The Silver Moon Elm Read online

  “Nobody around here,” she continued with all the dramatic flair her teenaged heart could muster, “can help me.”

  She stepped back and slammed the bedroom door. It would have more satisfying if Eddie’s head had been trapped in the doorjamb. Maybe next time.

  A sound from within her dark bedroom startled her momentarily. She flipped the light on and saw her gecko, Geddy, scrambling off a terrarium branch and into his log cave. She stepped over to the bucket of crickets, pulled the extraction tube out, and tapped a couple of new victims into his tank. He looked at them, then up at her, then back at the crickets, and then her again. Then he licked his eyeball.

  “You said it, chum,” she said, and flopped facedown on the bed.

  “Guess you went back to Crescent Valley after all.”

  Instantly she rolled over and glared at Skip, who was lounging on her windowsill, only partly blocking a chilly breeze. Skip was one of only a few friends who dared climb the trellis on the back of the house.

  “Knock much?”

  “What happened?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She sat up and wiped her eyes, as well as the corner of her mouth. She heard Phoebe whining outside her closed bedroom door, but she ignored it. The dog whined at everything. “It was bad.”

  “Anything ice cream might fix?” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a couple of slips of paper. “I’ve got coupons for Super Sauce Sundaes at the mall.”

  Jennifer couldn’t help a chuckle. It felt better than lying in her bed, drenched in self-pity. “Whadda big spender.”

  “What do you care what it costs me? For you, it’s still free.”

  She looked at the clock: It was 9:10 PM. “They’ll close soon.”

  “We’ll make it if you fly me there.”

  Shrugging her shoulders, she reached under the bed. “Let me just…” She found her daggers and strapped them on under her modest skirt and sweater set.

  He watched the ritual with a friendly leer. “Never leave home without ’em, huh?”

  “You got that right.” She moved to the window.

  “Whoa. Don’t forget your necklace!” He grinned easily at her inquisitive look. “Remember how I told you how good it looks on you?”

  “Francis Skip Wilson, are you hitting on me less than a week after our breakup?”

  He scratched the back of his neck, letting his chocolate hair sway back and forth. “Yeah, maybe. So you gonna cooperate or what?”

  “For ice cream, sure.” She snagged the emblem of the Moon of the Falling Leaves from her dresser, and put it around her neck hastily. “You know, it’s not like you’ll be able to see it after I morph anyway.”

  “I’ll know it’s there.” He climbed onto her back as she sprouted wings, and then he slapped her scaled hindquarters. “Giddyup!”

  “Skip.”

  “Sorry.”

  She waved to the terrarium with a wing claw. “Bye, Geddy.”

  As she launched into the dark November sky, she thought she heard the gecko make a noise. But she corrected herself quickly—there were still plenty of woodland animals out here scrambling for food, and the shrill warning shriek she heard made a lot more sense coming from one of them.

  Skip was, as usual, a charming date. He bought her a second sundae, even though he was out of coupons. Then he let her borrow his jacket as they walked out to a park near the edge of town, because she had forgotten her coat in her rush to leave. Then he offered his gloves as they sat on a park bench and she got drowsy trying to warm her hands.

  As she drifted off to sleep, she felt his soothing touch upon her throat. His fingers warmed the necklace charm she wore, and a soft melodious voice—his?—told her it was all right to sleep here, and not to worry about getting home.

  She’ll be home soon, she heard the voice say.

  And then the dream started. It began with a simple moon elm branch, thick enough to sprout into two. She got closer and saw tiny shapes leaping from one branch to the other, and then back again. It was amazing how far they could jump—the distance they bridged was hundreds of times wider than any of them. There were four of these small acrobats—spiders, she realized. As each jumped, it left a web strand in its wake, so that each jump built another line connecting the two elm branches.

  A Blaze of small dragons, barely bigger than the spiders, came toward the massive moon elm. Maneuvering between the two branches, they got stuck in the web being cast. Like flies, they buzzed and struggled. The spiders did not mind them; they kept jumping and trailing threads, faster and faster. More dragons came. More were caught.

  Soon the four spiders were barely visible, they were moving so fast. The web was less like a willowy construct than a barrier now. Pulled together tighter and tighter, the moon elm branches began to groan. Each new dragon that hit the web caused the whole trap to shiver with tension.

  Before Jennifer could think to reach out with a blade and cut the webs, one of the spiders spotted her, screamed, and woke her up.

  CHAPTER 6

  Tuesday

  Jennifer leapt up from her dream with relief, frozen cheeks, and a sore back. The sun had just barely risen, and she was still on the park bench. A latticework of frosty dew clung to her gloves—Skip’s gloves—and she chastised herself for falling asleep in the open during late autumn. You could have at least woken up long enough to shift to dragon form! Ever heard of exposure, idiot?

  Route 55 was not too far away. Cars were already commuting to work. None of them slowed to look at a transient girl in the roadside park.

  Skip was nowhere in sight.

  Still a dream?

  She looked around. There was something not right about the trees. What was it? Beyond the park, the houses seemed normal enough—No, there was one that looked strange. A house where there hadn’t been a house before. It was darker than the others and had intricate spires on each of the corners. With limbs on the outside supporting a large abdomen, it almost looked like a—

  So yes, still a dream.

  She identified what was wrong with the trees: They were laced with webs, caught in the branches of nearby oaks and maples like Spanish moss. And she spotted more houses, in places where once there had been parks and open fields.

  Not far away, there was a sign by the edge of the highway. It faced away from Jennifer, but she recognized it as the census sign that welcomed visitors to Winoka.

  Rubbing her shoulders, she got up and walked over to the sign. Across the road, she could make out the familiar retail stores that anchored Winoka Mall. There was Herberger’s, and Applebee’s, and the ice-cream store where she had gone with Skip.

  And where is he, anyway? Why isn’t he in this dream?

  She reached the sign and looked at the other side. A bright, reflective green, it read in bold white letters:

  PINEGROVE

  POP. 34,323

  VISITAR TUTOS, IMPERAR TUTOS

  Why Pinegrove? Why nearly twice the population of Winoka? And what was with that weird town slogan? Her command of Romance languages was shaky, but “imperar” sounded pretty pushy.

  A plane soared overhead, miles in the air. She slowly brushed off her—Skip’s—coat. Planes, coats, mall, road signs. So this wasn’t completely surreal. Usually her dreams meant something, at least since her first dragon change last year. Where was the meaning here? What were the webs supposed to mean? What did this dream want to tell—

  “It’s not a dream,” a familiar voice said behind her, and she turned to see Skip. He had on a new coat, and the gentle wind blew his bangs into his serious face.

  She shook her head. “Of course it’s a dream. I’m glad you’re in it; I was wondering where you were. What do you suppose comes next?”

  “What comes next.” He repeated the words tonelessly and came closer. “You realize it’s not a dream. I’m sorry, Jennifer. I just learned it was happening last night, right before I visited you. I didn’t have enough time to prepare you. I barely had enough time to save
you.”

  Jennifer’s good mood dwindled. She looked down at herself—she was wearing the same wool sweater and skirt combo under this coat, and her shoes were the same, and so was her jewelry, including the necklace—

  Change. She ordered it of herself because dreams sometimes cut off options, denied you the chance to think of a way out. In a flash she was in her electric blue skin, stretching her wings and preparing a gust of flame over the ditch, just to prove to herself she could…

  “No! Change back!” The vehemence behind his words surprised Jennifer, and she obeyed. “Jennifer, you can’t do that here. Ever. Jennifer, please let me explain. A group of powerful werachnids has cast a sorcery, and—”

  The lowing of cows interrupted him. Jennifer turned to the west, beyond the edge of town. A quarter of a mile away, the farmlands of the surrounding townships stood cold and stark against the advancing development of Winoka—

  Pinegrove?—and in one of those farms, about a dozen cows were standing and chewing, just like always.

  Suddenly, a brown spider the size of a pony leapt from a nearby tree and landed on top of one of the animals, driving its mandibles through the cow’s throat and bringing it down amid a strangled, bloody moo.

  “Cripes!” She felt his arm on her shoulder and let him pull her back a bit. “Skip, do you see that! Werachnids in true shape, this close to Winoka? The beaststalkers will wipe them out! Mayor Seabright won’t stand for it!”

  “Jennifer. Look at me. This is not Winoka. Winoka never happened.”

  Distracted, she turned away from the cows. “But we’re right across from—”

  “This is Pinegrove. What Winoka would still be, if the beaststalkers had never invaded. And if dragons never lived here. Which they never did, anymore.”

  As quickly as Jennifer had gone from bemused dream to startled surrealism, she now shifted to frightened irritation. “Skip, you’re not making any sense. We’re right here, in Winoka. We fell asleep last night. You must have woken up before me and gotten a breakfast sandwich from the McDonald’s down the road. I’m going to get really mad at you if you don’t pull one out of your pocket and share it with me, because that’s really selfish you know and what you’re saying just doesn’t make sense!”

  “Like I said, some werachnids cast a sorcery. A huge one. It changed a few things in this area. This town, and some others.”

  “Skip, the mall is right over there. Nothing’s changed!”

  “Look at that house.” He pointed behind him, at the very house Jennifer had noticed before. Its spires tweaked the cool air. Jennifer heard another cow gurgle a ways behind them, but refused to look.

  “The house is new,” she admitted. “But I’m not a freaking contractor or zoning official. New houses get built in this town all the time! Heck, my dad was probably the architect.”

  “Jennifer, your dad’s gone.”

  She shoved him back. “Skip, that’s not funny. I’m going home. I’ll see you in school later. Meantime, try to grow up.”

  “Jennifer, please come home with me.”

  “Piss off.” She was in dragon form and soaring over the highway in an instant.

  “Jennifer!” He sounded terrified. Looking back, she saw him shift into the same jumping spider shape he had used in Crescent Valley. In no time he was bounding after her. “You can’t do that! People will see you!”

  While she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of changing back—what he was saying was ridiculous!—she did find his earnestness unnerving. She flexed her scales and settled into a nice, soft sky pattern. No one below was likely to see her: She had snuck around Winoka a hundred times like this.

  He kept after her. “That’s not good enough! We can see better than beaststalkers!”

  “Calm down, will you! We’re almost there.”

  They approached Pine Street, and Jennifer scanned the treetops for the familiar sight of her house’s roof. It would be right…right over…

  Several cold facts hit Jennifer at once. First, her house was not there. In its place was a new structure—another home, she assumed from the size, but like the first strange house she saw, it was bloated and dominated by spires. The whole thing was painted a sickly pale lime, and neither the minivan nor Catherine’s Mustang was in the driveway.

  Second, if her house was not here, her family was not here.

  Third, if her family was not here, Skip was not lying.

  Fourth, if Skip was not lying, she was in colossal danger.

  She dove to the ground under a line of stark oaks and fluffy pines. These were trees from her backyard, she realized. Yet this was not her backyard anymore.

  I need help. Attempting a basic trampler skill, she breathed smoke onto the ground and stomped her hind leg.

  Nothing happened.

  Skip landed and shifted back to human form behind her. “Jennifer, knock it off! That’s not going to work. Do you honestly think there any reptiles left dumb enough to come to the aid of a dragon alone in this town?”

  She turned and grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “What did you do?!”

  “Jennifer, I didn’t do anything! I told you, it’s a group of—”

  “It was your aunt, then!”

  “I don’t think—”

  “How is this even possible!” She screamed it at the trees. “You can’t just go around shifting the universe! Moving people around, making some disappear, making others reappear!” Another icicle stabbed at the pit of her stomach. “Who else is gone?”

  “I don’t know. To make a universe where there are more werachnids, I imagine you’d have to get rid of lots of people. Starting with just about everyone we know from Winoka.”

  “So they’re living somewhere else.” I’ve got to find Mom and Dad. They’re probably in Eveningstar. That’s how far away, maybe an hour or two?

  He rubbed his temples. “Doubtful. Jennifer, the sorcery didn’t just change today. It changed history. Years and years of it. There were battles that hadn’t happened before, victories over dragons and beaststalkers, reasons why Pinegrove is the way it is today. People died in those battles. Probably your parents, and the Blacktooths, and—”

  “You know an awful lot about this,” she hissed. She didn’t know whether he was a liar or a conspirator. Or both.

  “Yes, I do know! I just learned most of it. I’m trying to fill you in, Jennifer. While you were sleeping, I went home and—”

  “Why was I sleeping, Skip? And why am I still here? If I have no parents, how am I even possible?”

  “Will you shut up and listen!” His impatient anger revealed a look Jennifer hadn’t seen on him before—the same look that once graced his father’s face, in the dungeon where they had once trapped Jennifer and her father.

  She chewed her tongue, willing herself not to strike him. Find out what’s going on, she advised herself as calmly as she could. Then beat on him.

  “It’s like I was trying to tell you,” he started again. He was looking at the frosted grass by his shoes. “I found out last night that this was going to happen. Mr. Slider told me. I don’t know who told him. But whoever’s behind it kept things pretty secret until the last possible moment. I barely had time to make an excuse and get out to you.”

  “Because you wanted to save me.”

  “The necklace,” he explained, pointing at it. She fingered the emblem of the Moon of the Falling Leaves. “It’s a protective talisman, representing change. The wearer can survive all but the most dramatic transformations. It needs a little help to work, and I’ve learned enough sorcery to enhance it. So even as the universe changed, you survived. With me.”

  “And what about everyone else?”

  He shrugged. “I’m figuring that out now. I spent the morning back at my place. I haven’t met anyone yet who’s even aware that the universe is any different. My aunt Tavia, Mr. Slider, the newspaper delivery guy, the guy at the twenty-four-hour gas station—they look the same, but they have completely diffe
rent memories of how they got here. None of them has even heard of Winoka.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me last night.” It wasn’t a question, but an accusation.

  He held his hands out, palms up. “Jennifer, you don’t believe me now, and it’s happened! How on earth were you going to believe me last night?”

  “We could have stopped it.”

  “Jennifer, whoever did this is not the kind of werachnid you just stop. Look at what they’ve done!”

  “We could have stopped it!” she insisted. “My mom and dad, they would have found a way! And Eddie’s parents, and Mayor Seabright, and the Blaze, they would have helped!”

  “Those people don’t exist anymore, Jennifer. They never saw it coming. They didn’t have a chance. And they certainly don’t anymore. According to my aunt here, no one’s seen a weredragon or beaststalker near Pinegrove for years. Heck, the guy at the gas station didn’t even know what a beaststalker was.”

  “Stop talking!” She put her hands over her ears. “You’re lying! There’s another explanation! This is a rancid little joke from a really puny mind, and I’ll get you for this, Wilson! This is not funny at all!”

  “I agree. It’s not funny. But it’s not a joke, and it’s happened. Jennifer, we have to figure out what to do next.”

  She looked at the houses near her own. The Blacktooth house had also been obliterated by one of these creepy, fat thin houses (this one a pale yellow, like the color of a desert scorpion). Another house—she was pretty sure the family in it had been simply human—was unchanged. Down the way, the Fisk house and the Anderson house also looked intact. She couldn’t make out the Elmsmith house.

  Susan!

  She began to walk.

  “Susan’s not there, Jennifer. I checked. I don’t think her family ever moved to this town. Remember, they came here for beaststalker protection?”

  This stopped her in her tracks. “You must think this is pretty damn hilarious, don’t you, Wilson?”

  “No, I don’t. I wish you would believe me.”

  I’m beginning to, she admitted to herself grudgingly. Really, she had no choice.