The Mangrove Maze of Moon-Moths
The pirate sloop burst from the mist just after sunset.
“Viran’s men,” Kalinga said, spotting the black sail. “They found us.”
The Sun-Skimmer could never outrun them in open water. Kalinga steered toward a wall of mangroves, where silver roots twisted into a hundred narrow channels.
Tara stared at him. “That is not an escape route. That is a bowl of wet noodles.”
“Pirate ships hate noodles.”
Their mast scraped branches as the mangroves swallowed them. The sloop stopped outside, but three pirate dinghies slipped in after them, lanterns bobbing through the roots.
Then pale moths floated from the leaves. They gathered above one channel until it shone like a moonlit road.
“Helpful insects!” Kalinga said, turning after them.
At the next fork, the moths split between six passages. Pirate lanterns glowed behind every one.
“Less helpful insects,” he said.
Tara opened their father’s journal. A drawing showed a moth beside a crescent moon. Under it he had written: Moon-moths follow the oldest light.
“Put out our lamp,” she said.
“In a maze? At night?”
“Quickly.”
Kalinga pinched the flame. Darkness dropped over them. The pirates laughed and raised their lanterns higher. Instantly, the confused moths streamed toward the pirates, lighting every wrong channel.
Tara tilted the obsidian compass until its glass caught the moon. A thin silver beam slid across the water. Three moths broke away from the lanterns and followed it into a root tunnel barely wider than the Sun-Skimmer.
“Oldest light,” Tara said. “The moon, not a lantern.”
They ducked as the boat squeezed through. Behind them came a crash, two splashes, and a pirate yelling, “Whose oar is in my ear?”
The tunnel ended at a black pool with no exit. The three moths circled the compass, then landed on the page in Father’s journal. Their powder revealed a hidden sketch: a crescent-shaped gap beneath the largest root.
Kalinga took a breath and pushed the tiller down. The Sun-Skimmer tipped, mast nearly touching the water, and slid under the root with an inch to spare.
They burst into open sea. The pirate dinghies tried the same trick all at once and wedged together beneath the root like corks in a bottle.
The moon-moths swirled above the siblings. Their silver dust gathered on the journal page, hardened, and lifted into the air as the second piece of the glowing map.
Tara tucked it safely beneath the compass glass.
From inside the mangroves came a tremendous sneeze.
“Moon-moth powder,” Kalinga said.
Another pirate sneezed, then another, until the entire maze sounded as if it had caught a cold.