The Shadow Behind the Stars (9 page)

We know,
we said.
We know the song of the thread as we know our own fingers, our own palms. We have only to shut our eyes to read any thread we choose.

“Yes,” said Aglaia. “I know you can. I know you do.”

How many nights had we sat with this girl around our fire? How many times had she laughed with us, and now it was as though she had never heard our voices, had never kissed our cheeks before she snuggled into her blankets.

She turned from us without saying another word. She took her cloak down from its peg. She stepped through our door out into the rain, and the wind threw it shut behind her.

It stormed all that night and into the next day. We did not go out to the sea; we did not do our work. We sat around our fire and watched the lightning's shadow sliding along our threads, sparking them orange and red and white. We listened to the thunder; we felt the rain hurling itself along our roof, a loud, messy drumbeat. It raged, this storm, a tearing, howling thing. It did not want to leave the world the way it was. It wanted to bite and thrash. It wanted to destroy.

The fire did little that night to diminish the dark that had trickled in under our walls, through the cracks at the edges of our door. It was a dense darkness, alive and certain. It had come when Serena had taken her spell from the girl, as though it had been waiting, as though Aglaia was a scented flower and it an eager bee.

We knew it. Not only because it was ours—it was our magic—but we knew this particular darkness, this thing that had shaped her path. We knew it because it was
hers
. Aglaia had said that when she closed her eyes, she could feel our threads murmuring to her, that she had spent so long in our house that our magic had begun to creep in under her skin. Aglaia had been empty; that had allowed our magic in. But we are also empty, in a way. It's why we go out to the waves every night—to fill ourselves back up. And living with this girl for so many weeks, I think something similar had happened with us and her powerful fate.

I knew my sisters could feel it too. We could hear one another breathing, and we knew the tingle that was inching along every bit of us. I had been right to keep this girl from
them. One conversation, one look at the true Aglaia, and they could not look away again.

We resisted it, all through that night and half the day, as the storm barked and snarled. We tried to forget the shine of her eyes. We tried to ignore the dark undercurrent swirling around our ankles, singing to us as a siren would, to come, to jump, to dive.

I tried to remember my determination that I would let this girl go.

When the thunder had rolled away, when the lightning had paled and then diminished, the darkness still churned, and our breaths still caught, and we still tingled.

The gulls began to call out to one another, asking how their neighbors had fared through the rain. I left my sisters sitting silent, and I went to our door and pushed at it. It complained, but I snapped a word, and the door flew open, and the world rushed in.

The sea was rolling and rolling, energized from the storm. The air was cool and buoyant. Even through the clouds, the sun reached down pale tendrils, gleaming at the ends of my hair, pulling me toward him, murmuring my name.

I followed; I went out past our house to the east end of the island, where a line of rocks led me out to a point overlooking the frantic waves.

I stood there in the final drizzle, the winds whipping round. I closed my eyes against them; the sun touched my lids with soft gray kisses, and the sea showered me with spray.

Of all us sisters I am the most susceptible to sensory passion—for a human
boy who fetches us water from a well; for a poem; for a place. Not the comforting love of Serena's mothering, but a hard, fiery love that tears at the space where I would keep a soul.

I gave myself up to it, standing there. I took in the sea and the sky; I let the sun flatter me. If I stood like this long enough, I might forget Aglaia's words about it being our fault. I might forget the tug of her thread, the smell of it, the shine. I might forget the baby and Endymion and the way she said my name.
Chloe,
she used to say.
Chloe, you must help me.

When I went back along the line of rocks toward our house, I saw what the storm had done to our garden. The leaves were bruised; the stalks were bent. The peas, the beans were scattered like so much bird food. And our vines.

Serena had come out of the house as well; she was standing next to what was left of them. Tiny grapes had squished, here and there, in the melee. Our trellises were broken into fragments. Grape leaves draped over every bit of the garden, and the vines were tangled strings.

I went over to my sister and I touched her arm. “They weren't much to speak of, anyway.”

She shook her head. One hand was near her mouth, and she stared down at the mess as though there was nothing else.

“We'll plant new ones. We'll do it better; they'll grow tall and beautiful. You'll see.”

“Oh, Chloe,” she murmured. “Do you think I care about the vines?”

“Don't you?”

She shook her head again.

“What is it, then?”

She turned to look at me. The sky was in her eyes. “He used to sit here. Right here. He used to bat at the fruit and watch the birds fly.”

That creature, the one who had wormed his way into our lives. It was hard to tell, with everything all over the place. But she was right. Just here was where he used to sit, and just here was where we buried him. And the storm had covered it over with vines and sticks and small squished grapes.

I got down on my knees and reached out a hand to the muddle, swept away some leaves. After a moment, Serena folded herself to kneel beside me. As the clouds started to peel away and a fresh new breeze came in, we cleared the mess from the creature's grave, until the dirt was bare and the fallen vines formed a wreath.

Then I sat back on my heels as Serena bent over it, her face hidden behind her hair as mine so often was.

I watched her, and I smelled this breeze, and I smelled Aglaia's thread, and I thought.

This girl was so dangerous. Her path might lead us anywhere, to any sort of terrible place. Already even I had lost faith in our work, questioning the rightness of her fate.

If we left, I still would not be able to risk telling my sisters the dark secrets she had told me. I alone would have to know what Aglaia had said. I would have to bear it, and not let even my face show it.

I don't know how Xinot came up behind us so silently,
but then again, I don't know why I was surprised that she could. She bent her craggy face down near my shoulder and said, “Can you smell it, Chloe? The future that sparks on this wind?” She turned her nose into it, looking out to sea, and then swiveled her neck so she was facing our rocky path and the mainland. The breeze was sweeping just like that, in from the sea, over our rocks toward land. Of course there were no actual sparks, but it did smell as though there were: sharp and exciting, new as my wool.

It was pushing at us, and Aglaia's thread was pulling at us, and my sister's eyes were whirling.

Xinot reached behind her back, and she dragged two large black sacks around to me. I peered into them.

“I don't know . . . ,” I said.

She slipped a small purse out from her skirt. It jangled, and Serena looked up, over at her. “This is for you, sister,” Xinot said, and thrust the bag into Serena's hands. “I'll have enough to do pulling my old bones along.”

Serena opened her bag as well, though we all knew what it was. When we had come away from the mainland, we had brought quite a stash of coin with us. We'd tucked the bits into the corners of our house; while Serena and I cleared the vines, Xinot must have been hobbling from wall to wall, finding our pieces. The coin wouldn't be what they used today, but it was gold.

Serena said, with such hope that I knew it was already far too late, “Are we going to follow her?”

Xinot pointed her cane into the wind. “I'm not entirely sure
we have a choice. You can feel the strength of this thing as well as I can.” She peered closely at us. “You can
smell
it.”

I was shaking my head. “I don't know . . .”

Serena murmured, tying the bag closed, “She shines bright.”

Xinot tilted her head. “She pulls dark.”

I did try. I said, “She's nothing to do with us,” but even I didn't believe it when I said it.

My eldest sister shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She held out a hand to Serena. “Coming?”

Serena didn't take the hand, but she pushed herself to her feet. “We can't go without Chloe.”

“Nonsense.” Xinot took Serena's arm. Much too effectively for a woman her age, she pulled our sister away, to the west, toward the pathway leading to the mainland.

As they left the grassy green cap of our island and started down the rocks, Serena was still protesting, and Xinot was still pointing her nose ahead determinedly, pushing away with her cane. I called out to them, “Wait!”

Xinot kept on, but Serena tugged at her arm. They stopped at the edge of the rocky pathway, looking back at me.

“Just—wait,” I called. I picked up one of the big black packs, and I ran back into our house.

Xinot had filled one bag with my spindle and wool; the other, the one I carried now, was mostly empty, for whatever threads we spun along the way. It held only one thing: a coil of long, golden thread, glittering bright as day.

I walked along our shelves, listening for the other. It was as easy to find as it had been before, and I slipped it into the bag, though I didn't
like to see it curling up next to hers.

Then I tied the sack shut, and I slipped its strap over my head, across one shoulder. It was light; the other would be much heavier. I took my cloak down from its peg and grabbed Serena's as well. Xinot was wearing hers already; she rarely took it off.

I hesitated before I opened the door.

What were we doing? How did we think we could follow a mortal girl, no matter how strong the pull of her thread, no matter how the wind sparked? What did we think we were going to do if we found her at the end of this path? We were not the sort who did things. We were what
is
, what
must be
, what
cannot be altered
. We were not meant to meddle.

I shut my eyes, and I tried to remember, again, all the reasons I had decided to let Aglaia go, all the reasons there were to be glad that we were alone on our island once more.

But there, behind my eyelids, was the girl's bright face. There was the sky in my sister's eyes as she stood by our creature's grave. And there was the coil of Aglaia's thread, calling, teasing, tempting me to go, to leap, to dive.

I was drawn by her path, and my sisters were drawn as moths to a flame, as ravens to a shine.

Even if I went out to them now and said that I couldn't come, it was possible that Xinot would shrug her bony shoulders and turn her rounded back, and she would leave anyway. And where Xinot went, Serena would go. And what was I to do: spin my thread and hand it off to no one? Listen to the prayers on the wind without my sisters there beside me?

Without one another, we are nothing. Not mortals, not gods. Empty, lonely voices swallowed up by the world.

I passed through our door, and I shut it tight behind me. I whispered a good-bye to my sea and my winds. The sun would never leave me, but the others were keening when I turned my back to them.

I went around to the garden and picked up my other pack. My sisters were still waiting at the edge of the rocks climbing to the mainland. Serena smiled as I came up next to them, and Xinot gave me a nod and a twitch of her eyebrows. I nodded back, though I had no answering grin. I hefted my packs more securely, and I followed them from our island.