The Shadow Behind the Stars (21 page)

It seemed to take forever; for him it did. For us, it really wasn't more than a few minutes before the mist faded away
and the keening ended, leaving the hollow sobbing of a frightened child.

We went over next to the bed and looked down at him. I closed my eyes as the room spun around. I had done this, the thing that would topple us all. I had taken the world as it was and turned it into what I thought it should be.

Aglaia's son was a baby no longer. He had grown five, nearly six years. He curled up under her chin, in the curve of her arm, and he was so big he was almost sliding off the bed.

After a moment Hesper said slowly, as though she couldn't quite believe she was speaking, “I have an old tunic from when I first brought my lad in off the streets. He'll need it.” She paused. “Won't he?”

I couldn't think to reply. Serena was kneeling by the bed, stroking the child's hair as he cried. Xinot said, “Yes. You should fetch that,” and Hesper slid away, out of the room.

“He's so old,” I said. “How can he already be so old?”

Xinot said, “How can he still be alive?”

I looked at her. There had been no accusation in her words, only wonder. Whether or not she would have stopped me from tying the threads, she did not blame me for this. I watched her watching Serena and Tad, and there was a fire in her like the fire that had burned as I twisted the ends together, and I thought too that whether or not she would have stopped me, she had not wanted to.

Her head was also tilted, though, listening, and her legs were braced against the floor, and I knew that she could feel it, the way the ground was buckling. This was much worse than
when she had almost
sliced
a thread at the wrong point. This was far beyond Serena's tense silence when she had mourned her children. We would not get away from this by running, or with a reprimand.

We had done it—
I
had done it, the thing that would tear everything apart. For a girl to die before her time was one thing. Aglaia's death was wrong; it made the darkness shudder, but it was not unheard of, for a mortal to leave her thread too soon.

For a baby to be given a whole long life, when he hadn't any to start with, for a week-old child to grow five years in two minutes, was something else.

I lifted my chin; Xinot nodded, sharp. Then we each took one of Serena's arms, and we pulled her from the bed to stand. I caught her eye, and I knew that she was with us too, in this thing—that she wouldn't have tried to stop me, not even knowing the end. Xinot reached around and grabbed my other hand, and we leaned into one another.

At last we closed our eyes, and the darkness was waiting for us.

It wanted to know what we could possibly be thinking. Its web was unraveling fast, and we were at fault, we who were pledged to keep it safe.

We did not make excuses; there were none. We did not say,
A life for a life
; we know that's not a fair trade.

The darkness said, in its wordless way, that it had never lied to us. We knew what it was. We knew its rules; we had known them since the beginning.

We know
, we said.
We have chosen this knowing.

It told us that the boy could not live. If he lived, everything would end.

It was angry at us. It was furious, and the heat of it poured through us, as it had after Monster died. It was showing us just exactly what we had put at risk: the beautiful tangle of fate that we had always loved.

Here was what it could not realize, though, what I never would have believed even if I had read this fortune a thousand times: It was too late for us. We had made our choice—to love a mortal more than anything, more than our darkness. We would end the world for the sake of this girl, as she had ended her life for the sake of her son.

Was it betrayal? Oh, yes, I knew it was.

But I did not care. I loved her, and as our magic raged, I could feel my heart breaking still, and I could feel my anger growing too, at all Aglaia had endured, at all she'd given up.

The clouds were gathering fast outside our window, much faster than clouds should gather. There were ominous lights in the sky—not lightning flashes, but burning pits of fire, where no fire should be. The people were beginning to come out into the streets, to understand that the world was at an end.

We had predicted this, after all.
Rain of fire. An end to all patterns.

The darkness told us, and it was as though it was granting us a gift, that there was one thing we could do to save it, still.

We didn't ask what that was; we already knew. We always know.

We would not do it.

It shrieked at us that everything would end!

We knew. We would not do it.

It reminded us, and there was a desperate edge to it, that we were sworn, that this was what we were, its keepers, its protectors. We couldn't let it die.

We opened our eyes. We stepped back from one another and dropped our hands. We were not listening anymore.

The boy was crying, and the people were screaming. Hesper came rushing up with her lad's old tunic; she went over to the window and threw the shutters wide, holding tight to the sill as the deep tremors we had been feeling began to shake the surface of the world.

“What is it?” she cried. “What's happening?”

The world is ending,
we said.

She looked at us with horror. “Is it your fault?”

Yes,
we said.

She screamed, and we almost couldn't hear her over the crashing, over the running and yelling and thunder, “You have to make it stop!”

We only looked at her. Serena went back to the bed, back to soothing Aglaia's son.

“Can't you make it stop?” cried our innkeeper.

We can,
Xinot and I said.
But we won't.

“You must!”

It was terrible, but it was thrilling, to stand beside my sister as the city crumbled and to do nothing—just to stand and let it fall. We said, rejoicing in it,
We won't.

Hesper watched as we knelt beside Serena. I touched Aglaia's cooling hand; we would be joining her soon enough. Xinot hummed a tune of cataclysms, of breaking points, of beautiful horrors.

I had never known an end could be beautiful like this. It was, though. All of us together would fall into the void. All of us together would go to a place we could not imagine; together we would finally die.

We paid no attention as Hesper lowered herself down next to us, leaning on her cane. She was crying, but silently; the tears rolled down her wrinkled face as she lifted the boy with shaking hands and helped him into the tunic. She pulled herself up to sit on the bed, settling Tad onto her lap. He had stopped crying at last. He snuggled against her, his thumb tucked into his mouth. She slid something from a pocket on her dress, where Xinot would have kept her shears.

She held it close against Tad's neck.

It was a small, very sharp knife.

“IT'S HIM, ISN'T IT?” HESPER
whispered. “He's what you won't give up.”

We didn't answer her, but she could read it in our eyes as we stared; she could hear it in our breaths that caught and stuck, in our suddenly frantic heartbeats.

She said, and it was almost kind, “You cannot destroy the world for the sake of one child.”

I made the beginning of a noise, I don't know what it was—some almost-cry, some almost-scream. Hesper held the knife steady against the boy's throat with one hand, stroking his hair again and again with the other. She said, as I had so many ages ago to Monster, “Good-bye, little one. Go well into the dark.”

She kissed his forehead. She drew in the breath that was to end his.

I made that sound again, that almost-sound.

There was something in it that did not fit with the angry joy we had been feeling. There was something in it, so lost, so helpless, that did not ask for vengeance or fairness. It did not ask for anything. It only cried out, because there was nothing else that it could do. Again, again, there was nothing that I could do.

Aglaia,
I thought, the moment before her boy died.
Aglaia, I am sorry. I have failed you after all.

I am not proud of it, but I closed my eyes. I did not want to see the final fragment.

There in the darkness behind my eyelids, Aglaia was looking at me. That flashing blue, that sweeping gold. The sure set of her mouth and her raised chin. She'd lost a world and kept on going. She'd done the impossible—found our island, tricked a prince, saved a child that fate itself had abandoned.

She had died to save this boy. She had
died
, and my heart had broken—was still breaking—would never stop breaking. And I was giving up?

One soft cry.

My sisters and I had linked hands, instinctively, as Hesper had pulled out her blade. We were as close as we ever are, in our dread, in our sure knowledge of the end.

It only takes one breath to kill a boy, but thoughts travel much faster than that, and my sisters knew mine.

That almost-sound rose within me, shrilled, pierced into a mountain-shattering
shriek
.

Hesper hesitated, only a bare wisp, but it was enough for Xinot to
twist
; her arm
shot up and the knife spun through the air, arched over our heads, and clattered to the floor behind us.

Serena was on her feet, holding her fists tight before her, looking off at nothing, at where our darkness was. We watched her, all of us still. I had only known that we must not let the boy die, not without trying to save him. That was what I had thought; that was what my sisters had responded to. I did not know what Serena had in mind, but I did not doubt that there was something. She was the most powerful thing, standing there—a mother enraged, lifting a loaded cart with her own two hands; running a thousand miles without a stop; untying a melded, sea-soaked knot and pulling a drowning child to the sun.

We could hear Hesper breathing, harsh. Xinot and I were trembling, as though we stood at the edge of a very steep something.

Serena said, and that power was full in her voice,
No, there must be another way.
She paused; she shook her head.
No
, she said again, surer.
It isn't the boy's death that you need; you need him not to have lived at all
.

The tremors shaking the city quieted for a moment; there was a questioning sort of break in the crashing thunder.

She went on, gaining certainty as she spoke.
You need him not to live a full human life, out where he would tear apart your patterns. You need him to go away from it all. He cannot influence other threads; he cannot change the world. He must be separate.

Serena paused, and in the silence we heard the people's screams, louder now that the other noise had calmed.
You need us to remove him from the tangle, as a bug from a spider's web. We can do that.

Now I understood; the spark caught and started to burn. I got to my feet as well. I took Serena's hand, stared where she stared.
Yes
, I said into the face of our darkness,
we can do that.

Xinot said, a low hiss from the bed,
We'll take him with us.

I said,
He'll never leave our island.

Serena said,
He'll never fall in love.

Or kill a man.

Or ask a powerful question.

Or answer one.

He'll never lead his people.

He'll never have a child.

Or a farm.

He'll be nothing,
we said, we promised, we prophesied.
We swear it.

Hesper said, in quite a soft voice, so that we almost did not hear, “By the gods, you don't know what you are doing.”

We ignored her. Serena asked our darkness,
Is it a deal?

There was a flash, a jagged bolt of lightning just outside our window. The whole inn shook, and the shutters rattled; even the bones in Xinot's pocket clattered, all on their own. Then a silence, green and dense in the aftermath. We waited; Hesper held the child tight in her arms.

Our darkness swirled at last, in agreement. It was a deal.