The Shadow Behind the Stars (25 page)

He warms me until there is no such thing as warmth or sun or time.

Then all is gone.

NOTHING.

Can you imagine that? It is not an imaginable thing. Even we cannot understand the moment between what was and the beginning of everything.

Think of the instant before you choose a thing, what you are going to eat this morning, maybe. You don't really decide what to eat; your hand moves before your thoughts, snatching up a bit of bread, or a cup of milk, or a strand of seaweed. Your hand moves, and
then
you think,
I will eat figs
, but you think that after you have already begun to reach for them.

That moment when you are reaching—without thought, without knowing—is a little like the nothingness that comes at the end of the universe.

Except that you never grab the figs, or think, or know.

It's before the beginning. It's after the end.

There isn't
anything here in the nothingness, not even waiting, not even expectation.

Not even questions.

THEN OUR THREAD, THE FIRST
of our perfect new universe, begins.

It is only a thought, only a breath of air.

My sisters and I breathe it in, and we open our eyes, and we look around.

I don't know how we can see, as there is no light yet. But then again, there is no dark, and we can see perfectly, in every direction.

There are so many directions. We're standing on an empty, colorless field, without any dirt or grass. It stretches limitless, without even a horizon. No one is here except for us. Nothing is here except for our clothes and Xinot's shears and my spindle and the basket of new, shining wool.

We are placed around the basket, balanced on three sides,
as though we are meant to sit around it, as though that is our purpose.

It
is
our purpose. This was the thought; this was the new beginning. Us, and the thread, and whatever world we choose, with whatever rules we think fair.

So we sit, and Xinot pulls out her shears, and I hold my spindle at the ready.

I smile about at my sisters. This is what we were made for. This moment, when we can set everything to rights.

“Who should we bring back first?” I say, because that is what we want, to bring you back. We want Aglaia and Tad and Hesper. We want everyone just the way you were. We'll only make you better, so that it does not hurt anymore, so that no child will ever be given a prophecy of pain.

Xinot has the answer. “We should bring back Monster.”

Serena reaches over to touch her hand. “Oh, yes. That is what we should do.”

I listen for our cat's thread. I hold my hand over the basket, and I wait until my fingers are tingling. There is no need to dive down for this thread. The basket will give us what we need; we determine the future.

There—that is the cat; I recognize his glitter.

Xinot says, “Make sure he doesn't die, Chloe.”

Serena says, “Take away the pain he felt at the end.”

I nod, and I only just keep from rolling my eyes at them. Of course I will. That's the point of this.

I pull out the thread and wrap it around my spindle. I think about humming some dreadful tune, but I don't know
anything that fits with the perfect world we are going to make. We will have to come up with some new, better tunes. We will have to come up with new everything—new stories, new languages.

The newness of it shivers through me, and I think that it is joy.

Around and around my spindle goes. It is a perfect spindle, but then it always was. The thread glitters, and I don't let anything bad creep in. I listen for the painful parts; I tug those strands away.

Around and around my spindle goes, and the thread I hand to Serena isn't as thick as my threads usually are, but that must be how it will work here. They don't need to be thick; they're perfect as they are.

My sister takes the thread and measures it, quick and sure. She pauses, looking at the place she's marked. It's only a finger-length, this tiny thread. She frowns at me, but I remind her, “No death, Serena. The length doesn't matter when he'll live on and on.”

So she passes the thread to Xinot, and our sister opens her shears.

Except they aren't shears anymore. I don't know what they are. We don't have a word for them yet; we'll have to make that up as well. They are sharp, but they are also blunt. They are long and straight, but also short and curved. They straddle the place Serena has marked, and some edge of them brings the beginning of the thread around, to lie next to the spot they are to cut. Xinot holds them wide, and then she brings
them together, and the sound
rings
like a far-off bell. When she pulls her not-shears away, Monster's thread has no beginning or end; it's a circle, going around and around forever, on and on.

We stare at it.

Mew,
something says.

We look down, and there he is, a kitten with soft, clean fur. He is winding around and around the basket, looking from one of us to the other to the other.

He looks up at Xinot as he passes her, and my sister reaches out a hand for him. He lets her draw him into her lap. She scratches him between the ears, just as she always used to do, and he closes his eyes, wrinkling his nose in contentment.

He is so perfect. He is so lovely and healthy and alive.

We sit there for a long time; it does not matter how long, because time doesn't really mean anything here, and Monster won't ever die.

At last Serena says, “Who else should we bring back?”

I blink and look away, remembering sea-blue eyes, sun-bright hair. “Aglaia,” I whisper, and my sisters nod.

I turn to the wool again, holding that memory in my mind. I listen for the beginning of our girl's thread; there it is, waiting for me, just as it should be. I tug a strand out and wrap it around my spindle. I don't need my sisters to tell me which parts to leave out. No raiding of her village, no baby's sickness, no
pain
.

There are so few strands left when I've weeded out the imperfect ones that it takes all my skill to form an unbroken
thread. It is very thin, and I hand the end carefully to Serena, afraid that it will scatter to dust.

She measures it with the lightest touch; she passes it along to Xinot.

The not-shears
ring
, and a delicate circle floats to the ground to rest alongside Monster's.

We look up, and my friend is there.

She is smiling around at us. There are no shadows on her face. There are no lines of worry or grief. She is as smooth as a polished stone, as smooth as the stones she used to gather from our shore.

That thought troubles me, and I let it drift away.

Then I stand and take the few steps toward Aglaia quickly, reaching out for her hands. She gives them to me gladly, smiling all the while. “Hello,” she says. “What is your name?”

“I am Chloe,” I say. I can hardly breathe, she is so real. “And these are my sisters.”

“Hello,” Aglaia says to them. She doesn't seem confused at how we can be sisters, with such differing ages. She doesn't seem confused by the colorless ground, either, or the way the space goes on and on.

I spin toward my sisters, eagerly. “Should we give her back her son?”

“Oh, yes,” Serena breathes, and Xinot nods as well.

So I let Aglaia's hands go, but only to listen for her child's thread, the one we first formed a week ago—if weeks mean anything now, which they don't. I pull the strands, sparkling as bright as they did then. I rub off all the wrong parts—the
sickness, the fear, and especially the much too early death. Serena measures the tiny thing, really only a wisp of a thread. Xinot
rings
it and it falls, big enough to fit around a very small pinkie.

For a moment I think that nothing has happened, because I am listening for something, and it is not there.

Then I realize that I was expecting a baby's cry, and of course there will be none, not in our perfect world, not where nothing hurts.

Serena reaches around the basket, to the side I cannot see. She scoops Taddeo up into her arms. He is the age he was when we first met him—all of them are, I realize, the kitten Monster and the girl Aglaia and the week-old baby Tad. Serena rocks the boy, and he sleeps peacefully. He does not murmur; he does not kick or cry. I lean over to look into his face, and I wish that he would open his eyes.

“Here,” Serena says, passing him to me. She gestures toward Aglaia, and I go over to the girl.

She has taken a seat next to the basket, leaning against it as she nods off to sleep. She is not easy to wake, but when I have shaken her shoulder quite roughly, she does lift her head and smile at me.

There is no blurriness in her gaze; it is as though she went from deepest sleep to clearest wakefulness—or as though when she slept, she ceased to exist, as though she does not remember now that she did sleep.

“Hello,” she says. “You are Chloe.”

“Yes,” I say, grinning at her.

“And these are your sisters,”
Aglaia says, nodding politely to them.

My grin falters. “Yes,” I say. Smoothest stones gathered from our shore, that she rubs and rubs, turning in her hands.

I shake my head, to clear it. I offer our girl her baby, and she lifts her arms for him obligingly. I tell her, slowly, so she'll understand, “This is your son. This is Taddeo.”

She nestles the baby close; she rubs her face against his. Watching the way he fits snug in her arms, I let out a breath, and I feel my nibbling thoughts backing away. It is going to be all right. It is going to be perfect. Aglaia has her child; all is well.

She says, smiling, “He is soft.” Then she lifts her arms, offering him back to me.

I shake my head. “He's yours,” I say gently, reassuring her. “He is your son.”

“Oh,” Aglaia says. “Thank you, Chloe. He is very soft.” She holds him close again, and she strokes his hair, smiling into one of the distances.

I leave them there, as they should be, and I go over to sit in my place again between my sisters. We see Aglaia smiling; we see the baby's breath going in and out. We watch them live.

We will watch for as long as we want. When they have lived forever, we will bring back another bit of the world, and then another, and we will watch them, too. After many eternities, we will have it all just as it was, but better, truer. It is going to be all right. It is going to be perfect.

Monster sleeps on Xinot's lap. Tad sleeps in Aglaia's arms. Soon Aglaia nods off as well, her cheek against the baby's forehead.

We watch them sleep, and we know that they are alive.

We watch so long that the last of the tears on Serena's face dry off, and she sits in silence with a small smile.

We watch so long that the anger I can sense coming off Xinot, as salt comes off waves on a breeze, eases, and then dissipates, into the windless space of our new world.

We watch so long that finally the numbness I have been feeling since Tad slid away starts to prickle here and there, as ice begins to sprout trickles of water underneath the sun.