The Shadow Behind the Stars (17 page)

When she'd closed the door behind her and pulled back her hood, she stood there looking from one of us to another, scrunching her face in thought. We waited, paused in our work. Xinot was perched at the end of our bed, her scissors held in one hand, the thread in another. It curled over to Serena, who was seated between the bed and the open window, and then stretched toward me, in the room's other chair before the fireplace, my spindle at my feet.

The thread gleamed, of course, a spider's web of starlight. Against our dark draped cloaks and darker eyes, it stood in greater contrast. A whisper, a fishing line, a flutter of a bird's wing.

At last Aglaia said, and her voice floated softly through our room like a shared thought, “I mean to kill him tomorrow night, after the wedding. He suspects nothing. I will be his heir, and any baby I bear after me.”

Yes,
we said.

She said, “Yes, it will be so?”

No,
we said.

“No, it will not be so?”

No, we cannot tell you that.

Aglaia said, “You know his thread. You know the time and shape of its ending.”

We cannot tell you that.

She demanded, “Do I succeed?”

We remained silent.

She looked about at us all, and I could see her anger, clear and sharp. Something twisted inside me, but there was nothing more to say, nothing more to do.

She said, and it was almost not a question, it was so heated, “Why are you
here
?”

We didn't try to answer her.

After a few long moments, she left us, without saying another thing.

Endymion's city had never seen such a wedding. It began with the sunrise, and it lasted long into the night. The rumors had all been true, though they did not begin to describe the pageantry this prince put on for the marriage to his destined bride.

There wasn't one grand feast, but four—one upon waking,
one at midday, one at sunset, and a last at midnight, after the couple had gone to their marriage bed. There were honeyed figs and dates rolled in crushed nuts, sweet rolls and salty breads, lentil porridges, chickpea stews, lamb served with every sauce, fish so tender it crumbled in your mouth. The wine was everywhere; Hesper brought us a sampling, and though it didn't reach the heights of our wine in its glory days, it smelled of fresh spring grasses and tasted of sunshine.

The plays and the games began right after the morning feast. Puppet shows on street corners, dramas in the city squares. There were ball-throwing games and balancing games and all manner of sport—wrestling and racing, swordplay and javelin throwing. Children ran from one end of the city to the other, and their parents didn't try to stop them. Everywhere, bakers passed out sweets and brewers poured beer.

In the more sophisticated sections of the city, the greatest actors in the land performed comedies, and virtuosos sang ballads composed for this occasion, featuring the noble prince and his beautiful bride. Aglaia and Endymion sat on a platform at one end of the city's main square; they held hands all day long, and there were flowers in their hair. They watched jugglers juggle and acrobats leap. They danced, to drums and flutes and lyres, smiling and laughing as they stepped and spun.

In the afternoon, Endymion's men pledged their faith to
Aglaia. They knelt before her, and they kissed her fingers, and she smiled at them.

Before the sun went to bed, all the bells in the city rang, and all the revelers stopped what they were doing, put down their drinks, and looked to the sky. In the main square, Endymion bowed his head and held one arm around Aglaia. He had offered her this moment of silence to remember her parents, her older brother and her younger sister, all the people of her village who had so tragically not lived to see this day.

She stared straight ahead, our girl. Her eyes were dry, and she leaned into her new husband's embrace as though it were the only thing that mattered in the world. When the bells rang again, she turned to him, and she kissed him softly on the lips. He brushed a hand against her cheek, so gentle. Everyone watching could see the love for her in his eyes.

They ate their sunset meal as a bard sang of Endymion's greatest battles, of Aglaia's bright eyes, her neck, her skin. They danced again afterward, with each other, with the lords and ladies under the stars. The celebration was still in full swing when Endymion pulled his bride close and said something in her ear.

She ducked her head, smiling. He took her hand and they walked back through the streets, not bothering with horses or with a carriage. Their people stood aside for them, murmuring blessings, reaching out hands to touch Aglaia's skirt and the ends of her hair.

As they reached the prince's house, I took his thread from my bag and placed it on a little table that stood in one corner
of our room. We gathered around it. We had been listening to it all that wedding day. The shutters were open; the curtains were drawn back. It was a new moon night; it was Xinot's night. It was so still, not even the stars were whispering. Xinot took the middle position in front of the thread, and she reached out her left hand to Serena, her right to me. We stood with our backs to the window, cloakless, our hair beginning to drift.

Endymion led Aglaia through his house, up stairs and down corridors, murmuring flatteries in her ear. She laughed softly, and her eyes sparked. They turned a corner, passed through a door, and entered his bedroom.

He let go of her hand to shut the door behind them, and she turned, waited for him, watched as he lifted his head to smile at her.

Fool. He did not know it, but we did. This was her night.

It was her destiny, and it was her due. We could not help her with it, but we could approve. We could lift his thread and hold it close as she smiled back at him, as she became exactly what he wanted her to be. As she drew her hair, bright as the stars, across one shoulder, and he stared. As she went to the table set with crystal goblets and the day's spring-smelling, sun-tasting wine.

She did not need us for the poison. She did not need us for anything. He could not see the powder she slipped into his glass; it was dim in the room, with only a banking fire and a dark-red lamp. He was not watching for it, anyway. He was not watching anything but her.

She didn't even need
to kiss him again, the death that she gave him was so fast.

As his thread began to flicker, as it started shedding sparks, we placed it on the table and turned our backs, so that he would be alone at the end.

IF SHE HADN'T BEEN AGLAIA—IF
she hadn't already won their hearts, received their pledges of faith, entered into their ballads—there might have been more questions about Endymion's death.

When she woke them in the middle of that night, though, with a scream that carried into the streets, bringing those who had finally gone to bed out of their homes again, their hearts racing, their nightdresses flapping in a chill wind—when she showed them Endymion's body, undressed, lying in their marriage bed, and she wept as though there was nothing left of her but her tears, her shaking hands, and her
pain
—when she begged them not to take him away, clinging to Endymion's house guard like a shivering leaf, reaching for the prince even as his soldiers lifted him up and carried him from the room—
there was not a person in the city who didn't believe her.

We heard it through our window, the whispering in the streets.

He was so happy, it overcame him.

His heart burst with the love.

At least he died knowing that she lived and that she had married him.

“He got what was coming to him, didn't he?” Hesper said, and we each smiled at her, just a bit. She chuckled darkly. “Good for her—and good for you, I suppose.”

“We had nothing to do with it,” Serena said.

“No more than you have to do with anything,” Hesper said. “Still. It was well done. I heard the fear in her voice as she talked of him.”

Aglaia kept to their marriage room, those long, hot days leading up to the funeral. I asked the sun to look in on her there, to keep her company. There was no need. My friend never left Aglaia's side if he could help it.

When they burned Endymion's body in a mighty pyre outside the city, everyone went, even the beggars, even Hesper. We sat alone in the city's strange, heavy silence, and we spun and measured and
sliced
to keep our hands busy, and she told us of it when she came back. Of the lords and ladies, dressed all in white, as sumptuously as they had for last week's wedding. Of the funeral cakes and the dark-red wine the soldiers passed out among the crowd. Of the children who ran beneath their feet, still nibbling on sweets, still laughing, though even that was muffled in the heat.

Our girl stood at the front of it all, in a gown so white it
blinded, so you almost couldn't see the circles beneath her eyes, the pallor of her face. She was heartbroken, the people said, one after another after another. She only kept on for
his
sake, because he would want her to.

And for ours.
It was an old clockmaker who said it first, Hesper told us. A little old man who spoke with such conviction that his words soon threaded all through the crowd as well.

She lives on for us. She is our princess. She will lead us now that he is gone.

When Endymion's body was only ash and the wood was heaps of coal, Aglaia turned from the smoldering remains and made her way back through the crowd, over the fields, into her city. She nodded at the people that she passed; she gave them her hand to touch.

I will care for you
, it was reported that she said.
You are mine now.

And then it was over. From that day on, Aglaia ruled her people from Endymion's house, and they followed her willingly. She didn't come to see us again; she didn't need our help. She never had. Her thread shone long and bright as ever.

So why did we linger?

The people cheered when Aglaia went into her city. We watched as well, our shutters open to ease the stifling air, our faces halfway hidden behind the pale-blue curtains that wafted, lazy, in the warm breeze. We did not let her see us.
We did not leave our room, except to ask Hesper for a bit of food now and again, when she forgot that we were there.

Aglaia came down through the streets many times in those last summer weeks, to shop in the colorful markets or to walk along the golden fields outside the city. She wanted the people to feel that she was touchable—not only a beautiful woman from a story, not only their princess, but one of them. Just a girl from a village.

She told them only a few weeks after the funeral that she was going to have the baby. She had to; she was showing, no matter how loose-fitting her clothes. They didn't question her. No one remarked on how fast she was growing. She had married their prince, so the child must be his, and it would lead them someday.

It was their dream come true; it felt to them the answer to Endymion's tragic death, the renewal of their hope, the beginning of a grand new tale. After she had told them, their love grew so bright that little children followed Aglaia whenever she came out of her home. They threw flowers to her, and they sang songs. She laughed and sang along. Her face glowed; her eyes shone; her hair rivaled the white stone walls for blinding glory.