The Girl and the Stars

“I’m alright.” Thurin pushed her hand from his arm and staggered up.

“You don’t look alright.” He looked like a rag that’s too worn to be used as anything but stuffing. She glanced toward the star, still blazing on the rock. “How can you put it back if you can’t even touch it?”

Thurin waved a tired hand at the star and the water rushed from the puddle to set it rolling back against the ice wall. He made a fist and twisted it. Somehow the ice drew the star half into it and began to lift it. Fascinated, Yaz edged closer while Thurin continued the slow upward flow of the ice, raising the star above her head toward its former position. Creaks, groans, and small splintering noises accompanied the star’s gradual ascent, the ice protesting just as it did on a larger scale as the great sheets moved across the rock.

Glancing back Yaz could see the effort it was costing Thurin. In the twilight she could almost see the threads of magic connecting Thurin to the wall. Suddenly he faltered, the gossamer network of his magic fell apart, and with a sharp retort something high above Yaz snapped.

The star fell, hit the rock, and rolled, coming to a halt by the side of Yaz’s foot. She heard Thurin cry out in shock then find his words. “Get away! Quick!”

The star blazed so bright Yaz could see nothing but its brilliance. The power and nearness of it sang in her bones, a wordless roaring, beautiful but wild enough to drown in. Despite its smallness and outpouring of light the star seemed a wider and deeper hole than that into which she had thrown herself only hours before. Unable to stop herself Yaz crouched and reached to pick the thing from the floor. The light made black lines of her finger bones and a rosy haze of the flesh around them. Her whole hand tingled, then burned, then closed around the star, so small that she could almost hide it within her grasp.

“Be still,” she told it for it seemed to her that the star was a racing heart, beating beyond its limits. And suddenly the blaze vanished, replaced by a molten reddish glow like that of the setting sun. There was a silence too. She had barely heard the star’s song before, but now that it was gone the air seemed to ache for its return. Yaz looked for Thurin and saw nothing but blackness swimming with afterimages.

“What have you done?” Thurin, aghast, speaking from her blindness.

“I asked it to be quiet.” Yaz blinked and was relieved to see Thurin as a dark shape moving against a less dark background.

“You shouldn’t be able to do that!” He sounded scared. Amazed, but scared. “Make it work again.”

Yaz went right up to the wall and held the star above her at arm’s length, stretching. She pressed it to the ice. “Make it go in.”

Thurin’s magic fluttered around her and the ice swallowed the star as easily as if she were pressing it into fresh snow. “It’s still not working!” he hissed.

Yaz stepped back. The star’s red glow gave the ice around it a bloody hue. “Sing,” she told it. And in an instant the light returned, bright as it had ever been.

“Come on!” Thurin grabbed her shoulder, nails biting into bare skin. “We need to go back.” He pulled her with him. “Pray nobody saw that!”

Both of them stumbled into the settlement, exhausted. Yaz found herself unable to stop yawning and Thurin seemed barely able to stand. “Working the ice . . . takes something out of me.” He straightened with effort.

Yaz just nodded and followed as he led off again. Her sight had yet to recover entirely and the cavern’s twilight pulsed around her. Amid it all a mysterious clot of shadow moved across her vision like a person wrapped in night.

“I’m not normally so weak,” Thurin muttered. “But when I was . . .”

“With the Tainted,” Yaz supplied.

He nodded. “My ice-work got used, but it wasn’t me using it. I was a passenger in my own body. I’m out of practice at being me . . . if that makes any sense.”

Yaz said nothing. Part of her was thinking of Zeen, demon-haunted, wandering out there somewhere in the black ice. The other part ran Thurin’s words through her mind. Out of practice at being me. She felt adrift. She had, for her entire life, been a small but vital part in a single organism dedicated to survival against the odds. Just like every other member of the Ictha she’d carried out her duties in the certain knowledge that should she fail they would all suffer. On the edge of extinction every mistake carried a fatal edge, every waking moment had a purpose, every hour was occupied. It seemed strange that after what should have been a fall to her death she had for perhaps the first time in her life a chance to practice being her.

On the outskirts of the settlement Thurin turned and looked out across the great cavern sleeping in its own starlit twilight. A dozen openings led from it into other caverns or tunnels. “It’s pretty, but seriously though, don’t wander off.”

“I might get lost?” asked Yaz, trying not to bristle at the suggestion she couldn’t look after herself.

“You might get taken.” Thurin made a flat line of his mouth. “Hetta will only eat you. Theus haunts the dark, and those they can’t fill with demons . . .”

“What happens to them?”

Thurin turned away. “Sometimes we hear them screaming, even here. It can last for days. They do it to tempt us out there.”

Yaz hung her head. The shadows and starlight seemed suddenly less beautiful and she shivered despite the warmth.

Thurin led off wearily without saying more.

They reached the barracks and almost fell through the door. Yaz found the energy to close it behind them, noticing as she did so that the door to Arka’s hut stood ajar. She wondered for a moment if the woman had watched them return together. She decided that she was too tired to care, about anything, and crawled beneath her thin blanket with a sigh. She thought of this Theus, this nightmare creature waiting for them in the darkness, and was sure she would lie awake until the next day. But she was asleep before she drew her next breath.

7

   HUA, LEAST OF all the Gods in the Sea, made Zin, the first man, from salt water, the bones of a tuark, and the skin of a whale. While Aiiki, least of all the Gods in the Sky, made Mokka, the first woman, from ice, clouds, the whispers of four lost winds, and a colour stolen from the dragons’ tails.

Zin climbed from the waves and scaled the great cliffs to find that Mokka was there on the heights before him and had already set her tent. Zin asked if he might enter for the wind was a stranger to him and cruel. Mokka knew the wind as she knew herself and let the man come within, for he would die without.

Zin brought fish from beneath the water and he ate to restore his strength. Mokka asked if she might eat for the sea was a stranger to her, showing its face but rarely. Zin knew the waters as he knew himself and let the woman eat, for she had known only hunger.