A Lament of Moonlight (5 page)

Chapter Five

“Is he
dying?” Ruby sobbed watching her brother spasm on t
he ground before them. Abigail was trying to fight off her tears while keeping her brothers body still.

“We need to get him to safety,” she said resolute
ly
.

“But which safety, the glowing that we aren’t sure what it is, or home?” Ruby asked again.

“The glowing I think,” Abigail told her, and Luna fluttered anxiously as if in agreement. The radiant butterfly landed on Melvin’s chest and either the presence of the
insect helped him, or he was fad
ing more rapidly than they had expected, for his breathing seemed to ease.

“The poison is spreading up his legs!” Ruby yelled tearing at the legs of his night pants and pointing at the wicked veins that spread up his legs.

“We can’t let it reach his heart,” Abigail said. “I have heard that when poison reaches your heart you die. We have to get him into the light before that happens.” She stood and began to hea
ve, but as he was
larger than her it was nearly impossible. “Ruby, grab his legs and come on, we have to make it there fast!”

And so they headed toward the purple light, afraid of what lurked out in the woods, but also sure that it could not enter Singers Trail despite all of the hissing and thrashing they were hearing. The birds in the trees they decided were of the same variety that the snakes and the wolves had been.

“Does the trail surroun
d the sugar shanty?” Ruby asked,
eyeing the birds in the trees.

“I am not sure,” Abigail said. “I’ve only been down there a handful of times and was never really interested when I was,” she was upset that she had not been more observan
t when she had been there. S
he had probably had her nose stuck in a book and not mindful for what was happening around her.

“I was thinking it might be hard going when we get there,” Ruby said. “If it is not surrounding the sugar shanty I don’t think we will have an easy time getting in. And
I don’t think
Melvin’s hammer killed those little
people. I think it
only stalled them.”

“Well whateve
r it did they are not
following us
right now,
” Abigail said and called a halt so that she could set Melvin down for a time w
hile she rested her arms. Ruby i
nsured that the hammer was restin
g well on Melvin before joining
her sister to stare up into the trees with the birds. They watched the evil black bird
s cock their heads down toward them as if observing
the humans below, wondering what they were made of, and how easily they would be to overcome.

“I don’t think we have much time!” Ruby yelled lifting Melvin’s shirt to watch the wicked black veins travel up his stomach. “HURRY!” an
d quickly Abigail and Ruby
hoisted Melvin up and made for the clearing of purple light where the sugar shanty stood.

It was apparent once reaching the sugar shanty that it was most certainly not surrounded by Singers Trail. The girls came to a sudden halt at the end of the road and appraised the scene before them.

A good thirty yards separated Singers Trail fr
om the sugar shanty where the birds
clung to the roof, shutters, and the ledges which surrounded the little building. Hundreds more of the menacing winged beasts clung to the trees around the sugar shanty watching them.

From out of the darkness around t
hem poured thousands
of the red eyed black snakes which slithered quickly to the sugar shanty
like an oily river rushing to engulf the shelter
. Within moments the sugar shanty became not a beacon of hope as it had been, but a pit of despair. They stared at the little one room building with its lean-to and shed and tears fell from their eyes.

But there was a glo
wing from within the building and the
purple light shown through the windows and th
e fissures in the roof
. It also did not escape their notice that where the light glimmered the shadkin did not go. Where pools of light fell on the ground no evil beast populated, where the fissures in the roof shimmered with purple radiance no dark bird stood.

“Hurry, he is dying! The black veins are closing in on his chest!” That was all it took, and thoughts of the dark animals surrounding the sugar shanty fled from their minds and the two girls tore off at an awkward run, closing the thirty yards to the door, but they would never make it. Mere seconds after they left the safety of Singers Trail they were engulfed in a cloud of angry, hungry birds that clawed and bit at their faces and hair scratching and pinching skin. Somehow they warded off the snakes in their flailing to be rid of the birds.

There came a creaking and purple light engulfed them. Ashes settled around them as the birds and snakes caught within the light now spilling from the shack were disintegrated. The birds were gone from the places where they had previously cleaved fleeing to the safety of trees and the rest of the snakes dared not come close to the swatch of light on the forest floor. The door to the sugar shanty had opened, and poured forth purple light which the three of them were cradled in the center of. Luna fluttered about their heads safely. The snakes hissed and struck from
just outside the pool of
light, and the dark birds hung in the air above their heads waiting for the light to fail. That was not something the girls were going to let happen, or at least they were not going to be outside when the light failed.

Quickly they gathered their dropped weapons and the still form of Melvin and dashed to the house, slamming the door behind them. The purple light did not fade but instead seemed to caress them in warmth and love. Abigail looked quic
kly around the rustic room and smelled the years of wood smoke, damp forest, and maple
the large boiling s
tove
cook
ed
down
from
sap. A bed stood in the far right corner, the blankets dusty and moth eaten, but a bed none-the-less and Ruby helped Abigail get Melvin situated on the bed as the blackness claimed their brothers heart, and he let out one final breath and fell still; dead.

“What happened?” Ruby asked even as tears filled Abigail’s eyes, but no words were needed for the ashen look coming over Melvin’s face told them all they needed to know. They broke down into tears then, and while Abigail held his limp hand Ruby crumpled into a rickety chair beside the bed.

Ruby clung
to her brother sobbing as if her very world was coming to an end. Try as she might Abigail could
n’t
console
her. Ruby
continued sobbing, gasping for air, her wailing echoing off the wooden planks of the small shack.

It happened then as a glowing around Ruby’s body. At first Abigail thought she was seeing something, but as the white light spread through her body it became irrefutable that she was indeed glowing with some kind of inner light just as the sugar shanty had on their trek down.

Abigail dropped Melvin’s hand and gasped. She stood and backed away from the bed her hand pressed against her mouth.

As the light filled Ruby it slowly began to spread to Melvin, the light per
meating the two of them, and
lighting up that section of the sugar shanty. Abigail looked around at the light, watching it dancing through the dusty air and filling the room not with fear or worry or even despair any longer, but with love and hope and all things good and wonderful with the world. Whatever Ruby
was doing it was something
Abigail never thought any human should have been able to do, and why she could see precisely what was happening was beyond her, but she set that idea aside.

But there was no time for that now, for through the light Melvin began to shift and the darkness of the black veins which had marred his body were abating. Melvin was coming back to life but what was stranger was whatever Ruby was doing was making the poison leave hi
s body
. The venom poured back out through the holes the snakes had injected it through and the green fog the elle folk had exhaled rolled out of Melvin’s lungs in a wisp of breath.

Ruby didn’t see anything through her tears. She did feel a curious calmness within her just before Abigail gasped, but she paid no a
ttention to it for she was too focused on her brother
.
Through her despair she felt as if everything would be ok.

As the last of the poison left him, color bloomed to his skin in vibrant health. No longer was he ashen and near death, but now he was rejuvenated more than they remembered seeing him in recent days.

“What happened?” Melvin asked as he came to, but he really didn’t need to ask. They told him about the last of the attack, not sure if he had actually seen it though he had still been present in his body and conscious at the time. They told him of the flight down Singers Trail and the fact that the sugar shanty was not surrounded by the wooded trail. They finally informed him of the new banes in the trees: the birds.

“So it appears that we have yet another problem doesn’t it? We should have turned around and not even come into the woods tonight.” He closed his eyes and relaxed onto the bed.

“That and I don’t think the elle folk were really destroyed, I think you stalled them,” Abigail voiced her concerns.

“I think you are right, but at least we stalled them,” Melvin shifted. “Is there anything in here to eat?”

“Most likely not anything that is good any longer,” Ruby said now more lively that her brother was back.

“We come down here now and then to hunt, there might be something, and we normally have some kind of rations here,” Melvin told her, and so the girls got around some food.

Before long they were sitting around the bed with a meal of dried peaches, cheese, and hard rolls that were not really bad, but slightly moldy as the cheese had been. When all of the mold had been picked off the perishable food they ate their fill.

Melvin was very tired, so while the girls cleaned up the building he rested for a time, and after letting him sleep for an hour they woke him as they figured that soon they should be on their way. The entire time they stayed there, however, the purple glowing had not stopped, and try as they might they were not able to find where it was coming from. It was odd to th
ink of there being light
without any source of fire, but it hung in the room as if rad
iating from the very air itself
.

“Melvin,” Abigail said as she shook her brother awake. He came to himself with a start.

“What time is it?” He asked looking around and noticing that it was still dark. There was no way for them to tell what time it was but Abigail figured it was somewhere around two in the morning.

“Four more hours until sunrise,” he said. “Where is that light coming from?” he asked looking around.

“We have not been able to find where it is coming from, so we stopped looking,” Abigail said, and he gave the small shack a quick look and could not find the source of light either.

“What are we going to do about the things outside?” he asked. “We can’t go back the way we came unless we are going home,” he told them watching Luna fan her wings on the small table. “There are no other paths that connect that way.”

“I know,” Abigail said though she really didn’t know much about Singers Trail. “What are we going to do anyway? I mean the sugar shanty became synonymous with what we were supposed to be doing right? We had an urge to come down here, and that urge led us here, and now that we are here I don’t feel as though there is any other place that we are supposed to go.”

“I know, I feel that too,” Melvin said looking to the other two who both nodded in agreement. “Ok, so we head home? You would think that if we were supposed to be here that there would be something else for us to do than just sit here. I mean we all had the same feeling, that our place was down here, and now that we are here? It seems a little pointless doesn’t it, I mean nothing was resolved, nothing was done except nearly dying.”

“Maybe we all wanted an adventure so bad that we made up the feeling?” Melvin suggested feeling more disappointed than he cared to show. “I know sometimes I get these feelings that I should go to a specific spot, or do something, and when I listen to that part of my mind sometimes things come of my being where my instincts said, but then sometimes nothing comes of it. Maybe this is one of those times nothing is going to come of it.”

“Maybe we should ask Luna,” Ruby suggested, though Melvin had never heard a more foolish suggestion in his life.

“Ask a butterfly what we are to do next?”

“Yeah!” She said as if she thought he was agreeing
with her. “By now I imagine
we all agree that Luna is not your typical butterfly?” She did have a point, so he gestured her on. “She has done some rather strange things tonight, like leading us on and trying to warn us not to leave Singers Trail. Maybe we should see if she has any suggestions.”

“But how?” Melvin asked frustrated. Many things were weighing on him at that moment. They were forsaken down in the sugar shanty, hours from safety and bed, not knowing what they were doing there and surrounded by hundreds of shadkin bent on their destruction. He was hoping that it was all a dream, but the sickness in his stomach told him that he was not going to wake in a few hours to find that it was all made up and he could go back to sleep. He had a hard time believing any of this was real, his sensibility would not allow his mind to agree with what his eyes were seeing, or his ears were hearing. He closed his eyes and waited for her reply, but it took a long time in coming and soon he found himself opening them again and staring at her; she was thinking. “We can ask her, but I have never seen her talk.”