The Shadow Behind the Stars (23 page)

“No,” said Serena. “There isn't.” She came over to take Tad from me, and I thought she was thinking of how I hadn't understood either, not her and her children, not Xinot and her cat. As she reached for the child, I drew a breath to tell her that I understood now—the way a mortal could seem another part of me, the way their hurts could burn and their joy glow like the sun. I wanted to tell her that you mortals were as real as the world: as true as starlight, as changeable as a wave on the sea.

But I didn't get the chance. As Xinot was stepping back to make room and I was stepping forward, holding out the boy, opening my mouth to speak, the oracle gave a sudden hiss and spun once more.

She pulled a second, smaller knife from her back; she twisted, sliding it between Xinot and Serena, into the space in the center of us, where the child was. Tad made some desperate sound. Xinot shoved the oracle back, and her knife with her.

But it was too late.

The boy was darkening with blood; she'd stabbed him, somewhere in his middle. I don't think he had the power left to scream, but he held my eyes with his sea-green ones, and there was a pleading there that sent an icy horror through me, because it was the same pleading that had been in Aglaia's eyes.

Xinot had let the oracle go; she was breathless, as Serena was breathless, as I was nothing but the trembling breath of this boy. My hands were darkening now, but I couldn't move; I couldn't put him on the ground until my sisters lowered us both down to the road, and we all huddled together there, tangled.

I held him.

What else could I do?

I held him, and he pleaded with me, and there was nothing we could do.

Again, again, again, there was nothing we could do.

I held him, and his eyes closed, and he went to join the darkness.

Time stopped happening. Nothing would ever be again; nothing had ever been. Even now, describing this moment to you, I am there again, holding the boy in my arms, and I know that this is the only moment, and it is also nothing.

I KNEEL WITH THE BOY,
waiting for the world to end. It doesn't. I try to rage, to feel that fury building, to give myself over to it. But there is nothing but a numbness, an emptiness, a
why, why, why?

I have spent my anger. There is nothing left.

Beside me, my sisters are keening; I hear them, high and sharp. I know Serena's pain, as heavy as an ocean, as deadly as a blade. She would have stepped in the way of that knife, even as a mortal; she would have taken the death from this child if she could.

Xinot's cry is more purposeful. She has anger left; she has power lashing inside, wanting a target, wanting someone to kill. I see her shaking with it; I hear her cane rattling as she braces it against the rocky ground. The oracle has stepped
away from us. She is sliding down the road, watching over her shoulder, holding the bloody knife out from her side. Maybe she did not realize how we would react to this. Maybe she is surprised to see us gathered as we are around the child, bent and crying—a mourning circle, a powerless-looking thing.

Oh, it is not that we do not have power. It is that we do not use it, and do not use it. It is that we guard the world, again and again, despite the terrible cost.

Xinot pulls herself to her feet, straight as she ever gets. She glances down the road at the oracle, and for a moment I think she is going to run after her, spend her energy punishing the mortal. But she glances away again, as though the oracle isn't anything at all. The oracle saw the look too, and she scurries away now, faster than her wary sliding. She'll obey the commands of our darkness, but she'd rather not pay the price that comes from her devotion.

What does she matter anyway? Nothing now, not now the boy is dead.

I lean over him, covering him with my hair. If I hide him behind its sheen, maybe he will still exist; maybe when I pull away, he will open his sea-green eyes.

Chloe
, Xinot says.

I ignore her.

Chloe, listen to me.

I shake my head.

She says, bending down right next to my ear,
Yes. You must. It is time to do our work.

I shake my head again, hardly understanding. What does
she mean, it is time to do our work? We cannot. We cannot even think of such a thing.

But she pulls me up by the arm, and I am surprised enough not to resist. She turns me around; she opens my pack. Even here, facing away from it, I can see the glimmer of my wool at the edges of my eyes.

Oh, and I don't know how it can, but it thrills me, still. Even now, even as I hate it with the numb, dead pain that has taken me over, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. Still something in me jumps to see it glimmering like that.

Xinot pulls out the basket of wool and my spindle; she hands them around to me. I take them, stunned at the glory, stunned at the way the glory still exists next to Tad, who seeps such horrible black in the starless night. I lower myself back to the ground, beside the boy.

I am not thinking anymore. I haven't thought since the oracle spun round with her blade, since time stopped moving in expected patterns, since I stopped being able to feel.

Serena crouches next to me, crying. That is all she is anymore—a flood of tears, as I am only a numbness. They wash her face, again and again, as the black washes Hesper's lad's tunic. My hands move of their own accord, toward the wool, toward my spindle. I listen for the next thread; it calls to me. It does not sound right, though; it sounds like pain and numbness,
why, why, why?
I don't pull that thread. I wait. I listen.

It is a strange thing that I do not hear our darkness. The darkness does not seem to exist in this numb place. Maybe if
I started to think again, it would be there, screaming at us to stop, to pay attention to what we are doing.

I listen for the thing that I want.

It is far beneath, and it is a long time before I hear it. When I do, I reach down into the basket, searching through. It is not there, and I reach deeper, past the bottom, into a space that nobody knew was there—not even me, who works with the thread every day, who knows more about this wool than anyone. I reach deeper, past the bottom, and my hand slides down and down. I am going to fall in after that, and I reach my other arm back to grab Serena's hand.

She holds it tight; I know her thoughts—she has none, just like me.

I reach; I reach. All around, the wool gleams. I dip my shoulder in, and then my head, following the faint sound of the thing I want. I do not close my eyes; I've no wish to, not when our glory swirls like this. I catch my breath at the dry burning of it.

Then Serena takes Xinot's hand, to hold herself back as she holds me back. And my eldest sister isn't numb. She isn't thoughtless. She's angry, but it's more than that. She has moved beyond anger into a knowing, certain choice, and I wonder at the surety she has. I didn't know that Xinot thought such things. I didn't know until this instant that she has been willing, all these ages long, to tear apart the universe if she was given reason enough.

She has never been afraid of that, of everything ending, and listening to her thoughts, I'm not afraid either. The wool I want
is calling out to me, deeper than I knew the world could go.

I come out of the basket and look over at my sisters.

Serena's tears are flowing. Xinot is shaking with the choice she has made—not out of fear, and not only out of anger—but also out of joy at the trueness of it, the way it is the only choice we have left to make, and the way that we are the only creatures in the world who can make such a choice.

They want what I want. They will do anything to get it.

We grip hands; we will not let go. I don't look at the bleeding boy. He slid from the edge many minutes ago, and there is nothing real left of him to see.

I grab my spindle with my free hand and plunge it into the basket. My shoulder follows, then my head. It is so deep, the thing that I want, and I know what I must do. I listen; I follow. I leave the ground behind and dive in after it, and my sisters come too, linked to me, kicking through our glory.

The world disappears.

We know this stuff, this glittering mass of magic. It isn't the web of our darkness. It isn't the patterns that must never be broken, the unchangeable spun threads.

This is what the patterns are made of. This is the substance from which everything else is formed, the answers to all the questions.

Everything is here. Everything that has happened, everything that is happening, and everything that will or could or might happen in the future.

And not only that, but also things that never did happen, and that never could.

Aglaia is here, an old, old woman, saddened with many lonely years.

Tad is here, a healthy little boy, younger than he is now. He kicks a ball through the streets of his father's city, and he laughs, his hair glowing in the sun.

You are here, being born and living and dying in a thousand different ways, with a thousand different fortunes.

Everything has happened here, and everything will happen.

We forget what we came for. We drift, holding hands, and we are all weeping now at the beauty of it.

I say,
Let us never leave this place.

My sisters do not answer, but I know that they agree.

We drift, we listen to the stories of the wool. Everything exists, all at once, and nothing ever ends.

It is a long time before we realize what is strange about this place.

We have been listening to so many lives, so much potential. Here, you mortals are unlimited, choosing one path and then the next, loving or killing or creating art so true it sends bright shivers down the back of anyone who sees it.

Everyone is here, every one of you who ever has or ever could exist.

There are no gods, though. No sun, no sea, no wisdom. There is no darkness. And there is no us.

We are nowhere in this place, not being born on our darkest night, not growing our vines on the mainland or watching
the waves out on our lonely rock. We do not love or kill or create. We are nothing.

It is a long time before we notice this, but when we do, I feel a thought trickling into my head, the first of my own thoughts since the oracle spun with her second blade toward the child. My sisters feel it too. It ricochets around and through our minds, until I am speaking it:
Something's not quite right.

I don't know what that means; of course everything is right. Everything exists. Everything goes on and on, even after it ends, even after it is gone.

But that thought is itching at me, and it doesn't go away, doesn't change, doesn't become false or unimportant.

Something is not quite right.

As I think it, we drift so far into the wool that I am not entirely sure anymore which is the way out.
It doesn't matter
, I try to tell myself and my sisters.
There is no need to leave. Everything is here.

Still that thought itches. It itches so much that I remember what we came for, and I scan the wool again, listening for the bit we're searching out. We're so deep we've reached it; I can hear it just off to one side. We dive over to it, and I grab the bit, wind it around my spindle.

Xinot has brought her shears; I see them poking out from her free hand. Serena lets go of me and Xinot; we float there in the wool, ready to work.

I know now what I was listening for.

It isn't a mortal; it's made of the same stuff, but it has none of the bits that make up a middle or an end. It's only a beginning—a very
first thought, a new breath of air, an instant that starts everything over again.

I am spinning; I am humming. My sisters watch me, knowing my thoughts.

This isn't anything that our world could bear. When we take it out into the light, it will end everything, tear apart the patterns, untangle the web. Once all has gone, this thread will be the start of a new time and a new world. And then we can spin and measure it—all the mortals, every life—exactly as we want. We can form the perfect universe, all comfort and joy. We can decide that no one will die, that lands will expand to make room for the threads that we will pile up on our endless shelves.