Page 24 of Magical Moonbeam
“I knew it!” Twobble exclaimed. “He’s alwayssniffingaround before something important.”
“Which,” Nova said, looking over at me with an arched brow, “is exactly why I’m here.”
I tilted my head, intrigued despite the fatigue pulling at my bones. “Because of Skonk?”
“Because of the Moonbeam,” she replied. “Skonk just confirms the timing’s close.”
She pulled out one of the scrolls and unfurled it on the edge of the rug. The ink revealed intricate astrological charts, old notations in languages I didn’t recognize, and a spattering of symbols that shifted if I looked at them too long.
“I’ve been studying the Moonbeam cycles,” Nova said, tapping a date marked in a glowing silver rune. “As we know, they shift slightly every decade, only by a few minutes, sometimes an hour, but the margins change the way the Veils interact. That’s why some years feel more intense than others. Why magic fluctuates. Why some gates open wider than they should.”
“So… do you know when it’ll hit this time?”
Nova leaned back.
“I think we’re close. Within days…six maybe… The last time it hit at this exact angle, there were reports of memory bleed across fae territories. Children seeing versions of themselves that hadn’t been born yet. Entire groves waking up after a century of dormancy.”
I blinked. “That’s… comforting.”
She smirked. “It’s magic. Comfort’s optional.”
Twobble nodded like a professor. “I once saw a goat walk backwards for three hours during a Moonbeam. His horns glowed and everything.”
Nova didn’t even question it.
Instead, she rolled up the scroll and reached for another. “If we’re going to do this, Maeve, we need to be ready. And we need to move fast.”
I nodded slowly. “Do you think Shadowick will feel it too?”
“They always do,” Nova said. “The question is whether they’lluseit.”
That chill crept back into the room, and Twobble yawned loudly.
“Well, if they try anything, we’ll just toss Skonk at them. He’s unpredictable and mildly sticky. A perfect distraction. We just have to find him again.”
I smiled despite the knot forming in my chest. “Thanks, Twob.”
He gave me a mock salute with the remains of his biscuit.
Nova stood and squeezed my shoulder. “Sleep. I’ll wake you if the signs stabilize. We’ll know. The Academy always knows.”
As she left, I watched the fire flicker across the ceiling.
Maybe we were closer than I realized.
Perhaps, this time, we’d step into the Moonbeam on our terms.
Sleep came slower than I’d hoped.
My mind wouldn’t quiet. The teacup on the bedside table had long gone cold, the soft ticking of the enchanted clock marking the passage of a night I wasn’t sure I wanted to cross into.
But eventually, the pull was too strong.
And I slipped under.
Into the fog. Yet it wasn’t the fog of sleep, but the fog of Shadowick.
I stood in the center of town, not in a vision or an echo.
