Beautiful Darkness (37 page)

She studied me, then picked up her red notebook and started
scribbling. “I'm listening. I just have to write down a few things.”

I looked over her shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

“The sky.” She looked back into the scope and then at her selenometer. She wrote another set of numbers.

“I know that.”

“Here.” She stepped aside, motioning me closer. I looked through the lens. The sky exploded into light and stars and the dust of a galaxy that didn't remotely resemble the Gatlin sky. “What do you see?”

“The sky. Stars. The moon. It's pretty amazing.”

“Now look.” She pulled me away from the lens, and I looked up at the sky. Though it was still dark, I couldn't make out nearly half the stars I had seen through the telescope.

“The lights aren't as bright.” I looked back to the telescope. Once again, the sky burst into sparkling stars. I pulled back from the lens and stared out into the night. The real sky was darker, dimmer, like lost, lonely space. “It's weird. The stars look so different through your telescope.”

“That's because they're not all there.”

“What are you talking about? The sky's the sky.”

Liv looked up at the moon. “Except when it's not.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nobody really knows. There are Caster constellations, and there are Mortal constellations. They aren't the same. At least, they don't look the same to the Mortal eye. Which unfortunately is all you and I have.” She smiled and switched one of the settings. “And I've been told the Mortal constellations can't be seen by Casters.”

“How is that possible?”

“How is anything possible?”

“Is our sky real? Or does it only look real?” I felt like a carpenter bee the moment he found out he'd been tricked into thinking a coat of blue paint on the ceiling was the sky.

“Is there a difference?” She pointed up at the dark sky. “See that? The Big Dipper. You know that one, right?” I nodded.

“If you look straight down, two stars from the handle, you see that bright star?”

“It's the North Star.” Any former Boy Scout in Gatlin could tell you that.

“Exactly. Polaris. Now see where the bottom of the cup ends, the lowest point? Do you see anything there?” I shook my head.

She looked into her scope, turning first one dial, then a second. “Now look.” She stepped back.

Through the lens, I could see the Big Dipper, exactly as it looked in the regular sky, only shining more brightly. “It's the same. Mostly.”

“Now look at the bottom of the cup. Same place. What do you see?”

I looked. “Nothing.”

Liv sounded annoyed. “Look again.”

“Why? There's nothing there.”

“What do you mean?” Liv leaned down and looked through the lens. “That's not possible. There's supposed to be a seven-pointed star, what Mortals call a faery star.”

A seven-pointed star. Lena had one on her necklace.

“It's the Caster equivalent of the North Star. It marks due south, not north, which has a mystical importance in the Caster world. They call it the Southern Star. Hold on. I'll find it for
you.” She bent over the scope again. “But keep talking. I'm sure you aren't here for a lecture on faery stars. What's going on?”

There was no point in putting it off any longer. “Lena ran away with John and Ridley. They're down in the Tunnels somewhere.”

Now I had her attention. “What? How do you know?”

“It's hard to explain. I saw them in this weird vision that wasn't a vision.”

“Like when you touched the journal in Macon's study?”

I shook my head. “I didn't touch anything. One minute I was staring at my reflection in the mirror, and a second later all I could see was stuff flying past me like I was running. When I stopped, they were standing in an alley a few feet away, but they couldn't see or hear me.” I was rambling.

“What were they doing?” Liv asked.

“Talking about some place called the Great Barrier. Where everything will be perfect and they can live happily ever after, according to John.” I tried not to sound bitter.

“They actually said they were going to the Great Barrier? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Why?” I could feel the Arclight, suddenly warm in my pocket.

“The Great Barrier is one of the most ancient Caster myths. A place of powerful old magic, long before there was Light or Dark — a sort of Nirvana. No logical person believes it really exists.”

“John Breed does.”

Liv looked up at the sky. “Or so he says. It's rubbish, but it's powerful rubbish. Like thinking the Earth is flat. Or that the sun orbits the Earth.” Like Galileo. Of course.

I had come here looking for a reason to go back to bed, back to Jackson and my life. An explanation for why I could see Lena in my bathroom mirror that didn't mean I was crazy. An answer that didn't lead back to Lena. But I found the opposite.

Liv kept talking, oblivious to the sinking stone in my stomach, and the one burning in my pocket. “The legends say if you follow the Southern Star, you'll eventually find the Great Barrier.”

“What if the star isn't there?” With that one thought, another began to stir, and then another, all coming loose in my mind.

Liv didn't answer because she was frantically adjusting her telescope. “It has to be there. There must be something wrong with my telescope.”

“What if it's gone? The galaxy changes all the time, right?”

“Of course. By the year three thousand, Polaris won't be the North Star anymore, Alrai will be. It means ‘the shepherd’ in Arabic, since you asked.”

“By the year three thousand?”

“Exactly. In a thousand years. A star can't suddenly disappear, not without a serious cosmic bang. It's not a subtle thing.”

“ ‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’ ” I remembered the line from a T. S. Eliot poem. Lena couldn't get it out of her head, before her birthday.

“Yes, well, I love the poem, but the science is a bit off.”

Not with a bang but a whimper.
Or was it not with a whimper but a bang? I couldn't remember the exact words, but Lena had written it into a poem on the wall of her bedroom when Macon died.

Had she known where this was going all along? I had a sick feeling in my stomach. The Arclight was so hot, it was singeing my skin.

“There's nothing wrong with your telescope.”

Liv studied her selenometer. “I'm afraid something is off. It's not just the scope. Even the numbers don't follow.”

“Hearts will go and Stars will follow.” I said it without thinking, as if it was any old song stuck in my head.

“What?”

“
Seventeen Moons.
It's nothing, just a song I keep hearing. It has something to do with Lena's Claiming.”

“A Shadowing Song?” She looked at me in disbelief.

“Is that what it is?” I should've known it would have a name.

“It foreshadows what's to come. You've had a Shadowing Song this whole time? Why didn't you tell me?”

I shrugged. Because I was an idiot. Because I didn't like to talk about Lena with Liv. Because horrible things came out of that song. Take your pick.

“Tell me the whole verse.”

“There's something about spheres, and a moon before her time appears. Then it says the part about the stars following where the hearts go…. I can't remember the rest.”

Liv sank down onto the top step of the porch. “A moon before her time appears. Is that exactly what the song said?”

I nodded. “First the moon. Then the star follows. I'm sure.”

The sky was now streaked with light. “Calling a Claiming Moon out of time. That would explain it.”

“What? The missing star?”

Liv closed her eyes. “It's more than the star. Calling a moon out of time could change the whole Order of Things, from every
magnetic field to every magical one. It would explain any shift in the Caster sky. The natural order in the Caster world is as delicately balanced as our own.”

“What could do that?”

“You mean
who
.” Liv hugged her knees.

She could only be talking about one person. “Sarafine?”

“There are no records of a Caster powerful enough to call out the moon. But if someone is pulling a moon out of time, there's no way to know when the next Claiming will come. Or where.” A Claiming. Which meant Lena.

I remembered what Marian said in the archive.
We don't get to choose what is true. We only get to choose what we do about it.

“If we're talking about a Claiming Moon, this is about Lena. We should wake up Marian. She can help us.” But even as I said it, I knew the truth. She might be able to help us, but that didn't mean she would. As a Keeper, she couldn't get involved.

Liv was thinking the same thing. “Do you really think Professor Ashcroft is going to let us chase after Lena in the Tunnels, after what happened the last time we were down there? She'll have us locked up in the rare-books collection for the rest of the summer.”

Worse, she'd call Amma, and I would be carting the Sisters to church every day in Aunt Grace's ancient Cadillac.

Jump or stay in the boat.

It wasn't really a decision, not anymore. I'd made it a long time ago, when I first got out of my car on Route 9, one night in the rain. I had jumped. There was no staying in the boat, not for me, whether Lena and I were together or not. I wasn't going to
let John Breed or Sarafine or a missing star or the wrong kind of moon or some crazy Caster skies stop me now. I owed the girl on Route 9 that much.

“Liv, I can find Lena. I don't know how, but I can. You can track the moon with your selenometer, right?”

“I can measure variances in the magnetic pull of the moon, if that's what you're asking.”

“So you can find the Claiming Moon?”

“If my calculations are correct, if the weather holds, if the typical corollaries between the Caster and Mortal constellations stay true …”

“It was more of a yes or no question.”

Liv tugged on one of her braids, thinking. “Yes.”

“If we're going to do this, we have to go before Amma and Marian wake up.”

Liv hesitated. As a Keeper-in-Training, she wasn't supposed to get involved. But every time we were together, we found our way to trouble. “Lena could be in a lot of danger.”

“Liv, if you don't want to come —”

“Of course I want to come. I've been studying the stars and the Caster world since I was five. All I've ever wanted was to be part of it. Up until a few weeks ago, the only thing I'd done was read about it and watch it through my telescope. I'm tired of watching. But Professor Ashcroft …”

I had been wrong about Liv. She wasn't like Marian. She wouldn't be content shelving Caster Scrolls. She wanted to prove the world wasn't flat.

“Jump or stay in the boat, Keeper. Are you coming?” The sun was rising, and we were running out of time.

“Are you sure you want me to?” She didn't look at me, and I
didn't look at her. The memory of the kiss that never happened hung between us.

“You know anyone else with a spare selenometer and a mental map of missing Caster stars?”

I wasn't sure her variances or corollaries or calculations were going to help me. But I knew the song was never wrong, and the things I saw tonight proved it. I needed help, and so did Lena, even if what we had was over. I needed a Keeper, even a runaway Keeper with a crazy watch, looking for action everywhere but inside a book.

“Jump,” Liv said softly. “I don't want to stay in the boat anymore.” She turned the handle on the screen door quietly, without making so much as a click. Which meant she was going inside to get her stuff. Which meant she was going with me.

“You sure?” I didn't want to be the reason she was going, at least not the only reason. That's what I told myself, but I was full of crap.

“You know anyone else dumb enough to search for a mythical place where a rogue Supernatural is trying to call a Claiming Moon?” She smiled, opening the door.

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

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