Page 32 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)

Chapter 32

Aubrey

Everything was going to be fine.

I didn’t think I’d felt such peace since I was a kid. Since before Mom had gotten sick, and I’d realized that the world was a screwed up, deeply unfair place, and sometimes the best people had the worst lives.

Puppy , the mountain grumbled beneath me, making his voice known for the first time that morning.

Nausa again.

For centuries, whenever Slate started to rumble, the four families brought their stones to a summit at the same spot on Mount Slate. Iri with the Moonstriker, Verelle with the Duskbringer, Soz with the Dawnchaser, and Nausa with the Sunrunner.

But right now Slate was annoyed with Iri, he’d made that much clear.

And Nausa, however it had happened, had been broken between the last meeting and now.

As a stone, that meant that Nausa—also known as the great wolf—was dead. Instead, her two pieces were their own creatures now.

Slate knew that was a thing that happened sometimes. He’d been the one to tell me about Kit’s stone once being a piece of Iri.

But Nikka was a tiny chip, and perhaps the fracture Slate had spoken of had left Iri largely intact.

I was already leaning too hard on Kit, but I had to try this. I had to talk to Slate, to see if I could make him understand.

So I leaned into Kit as we walked, letting him guide my steps as I focused instead on Slate.

It was hard to really know how to do this because I’d spent so little time at it, but I let myself fall into it entirely. The vibrations of the ground under my feet. The feel of the wind on my face. The trees and rocks and even the squirrels and birds in nearby trees.

You understand that Nikka fractured from Iri , I said, shoving the words as hard as I could into the world.

Fractured little sister , he agreed. The immortal fox boy found her. They’re good together .

The immortal...I had no idea how Kit was “the immortal fox boy,” though my heart did leap at the notion of him being immortal. That would be good, Kit living forever. I liked that.

Still, not what I needed to be worried about right then.

Yes, exactly. So Iri still exists, and now there’s Nikka too .

Nikka , he said, like he was considering the name. Okay. Nikka .

Good. That was good. Now, though, on to the hard part. I put the words together carefully as I pressed them out toward him. The same thing happened to Nausa. To the puppy. She broke. Only it wasn’t a tiny chip off her that left her mostly the same .

It sat like a hollow in my gut, the idea of Nausa’s death, and while it had always been sad, it had never done that to me before. It was how Slate felt, I was sure of it—even if I had no idea how I knew what everyone was feeling all of a sudden.

Puppy is gone . The words were whispery and paper thin, and the pain in them brought tears to my eyes. Or maybe it was the way I could literally feel what Slate was feeling. Puppy, my sweet puppy, was dead. I would never speak to her again.

She is , I agreed somberly. I’m sorry, but I don’t think she left a big enough piece to be mostly the same, like Iri .

Beneath me, the ground trembled.

Kit jerked under my arm, spinning to look at me, his eyes wild, and I could almost taste the fear in him. He was worried I would have another seizure.

I was also crying, which didn’t help, because when he saw that, the panic in him spiked.

“I’m okay,” I managed to whisper through the tumult of everything happening in my brain. “Trying to explain to Slate about Nausa.”

He winced at that, then at the ground, still trembling slightly beneath us. I didn’t feel like the world was slipping away from me, though, not the slightest urge to tremble. That was good. Right?

I couldn’t worry. I had to focus, push through.

There are two pieces of Nausa , I told him. When Caspian found her, he found that the two pieces were alive. So there are two puppies. Different puppies, not Nausa, but they are puppies .

Not my puppy. He sounded like a petulant toddler, and honestly, I couldn’t blame him.

If someone told me my puppy was dead and offered me two in its place, I wouldn’t see it as a great gift. It would still be a loss, because my puppy was gone.

On the other hand, I couldn’t give Nausa back.

Nothing could do that.

Well, I supposed that Iri could maybe—but no. That wouldn’t work. If it were possible, the Moonstrikers would have already done it. Maybe they were hesitant to use their gifts frivolously, but this was the world at stake, so they’d have done whatever they could.

I didn’t know Rain very well, but I knew he would never let anyone suffer if he had a choice, even if I suspected, given Kit’s feelings toward her, his mother would care considerably less about human suffering.

I’m very sorry about your puppy , I told Slate. I wish I could help. I wish anyone could make it better, but no one really can. Losing someone is always terrible .

You’ll leave too , he grumped at me, but the shaking of the ground was slowing, so I hoped I was helping.

I couldn’t promise I’d never leave, obviously, since I was human and I would inevitably die. I didn’t want to leave the world in crisis when that happened simply because Slate was angry at being lied to by another human.

I’ll die eventually , I admitted to him. I’m human, and that happens to us. Not like stones who only die when they break. Humans always break eventually.

No, like the other .

Other? What other?

He made a sound that approximated a sigh, like everything in the whole world was so very tiring. Another boy came before. Like you. Strong. Smaller, though. But his mind was enough, I could feel him. Hear his songs. Then when he started to feel me, he ran away and never came back .

Well that was just rotten. I didn’t know who the boy in question was, or when it had happened, so I couldn’t have even told Slate if there was a valid reason for the guy leaving. Heck, I’d started having seizures when Slate had first touched me, so that alone was probably a valid reason to get the heck away, assuming a person was more sensible than me.

Not that I’d known what the episodes had meant.

Kit had sort of known, and if he’d told us I didn’t doubt Aunt Titania would have dragged me away, no matter what Kit said would happen. Plus I hadn’t liked him yet, hadn’t trusted him yet, so I’d have probably gone with her.

I shook my head. This was no time to get distracted with might have beens. I’m not leaving , I told Slate. I will die eventually, but I won’t abandon you before that. And who knows, maybe we can find someone else who can bond you before I die. Now that we know it’s possible, people might like to come talk to you .

Don’t want someone else , Slate said. He was pouting. I didn’t want to be judgmental in this of all situations, but I was getting the distinct feeling that while an ancient and powerful volcano, Slate was also rather young, developmentally.

But that also made sense, didn’t it? Geologically speaking, Slate wasn’t that old for a volcano. Even if you ignored that, there was the socialization aspect. Stones alone took centuries to learn concepts, but when they lived with humans, the timeline sped up. Slate spent most of his time with very young stones who hadn’t yet bonded humans, like Kit’s Nikka. Other than that, there were the occasional visits from the four family stones.

And then he was alone with baby stones again, who he might or might not even be able to communicate with.

Always alone , he agreed sadly, but also as though he’d heard and understood at least some of my internal thought process. His voice was louder suddenly, like it wasn’t in the rocks and the trees anymore, but right there inside my very head.

The world moved, and it took me a second to realize that it was Kit, wrapping himself around me. He looked horrible and tragic and sad, and I only had a moment to register that before the black spots moved in and I realized that darnit, I was about to pass out.

Again.