Warmoon [ONC 2020]•[Shortlisted]•[Honorable Mention List, Stunning Worlds]

11. Astrarium

It was the silence that woke her, an absence of something that had become such a constant she had forgotten what the lack of it sounded like.

The rain had stopped.

Surprised, Rhoa sat up and opened her window, ignoring the cold as she looked out into a dull, dingy sunrise. A fat drop of water splashed on the top of her head, but only one, and it came from the gable above her. Heavy clouds still scudded across the sky, but they weren't pouring water on everything anymore, leaving surfaces glistening in the light of a watery dawn. It was almost pretty, and the birds were beginning their dawn chorus, their songs clear and crisp for the first time in weeks.

A smile tugged at Rhoa's mouth and she closed her eyes, basking in the unexpected peace for a moment. She had actually gotten decent sleep. No one had attacked during the night, and neither Gran nor Orla had woken her, which hopefully meant Phane wasn't worse.

Thought of Phane had her hurrying out of bed and into her clothes. There was too much to be done to be sitting around appreciating birdsong. She took the stairs down to the second floor two at a time, then ducked into the sickroom.

Orla was sitting by Phane's cot, sponging Phane's forehead with a wet cloth.

The sight of her laughing whirlwind of a brother lying there, silent, motionless and sallow, was almost more disturbing than if he had been covered in blood, and Rhoa had to steel herself as she tiptoed all the way in.

"He's still breathing," Orla whispered, glancing up at her. "Gran managed to get a little of Tettony's honey broth into him earlier, but he didn't keep it down."

Rhoa nodded and crossed her arms over her chest. With only a year between them, Phane had been the one dragging her off into adventures and trouble when they were children, and the one training alongside her as they got older. He was always finding ways to make everyone laugh, always smoothing feathers, always learning new things. He couldn't just die. He was too alive.

Yet there he was, draining away into fevered oblivion, and there wasn't anything any of them could do but hope and wait.

Throat tight, Rhoa nodded again. "Well... Let me know if he gets worse," she managed. "And thank you. For taking care of him," she added. "Its a great help. I um... I have to... go..." she frowned and turned abruptly, heading for the door.

She got halfway down the stairs to the kitchen before the tears hit, searing her throat, bowing her shoulders and stealing her breath. There wasn't time for that either, though. Baring her teeth, she shoved her fear back down, swallowed her sobs, and forced herself to keep moving.

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The fireplace in her father's study was usually alight, a merry blaze lending some warmth to the otherwise austere room. Without it, his great antler-legged chair looked a bit like some sort of lonely, hairy, hunch-backed monster looming in the shadows by the hearth.

Stifling a shiver, Rhoa walked swiftly to his desk, trying not to feel like she was ten years old and about to get a scolding as she fetched a key from its hidden compartment in the top drawer. Her real objective wasn't in his study, but in the room beyond - which really would have gotten her a scolding if she had tried to sneak in there at the age of ten.

The Keeper's timetable was in her father's Astrarium, though. Yesterday, her mother had been the one copying out the day's chore lists and deadlines from the calculations her father had done. Now that job fell to Rhoa, so into the Astrarium she must to go.

Still, when she reached the arched double door at the far end of the study, she hesitated, half expecting her father to pop out of a corner somewhere to send her scurrying back to her lessons. Rolling her eyes at her own reaction, she pushed the door open just enough for her slender frame and slipped inside.

The quiet whir of well-tuned gears greeted her, along with the smell of fine machine oil and ancient leather book bindings. Three walls were lined with a honeycomb library full of scrolls and parchment tubes. The third wall was a bank of diamond-paned windows that let in feeble rays of morning light. Suspended from the ceiling two stories above her head, the massive system of cogs, pulleys, weights, counterweights and pendulums ticked away seconds and rotations of the earth, while on the floor, a series of thirteen bronze and copper dials displayed precisely when the phases of the Warmoon would occur across the different sectors of New Homeland.

It was a familiar, but awe-inspiring sight that always made Rhoa wonder what sort of person could have come up with all of it. She didn't have time to trace the elegant movements going on up there, however, and instead hurried to the podium next to the dials.

The timetable lay spread out over the blotting mat, pinned down with a pen knife and a piece of Keeper's stone. It took all of a minute for Rhoa to jot the day's adjusted schedule onto a curl of parchment. Then she stared at what she had just written.

The Warmoon was going to crest in less than eight hours. She had barely seven hours to finish mudding the rest of the tower.

Her stomach hollowed out.

Her parents might return in seven hours. It was possible.

It was also possible that they wouldn't.

If they didn't, there would only be seven hours before Phane, Sarrie, Gran, and everyone in Ardusk either lived or died if she didn't get things right.

Taking a deep breath, Rhoa collected her scrap of parchment, and strode out of the Astrarium, locking the door behind her.

Some birthday this was turning out to be.

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