Red scoffed. “All that is only has power because they will it so.”

  “So the gods took your name from you? Seems to me you’d hate those gods.”

  “No,” Red growled. “Men took my name from me … I took my name from me because of what I’ve done.”

  “It’s your gods either way,” Knalc prodded. “Your gods gave you power and gave power to those who stripped your name away. I wouldn’t love no god like that.”

  “It’s the same for Wilder-gods,” Red sneered. “You think Moon cares more about you than Aprheus cares about his children?”

  “Wilder-gods never give shit,” Knalc said. “They only take. Grandma Dirt takes our bodies, Death bottles-up our breath, and all the other gods smash our souls for sport below Mount Hush-bee. I am what I am. No god had hand in molding me.”

  Red muttered almost like he didn’t want Knalc to hear, but there wasn’t no one else to note the hissed curse: “Heathen.”

  “The only gods that don’t take is Pappa Sun and Mamma Moon,” Knalc butted back. He looked up at that sky—star strewn and wild but for Mamma Moon keeping all those lights in line, keeping bears and boars and belts as they should be in the sky. Knalc knew without her, the stars would bounce and twist and burn each other. “Those two are the only gods worth more than liking.”

  I’ll weave you the story Knalc whispered to Red—for when he spoke it, it was in Valforian and stories in Valforian don’t sing like Wildertongue, even the lowest of our tellers could word-whip the tallest Valforian-teller. You all have already heard this tale as far back as when all you minded were teat and tears, but maybe you ain’t heard me weave it for you.

  Back afore Time had taken flight, afore sun or moon shifted through the sky, there was just Grandma Dirt, and she would look up at the great above and, for whatever flew by before time came to be, she was lonesome. Not mate-hankering or loin-hungry, but she wanted another, someone she could see and know as she looked about. So she sunder-yanked her own flesh and flung it skyward—that became Mamma Moon. And Grandma Dirt liked her daughter and smiled to see her hanging high above and looking back at her.

  Mamma Moon set to work, making the wings of Time and all other things that soar through sky, she filled the curves of her mother to keep her flesh good for food and forests. She pulled up mounds of earth in other places so she could reach out and touch her mother as she passed through the sky.

  But time makes all good things go to rot.

  Mamma Moon got to feeling lonely too and hers was a deeper longing than her mother’s. This was a loin-hunger, a mate-hankering. Moon didn’t have means to make a mate of her own, but she knew how it was done ‘cause Grandma Dirt shared all her secrets with her daughter.

  So, while Grandma Dirt was slumbering, Mamma Moon crept toward the horizon and dipped into her mother, finding that molten red that thunders through her like blood. She seized it and crafted it careful-like and placed it in the sky and made Pappa Sun.

  And Pappa Sun lit the dark places of the world and set Green about the earth and smiled rainbows into the sky. And when Grandma Dirt woke, she didn’t mind none, her daughter was happy. And Sun and Moon together made mortal man to walk the earth and celebrate their union.

  While Mamma Moon had been wrapped in her mate-hankering, she hadn’t noticed that Time had gotten to its own makings. Death came into this world—made to do as Time would want. The only task Death was saddled with was taking, harvesting, reaping, ripping. Death didn’t think high or low of this job, took no joy in seizing and stealing—the duty was fixed and Death saw it done. Not wrathful or gleeful or hatesome, Death is dutiful.

  But Pappa Sun and Mamma Moon, in their jubilation, made it impossible for Death’s work to be done. Together they bliss-drowned the earth so everything had means to live forever, and without the food of souls, Death began to wither. What would you do if the lacking of work—work that brought you neither joy nor hate—began to unwind you?

  So Death, desperate and hungry, pulled Pappa Sun from the sky while he was sleeping and hid him ‘hind the mountains. When Mamma Moon came back from tending the sea and tides, she was shook to see Death—normally cold and calm—in a frenzy.

  “It was Mist!” Death rattled. “Mist rose up and swallowed Sun and made off with him!” And he pointed Mamma Moon over the horizon opposite of where he’d hidden Sun. “Quick! Quick! Fast now! Heave-run and you might just catch them!”

  Mamma Moon didn’t think to question Death. Death—until now—had never bothered to lip-lie. She took off after her love and never bothered to look over her shoulder to see Death sneak back toward the horizon.

  Once there, Death shook Pappa Sun awake. Pappa Sun didn’t have time to puzzle out why he’d woke in a strange place ‘cause he was stun-shocked at Death dancing up and down and shouting so.

  “Run! Run! Fastlike now!” Death cawed. “It was Unglog! He got hungry and he snatched up Moon and now he’s running off with her, slobbersome, with plans to swallow her whole!” And Death—knowing that Sun was just thread-shy of Moon sprinting—pointed to the same horizon he’d sent Moon over. “That way! They went that way! If you take off now, you might just catch Unglog before Moon rounds his stomach.”

  Pappa Sun didn’t waste a breath. Leaving a trail of flames and sizzling air across the sky, he took off in the direction Death had pointed him.

  Soon as he was fled, Death found Time and asked this: “Make it so Moon and Sun are caught in this beat-breath. Make it so that they are forever tailing each other ‘cross the sky and heavens. Then I will better be able to do your work. Together they give so much that Time means nothing—folks don’t heed what they don’t fear and Death cannot stand against them. But separate and mind-set on tracking down the other, they won’t have mind or means of keepin’ humans safe. I—Death—can go about my work again and people will fear and heed you.”

  And so Time did this. He bound up all his power in makin’ sure Moon and Sun shifted through the sky. Time cursed ‘em to run the same trail ‘cross the heavens until they burn through both.

  Cry and weep whenever you watch the Sun set while the Moon peeks over the horizon—for that is Moon catching tail of her lover only to have him vanish. It’s same-like at sunrise when Sun gets a look-see at his lost lover.

  But there was a crack in old Death’s plan.

  Sun was that thread-width slower than Moon, and Grandma Dirt built her body and the heavens ‘round it like an apple. Lick an apple in one direction and you trail back to where you started. Moon was able to catch Sun!

  Rejoice and sing when Moon and Sun are heaven met—for that is the union of two lost loves! Majestic and summer-bright are both those heavenly bodies, but so enraptured by their union are they that they focus all their god-might on loving the other. They both go night-black in their passion to better know the other.

  Miracles bubble ‘bout in that time, children. Under a moon-shadow sky are many a union brought to be; and those conceived while all is dark are god-touched.

  But they are time cursed. In the beats it’d take a pair to undo belt and breaches, the black is already starting to fade. Sun and Moon are forced apart and, until Death is conquered, our mortal sort will never know their share-glory.

  And that is where Knalc finished the tale.

  “Shit story,” Red said—though he brushed salt from his eye.

  Knalc stared with narrow eyes at the moon. Stared at it until his eyes were glow-stung and salty too. He shook away and smiled a dead man’s grin. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s still a shit story.”

  Red nodded and ran rattling fingers over the place an arm had once been. He clutched at the cloth that covered it—angersome.

  Long was the buzz and wail of the Wilderlands and long was the night-sigh as it blustered against them—but neither man were bent to blanket or bed. Long are the lives of those who know the dead and dying.

  Red’s fingers relaxed, and he stopped his phantom-clutching. “I don’t believe I’ve asked you your name.”

  “No,” the other nodded. “You haven’t.”

  And he never did. There they sat: one man, red and nameless, and the other having name he never spoke.

  The long night wound on.

  Winter was coming in like a fresh tooth when they finally found hint of her.

  Though never chumsome or kin-like, Knalc and Red never ceased their nosing about. The Wilderlands had been kind to them—kind in that it hadn’t been cruel. It was Red who managed to catch that first whiff of Dhorena. You might go thinkin’ Red was able to spot it ‘cause he’d finally started to get some Wilder-wits about him. Nay, he spotted it ‘cause it was a mark he knew better than any name he’d had.

  It was a grey stone they’d never wandered upon before or hence—blood-varnished on it was a pronged lightning bolt.

  “She was here,” Red said. His single hand took to shivering as he rubbed the rock, like this blood-made lightning was rattling his joints.

  “You don’t know that,” Knalc said, knowing he knew the mark but not from where. “There are Wilder and Wastefolk who might have left that mark.”

  “No,” Red said. “She’s the only one who’d draw this mark out here.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure as sin.” He didn’t know what the words were, but he’d heard Knalc say ‘em enough that he had a taste for their meaning.

  Wizards ain’t got need of paths or trails for hunting and travel—they just bend the Wilderlands to their will when they travel. Way I hear it, some wizards don’t even need to walk or wade to reach a place, with naught but words and will they can whisper themselves ‘hind any tree or rock. Point being, there was no way to true-tell where the wizard’s lair was—they weren’t much better off than the wandering they’d been at afore, ‘cept now they knew they were close.

  So they walked beyond the stone, in a direction they were a hair more than half sure they’d never wandered afore. The Wilderlands seemed to be chanting around them.

 

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