Earthshine: Book 2 in the Lunation Series

By J.J. Gadd

Book 2 in the Lunation Series: A modern-day moon myth about seven companions who change the world, where readers can choose the path they wish to follow through the narrative.

Raul is thwarted for now, but war threatens the old capital city - and only Marama is capable of defeating the enemy.

Branguin, Arla, Perry and their companions must free Marama before the world is destroyed by eliciting the spell from the elusive Elodie while facing death, family secrets and attacks from white wolves. But battle awaits them, and Quira and Worthing must be defended from the attack of the Plains Lord.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781460702949

J.J. Gadd

JJ Gadd is an Australian writer based in regional Victoria. She likes green and growing things, cooking, and history - particularly antiquities. The call to writing came young, and she worked as a journalist and editor for more than 15 years, garnering the life experience she thought she’d need in order to do justice to the story she’s wanted to write since she was a girl. Now that she’s a grown-up she’s realised that life experience is something that keeps happening - but she wrote the story anyway.

Book preview

FAMILY TREE

MAP

The story so far …

At the end of book 1, Lunation, the companions discovered a dormant spell set by the long-lost queen, Marama, who has been trapped in the moon for 500 years. Marama’s uncle, the sorcerer (saher) Raul tries to stop them activating the spell with help from the Boy’s grandmother Elodea, who has been bewitched into forgetting her family, but another of the Boy’s ancestor’s, Eave, materialises and tries to prevent the attack. When the companions successfully activate the spell Raul is trapped in a moon of his own. The companions are safe from Raul for now – but no closer to their goal of releasing Marama from the moon, and now both she and her uncle Raul ride the sky as moons, one white, one red, both desperate to be free.

CHAPTER 1

Stunned silence reined at the ruined castle on the cliff top. Overhead, the red moon, a newly born prison for the saher who had just attacked them, added its fiery pink glow to that emitted by Marama’s pale half moon. No one noticed. They were too busy staring at Eave, who quickly spoke again.

‘While I’d love to swap stories, I have a hunch we’d better get to higher ground. Did you leave your rope hanging at the cliff?’ he asked Perry, who nodded. ‘Good. We’d best go over, not through, the cliffs. I think we may encounter danger in the tunnel, due to the earthquake. Quickly now.’

With a cat-like leap, he launched himself off the altar.

‘But— the room below,’ Habsem protested. ‘I’m sure it’s full of valuable historical documents. I must collect them.’

‘Delay at your peril,’ Eave replied. ‘Leave the gear. Let’s go.’

Eave set a fast pace towards the cliff top and the Boy found himself jogging after him obediently, along with everyone except Anselt, who disobeyed the order to leave their gear and detoured the extra couple of steps required to retrieve it. When the woodsman caught up with them he passed the packs around to the others to share the burden. Habsem stuffed the spell book, which he was still carrying, into his pack.

‘Wait a minute,’ Anselt panted, moving alongside Eave, who ran like a cat, with nimble, bounding feet. ‘Why should we trust you? You tried to stop us from coming here a few hours ago.’

‘I was trying to protect you from Raul,’ Eave replied. ‘I knew what he would do to the Boy. I did not know, however, about Marama’s spell. That was a surprise for all of us — including Raul.’

‘Can’t we just stop a minute and discuss all of this?’ the Boy asked, frustrated.

‘No time!’ Eave replied. ‘We must get to the top of the cliff as quickly as we can.’

‘He’s right,’ Elodea spoke for the first time. ‘I can sense danger approaching. Hurry!’

As they approached the crevice that led to the oyster cave they heard a strange, sucking sound. Looking back, the Boy saw by the bright, dual moonlight that the seawater was receding, exposing the sea floor. It was quite a bizarre sight — rocks and seaweed and coral, and fish gasping pathetically as they tossed themselves about on the sand, trying to find water. The water had disappeared from inside the crevice too. The rocky sea floor was covered with a crowded bed of vertical, half-moon shells that, collectively, looked a bit like rocks. Circling around them was a stone dock and walkway that had previously been covered in water.

‘The pearl oysters,’ Habsem said, pausing. ‘And look at that dock — the sea levels must have risen since the moon maiden’s time, because we couldn’t see that before. Perhaps the tide is out?’

‘Should we go down for a closer look?’ the Boy asked.

‘It’s not the tide! There’s no time! Run!’ Eave barked.

Eave doubled his pace, sprinting towards the cliffs. Perry overtook him as they reached the bottom, guiding them to where his rope hung down the cliff side.

‘It is strong enough to support several of us at once,’ Perry said. ‘Climb the cliff-face with your feet and pull yourself up the rope with your hands at the same time.’

His instructions were unnecessary for Arla, who nimbly led the way up the rope as though she had climbed a hundred cliff-faces before, using the gnarly old roots as footholds. Behind her Anselt and the Boy struggled a little, but it was Habsem who found the ascent hardest of all. Looking back down, the Boy could see Perry assisting Habsem, and Eave turning back into a wildcat. The sight made him feel queasy, but seconds later he was a little jealous as Eave expertly scaled the tree roots in cat form, passing them quickly. It appeared that claws and a tail were useful. Elodea stood at the bottom watching them, but making no move to join the climb. Suddenly he realised they had forgotten Bianco.

‘Bianco!’ he cried, and Arla looked back with an unhappy cry.

‘Do not fear!’ Elodea called. ‘I will come last, I am the lightest. You must pull me up, and I will hold the hound.’

Unsure, he exchanged an uncertain look with Arla — just minutes ago Elodea had assisted Raul’s attack against them — but at her nod he continued climbing up the rope.

Arla reached the top first and, after catching her breath, turned and helped the others with the last part of the climb. When they were all up, Elodea secured the rope around her body and took Bianco in her arms. The dog did not look happy, but stayed very still as the others pulled them to the top. At any other time the Boy an amusing sight — the white greyhound was almost as big as the tiny woman — but not this time. The idea of leaving Bianco behind was too much to bear. The two were just cresting the cliff top when a distant, roaring sound became audible.

‘Quickly!’ Eave yelled, a man again — though no one had seen the transformation this time. ‘If there’s time, we should climb the trees at the top.’

Eave chivvied them all up the slope, which continued at a gentler incline. At the highest point, they gathered among the roots of a giant banyan tree, but there was no time to climb it. Racing towards them was an enormous wave, the biggest thing any of them had ever seen. It crashed over the end of the promontory, and the castle, with lightning speed; half a second later pummelling into the cliff top on which they perched with a ferocious, roaring power. Miraculously, it stopped short of the incline on which they stood, and all they felt was the sharp spray generated by the impact of the wave’s collision with the cliff. The Boy felt relief mingled with adrenalin as the wave fell away, receding almost as quickly as it had come. It was an eerie sight in the bright, bright moonlight.

‘What was that?’ Perry asked, wild-eyed. ‘Was it sent by Raul?’

‘No — I think more likely it was a tsunami, generated by the earthquake a few hours ago,’ Eave replied. The companions looked at him blankly.

‘He means that the earthquake must have shaken the sea floor so much it created a giant wave,’ Habsem explained. ‘We are lucky, because we made it up to high ground. I don’t think the cities along the coast will have fared so well.’

Imagining the giant waterwall hitting Quira and Worthing made the Boy shudder. He hoped the damage would not be too great.

‘I thought you or Raul had created the earthquake, to stop us passing through the tunnel,’ he said.

‘Ah, well, I did use the earthquake as cover for a little rock fall,’ Eave admitted. ‘But I did not create the earthquake itself.’

‘Why didn’t you reveal yourself to us and help us?’ the Boy asked. ‘You frightened us half to death! We had no idea how many more wildcats there were in the tunnel.’

‘I wanted to protect you from Raul,’ Eave replied. ‘If he didn’t harm you, at the very least he would try to turn you into one of his pupils, as he had Elodea and I, and I did not want to see that.’

The Boy was confused. The appearance of two of his ancestors at the cliff top — one of them in the company of an evil saher, or sorcerer, and the other initially in animal form, and both presumed dead (one of them by hundreds of years) — was admittedly a bit of a shock. And Eave had been trying to save him from being tutored?

‘I had managed to escape Raul’s tutelage, but Elodea hadn’t,’ Eave explained, with an air of utmost patience. ‘He got his hands on her when she was younger even than you, Branguin. You can see Raul’s imprisonment in the moon has freed Elodea from his enchantment — she is no longer bewitched.’

‘It’s true,’ Elodea said. ‘But before Raul was transformed, I heard Anselt calling my name. It started bringing me back. My old friend.’

She smiled at Anselt, and he blushed, busying himself with lighting a fire to ward off the chill from the wind on their now-damp clothes. The older man placed his hands on the tree, and the Boy wondered if Elodea also knew that Anselt was asking the tree’s permission to light the fire, and thanking it for sheltering them. There were plenty of broken branches scattered about, and as the conversation continued, Perry and Arla helped the Boy and Anselt collect them. Soon they were seated snugly in a natural circle formed by the enormous tree roots, with a fire at the centre.

‘Do you mean you had forgotten us?’ The Boy asked Elodea, who had meanwhile been staring out towards the sea, looking a little shell-shocked. ‘But I saw you in the house in the forest.’

‘Yes, I was drawn there, but I could not remember why. The name Anselt was familiar to me, but I could not place it. Raul must have blocked my memories. I don’t even remember how I met him.’

‘That’s my fault,’ Eave said. ‘At least, I was the one who accidently led him to the house in the forest — and all because I left it in the first place. As a young man I was curious about the tapestries in the house and the story they seemed to tell. All my parents and grandparents could tell me was that we must wait until Marama called us, and then free her from the moon. I left my wife and son — your great grandfather, Elodea — and made my way to Quira, determined to learn what I could about it all, and see if I was the one to free her from the moon. Time got away from me, and before I knew it I had been at the university for twenty years.’

‘I found your manuscript,’ Habsem said. ‘But someone took it from us. Was it you?’

‘That’s right,’ Eave replied. ‘I did not want you to learn anything about me.’

‘The records named you Moon Sweeper,’ the Boy said. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Ask Habsem — he shares the title,’ Eave said, and the professor coloured as Anselt and the Boy turned accusing eyes his way.

‘There wasn’t a chance to tell you,’ Habsem said. ‘Besides, I am sworn to secrecy, as Eave well knows.’

‘Very well,’ Eave laughed. ‘I will spill the beans, since I am no longer in the university’s employ. Moon Sweeper is the title given to those who undertake a secret charge from Dahaka University to try and gather information about their founder, Queen Marama, and try to find ways to set her free from her lunar prison. None of us have been very successful, I might add. I certainly got distracted — Raul discovered my existence and lured me to his island with the promise of teaching me sorcery. He is very convincing, and at the time I thought learning the spells for living forever seemed like a good thing. But Raul never could convince me to tell him where I had come from, though he did suspect I was a descendant of Marama’s.’

‘So how did he find you?’ the Boy asked.

‘I think he was aware that the university wanted to free Marama, though he found it amusing,’ Eave replied. ‘So he kept an eye on the Moon Sweepers’ movements. But it was my eyes that really gave me away, of course. There is almost nobody with yellow eyes in all the land, except for our family. The rest of the Geolwe have been driven into hiding, as we were.’

‘So there are more of us Geolwe?’ the Boy asked, gesturing to his own yellow eyes. ‘Do you mean the Cloud Collectors?’

‘Yes, that’s right, though I have never encountered them. They are hidden away high in the mountains somewhere. I’m not sure even Raul had ever met them — they are notoriously shy of people because they were harmed by them in the past.’

‘Raul has met them,’ Elodea clarified. ‘Though I could never learn much about the meeting from him. He was sensitive about the encounter, but he was proud to be Geolwe. He aped their ways, not eating much and living ascetically.’

‘Do you mean to say that they’re not human?’ Arla asked, surveying the three yellow-eyed companions with a curious expression. ‘I can’t imagine people who don’t need to eat.’

‘Legend has it they live on water, not food, and were here on Kerria eons before people came along. They look very human-like though,’ Elodea answered. ‘In fact they must be human, if our ancestors were able to mingle with the people of Kral when they came to Kerria.’

‘Raul never spoke to me of the Geolwe, so you know more than I,’ Eave said to Elodea, thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if his encounter with them came after my time with him?’

‘More importantly, did Raul tell you why he and Marama were fighting?’ Anselt chipped in, asking the question to which everybody wanted to know the answer. Elodea shook her head helplessly.

‘No, me either,’ Eave said. ‘We did not talk about that until the very end. Because Raul was aware I had been a Moon Sweeper, he knew better than to tackle the subject of Marama with me. Actually I suspect he hoped to win me over to his side with kindness — he was extremely courteous right until the last, when I challenged him about his imprisonment of Marama and asked to learn the spells required to free her. He was unimpressed, to put it mildly. I was lucky to escape with my life — he has a dreadful temper, and was determined to prevent any attempt to free her.’

‘What did he try to do to you?’ Perry asked, although he looked as though he was not truly sure he wanted to know the answer.

‘He’s very good with blasting fire,’ Eave replied. ‘But he had taught me the spells he was using against me, and it wasn’t difficult for me to apply a little creativity to the spells in order to turn them back against him. He’s a rigid thinker, and he didn’t expect that. Elodea, your experience might be different — you knew nothing of Marama, so would have been unable to fall out with him over it?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Elodea replied. ‘— I didn’t even know who Marama was, I’d never even heard her name. I’d seen the tapestries in the old house, of course, though I wasn’t supposed to go in there — Anselt and I used to sneak in together, as children.

‘But because I didn’t know anything about Marama, Raul must have realised I wasn’t much of a threat. I think I reminded him of her, though. He called me Marama once by accident, quite