A Nearer Moon Read Online Free Page A

and the birds and the bugs are as friendly as could be.”
    Mother clucked her tongue. “You know the answer to that, Perdita. Whether they will it or not, as the humans grow, we ebb. There was a time when we were friends with the humans, when we did not hide ourselves from them and we shared our magic with them. Before they dug down in the earth and brought the deepest, darkest metals out to taste the air, to poison everything they touched.
    â€œNow this world cannot hold us both. If we wait too long, we may not have enough strength to make a door at all. We may not ever be able to leave. As it is, we can only make the one door, and hold the space between worlds open for a few minutes.”
    Perdy’s lips pursed together. Gia took a knot of her hair, unwound it, and wound it back up with a sprig of flowering vine tucked between the plaits.
    â€œYou’ll see,” Mother assured her. “The fish will be just as friendly, and the waves just as fresh in the new world the door makers find for us.”
    â€œAnd we’ll be together,” Gia said. “That’s all thatmatters. When we get to this new place, I’ll help you map our new stream. I’ll go with you to learn the rhythm of the new rapids and the taste of the new lake. It will be an adventure—just what you love best. You’ll see.”

    But still Perdy was uneasy. So she decided to craft a thing to take with them so they never really had to leave this place behind. One for her, and one for Gia.
    Perdy wove a pair of coronets out of burnished fig roots. Into the wood she set crystals from the mountain streams, agates from the salty mudflats, and iridescent snail shells that glowed with the memory of the deepest depths of the lake. Every night, while they listened to the chanting of the door makers, Perdy wound a new treasure into the coronets. Every morning she emptied her pockets and set out again to search for that one last piece.
    â€œPerdy, will you stop this wandering?” Gia pleaded. “You heard Mother. The door will open and close any day now. You have to be here when it does.”
    â€œI can skate all the way from the lake and back faster than you can blink. There’s no way I’ll miss it.”
    â€œQuit being so stubborn!”
    â€œQuit being such a worrier!”
    Gia stomped away. She didn’t understand what itwas that called her sister away again and again, farther and farther from home. But there was no stopping Perdy, so Gia set out to find a way to bring her back again if she ever went too far.
    She studied, and she listened, and she worked at the curious tangle of sprite magic. Gia watched the hands of the door makers and counted the phrases that passed through their lips as they fashioned the door in the air and probed the worlds beyond.
    Perdy had no interest in such a still task; she had no discipline to work at a tangle that did not easily come loose in her fingers. But Gia was a patient soul. She wasn’t looking for the same kind of magic the door makers worked. What she needed to know, what she wanted to master, was the coming home, the calling to the nest kind of magic.
    The door makers were too busy at their task to teach what they knew—there would be time for that in the next world, they said. So Gia had to work it out on her own. First, she spelled a leaf so she could drop it anywhere in the stream and it would find its way back to the sandy spot where she waited. Next, she magicked a beetle to come whenever she called from wherever she called.
    But it is one thing to cast one’s will over a leaf or a bug; it is another to compel a creature with a mind of herown. What Gia needed was something even stronger, a magic powerful enough to carry her sister back to her. She cast around herself for the things of this world that she knew. She settled on the reeds that grew in the shallows of the river, that grew tall despite the freshwater crabs that tunneled