6. The Death of Dash: In the Time of Indigo Cloud's Return to the Reaches

Moon was warm and buried under the blankets, Jade curled around him, when

someone said quietly, "Jade?"

Jade sat up and leaned over the side of the hanging bed. Still half asleep, Moon shoved himself up to see it was Blossom, standing below the bed.

She looked upset, and there were mud stains on her feet and on the loose pants and shirt she wore, as if she had been out on the garden platforms and shifted without washing her scales first. This was concerning, since Blossom was one of the older teachers and one of the calmest people in the court. She said, "Dash is dead."

Moon snapped completely awake. "What was it?"

Blossom blinked in incomprehension, then shook her head.  "No, nothing like that.  He died in his sleep."

Moon rubbed his face, trying to ease his pounding heart down from the instinctive "something is attacking the court go kill it" reaction.

Jade hissed out a breath and sat back on her heels. "I suppose we should have expected it.  He wasn't getting any better."

Blossom said, "He went out to work in the root gardens with us. Thistle kept telling him not to, but he's been worried about how the redbeets were doing." She sighed. "He went in to take a nap in the teachers' hall, then Merry tried to wake him, and he was gone."

Moon liked Dash. He was a teacher, and very old, but the illnesses that had run through the old colony and the last battle with the Fell there had sapped his strength.  His memory had been fading, too.  He had been one of the Arbora who had accepted Moon's presence in the court completely, though that had mostly been because Dash couldn't remember which consort Moon was or how long he had been here. It had been a nice change, at times.

Blossom told Jade, "I thought you might want to tell Pearl."

Jade frowned. "I think she'd take the news better from you.  Or Stone."

Blossom lifted her brows. "I already told Stone and he said you should tell her."

"Of course he did." Jade considered it, her tail stirring.  "What about Bone?  He could tell her."

Blossom had apparently prepared for this too. "He said you'd say that and

he said no."

Jade hissed and shook out her frills. "She's going to be very upset."

Confused, Moon asked, "Did Pearl like Dash?" It sounded as if they were talking about much worse news than that an old and ill Arbora had died in his sleep.

Blossom said, "Oh, that's right. You don't know-- Dash took care of Pearl when she was a fledgling."

That was a surprise. Moon said, "I didn't know he was that old."

Blossom gave him an odd look.

Jade moved Moon over and disentangled herself from the blankets.  "I'd better tell her.  Putting it off is going to make it worse."

***

They put Dash in the niche next to Flower's in an unused Aeriat level. The mentors no longer knew how to make the wood grow over the openings immediately, but they thought it would happen eventually on its own. Sitting back against the wall of the corridor with Jade, Chime and Balm, Moon didn't sing with the others; he had never felt comfortable with Indigo Cloud's song, even though Opal Night's had been irresistible.

The singing could go on for a long time, and Moon was prepared to sit through it, but Pearl suddenly stopped and turned away.  In the startled silence she whipped out of the corridor so fast that the displaced air overturned a few of the smaller Arbora. Watching her go with a worried frown, Jade drew breath to speak.

And Moon felt Pearl's grief move through the court like a wave. It swelled in his chest for an unbearable instant. Balm and Chime both flinched in unison. It flowed over the warriors and Arbora crowded in the winding corridor and all the attached rooms and passages, causing gasps, startled sobs.

Jade hissed out her breath and Moon felt the sensation fade away. Ember pushed to his feet, shifted, and leapt up the wall to climb along the ceiling, following Pearl. Stone unfolded himself from where he had been sitting with Blossom and Rill and stood. He walked down the corridor as the Arbora and warriors flattened themselves down or climbed into each other's laps to get out of his way.

Jade stood, her spines in a carefully neutral position. The Arbora must have taken that as a sign, because from further back in the corridor, Bell said, "We have food in the teachers' hall." Blossom and Rill started to shoo the nearest warriors and Arbora into movement.

Moon realized he had flattened himself back against the carved wood wall.

Beside him, Chime stirred uneasily and whispered, "I knew she'd be upset, but..."

Balm leaned across Moon to whisper back, "I think this is good. At least she didn't try to pretend it didn't hurt."

"That's true," Chime agreed. "It was much worse when Rain died."

Jade was flicking her spines at them and Moon nudged them both.  "We need to go."

As Moon followed Jade and Chime and Balm down to the teachers' hall, he could still feel the gentle pull of Pearl's grief, echoing through the connections that brought the whole court together through the queens. Moon had felt that connection before, but he thought if this had happened a turn ago he would have been terrified. It was a little terrifying now.

He wondered what Malachite would have made him and everyone else at Opal Night feel, if she hadn't had that steely control over her emotions.

Except for the teachers in the nurseries and the warriors and soldiers on watch, most of the court ended up in the teachers' hall or the bowers adjacent to it. The Arbora started to make tea and Moon sat with everyone and listened to them mourn Dash.

"I'm glad he got to see this place," Rill said. She handed Moon a plate of spiced fruit and he passed it to someone else. "That he saw us settled here."

"And he saw his root cuttings were going to survive," Bramble agreed. "He was worried about that the whole trip here on the flying boats."

Chime leaned over to Moon and said, low-voiced, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." The last thing Moon wanted to do was try to explain how he felt, even to someone as sympathetic as Chime. He knew by now that Raksura had no idea how their queens appeared to outsiders. "Is Pearl all right?"

Jade heard and turned toward them to say, "I sent Blossom up to check. She said Ember and Stone are in her bower with her." With a tilt of her spines that Moon couldn't read, she added, "Some of her warriors are up in the queens' hall, including River." Her eyes narrowed.  "Are you all right?"

Moon drew back.  "I'm fine."  It was something he was going to have to get

used to.