The Shadow Behind the Stars Read online

  We hadn’t returned your visits; we were solitary, even then. I liked the awe of mortals, the way you cast down your eyes and stood aside to let me pass. Especially the young, muscled men, the ones with calloused hands and life pouring through them. I did not speak to them, but I liked to think that they would have done my bidding, had I asked it. And Xinot didn’t engage with you even as much as I did. She slipped by you as a drifting chill. She sat silent on her stump when visitors came, and she stared off into nothing, and the shadows gathered around her.

  The human children, though, had been somehow drawn to my middle sister, and she to them. Serena used to play with them out in their fields—games of chase, dancing rhymes, and braiding hair and flowers. She had favorites, first one child, and then another as that one grew. She spent more time with these, teaching them crafts and the language of trees, bringing them home to feed them sometimes. She loved to watch them grow.

  At first, when her children passed into adulthood, and then old age, and finally left her completely, Serena had only smiled sadly and let them go. There were always more children, after all—some of them the daughters and sons of earlier ones. But Serena had always felt herself too much a mother. And mothers aren’t meant to watch their children grow old, and older, and then disappear. They aren’t meant to go on living after their children have gone.

  It ate away at her. Not all at once, but we could see the sadness growing in her eyes. Xinot had worried more than I did. I thought Serena would stop caring so much, once she realized there was nothing to be done. Xinot, though, began to suggest that our sister stop taking in new children, that she give up this game. Every morning she would beg Serena to stay home, not to go out to the fields where the little ones ran after butterflies and one another. Every morning Serena would say, “I’ll stay tomorrow. Just give me this one more day, and then I will be content.”

  And tomorrow she would say the same, and tomorrow and tomorrow. And the sadness leaked from her eyes and spread across her face, and she didn’t smile anymore.

  She began to sigh as she measured the thread. Her fingers moved as flawlessly, and she passed the thread as smoothly. But she didn’t join in when we sang our tunes, and she held herself so poised, so tense on her chair that I half expected her to turn to stone, and shatter.

  It added a dangerous glint to our art. As the days went on, it became more and more difficult to time our movements, to create a rhythm and flow. There was a thinness to our work, an on-edgeness that made it seem as though our lengths and our snaps were limited, as though we would soon be wringing the very air for our bits of fluff.

  I stayed away from my sisters, those last weeks on the mainland. I spent my free hours out walking through our vineyards, ripping one leaf after another from the vines. I’d snarl at them, and they’d burst into flames. For days, all I saw when I closed my eyes were those drifting bits of ash.

  Xinot’s usual irritation also grew as our sister melted into herself. When you mortals dropped by, she’d snap before you’d crossed the threshold, demanding to know what you wanted, glaring with utter malice. You backed away, more times than not, and left without saying a word.

  She was ever gentle with Serena, though. I could hardly bear to look at our grieving sister, but I saw Xinot holding her hand, humming a soft, sweet tune—our Xinot, being kind. And when Serena wasn’t doing anything but sitting in her chair and staring into the fire, when she had even given up all her sewing projects, her long, fair hands folded listlessly in her lap, it was Xinot who made the decision to leave.

  Serena wasn’t capable of protest. And I wanted nothing more to do with mortals. I wanted my sister back; I wanted our work to be simple and full of joy. We agreed one evening that we would go, and we were gone with our wool and threads by morning. We told no one; only Serena’s pack of children would have missed us, and we didn’t want to see them. Not then, not ever again. We went far out, to the edge of land and beyond; we disappeared from mortal life. It was so pure on our island. There were no children, no visitors, no distractions. Once in a generation a hero made his way to our door, asked a question, and went away again. The rest of the time it was only us, and our threads, and all their glory.

  See, the danger in you mortals is that you are so often at odds with your fate. You rail against it; you suffer because of it; you die. Yet in order to work our magic, we must believe in it. We must love the beauty of our threads, shiver at the mystery that lies at either end, catch our breaths at the wonder of our shaping. When we do, the thread runs smooth and the spindle whirs soft and the scissors snap clean and fast. When we believe in our work—when it is smooth and soft, clean and fast—we brush up against a power deeper than you could imagine. It is a power deeper than gods, deeper even than us three sisters. It forms our work; it gives our makings breath. It’s a hidden pattern, a silent promise, the shadow behind the stars.

  We can control this power, in a way. We can use it to form a minor fortune-telling, as Xinot does with her fish bones. We can fill ourselves with it, so that any of you mortals looking us in the face would feel a great awe rushing through you, like a wind. We can speak words, and they will echo with terrible truths, and it will be we who have chosen to let them free.

  The power that we thus use, though, is not merely a slave to our will. It is much more dangerous than that. It is a thing as old as mortals; the gods do not know where it came from. It is a power so great, it is invisible, and it is weightless. It is gravity; it is direction.

  We must believe in its rightness. We must believe so thoroughly that when we touch this power, we become it—the spinning and the drawing out and the slicing. If we don’t believe, we sing off-key, we struggle with the thread. And we cannot afford to struggle; we cannot risk mistakes, because mistakes that creatures such as us make are more than deadly. They can be cataclysmic. They can be world ending.

  That first morning, as Aglaia and I dragged the skiff from its usual home between two large rocks, we left Xinot muttering riddles and Serena sewing hats in our house. I had told my sisters we were going out to fish, and they had nodded, looking relieved. Aglaia would need much more food than we did, and my sisters had never taken to fishing.

  I took the lines and the hooks with us, and I dug in our garden for some grubs. Aglaia slipped the slimy things into a pouch at her waist, without a complaint, not even wrinkling her nose at them. So we were all prepared for a fishing trip, but I had lied to my sisters. I didn’t mean to feed the girl. I meant to drown her.

  My sisters would be angry, I supposed—even Xinot would not approve of blatant murder. But I had to do something. Never mind that Aglaia’s thread was so long it towered above the others on its shelf, never mind how the darkness had gathered around her last night. I thought of Xinot, who would not let her face show as she tidied the threads, for fear that we would see the horror reflected there; I thought of Serena, who was already much too involved with this orphaned girl. I was determined to take Aglaia’s destiny into my own hands, to keep my sisters and our work safe.

  Along with the fishing gear, I added a sturdy rope to the bottom of our skiff before we pushed off the island. Aglaia saw me shove it under my seat, but she didn’t say a word. In fact, all the while I rowed us out into the sea, she sat across from me, looking at me amiably. There were no shadows in her eyes.

  When we were far enough out that there was only water and sky in any direction, I took the rope from beneath my seat. I considered the girl.

  It would be the simplest thing in the world, to bind Aglaia’s hands, to tilt her into the waves. She wouldn’t even know it was happening; Serena’s spell would ease her suffocation, and she would swallow water easily and go without any struggle.

  Well, it was possible that the magic would slip away from her at the end. As her mind darkened and her heartbeat slowed, she might open her eyes, aware at last of the tightening hold of the water. She might panic, white bursts of shock shooting through her brain. She might suffer after all.
/>   But then never again.

  Even in her half-aware state, this girl was beautiful. It may have been that beauty that made me hesitate before I killed her—the way the sun was playing at the ends of her hair, the way her eyes reflected the shifting sea. For a moment, as I watched her, I saw the world in this girl. But I think it was more than that. If I hadn’t seen the moment by the threads when the dark fear had crossed her face, or if I hadn’t felt our magic swirling around her—I would have wondered, maybe, but I would have let her go.

  Those beginnings had shown how dangerous this girl might be. But I work the same thread as my sisters, and the hints at deepness also tantalized me.

  Before I drowned her, I laid my fingers along Aglaia’s cheekbone. I murmured a rhyme that undoes snarled things—I hadn’t one strong enough to take away Serena’s spell completely, but I could grant this girl a momentary clarity.

  I saw her blink; I saw the shudder go all through her skin. I pulled away from her, back to my own seat, behind my hair.

  She was breathing heavily. Her hands were gripping her bench, and I felt my heart beating fast as I watched her lift her head and open her eyes.

  The horror that had flashed last night was back; it rattled her breath and shook her frame. She looked about, at the sky, down into the boat, and up to me. I don’t think she was seeing any of it. I don’t think she was wondering what she was doing out in the middle of the ocean—my untangling spell didn’t allow for uncertainty.

  When she caught my gaze again, I knew she was going to speak, and suddenly I didn’t want to know what she would say. Oh, she was so beautiful—a thousand times more radiant than she was under Serena’s spell. She was in pain, but full of purpose, and full of rage. I knew that as she opened her mouth—I knew the tone of her voice before she said it: “They weren’t raiders, Chloe. Those bastards knew the secret way in under the village wall.”

  The anger I had anticipated, but I was frozen under the sure, cold knowledge in her words. She was telling me something important; it was a secret that she hadn’t known when she showed up on our doorstep only yesterday. She was glaring at me. She was expecting me to speak. I faltered—I, the steadiest of my sisters!—and did what the mortal wanted. I said, “Are you certain?”

  “They knew,” she said. She leaned toward me, and that bright day was glinting like blue fire in her eyes. “They never opened the gate; they were there before we realized it. And—and they knew me. They pointed; they recognized me.”

  She was only a girl, some orphaned child Serena had felt sorry for. I had spun her thread. I had spun a thousand threads as tragic as this girl’s.

  But I was shivering. I pulled farther away from her.

  “Chloe—” she started to say, and I saw her blink, hard. I thought she might be crying; I turned my face so I would not see her tears. “Chloe—” she said again; it was desperate. I looked, and she was staring, all still, as though gripped in some tight hold. Her lips fluttered once, wordless.

  And then, between one blink and the next, her breath went out, and her face calmed.

  Her shoulders relaxed; when she looked at me again, her eyes were dim. She blinked again, but slowly, and she leaned back on her seat, looking lazily across the waves.

  I stared at her, still quivering. The sea was so silent, and the sun warmed us so pleasantly. My hair whipped much too frantically for such a calm scene, such a lovely girl sitting peaceably across from me.

  The sun asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t answer him. I supposed Aglaia had been as self-aware, as alive when she first showed up at our door. But then she had been like any of the wandering heroes we’ve had come to our island, scattered over the eons: temporary, disconnected from us. Sharing a boat in the middle of the sea, telling me her secrets, she had become someone individual; I knew her now.

  I couldn’t kill her. I wanted to, still. Oh, how I wanted to let her sink out of my sight, to forget her voice and the fiery way she had looked at me. I wanted never to think about this girl again.

  Turning my face to the depths of the sea, I cursed the wonder that had made me take the spell away. Why had I needed to know? She was only another mortal, another poor creature caught up in our web. I knew what happened to such creatures. There was only ever one end.

  I shoved the rope back under my seat, and I took out the fishing lines. Aglaia smiled sweetly as I showed her how to bait a hook, and I scowled and wished her safely drowned. But after the sea had granted us three fat fish, and they were slapping against our hull, mouths gaping as this girl’s did, watching them, I brought her back to our island, and I helped her from the boat.

  That afternoon my sisters and I sat in our usual places and worked. Aglaia waded out along our shore, watching minnows dart and gathering smooth, bright stones. She was piling a small collection in a corner by the blankets where she had slept last night. They were gleaming, empty things—not a speckle or a rough spot in the bunch.

  As the sun dipped low, Aglaia put a fish over the fire to grill. She sat on the floor by the pit, watching our latest thread shimmering in the late summer light, passing from spindle to palm to slice. She rubbed her new collection in her hands, all over, around and about again. Each of her movements was spare, and exact, and as smooth as the stones.

  I didn’t tell my sisters what Aglaia had said in the boat, not as we worked and not as we stopped to eat the fish by our fire. After we ate, Serena picked up her hats again. She showed the stitches now and then to Aglaia, who put down her stones to finger the stuff, blinking wide.

  Xinot was watching me over the top of her cane. I was sitting a bit away from them, tucking my knees up and folding my face in behind my hair. I could sense my sister’s bottomless eyes, her knowing mouth.

  “What bothers you, Chloe?” she murmured. The others were laughing at something; or Serena was laughing and Aglaia was joining in.

  I didn’t answer; I hunched lower.

  Xinot curled her fingers, inviting. “You can tell me.”

  “Nothing,” I muttered. “Leave me alone.”

  She sniffed, but she turned away toward the fire.

  As I watched the firelight outlining her dark cloak and curved back, I thought about calling her to me, telling her what Aglaia had told me. It wasn’t much, after all. Just a clue, just a hint of something more sinister than the nightmare she had already revealed. They weren’t raiders. They knew me. They knew the secret way in under the village wall.

  Oh, raiders were bad enough, and seeing your parents killed, your village ruined. How could this be worse?

  But it was. I already knew that, having heard only those few words. It tasted . . . it tasted like hubris, like vengeance, like all those darker paths a life can weave. It tasted sharp and meaningful, like something you couldn’t escape.

  I knew that it would draw Xinot in, a mystery like that. Even I hadn’t managed to keep from chasing my curiosity to the other side of Serena’s spell. If my eldest sister got a whiff of what I’d found, she would want to follow this girl, all the way to the end of her thread, to let each drop of destiny soak through her limbs, slide along her bones.

  Neither of my sisters was safe from this girl; I mustn’t let either of them become attached. Not after Serena’s children. Not after what had happened to Xinot later, out on this very island. I hadn’t been able to drown Aglaia today, but I swore then that I would keep her from the others. I would take her out in the boat with me again tomorrow, and the day after that, until I could follow through with my plan of killing her at last. I would keep her bright eyes from Serena’s soft heart, from Xinot’s need to know.

  For that night I sulked, and Xinot left me alone. I listened to Serena talking with Aglaia, and I thanked the gods for the hollowness in her cheerful replies, for the way my sister’s spell had hidden the girl who had spoken to me, somewhere far below.

  Four

  I KEPT MY OATH; I took Aglaia out fishing in our skiff again the next morning, and then the next after that. I left
the rope under my seat in the boat; each time we went, I grabbed it as soon as we were out on the waves.

  But each time, I couldn’t quite get my hands to tie hers. I tried using my magic; I whispered words that compel flesh to move, and my arms jerked toward the girl, and she watched patiently as I lifted her wrists. But the touch of her skin always broke my spell. I blamed it on Serena’s power, twisting along the girl’s arm, undoing my own magic. I never tried twice in one morning, though. As my hands fell back to my side of the boat, I dropped the rope to the floor as well. I even felt my fingers relaxing, my shoulders falling back when I reached for our lines and hooks, as if in relief.

  Every morning this happened. Each day I swore fervently that it would not happen again, and each day I was forsworn.

  Those first afternoons, as I worked with my sisters on the island, I watched the girl to be sure there was no sign of the bright-gazed mortal I had seen. At least I found nothing to worry me in that. Aglaia was happy to sit in a corner much of the time, humming or sewing away at some project Serena had handed her. Sometimes she’d go on rambles around our island, leaping from rock to rock or gathering her empty stones. In the evenings after we’d eaten, she loved to sit by Serena, who would stroke the girl’s hair absently. She did not bother Xinot, and my eldest sister generally behaved as though she was not there.

  I kept her by my side as often as I could; I spent many hours out on our rocks with her, scaling fish or skinning vegetables. She would look out over the waves, never toward the mainland but off past the end of the island. I would listen as she began to hum her strange, haunting tunes. There were never any words in Aglaia’s tunes, not any that I understood. But her singing voice was unbearably lovely, like the last lingering notes of a harp song.