I did not think it unlikely that out of all of Lun's moons, I knew the least about the most amount of things.

When Precept Seram led us somewhere deep down below her classroom and all of us came face to face with a gatekeeper, I seemed to be the only new moon that was not absolutely terrified. Even Tana, her honey brown hair tied up at the crown of her head and her blue stoned necklace on full display, kept her back pressed against the wall.

There was no end to what I didn't know about aura or being a sorceress. For most of my life, my power had felt like some uncontrollable force that could not be controlled, and I had only just begun to feel that I understood it enough that I could explain it to someone.

There was a strange collection of things I did know however that none of the other moons could ever hope to know.

I could tell someone what color underwear at least half of The Mothers wore.

I could tell someone that The Lady in Red had been forbidden from having a child with the one she loved because they would end up with a twinsoul like me and not a one of us ever stayed sane.

I could tell someone that underneath the monstrous mass of tattered fabric that all gatekeepers wore, there was just a person. The sound of clinking chains that happened every time they moved was just the metal restraint that I had seen over the blackened flesh of the man in the medery. The way they moved. . .

Well, the way they moved was still unsettling, my knowledge didn't change that. It was much too smooth and fluid, like the serpents in Mother Gwyn's deepwoods.

The others did not know that, and all of them stayed as far away from the gatekeeper as they possibly could.

I followed behind Precept Seram without a second thought, having been through the gates enough times to not be nervous about the travel.

"Remember, moons. You are always acting as a representation of Lun and The Mother in Blue, but I expect even more from you while we are away, understood?" Precept Seram asked for the third time since class had ended.

"Yes, Precept Seram." We all answered, our voices a little more in time with one another after answering her in the same way so many times.

"Spotless." She said with a clap of her white gloves hands.

There was one major difference between then and all the other times I had seen gatekeepers before.

There were guards, just like there had been in Hymneth.

There had been two at the end of the hall, another two guarding the door, and two more standing in the room with the gatekeeper. Each wore shining silver gauntlets and grieves, a stark white surcoat with a hollow blue circle over their chests, and weapons adorned with deep blue stones on their pommels.

I could not help but wonder if their presence was due to the two attacks that had happened. I had seen the aftermath of the first and briefly heard Underwitch Maletta mention the second.

Who would attack gatekeepers in the first place? It couldn't have been Azeralphane like the man who had his tongue cut out had screamed once it had been healed.

I knew that because Alexei told me so.

Alexei would never, ever, for absolutely any reason, lie to me.

The black gate already filled with the strange swathe of darkness that they always were when they were ready, Precept Seram clapped her hands for the second time and put on an excited smile.

"Who shall be first, Tana?" My pink haired precept asked, looking expectantly at the honey haired underwitch.

Tana hesitated and all of the other new moons were trying their best to not meet Seram's pastel blue eyes.

In that moment of hesitation, I stepped in front of the gate and answer my teacher. "I will, Precept Seram."

When someone had spent as much of their life locked away as I had, going anywhere came with an unreasonable amount of excitement.

When someone had only been dragged away from their life to be punished the way I had, that excitement bubbled up to a dangerous froth at the thought of going somewhere without being in trouble.

When someone had spent as much time with Anna as I had, that excitement came with the cold pain of being away from her.

I had felt very strange when I went down to tell her goodbye. How could it be possible that it had taken hours for me to pry myself away from her and decide that our next kiss would be our last until I returned, but then skip eagerly back up to the class room in anticipation of leaving?

Every part of me had missed her already. I dreaded the thought of not sleeping together, but every part of me had also been dreaming about the familiar place since Plia had told me of it.

"Spotless, Underwitch Ire. Go right ahead and wait for us on the other side." Precept Seram said with a pleased nod.

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling when I saw the annoyed expression on Tana's face. Without letting another moment pass, I left the guards, the gatekeeper, my teacher, the other new moons, Lun Arcanicil, Sam, and Anna behind me as I stepped through the black gate.

There was one thing I could not leave behind however.

Alexei.

My white haired guard was the first thing I saw when I came out on the other side of the gate. He stared at me with his one white eye, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

"I was almost convinced that you would not be able to make yourself leave Lady Anna behind." He said simply.

I covered my eyes against the bright light that blinded them and walked towards him. "Master Alexei, did you just make a joke?"

Before he could answer, I stepped forward and found that there was no ground to meet the bottom of my boot. My weight pitched forward and I felt my stomach flip as I began to plummet off the unseen edge.

Then, just as quickly as I had started to fall, I stopped.

"It is fortunate that I was warned of your clumsiness." I heard Alexei sigh.

My eyes adjusted to the new light and I opened them to see nothing underneath me but water breaking against the stony cliff side I had almost fallen down.

Alexei pulled me back and moved me away from the ledge with no more effort than it would have taken him to move a small child. Both my feet on the ground and my eyes uncovered, he let me go just as Underwitch Mallory came through the gate.

"Oh wow!" She said as she spun a slow spin and took in where we had arrived at. Her brown hair was short, just long enough to reach her sharp jaw, and her lips were full and stretched wide in a dazzling smile.

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I followed her line of sight as she turned, careful to not step off any cliffs that were trying to sneak up on me.

The gate had been placed on the open peak of a small mountain and I had never seen a view that was quite so breathtaking. Not on the roof of the manor in Erosette, not at Rhiannon's mansion, not on the mountainside near Radomir's pass, nowhere.

There was an ocean all around us.

The setting sun that had momentarily blinded me painted it with highlights of burning orange and glittering silver.

We were on an island that looked like it had been fit together by mismatched pieces of other places.

Its right side sloped down into a beach of pure white sand while a dense jungle ran all along its left. There was a hollow in the tangled vines and trees where the ground became red and dry around what looked to be a small lake. We stood on the shorter of the two peaks that stood tall on either end of the island. The other, taller one, had a cover of white smoke that concealed most of what rose above us.

There was so much to look at, so much to make sense of. It was warm like it was in Erosette, much too warm for my uniform without being unpleasantly hot.

Plia appeared from the gate next and fear twisted her face as soon as she did.

"What is that?" She shouted as she pointed one hand up to the sky and hid behind the other.

I whipped my head around to see what she was pointing at and was nearly blown off my feet by a great gust of wind.

The sea salt smelling gust sent Ire's black hair billowing out behind me and a violent shiver down my spine, as I realized that it had not blown in off the ocean that surrounded us.

It had come from the wingbeats of a dragon.

Only, it was nothing like any of the dragons in my mother's stories.

It had no hide of glittering scales. It was not red, green, black or any of the metallic colors either, it was a single shade of pale tarnish, like weathered bone or old parchment.

It's fangs we're not gleaming white. They did not drip with poison or blood. Nor were its claws tipped black or made of steel. Both had been folded, creased, and coiled from the same material that the rest of the creature was made of.

With another beat of its massive wings and another sea salt scented gust sent billowing against me, the dragon opened its maw.

It was then that I understood what I was seeing.

Fire did not come bursting from its mouth. There was no lightning, ice, or cloud of rot either.

It roared a mighty roar and a storm of Snow White confetti rained down over the mountain peak and all I could do was smile in wonder at what I was seeing.

It was nothing like the dragons in my mother's stories, but it was a dragon, a paper dragon, and it was welcoming us to its domain.

And just as it had come, before the thousands of tiny fluttering scraps of paper could settle onto the ground, it spun up into the air and flew into the white smoke of the far peak on wings of animate parchment.

"Did you see that?" Underwitch Mallory asked through a fit of giggles.

"Yes." Plia cried, still hiding behind her hands.

"It was amazing!" Mallory exclaimed.

"It was terrifying." Plia cried again.

In my excitement, I took a quick step towards them. My mind meant to agree with Underwitch Mallory, to tell her that I also thought what we had just seen was amazing, but my mouth could not follow its orders. I pointed toward where it had flown off to and met Underwitch Mallory's eyes in the same moment.

"Dragon!" The word burst from my lips just as the paper creatures confetti had from its maw.

Underwitch Mallory blinked several times before she gave me a single nod. "Right. That was a dragon."

My cheeks grew warm and I turned away from her to hide the fact that it felt like I was dying inside. She already had Tana in her ear, telling her that I was crazy and violent, and I had just failed miserably at trying to speak to her for the first time.

I knew as soon as I did it that I would find nothing there, but I looked to Alexei for some reassurance or comfort.

To my surprise, my usually cold and distant guard actually gave me something.

I had not noticed it when I had arrived to the island because of being blinded and nearly falling to my death, but there was a small bag with a long strap hanging from the end of one of Alexei's swords.

He took it off and offered it to me just as Underwitch Vanda came through the gate.

"Lady Anna did not want to interrupt your class. She sent this with me." He said simply as I took it from him.

"Thank you." I said, unable to keep myself from squeezing the little bag against my chest. It had only been a half a day since I had seen her and my heart already ached.

She would have comforted me after my terrible attempt at talking to Mallory. I knew that like I knew the face I wore was not my own.

I would have opened it and rifled through it the very next moment if Plia had not called out and pointed to something for the second time.

"Is that where we are staying?" She asked aloud, her face no longer hidden behind her hands.

I walked to the edge of the cliff without getting too close to it or the other underwitches, it would be hard to dislike me more if they didn't know I was there, and looked down at where she was pointed.

Standing tall over the lush green jungle that bordered half of it was some sort of pointed structure. I could not make out any details beyond that because of the uncountable strands of white fabric that covered it.

From its top, they spread down in every direction. Over and into the trees, out and across the sandy beach, up the banks of the small river that snaked towards the peak we all stood atop, it looked like some monstrous spider had spun its web and made the center of the island its home.

The dragon's cone of confetti having settled and its wing beaten wind long past, I had begun to sweat in my uniform. I knew that it was not just because of the additional layer of tights that I wore because the other new moons had started shedding their own cloaks and jackets.

If they were doing it, then that meant that I could as well.

By the time Tana, Underwitch Vanda, and Precept Seram came through the black gate and the strange energy that filled it swirled out of existence, I had shed every layer down to my dress. I would have pulled off my boots and stockings if there had been more time. The dusky air was so nice, I might have taken everything off if I was alone. Mother Nami had made sleeping on a beach sound so nice the morning I had mooned her in the little wooden shack that I could not pretend that I was not curious.

"Did we all make it one piece? Answer when I call your name please." Precept Seram began.

I was not the only one that had brought a bag. In fact, I would have been the only one without one if it had not been for Anna and Alexei.

Plia's was not slung over her shoulder like mine was, it was wrapped around her waist like a belt and the bulk of it sat in the small of her back.

When I saw one of its snaps unsnap of its own accord and then some small wax paper wrapped sweet come floating out of it, I whipped my eyes from Precept Seram to Alexei and pointed like the short Underwitch had done with the paper dragon.

My guard looked, saw what I was seeing, and then shrugged.

The sweet floated over the cliff side and out of my sight before I could say a word.

"Underwitch Ire?" Precept Seram said in a tone that told me it was not the first time she had said my name.

"Here!" I answered just a little too loudly.

"Spotless." She said with a clap before stepping to the side and gesturing to a man that was climbing up the last few steps to the peak.

"For those of you who have never been here before, welcome to Silkcradle. I see that Master Fetti-Gami has already made his introduction," The man laughed. He wore no shirt and carried what looked to be an unlit torch in one hand. "The warden of this island has had to step away for the time being, but I will guide you down to where you will be staying. Do not wander off the trail. All of you are safe here, but misunderstandings can happen."

"Can you be the warden of my island?" Underwitch Mallory called out.

Precept Seram let her shoulders sag as she let out a sad sounding sigh. "Honestly, Underwitch Mallory. The sun has yet to set and you are already falling into vulgarity."

Once all of Lun's new moons stopped laughing, myself included, the man spoke again.

The man continued. "Also, if any of you notice that you are missing something or that your things have been gone through, please let me know."

Plia's bag, the wrapped sweet, the impossible way it had floated away under its own power, I had just witnessed exactly what he was asking to be warned of.

It was a shame that I had already embarrassed myself enough for one day. What would the others think of me if I started shouting about floating candy and animate bags?

The man would have to wait until I could tell him without being overheard.

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