Midnightstar (Creatures of the Lands Book 5) Read online

  Midnightstar

  Creatures of the Lands: Part V

  Natalie Erin

  Contents

  Other Books by Gryfyn Publishing

  1. Chapter One

  2. Chapter Two

  3. Chapter Three

  4. Chapter Four

  5. Chapter Five

  6. Chapter Six

  7. Chapter Seven

  8. Chapter Eight

  9. Chapter Nine

  10. Chapter Ten

  11. Chapter Eleven

  12. Chapter Twelve

  13. Chapter Thirteen

  14. Chapter Fourteen

  15. Chapter Fifteen

  16. Chapter Sixteen

  17. Chapter Seventeen

  18. Afterward

  Acknowledgments

  The Witch’s Curse

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Natalie Erin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The reproduction or utilization of this work in part of in whole including xerography, recording and photocopying is strictly forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Erin, Natalie

  Midnightstar / natalie erin

  Summary: Midnightstar finds herself slipping into insanity as she struggles to understand the horrors of war and her newfound identity as a skygazer.

  BISAC Category: Young Adult/Fantasy

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed in the USA by Gryfyn Publishing

  For information about custom editions, special sales, ARCs, and premium and corporate purchases, please contact Gryfyn Publishing at [email protected]

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Other Books by Gryfyn Publishing

  Alora by Megan Linski

  These Starcrossed Lives of Ours by Megan Linski

  The Rhodi Saga

  Rhodi’s Light by Megan Linski

  Rhodi Rising by Megan Linski

  Rhodi’s Lullaby by Megan Linski

  The Kingdom Saga

  Kingdom from Ashes by Megan Linski

  Fallen From Ashes by Megan Linski

  Redemption From Ashes by Megan Linski

  Prince of Fire by Megan Linski

  BOUNCING ON THE MOON

  This life we lead

  Is little more than a lie

  The sun simply reflects

  And the moon doesn’t shine

  The rings in space

  Are an illusion of rock

  And they just spin

  Like a timeless clock

  Waves topple over

  Grains of lost sand

  No longer cared for

  By this false land

  The earth we walk on

  Is no more than dirt

  Dropped there forever

  Like a lost skirt

  We bounce around

  Lost in this time

  That is not yours

  And is not mine

  We jump off the moon

  And land among the stars

  But those bright lights

  Aren’t even ours

  We are forced to see

  Every detail of life

  But none of it exists

  Except for the strife

  God says he can save us

  In all of his scriptures

  But upon this Earth

  Is only fake pictures

  The smiles on faces

  And the hope inside eyes

  Are simply more disguises

  And pretty little lies

  We go on hoping

  It gets better from here

  And maybe it will

  If only we make it there

  Bouncing on the moon

  A sport so easy to enjoy

  For a lost little girl

  And a broken hearted boy

  Find joy in the lies

  Find pain in the truth

  That’s the way we live

  When we are all youth.

  Krisen Grace Lison

  Chapter One

  Seeing Strange Things

  “Midnightstar!”

  Midnightstar ran, her breaths coming in labored gasps, heart pounding with each step of her paw.

  “Midnightstar!”

  “I’m coming!” the she-wolf yelled, forcing herself to run faster as she whirled past trees that were changing color, going from blue to pink to red in a dazzling, spectacular array.

  This was so confusing…this was all very confusing! Her world was in black and white...why did she see things the way they were now, in a rainbow of nausea inducing colors, a rampage of vibrant shapes that bent and twisted as she went?

  The trees furrowed underground and came up again like moles, nosing her feet and kicking her with their roots so she would go faster. “Stop it! Leave me alone!” Midnightstar cried.

  Seemingly on command, the trees laid down and the wood became a road, which writhed beneath her paws until she was stepping on piles of worms.

  “Ugh!” she yelled in disgust, and she extended her strides in an attempt to escape the wrigglers. The worms crawled into one massive, giant mound, and soon that mound became a mountain…and Midnightstar was standing on top of it, looking down upon the Lands and all their glory.

  “Why am I up here?” Midnightstar murmured. She peered below, trying to see what path she should take, but nothing called out to her. Her ears pricked and she heard a happy voice singing a cheerful tune from inside the mountain, echoing out of a cave. Curious, Midnightstar padded to the entrance, where she dove in nose first to find the source of the noise.

  “You seek answers,

  Have them I do!

  You have questions,

  I’ve got a few!”

  Midnightstar peeked her head around the corner. Her eyes widened as she saw a horrid animal dancing wickedly on its hind legs around a small flame in the center of the cave. The creature appeared to be a combination of several animals. It was some sort of doggish reptile, one with crooked teeth, long claws and a scaly, yet furry, exterior.

  “You don’t know who you are,

  I don’t know who I am too!

  You’d better come to find me,

  Time’s running out on you!”

  The creature threw multiple items into the fire as she danced. First, she threw in the body of a wolf, then the body of a unicorn, then mushrooms and tree roots and flowers and all sorts of plants. Lastly, she pitched in a shimmering diamond tiara, with two tangled necklaces.

  Once the necklaces hit the flame, the fire exploded. Midnightstar leapt back as she saw all the people she knew in the fire, submerged within the flame. There was Kia and Keota, her siblings and parents, Kennu and Allie, Ionan, Vera and all the rest...the fire turned white, then purple, then blue with each display of a different face.

  “Burn, burn, burn!!!” the creature screamed, laughing before continuing her song.

  “Nagli does as Nagli will,

  come talk to the bones, they’re quite a thrill,

  fight the Despondent, chase it out,

  or end up dead, and Nagli will pout.”

  Terrified, Midnightstar ran. But her legs wouldn’t listen to her directions...they ran straigh
t through the cave and right into the fire! Her flesh was burning, melting, slinking off her bones and the creature was laughing maniacally in the background…

  She was standing by a pool, memory of the fire wiped clean. The cave around her was dark and gloomy, and nothing shone except the sparkling blue water that cast off an eerie glow upon the walls.

  The white spots upon her back started to glow, like the eyes of Allie and Kennu did when they prophesied. Midnightstar had no doubt that her eyes were glowing, too. She peered into the pond to see if her assumption was true, and gasped as she did so. Nothing showed in her refection but her eyes, and the spots on her back. It looked as if the stars themselves floated within the water.

  “I have no reflection. I have no face,” she whispered. “No reflection, no face, no reflection, no face…”

  “Midnightstar!”

  The black she-wolf jolted out of her vision, shaking her head and blinking rapidly. “What?”

  “You’re spacing out again,” Rabika whined, her gray fur standing on end as the scar on her face contorted in a growl. “That’s the third time today.”

  Midnightstar shook her head once more. “I’m sorry Rabika, I was…thinking,” she said in response, rubbing her head with her paw.

  “You seem to be doing that a lot lately,” Rabika snapped back. “Why don’t you keep your eyes on the road, since you’re supposed to know where we’re going?”

  “Of course, Rabika. Thank you for reminding me.” Midnightstar nodded politely.

  The wolf growled, saying, “Next time somebody has to scout ahead, I’m going instead of Tatl. He can stick behind with you and try to get your head out of the clouds.”

  A tiny red she-wolf piped up behind her, saying, “Don’t blame Mids! She’s just thinking about how we’re going to the Assembly of the Lands!”

  Thank the Creator for little Adelaide. “Yes, Rabika, exactly,” Midnightstar added. “I have to backtrack in my head where exactly I was taken when I was a pup. That’s where the Assembly of the Lands will be, I’m sure.”

  “Didn’t seem like you were remembering to me,” Rabika growled, but she pursued the argument no more. She and Adelaide continued ahead, leaving Midnightstar behind. Midnightstar cringed, though inwardly, she breathed a sigh of relief. She hated lying, but it seemed like it was the only way to get her friends off her back about her daydreaming. Little did they know, it wasn’t really daydreaming at all.

  Ever since she’d left her pack behind on that dark night several weeks ago, Midnightstar had begun to see things. It had first started in dreams, strange nightmares prowling in her sleep, but then the visions continued, and began to haunt her even when she was awake.

  And always, there were voices everywhere. Voices calling to her, voices crooning at the back of her head telling her to listen to them, to turn around, that they were right behind her. Every so often she felt taps on her shoulder, only to turn around and find nobody there. Her sight constantly faded in and out of reality, so much so that Midnightstar sometimes couldn’t tell what was real and what was fake. It was as if she was walking between two worlds. Her head was floating upon air, but her body was stuck on the ground. It made for some very sick experiences.

  Midnightstar couldn’t let any of her fellow travelers know that she was insane. They were already following her on a crazy mission...what would they do if they knew that their leader was going mad? The only thing she could hope for was that she could retain her sanity until the war between the wolves and the unicorns finally ended. The rest, such as stopping Wyntier for good, would have to be everyone else’s responsibility. It was a miracle she had managed to keep her sight hidden from everyone for this long.

  “Having another vision?” a long, serpentine dragon asked, the blue fur on his back flowing over his white scales as he slunk down from the trees above her.

  Kept her sight hidden from everybody except Xiuhcoatl, of course.

  “Will you just keep quiet? They don’t have to know,” Midnightstar hissed.

  “I never said they had to know. All I did was ask if you had another one,” he responded. He wasn’t much larger than she was, only around her size, though he was just past his teenage years. Save for Mirabelle, she’d never seen such a little dragon, though that didn’t make him any less of a nuisance.

  “Yes. Why do you want to know?”

  “I want to help,” he offered, floating along the ground.

  “You could never help. You don’t know what’s going on. None of us do.” Puny, slinky thing who hasn’t even grown his wings out yet, she thought.

  “Oh, come on. Just tell me what you see.”

  The thought of relaying her ridiculous visions to another was mortifying. “I don’t even know how you figured out I was having these visions in the first place,” she said.

  “A dragon’s intuition.”

  “You dragons and your silly intuition.”

  “It’s never wrong,” Xiuh boasted.

  “Well then, if you’ve got such good instincts, why don’t you tell us which way to go?”

  Rabika and Adelaide overheard this. The other two wolves turned around to look at him.

  Xiuh’s face fell. “I...uh…”

  “I thought so.”

  “Pardon me if I ask this, Mids, but where exactly are we going?” Adelaide asked, looking at her with big, warm eyes.

  “Yes dearest, where are we headed? You haven’t managed to tell us the details of your plan,” Rabika put in, licking her paw.

  Midnightstar swallowed. “I told you. We’re going to the Assembly to convince them to come back and stop the unicorn war.”

  “Yes, I know that, but do you have a plan on how you’re going to persuade them to help?” Rabika pressed.

  “You always have to have a plan, Rabika. Can’t we just take it as it goes?” Adelaide said, waving her paw at her sister.

  “It does help to know what you’re doing,” Midnightstar said quietly, letting herself succumb to Rabika’s stern gaze.

  “Even if we do manage to make them come with us, you think those nags are going to listen to a bunch of old animals telling them what to do? As if,” Rabika barked.

  “Of course they will!” Adelaide said defensively, and Midnightstar felt a flush of embarrassment rise up in her coat. “All it will take is a sensible voice in the process, and the unicorns will simply stop fighting us. Everything will be fine once we all talk it out.”

  Midnightstar had to stop herself from yelling at Adelaide. She loved the little wolf with all her heart, and always made sure to defend her against Rabika’s murmurings, but she was simply too innocent. In all honesty, Midnightstar admitted to herself that she was worried. Something as sweet as Adelaide’s naivety could get her, and the rest of them, killed out here.

  Midnightstar squashed her annoyance at Adelaide and turned it around on Rabika. “What exactly else is there to do, Rabika? We either keep pressing on and try it my way, or we go back. What’s left back home? Nothing.”

  “There are friends back home. And family and meat and home,” Adelaide added. “And all those things are very fine.”

  “There won’t be a home if we turn around,” Midnightstar insisted. “Everybody will be gored by a horn. If unicorns don’t kill our pack, the Second Despondent will. Look around, you two! Food is hard to find.”

  “It would be easier to find if we knew the land we were hunting on,” Rabika grumbled.

  “You guys want to leave, go ahead, but I’m still heading north.”

  Midnightstar kept walking. “I’m with her,” Xiuh added, following her lead.

  “You’re just afraid of facing everyone after you come back with nothing,” Rabika spat, scraping her nails against the dirt.

  Midnightstar almost stopped, but instead of retaliating, she simply brushed Rabika’s comment off her shoulder coolly. “If it was a question of my cowardice, Rabika, I would’ve never left the cave in the first place.”

  Midnightstar knew obedient Adelaid
e would follow her anywhere, and there was no way that Rabika would leave her fluffy-headed little sister out here alone. She would come. Midnightstar was so sure, in fact, that she didn’t even look back.

  Sure enough, the crackling of branches as Adelaide clumsily tripped over them proved enough evidence that Midnightstar wasn’t leaving them behind.

  “You handled that last insult from Rabika well,” Xiuh said, walking by her side. “How did you manage to do that? Aren’t you afraid of looking like a fool?”

  “The only thing I fear is losing the ones that I love, dragon. The rest doesn’t matter to me,” Midnightstar said.

  “I don’t understand accepting her insult. But I guess dragons are very prideful,” Xiuh shrugged. “And even if we weren’t, I wouldn’t have put up with that last comment. She’s been giving you trouble for the past few days.”

  Midnightstar sighed. “You have to understand her, dragon. Rabika hates having nothing to do, and so far, our mission is leading us nowhere. If she had a task besides walking, she wouldn’t be acting this way. I honestly don’t know where we’re going, only that the Assembly is in the general direction of the Ice Borns. This trip wasn’t very well planned. One of the reasons why I wanted to go alone.”

  “Why do you keep calling me ‘dragon?’” Xiuh asked, putting his head down to look her in the eye.

  Midnightstar paid no attention to him. “Because that’s what you are to me. It may seem cruel, but I confess that I don’t want to get close to anyone else. I appreciate your help on this journey, though I’m wondering...”

  “Yes?” Xiuh pursued.

  Midnightstar looked at him now. “Why did you come? You don’t know me, nor does a dragon have anything to do with a war between wolves and unicorns. Your place isn’t here.”

  “I have to argue that,” Xiuh said. “After all, I’m just like you. There’s nowhere else for me to go. Back to the desert? My sister has a new family now, and my mother has chased me out of the nest.”