The Shadow Behind the Stars (16 page)

“You think we are blind to this?” Serena said.

“I think,” said the woman, “that you have not walked the mortal realm in many ages, and that there is a reason for that. I think the stories they tell of you are true—that you do your work without a care for its result, that you, who should be the wisest of creatures, don't even understand your own art.”

I said, finally, snarling at her, shaking off my sister's arm completely but staying at her side, “Mortal, you are overfull of your few years. You talk to us of understanding—
us
, who have seen the birth of stars.
Us
, who measured your life before you knew you existed;
us
, whose thoughts you could never comprehend. Save your wisdom, old one, for your grandchildren. We've no need of it.”

“Have you not?” The woman peered about at us all. “Have you not, indeed?” She shook her head. “You three are no wiser
than babes, toddling from wall to wall for the first time. You think because you've lived forever, you know what it is to live.

“You”—she gestured to me—“you are youth without potential. You are strength without purpose. Eternal youth is not youth at all—it is frozen time, incapable of learning or growing. Our young people grow in bounds every day, in thought and body and spirit.

“And you,” she said, turning to Serena, “you think you understand what it is to be a mother, a woman in her prime? But you have no yearnings for youthful days gone past, and you have no fear of the shriveling days to come.

“And the oldest of you is the least like us of all.”

“Am I?” said Xinot. Her eyes were dark pebbles; her fingers twitched and twisted. She did not look human, true, but she did look wise, inscrutable, a creature of the night. I had always believed that Xinot knew things Serena and I only guessed at. That there were answers in her to questions the world hadn't thought to ask.

The old woman blinked at her, as if reconsidering what she was about to say. But then she gave a shake of her head and pointed a finger at Xinot. “You, crone, may be closer to the mysteries than your sisters. But you do not know the mystery of having lived a long life. You have not felt yourself change from day to day. You do not wake in the morning believing that you can run again, as fast as you ever did. You do not taste death in every last bite of food, feel him following as you shuffle about.”

“Do I not?” said Xinot. “Do I not know death as well as you?”

In the silence, we all heard it. A gritty
snap
, as though a
rusty pair of scissors was clanging shut. The old woman didn't move; I couldn't see her blink.

Then she drew in one long, shuddering breath. “You have seen much, all of you,” she said. “But you will never understand what it is to live, to grow, to die. You will never understand the uncountable, priceless moments that make up those threads that you so casually spin, that toss us here and there with no thought for what's kind or what's fair. We are nothing to you.” Then, low, “And you are nothing to us.”

It was only what we had heard a dozen times in stories along the road: that we were separate from mortals; that we did not care. And it was true enough. There was no reason to lose my breath, hearing it again; there was no reason to hate this woman so.

Serena said, and there was such a bitterness in her voice, “What is it to you, then? Why should it matter what we know about Aglaia or about living, how wise or how ignorant we may be?”

“It doesn't,” the woman said. “Not in any practical way. It's only that she's just gone off with him, and everyone is so overjoyed, and I know that something is not right.” She nodded at me. “I'm not completely blind, maidy. I can sense the power that drips from you three. But you let her go to her fate anyway, so you cannot use it—or you choose not to, which comes to the same thing. And I cannot help wishing that you were different than you are, and resenting that you are not. And I am old, and I can speak my mind without fearing what you might do to me.”

Xinot said, quiet, sure, “Resenting does no good.”

The woman did not say anything for a moment, and then she sighed. “You are right, of course. No good at all.” She turned back toward the door; she paused, saying over her shoulder, “I'll bring you a pot of stew, shall I? You needn't risk coming down into the inn while you stay.” Her mouth quirked, and she laughed a dry laugh. “I don't suppose you'd care to be recognized by most people. Most wouldn't like you any more than I do.”

She opened the door and left. After a few moments more, I went over and snatched my cloak from the floor, and I threw it around my shoulders. I sat by the fireplace with my hood pulled up, and my sisters left me alone.

We were not there when Aglaia and Endymion rode into the courtyard of his grand house. We were not there when he gave her the most elegant of his rooms or when he showered her with gowns, with jewels, with sweets. We didn't have to see her letting him take her hand as they planned their future. We didn't have to see the light she kindled in her eyes when he walked by or the way he looked at her, as if she was the answer to his dreams.

It wasn't our place, out there where the world was watching, where the stories were being spun.

It was ours to wait in the inn's dusky room, to do our work, to listen. We could have known all that was happening by running our hands along Aglaia's thread or by closing our eyes and finding it in the darkness, but there was no need.
The old innkeeper, Hesper, told us everything when she brought our meals. She kept her word; we didn't even leave our room to go down to the main floor where she served the other guests.

The stories Hesper brought were the ones heard by all the people of the city. Every word their heroes spoke, every touch and glance was passed along from maid to cook to delivery boy, and down through the sun-washed streets like rain.

They were in love. They were happy; they would be married in three days.

Rumor after rumor about the wedding circulated, gaining in splendor with each telling—there was to be a grand marriage feast; a largesse would be given, so huge that every beggar would be fed that day. The dancing would last far into the night. All the city's richest lords and ladies would attend, and all would wear shining new gowns, new fine-cut tunics.

Hesper didn't say anything more about us being powerless, but she relayed all these things dryly, giving us many looks. We ignored her; or at least, Xinot and I did. Serena smiled at the old woman and asked after her lad in the kitchen. We stayed silent as they chatted, and I remained irritated long after she had gone.

“
Powerless
,” I muttered as we ate our noon meal the day before the wedding, seated on the floor around a plate of fruit, cheese, and bread. “I'd like to see a thing with more power than we have.”

“Is it power if we never choose to use it?” said Serena, and
I gave her a sharp glance, but she was calm, chewing a date.

“We choose not to use it
because
of how powerful it is,” I said.

“Hmmm,” said Serena.

Xinot said, “You are not suggesting that we do something?”

“No, of course not,” said Serena.

“There's nothing to do, anyway!” I said.

Serena gave me a pacifying look. “I didn't say there was, Chloe.”

“What could we do?” I said. “Kill Endymion before his time? Oh, maybe we should just take out his thread and cut it into pieces!”

“Chloe,” said Serena.

I got to my feet and moved away from them toward the window. “What are we
doing
here?” I muttered.

Neither of them answered. When I turned, they were frozen, looking up at me. Xinot said, “We followed her this far.”

Serena said, “She shines bright.”

I sighed, and I shook my head. I peeked out through the shutters, where the sky over the city's white walls was sparkling blue. I didn't tell them we had to pack up, to run from this girl as fast as we could. I didn't want to, not any more than they did.

“What did you mean,” I said suddenly, turning from the window to face Serena, “when you said I was only as old as you in years? What other way is there to be old?”

Serena blinked at me; she shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. “I don't know what I meant.”

Xinot said, gnawing calmly on a heel of bread, “Mortals count their age in years, Chloe. We are not mortals. Time does not do the things to us that it does to them.”

“Yes,” I said. “So?”

Serena said, “Xinot, it does not matter.”

“So,” said Xinot, “in years you are as old as Serena, as old as I am. In essence, though, you never will be. We will never be young, and you will never be old.”

I said, “You sound like Hesper. Are you saying I am as inexperienced as Aglaia, that I know as little about the world as—as a newborn mortal?”

“Of course not,” said Serena.

“Youth has its own wisdom,” said Xinot. “And its own faults.”

I thought about the way I never was the one who made our decisions. My voice was always third, and least. Then I thought about the way I had kept Aglaia's pain a secret from my sisters for so many weeks. I thought about how I was always protecting them, for fear they would lose themselves again, and a thread would break, and the darkness would scream, and our glory would disintegrate into nothing.

“You think I am the weakest, though,” I said. When Serena began to make comforting sounds, I cut her off. “You don't realize how blind you both are. You don't realize how many problems you cause, how many times we would have been in real trouble if it hadn't been for me.”

Xinot scoffed, “Name one.”

I did it; I said the word none of us had uttered since that day: “Monster.”

There was silence. My sisters were not looking at me, were not looking at each other. Xinot had dropped her hands with their bit of bread into her lap. Serena was staring blankly at our plate.
Just a cat,
I reminded myself.
How could they still be upset over just a cat?

“That was my fault,” said Serena softly. “Not Xinot's.”

“She would have cut the thread,” I said. “She
knew
.”

It was a relief to say the words at last. Even as I saw the guilt creeping into their faces, I was glad to say it. I was glad to place the fault where it was due.

Xinot said, “Yes. Yes, Chloe, I knew.”

I said, “I was the only one willing to stop it. I was the only one who wouldn't let us ruin everything.”

There was a pause, and then Xinot said, “You spun the thread before Serena measured it, before I nearly cut it. If the end had happened, do you really think it would have had nothing to do with you?”

I remembered that thread, writhing in its wrongness, and the fury on Xinot's face. I remembered how close it had been—closer even than my sisters knew. I almost hadn't snatched it away in time. In my horror, I almost hadn't snatched it away at all . . . but then I did, didn't I? That was what counted. “If I did spin a faulty thread, I didn't mean to. And when I realized what was happening, I knew what to do. I was the only one of us who knew what to do.”

I thought they weren't going to respond. Xinot had put
her bread back on the plate; Serena was twisting a date in her fingers, around and around. I didn't feel like eating anymore either. I pulled a chair over to sit by the window, leaning onto the sill. It had been so close, and he had been just a cat. Just one bright-eyed, soft-furred cat. And they thought me the weak one.

Xinot's words came from behind me, and they were low and hard. “You don't know everything.”

I didn't turn to face her, but I muttered, and I know she heard, “Neither do you.”

That night Aglaia came to visit us. Hesper showed her to our door. As she slipped in, we looked up from the thread, and we caught our breath. She was cloaked; she seemed another one of us, her hood pulled low over her face, strands of her golden hair peeking out at the edges.