Two Dark Moons Read online

  Also by Avi Silver

  Sãoni Cycle

  Two Dark Moons

  Three Seeking Stars (Coming Soon)

  Watch for more at Avi Silver’s site.

  ­­­­­

  Two Dark Moons is a work of fiction. The characters, places, events, and dialogue portrayed in this book are drawn from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Text Copyright © 2019 by Avi Silver

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published by Molewhale Press

  www.molewhalepress.com

  First Edition

  eBook edition ISBN: 978-1-7752427-3-4

  Cover art and interior illustrations by Haley Rose Szereszewski

  haleyroseportfolio.com

  Map and book design by Sienna Tristen

  To everyone who has ever been told

  they are too much.

  CONTENTS

  Map

  Prologue

  Part One: Ateng

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Two: Eiji

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Three: Sodão Dangde

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  Thank you to our Patrons!

  It was thought to be bad luck to give birth beneath a moonless sky, but Lahni Par was very quickly learning that this baby did not care.

  The pain had come nearly three lunar phases early—a rush of water and a low clenching in her belly as she was packing to make the biennial crossing with the rest of the hmun, her village. One look at her face and her husband went pale, rushing off to find his mother and his composure. Any other day she would have teased him for knocking over their bags on his way out the door; under any other lunar phase she would have laughed at her misfortune, charmed by the child’s hereditary impulsiveness. A good trader, she might have said. So eager to come and explore!

  It was harder to plan for the future of one that might be exiled from the mountain not an hour out of the womb.

  Outside, all was stars, freckles on the face of a sightless god. The unsteady twinkling was beautiful but offered no divine truth for the people to interpret. This was the Minhal lunar phase, a time of unguided darkness as the moons Ama and Chehang averted their eyes from the mortal world below. A bad time for babies—any child ignored by the gods in birth had no chance of thriving into adulthood.

  And though it was unfortunate, the wisdom passed down by the oracles of Ateng was as clear as it was bruising: Cast out this unfortunate soul, for it brings only disorder to the hmun.

  So Lahni laboured quietly. She bit down on a rag, and she dug her nails into her husband’s arm, and she followed along with his whispered prayers in her head. Her back felt fit to split like a nightflower.

  Outside their home, the voices of the hmun rose in song, ushering out Fourth Minhal and welcoming First Par, the opening phase of each lunar cycle, and a fresh start to the calendar year. It was only a matter of hours before the first sliver of Ama’s curious red eye would appear, and they would be safe.

  But these were hours that the baby simply insisted on being present for. Lahni gritted her teeth, sweat stinging her eyes. Her mother-in-law, Euna Mi, patted her brow with a damp cloth, humming along with the hmun’s song, calling forth Ama’s return with more urgency than most.

  “The Grand Ones would understand it’s not our fault, wouldn’t they?” Tonão Sol asked his mother, his voice wavering slightly. “She was planned for Hiwei, Par at the earliest—”

  “She had plans of her own,” Euna said, her eyes wrinkling at the corners with a smile.

  “But they won’t—I mean, they wouldn’t exile us. They’re—she’s so early, it wasn’t on purpose, it’s the very last day!” Despite his best efforts, Tonão’s conviction sounded a lot more like desperation. Lahni could hardly blame him; not two years earlier her neighbours, Esteona Nor’s children, had been sent to their deaths with their Minhal child in their arms. For the good of everyone. For the safety of the hmun.

  Her belly cramped and she squeezed her eyes shut, shaking with the effort of swallowing every last cry her throat begged to release.

  May this pain make my child fierce, she thought. May it make her survive. May it make her Par.

  “My son, now is not the time to worry,” Euna Mi murmured, rubbing Lahni’s belly to the rhythm of the new year’s song. Lahni almost asked her to stop; they could not tempt the child out with joyful music, not into a world that would not want her.

  “How—how long now?” Lahni asked, her legs trembling as her body betrayed her with every contraction. She lurched forward, a soft sob rising up from within her. “I can’t, Mother Mi, I can’t—”

  “It seems like a very good time to worry, Mother—”

  “Or perhaps,” Euna Mi interrupted, her voice suddenly stone-solid, “it is a good time for you to catch.” She fixed her son with a meaningful look, disregarding all confusion on his face and nodding to the kneeling point on the floor. “I’m in the other room, singing with your Viunwei while we pack his things. Otherwise, I would be here.”

  For a moment Lahni could only stare at her, dizzy as she grappled with the woman’s intention. It was the role of grandparents to catch the baby, to have the wisdom of the elders cradle the first breath of the newborns—to pass the role off to her son would be nothing short of blasphemy. Unconventional as Euna Mi was—as all of the Mi phase children were known to be—she held substantial influence in the hmun. Her honesty was taken at face value. It would not be long before she would be called forth to take her Grand Ones’ Vows, to sit upon the council as Grandmother Mi to the entire community. And yet here she was, breaking one of the laws it held most sacred.

  Lahni opened her mouth, wanting to confirm, wanting to question, but then the baby was coming and she could do nothing but bite down on the rag that had dried out her tongue, succumbing to every signal her body had been throwing at her for the past several hours. With one firm pat on Tonão’s shoulder, Euna Mi rose with the grace of a much younger woman, clapping her hands and erupting into song as she exited the room to find her grandson Viunwei.

  It would have been easier on the young parents, to have another person there. But even Euna Mi could not be so brazen in the spiting of her gods.

  The child entered the world to the sound of her father’s singing, untroubled by the black sky blanketing the mountain. Gods or no, she would wail just the same. The moment Lahni recovered her breath she joined in the song, her rasped voice raised to fill all of the space she had left empty in her labouring. Guided by love as much as fear, they filled their home with music, determined to cover the cries of the baby that had come too soon.

  They sang the new year’s hymn in familiar harmony, both privately wishing they could be singing their bawdy travel songs instead. Tonão rested his head on his wife’s shoulder, singing louder when she could not find the energy—for once, she was the one who could not keep up with him. The baby latched
onto her mother’s breast, drinking up life as eagerly as any Par that ever was.

  Except she wasn’t.

  When the songs of the village finally died down, the silence in the home of Lahni Par and Tonão Sol stretched on for miles. The neighbours had come back in next door, and Lahni could hear their words muffled through the stone walls, the clinking sounds of their packing for the crossing. Lahni held her breath and stroked the baby’s head, willing her silent. Her bad luck, her birthright, would catch up the moment she started crying.

  When the terrified hush was disturbed, it was by Euna Mi, whose eyes twinkled with her best imitation of surprise as she opened the door. “How marvellous!” she exclaimed, walking over to peer at the little bundle that was her second grandchild. Lahni could only watch, worn down from fear and effort. Beside her, Tonão did not dare to speak. “Your labour is picking up now, isn’t it? How fortunate, to have this child on the opening day of First Par! What a bold traveller she will be, just like her mother, crawling down the side of the mountain before she can even walk!” Next door, the voices stopped. Euna turned her gaze to her son, raising her eyebrows.

  “We are—we are very lucky,” he said, his voice gone tight with the wavering strain of suppressed tears. “Very lucky, Mother.”

  “I’ll share the news, I’ll share the news! And then I’ll be right back to you, so don’t you worry about that,” the woman chirped, stroking Lahni’s hair with pride. “What a gift you’ve given me today, getting me out of my own packing duties to meet the second Par of the family! Though I cannot say the crossing will be much fun for you, Lahni my dear. We’ll make sure you rest at each of the Fingers. Give that baby a good taste of sky.”

  “Rest would be good,” Lahni said, not having to feign her fatigue in the slightest.

  “But for now, you work.” It was remarkable, how Euna Mi could greet misfortune with nothing but a familiar smile and tea on the fire. Perhaps it was the nature of her own birth phase that allowed her to abandon custom without a second thought. Perhaps it was the fierceness of her love. Whatever it was, Lahni did not argue. “Only a few hours now, I’d say. Not much longer at all.”

  In the earliest hours of First Par, the second child of Lahni Par and Tonão Sol was born a second time. Her mother yelled and groaned and her father wept, and both of them meant every last bit of it. Grandmother Mi caught the baby, passed from one adult to another, and welcomed her into the world with a sharp pinch on the thigh that moved her to wailing loud enough for the neighbours three houses down to hear. It was an unfair reward, for having been dutifully quiet following her first entry into the world. Lahni feared she might never let them live it down.

  Together, Lahni and Tonão sat and looked upon their child. Such misfortune, saved only by luck and by heresy. This time, neither of them were singing.

  “What do we name them?” Tonão asked softly, wiggling his little finger into the baby’s angry fist.

  “Her,” she reminded him firmly. “Par.” In naming the baby a child of Par, its gender had been determined feminine; an accidental misgendering was all it would take to raise suspicions about her being Minhal.

  “Of course Par, my love, but—”

  “I don’t know, Ton,” Lahni said with an exhausted laugh, gazing down at the child as if she might have some sort of insight to offer. All things considered, it wouldn’t be surprising—the child had entered the world riding in on an unexpected choice. Unpredictability would likely to be a theme in the coming years. A troublesome baby for troublesome parents, eager to disrupt the tidy household they had established with Viunwei Soon. If she was ruled by Par, the conflict would serve holy purpose. If she was ruled by Minhal, then who was to say?

  The fussy little bundle sighed in Lahni’s arms, her soft new brow already creased with worry. She reached down, brushing it away with her thumb.

  “Sohmeng,” her husband said, leaning back against the hanging furs that insulated their cool walls.

  “What?”

  “Her name. Sohmeng.” She who becomes. With all the odds stacked against her new daughter, Lahni figured it was a good place to start.

  “Sohmeng Par,” she said, and she knew with sudden certainty that there would be no other names up for consideration. Though she had never claimed to be any sort of oracle, Lahni Par knew some things like they had been carved into her bones: how to track and avoid the sãoni that roamed the forests below, what lullabies would soothe her son to sleep, her husband’s favourite ways to be kissed, which lunar phases would deliver her safely from their own hmun, Ateng, to the many hmun down below in Eiji. And now, that this child would be marvellous and challenging and full of purpose.

  What purpose that was remained to be seen. She would simply have to become.

  On the last day of her life inside the mountain, Sohmeng Par was fighting with her brother. Perhaps she would have done things differently if she knew what was coming, but the gods did not see fit to warn her, and she most likely would not have listened to them anyway.

  “Sohmeng, I have never been so humiliated—”

  Sohmeng tended to dig her heels in when she was being lectured, and no one exercised that skill quite like Viunwei. The current list of grievances included something about her being inconsiderate, something about her disrupting the whole community, something else along the lines of a-new-low-even-for-you. She wasn’t really catching it all. In fact, for the most part, she was doing her best to tune it out, counting her steps as a helpful means of distracting herself from her brother’s hysterics. If he was saying anything important, she figured it would be brought up again in this fight’s inevitable reprise later that night.

  “By the moons, you are making a game out of being difficult,” he hissed, storming behind her as she padded her way down the damp stairs into the cavern’s throat, trying to outpace him.

  “Am I winning?” she asked dryly.

  “Sohmeng Par.”

  “Viunwei Soon!”

  It was going to be a long walk down to Chehangma’s Gate.

  She blew her bangs out of her face in an irritable huff, listening to the chittering of small creatures that clung to the walls high above, their blinking opalescent eyes illuminated by the glow of lichen and wovenstone. Sohmeng had half a mind to grab her knife and chip a chunk off the wall—her old dice were beginning to lose some of their lustre, and she was sick of squinting every time she wanted to cast them after everyone else had gone to bed. But making an unsanctioned cut in the mountain might actually kill Viunwei, and even she wasn’t so bold as to desecrate the caves on the way to a meeting with the Grand Ones.

  See? she thought, glaring up at the ceiling. Not entirely inconsiderate.

  “What exactly are you planning on saying?” Viunwei asked tightly. For all he looked like their father, fair-eyed and unreasonably tall, his face lacked any of the man’s easygoing nature. Under the soft green light of the wovenstone, the shadows even made him look cruel. “You’ve had this discussion with them time after time, you know as well as I do that they are not going to let a tengmun kar do the work of an adult. You’re still a child, Sohmeng.”

  “It’s not my fault that my Tengmunji was cancelled—” she began, unable to keep herself from rising to the bait.

  “They won’t care. No initiation, no opinion,” he said, cutting her off with a dismissive shake of his head. “This is a bad choice. Go in, apologize for what you’ve done, and try to sound like you mean it. No special requests, no big ideas. Just be humble, for once in your life.”

  “Yes, oh mighty brother, beacon of stability, cleverest of them all!” She threw her hands into the air, giving him a scathing bow and nearly falling down the stairs in the process. He jumped to catch her, but she smacked his hands away. “I’ve listened to your advice. I’ve taken it into consideration. And I’m going to do this my way. If you don’t like it, you can walk right back the way you came, but I am not putting up with your cosmically-ordained melodrama today.”

  She tur
ned away before he could respond, stomping her way down the last of the stairs. The glow along the cave’s walls grew brighter as the veins of wovenstone thickened, then dimmed once more as soft rays of sunlight shone into Fochão Dangde. That was the magic of Chehangma’s Gate: a skylight in the mountain, welcoming the gift of the gods’ direct gaze down upon the moons’ eldest representatives. Sohmeng unclenched her fists and took a deep breath of the damp, musty air. Silently she named the phases in her head, searching for her best self in the rhythm of the cycle: Par, Go, Hiwei, Fua, Tang, Sol, Jão, Pel, Dongi, Se, Won, Nor, Chisong, Heng, Li, Ginhãe, Mi, Ker, Hiun, Ãofe, Soon, Nai, Tos, Jeji, Minhal.

  Self-consciously, she combed through her thick hair with her fingers, as though she could mold her thoughts into something clever. It didn’t matter how many times she had brought her troubles to the Grand Ones before, today could still be different. She would enter with peace. She would listen with humility. She would not be difficult. At the end of each argument, the Grand Ones always encouraged her to practice patience, to contain her reactions to the things she could not change.

  The problem was, no one ever seemed to have any answers when she asked precisely how that was done.

  Still trailing behind her, Viunwei had, remarkably, shut up for the time being. Squaring her shoulders, Sohmeng walked through the Gate, drilling the same idea into her head that she always did: be better. Be something they won’t hate. But be yourself, too.

  Maybe today would be the day those thoughts didn’t spark off each other and ignite in disastrous flame.

  Light wafted in hazy rays upon the greyed heads of the Grand Ones. Twenty-four elders sat around twenty-five spots in a circle, each perched on a stone seat with thick moss padding to cushion their aching backs and furs to keep their legs warm. At the base of each chair, the markings of their ruling lunar phases were engraved, matched with the tattoos that had been bestowed upon their cheeks when they were identified as Ateng’s eldest living representative of that phase. The tattoos were a reminder of their twilight year purpose, to embody the most powerful lessons the moons had to offer.