Shadows of the Dark Crystal

GROSSET & DUNLAP

Penguin Young Readers Group

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
eBook
ISBN 978-0-399-53980-0

Special
fala vam
to Claire; to Kate and Kathryn; to my mom for raising me as an artist and a dreamer; to my dad for making me watch a scary puppet movie at an impressionable age
—J. M. Lee
For K. G.
—Cory Godbey

At first, there was silence . . .
and then the song began.
The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths

T
he visitor appeared in the early morning, before the Great Sun had reached its summit in the pale blue sky.

Naia watched from the cooler canopy of the great tangled apeknot trees. At first, she put her hand to her rock-and-rope
bola
, but paused when the visitor hesitated to shed her cloak, which was heavy with mud and algae. Beneath the hood, Naia saw a stern-faced Gelfling woman with long silver hair. What was a Vapra doing so deep in the Swamp of Sog? It was peculiar—maybe even suspicious—yet Naia felt no fearful quickening of her heart, and her hand dropped away from her
bola
. All around, the Swamp of Sog stretched and yawned for morning, the droning of buzzers and chirruping of climbers
crik-crik
ing in harmony with the great song of the world. Watching the visitor, Naia took a sour alfen fruit from her waist-pouch and munched on it in thought.

“She must have come a long way,” Naia murmured. Her companion, Neech, coiled in her vine-like hair, gave only a quiet burble in response, burying his head further in her dreadlocks. As the visitor resumed her journey, Naia balanced the alfen fruit's smooth knuckle-size pit between two ridges of apeknot bark. A quick flick of her finger sent the pit tumbling down through the spirals and twists of the tree's bark, disappearing into the depths
of the gnarled trees. Then she followed, another flicker within the kaleidoscope of canopy shadows.

The stranger spent the afternoon traveling toward the heart of the swamp. Once or twice, Naia thought about running ahead to alert her village, but she worried she might lose the visitor to quicksand or any number of hungry swamp creatures. An alternative would be to make herself known and offer help, but strangers were called
strange
for a reason. Confronting an outsider in the depths of the swamp might be just as dangerous to Naia as a swamp creature might be to the Vapra.

What would have taken Naia a few hours on her own became an all-day trek. Just as the sky began to dim, the dense apeknots gave way to a circular clearing where the trees were huge and ancient, lovingly maintained by Gelfling hands. They'd reached the home of the Drenchen clan. Naia looked from the system of boardwalks that floated on the swamp floor between the apeknots to her village above. Lattice walkways and walking-ropes connected buildings carved into the crooks of the enormous trees to those hanging from thick pendulums. A whole world suspended above the swamp.

While the visitor, shining with sweat and bruises and buzzer bites, paused to catch her breath at the Glenfoot, Naia made haste toward the heart of the village. She leaped from a branch to the closest walking-rope, gripping with her bare toes as she dashed along it. At the center of the glen loomed Great Smerth, the oldest tree in the swamp, in which her family had lived for generations. Winding walkways circled its enormous trunk, studded by
circle-shaped entryways and windows decorated with lush flowers and thick, dangling vines.

She took a flying leap, clearing half a dozen paces and landing with a calculated
ka-thump!
on the outer landing balcony. The wingless landing made her sound like a boy, but it was unavoidable. She didn't have time for grace, anyway. As she shouldered through the doorway, her footsteps echoed against the golden heartwood of the rounded hall within. Friendly faces met her on the way, but she had no time to return their greetings now.

“Mother!”

Neech gave a tiny chirp of relief and fluffed the fur around his neck into place as Naia entered, breathless, into her family's chamber. Her mother, swathed in an embroidered cloth of deep turquoise and gold, was seated on a small stool, while Naia's two younger sisters wound beads and colored string into her thick locs. Maudra Laesid looked every bit the
maudra
of the Drenchen clan, her kind face patient with wisdom and young with laughter. The spots that dappled her clay-colored skin reflected the spring green in the light, and her wings shimmered like a beautiful cloak of indigo and turquoise. In her hands rested a fledgling muski, only half the size of Neech. It was ailing from a small cut that broke its slick black skin.

“Ah, Naia, good evening!” said Laesid. “You missed lunch, though I suppose you're in time for supper.”

“An outsider,” Naia said. She plucked a damp cloth from the basin near where her sisters were tending to their mother, swabbing swamp mist off her cheeks with it. Her sisters gave her
a tilted look, and she realized she hadn't begun at the beginning. “This morning, on my watch. I saw an outsider enter the swamp. She's here now, at the Glenfoot. She seems a Vapra—a Silverling, fair of hair and face. Mother, did you call for the All-Maudra?”

“No,” Laesid said. She had not looked up from the baby eel where she held it gently in one hand, waving the other above it in a slow, circular motion. Her fingers shone with a gentle blue gathering light as if it were a palmful of crystal water. By the time the
maudra
withdrew her hand, the cut had closed and the puffiness had receded, leaving the eel to chirp in thanks before flitting away out the window.

Eliona, the
maudra
's middling daughter, stood and perked her ears up with any excitement their mother failed to express. “An outsider!” she exclaimed. “From the Ha'rar? Has she brought gifts from the All-Maudra?”

“If she has, they're heavy with mud by now.” Naia snorted. “She took the low way. It took all day, Mother! Haven't Silverlings any sense in the swamp?”

“No, they don't have swamps on the Vapran coast,” Laesid replied wryly. “You could have helped her, you know. It would have helped you, too.”

Naia pressed her lips together, crossing her arms and choosing not to respond to the light scolding. Her mother always seemed to have a better solution on the tip of her tongue, no matter how much thought Naia put into her decisions. That was what being the
maudra
was all about, after all—and Naia wasn't
maudra
yet.

“Anyway, what shall we do?”

“If she was in fact sent by the All-Maudra, we had better greet her, and sooner better than later. Meet her at the Glenfoot. Pemma, summon your father, have him join Naia and our visitor. I'll see her in my chamber if she calls for it.”

As Pemma, the youngest, scampered out to fetch their father, Laesid reached to the floor and grasped her crutch, leaning on it to pull herself up. Naia dried her face with her sleeve. She was unsure about greeting the visitor alone, and although she was too old for a child minder, she was secretly glad that her father would be there. There was something about the Vapra's arrival that was causing a worming feeling in Naia's gut.

“Mother,” she said, quieting her voice. “Could this be about Gurjin?”

Maudra Laesid shrugged, raising an open hand with no answers in it.

“Not everything is about your brother, my dear,” she replied, but her voice sounded uneasy, and the salt in it fed the worm in Naia's stomach.

“The last time a Silverling came—” she began.

“And not every messenger from the All-Maudra is here to take your family away,” Laesid finished. “Now go on, don't keep our visitor waiting. Show me your skill with formalities. Invite her to sup, and we'll see what all this huff-puff is about.”

Naia kept her mouth shut, unsure how to explain what she was truly feeling. When Gurjin had first been sworn into service at the Castle of the Crystal, Naia had been filled with resentment and envy. Though she and her brother were precisely the same age,
same in skill and will, their fates were different. His was to respond to the summons while she remained in Sog to apprentice to her mother. It was the duty of the eldest daughter, after all. That was the way it had always been. Naia had since come to accept it, but it didn't stop her from hoping that one day a soldier would arrive to summon her to leave the swamp as well. Her mother, however, seemed to know better.

Swallowing her pride, Naia took the Stone's Way: a long, twisting tunnel down to the foot of Great Smerth. She ignored the careful glances and smiles from the men and children in the winding passage as she hurried by. She worried about what they might be thinking; even Eliona's wings had bloomed, and she was one trine younger . . . Naia pushed the self-conscious thoughts out of mind. It was only a matter of time, her mother had told her:
Coming of age is a journey, not a destination
.

The Great Sun had long been at full height, its red brother peeking just along the border of the visible sky and warming the glen and shining on the pensive faces of the Drenchen scattered across the walkways and rope bridges. Above and around, Naia's clanfolk whispered, gray and green and brown faces peering out their carved windows at the exhausted traveler resting against the knees of a nearby root. Naia approached and took the closer look she hadn't been afforded earlier in the day. Unlike the sturdy Drenchen, the visitor was as skinny as a stick, with a narrow face and high, soft cheekbones. Where Naia's thick locs were bound in twists and ropes of black and green, the Silverling woman's hair hung in sad sheets of pale lavender, and though she had a proud,
even brow and the posture of an adult, it would be easy to lift her with a hand and toss her back into the swamp through which she'd come.

“Hello,” Naia called as she approached. Startled by her voice, the visitor's ears flicked toward her like delicate white cup-flowers.

“Hello,” she replied. She spoke with an accent, shaping the word a bit sharper and shorter. Despite her weariness, she stood and did a quick, formal bow, holding the carved, unamoth-shaped brooch at the neck of her cloak.

“Perhaps you can assist me. I am Tavra of Ha'rar. I'm hoping I might ask the inconvenience of your clan's hospitality—if I could speak with your
maudra . . .”

When Tavra trailed off, Naia realized she was done speaking, even if she hadn't finished her sentence, letting Naia guess the rest instead of saying it out loud. Naia tongued her teeth and took on a relaxed posture while still holding her chin up, a pose that was well practiced.

“The
maudra
is my mother, and I am her eldest daughter. You may speak with me in her place.”

A look of relief passed over Tavra's long face, though her eyes still watched Naia the way she might look at a wild Nebrie, wondering whether it was dangerous or not. Was that what outsiders thought of the Drenchen? The look, and whatever words Tavra was about to utter, flitted away when Naia's father joined them. Bellanji was stout and heavy, with the locs of his great beard wound with string and beads, a spear held loosely in his hand as a formality that might befit the role of husband to the
maudra
.

“Hello there!” Bellanji said in his big voice. “Naia! I thought I asked you to clean your catches before bringing them to the supper table!” Then he let out a big laugh, mostly at Tavra's expense, and Naia felt a little smile prick the corners of her mouth.

“Father, this is Tavra,” she said. “Of Ha'rar.”

Bellanji raised one thick black brow.

“Ha'rar, eh?” he said. “Did the All-Maudra send you? Or maybe you're one of her daughters! How many of them are there now? No fewer than sixty-four, I'm sure.”

Tavra's cheeks were so pale that they turned pink, and she raised a hand.

“I am merely a traveler who happens to hail from the home of the Gelfling All-Maudra,” she said. “I have long since heard of the sights and . . . smells . . . of the Swamp of Sog. I was hoping I might ask the inconvenience of your hospitality, that I might witness all you have here for myself.”

Bellanji waited, allowing his daughter to do the decision making, though she was not
maudra
yet. Naia let the talk fall quiet, sensing something riding below Tavra's words. There was much the Vapra wasn't saying, but so far as Naia's instinct could tell, it was nothing more dangerous than the Drenchen clan could take care of, should trouble arise. Resolved, at least for now, she gave her father a decisive nod. His smile returned, and he stomped the butt of his spear on the boardwalk before striding away.

“Well then, we'll all witness something either way, won't we?” he said over his shoulder. “Naia, find Tavra of Ha'rar a place from which she might enjoy our hospitality. She may stay as long as she
likes—and tonight at sup, she can enjoy the sights and smells she's so longed for!”

Though Tavra's request had been granted, the look on her face was hardly enthusiastic.