Free A Nearer Moon by Melanie Crowder

are you!”
    â€œI’m thinking,” Luna said. She turned in a slow, tight circle, tap, tap, tapping.
    â€œI can see that.”
    Luna switched directions, circling the other way. “We’d have to dig the mud out from the underside of the dam somehow. If we dig deep enough, the water will slip through, a little bit at a time.”
    â€œYeah, slip through right on top of us,” Benny said with a snort, swatting at the stick. It spun out of her hands and landed on top of the water. “And then we’re neck deep in muddy swamp water, and if we take evenone sip, we’ll get sick too. We can’t help Willow if we’re laid up in bed. And what if one of those trees came loose and smashed right down on top of us? No way. It’s too dangerous.”
    Luna stopped her circles and hunched down beside him. “But what if when the sick water is gone, the sickness leaves Willow, too?”
    Benny scrambled to his feet, the walkway tipping and swaying with his sudden movement. “Wait a minute. What if we weren’t behind the dam when the mud broke apart? What if something else knocked it loose and we were far away, high up on the riverbank?”
    â€œSomething else?”
    His eyebrows wiggled up and down. “A little explosion . . .”
    â€œRight, because that wouldn’t get us in trouble at all!”
    â€œI’ll just say I’m practicing for the festival. If we stick my comets into the mud and light them all at the same time, they’ll blow little holes in the dam. And little holes, with the water pushing against them, might turn into a big hole.”
    â€œYou’re crazy,” Luna said.
    â€œCrazy brilliant, you mean!”
    â€œOkay, but we have to light those fuses and get out of the way quick—far out of the way.”
    â€œWe’ll only get in trouble if it doesn’t work,” Benny said with a wicked grin. “If it does work, if we wash all that mucky swamp water downstream, we’ll be heroes! And you’re right—Willow just might get better.”
    â€œYou really think a couple of comets will be enough to bust up the dam?”
    â€œIf it isn’t, I’ll still have the spinners and fireballs left over for the festival.” Benny shrugged his shoulders. “And at least we’ll have tried something, instead of just sitting around and watching Willow get sicker and sicker.”
    Luna nodded. “Tomorrow. Meet me under the dam at lunchtime. And bring your comets.”

17
Perdita
    A t first Perdy was afraid to travel too far from where the door had been in case it reopened, pulling her through to join the rest.
    But it never did.
    She went back every day until the water covered everything, and the moss and whatever secrets it held were buried under layers of silt and mud. Perdy asked the fish and the frogs and the skinks to help her search for the thing she had lost, to search beneath the mud, to sift through the silt and comb through the fallen branches. But the locket was never found.
    Eventually, Perdy began to lose hope. Sadness settled into the empty spaces inside her.
    As the rising water loosed the dirt from around their roots, massive serayas with low-slung branches crashed, one by one, into the growing swamp. The dam thickened, week by week, month by month, as the trees lodged against the mud, mortaring themselves into a solid wall. High-kneed pulai trees sprouted in their place; somehow their seeds had smelled the swamp and had known which winds to follow to find the still water.
    The humans could have left. They might have left their homes and walked up the hill or upriver to find new places to live and start new stories on higher, dryer ground. But most of them didn’t. They stayed in the place where their grandparents had lived, in the homes where their great-great grandparents had first taken a felled tree and carved a boat to winnow through the streams.
    Perdy went,