Move the Stars by Sandy Lender

Author:Sandy Lender [Lender, Sandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781734515206
Publisher: IYF Publishing/Dragon Hoard Press
Published: 2020-03-01T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

Noel sat heavily on the smoothed boulder outside the house and patted it, signaling for Ava to sit next to him. She obeyed, and Strike scampered to the shoulder farthest from him. Flame hopped onto Ava’s lap and curled to lie down and sleep there.

“Strike has lost his trust of me,” Noel said. “And Flame has no love for anyone in this family but you. What Devon, this star reader elder person, says about you is right. I can see it as clear as I can see the tools I carry.” He gestured at the rock splitting wedges, shims, and a pickaxe nearby.

“I think you don’t give yourself a fair—”

“Let me speak my mind,” he interrupted.

She nodded, absent-mindedly scratching Flame’s chin while the shoulder dragon purred on her lap.

Noel stared at the dragon for a moment, and then said, “Flame won’t let anyone pet her like this except you. She tolerates Leon because she must. You’ll not be able to leave her behind again. If there was a swamp to leave her for. Do you know if Wiellfen survived the meteor storm? The one that burned the fen?”

“I don’t,” she answered.

“Alleeta could go there,” he mused. “If you taught her the skill, she could harvest kelp at Wiellfen. She’s old enough to make the journey, older than you were when you were first walking back and forth from Eddag.”

He paused to stare up at the dusking sky. The stars now hanging too close to their world shone over-brightly already, and he pointed at them. “The stars look very different today. I can see for myself this is all wrong. I knew it when the big quake shook us after you left for Eddag. Felt that shake the house and I knew we were all in trouble. Then a messenger came through saying Clay Village had been sucked into the Azur and all manner of crazy things. Never been any good news since then.

“Now you come home early with these others, one of them looking like she’s your age but somehow strange like we pulled her out from under the stone mines or something, and you want to go to the Far Quarry.” He paused. “You want to go to that horrible place.”

He let the sound of ween-moths hum in the approaching evening for a few minutes before he continued.

“I always knew you were a special child. When we used to go into the mine shafts, down under the depths of the quarry, the glowworms were drawn to you. You never wanted for light.

“When the smoulder came and Strike chose you, I wasn’t surprised by the choosing. I think Flame chose Leon because she wanted to be in your family, not because the toddler had no affinity for shoulder dragons.

“Do you remember how the ween-caterpillars used to hang cocoons all around the sleeping room window? Then when I built a second sleeping room for you girls, the caterpillars came again, but only to the sleeping room with you girls in it.

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