The Shadow Behind the Stars (5 page)

Well, it was possible that the magic would slip away from her at the end. As her mind darkened and her heartbeat slowed, she might open her eyes, aware at last of the tightening hold of the water. She might panic, white bursts of shock shooting through her brain. She might suffer after all.

But then never again.

Even in her half-aware state, this girl was beautiful. It may have been that beauty that made me hesitate before I killed her—the way the sun was playing at the ends of her hair, the way her eyes reflected the shifting sea. For a moment, as I watched her, I saw the world in this girl. But I think it was more than that. If I hadn't seen the moment by the threads when the dark fear had crossed her face, or if I hadn't felt our magic swirling around her—I would have wondered, maybe, but I would have let her go.

Those beginnings had shown how dangerous this girl might be. But I work the same thread as my sisters, and the hints at deepness also tantalized me.

Before I drowned her, I laid my fingers along Aglaia's cheekbone. I murmured a rhyme that undoes snarled things—I hadn't one strong enough to take away Serena's spell completely, but I could grant this girl a momentary clarity.

I saw her blink; I saw the shudder go all through her skin. I pulled away from her, back to my own seat, behind my hair.

She was breathing heavily. Her hands were gripping her bench, and I felt my heart beating fast as I watched her lift her head and open her eyes.

The horror that had flashed last night was back; it rattled her breath and shook her frame. She looked about, at the sky, down into the boat, and up to me. I don't think she was seeing any of it. I don't think she was wondering what she was doing out in the middle of the ocean—my untangling spell didn't allow for uncertainty.

When she caught my gaze again, I knew she was going to speak, and suddenly I didn't want to know what she would say. Oh, she was so beautiful—a thousand times more radiant than she was under Serena's spell. She was in pain, but full of purpose, and full of rage. I knew that as she opened her mouth—I knew the tone of her voice before she said it: “They weren't raiders, Chloe. Those bastards knew the secret way in under the village wall.”

The anger I had anticipated, but I was frozen under the sure, cold knowledge in her words. She was telling me something important; it was a secret that she hadn't known when she showed up on our doorstep only yesterday. She was glaring at me. She was expecting me to speak. I faltered—I, the steadiest of my sisters!—and did what the mortal wanted. I said, “Are you certain?”

“They knew,” she said. She leaned toward me, and that bright day was glinting like blue fire in her eyes. “They never opened the gate; they were there before we realized it. And—and they knew
me
. They pointed; they recognized me.”

She was only a girl, some orphaned child Serena had felt sorry for. I had spun her thread. I had spun a thousand threads as tragic as this girl's.

But I was shivering. I pulled farther away from her.

“Chloe—” she started to say, and I saw her blink, hard. I thought she might be crying; I turned my face so I would not see her tears. “Chloe—” she said again; it was desperate. I looked, and she was staring, all still, as though gripped in some tight hold. Her lips fluttered once, wordless.

And then, between one blink and the next, her breath went out, and her face calmed.

Her shoulders relaxed; when she looked at me again, her eyes were dim. She blinked again, but slowly, and she leaned back on her seat, looking lazily across the waves.

I stared at her, still quivering. The sea was so silent, and the sun warmed us so pleasantly. My hair whipped much too frantically for such a calm scene, such a lovely girl sitting peaceably across from me.

The sun asked me what was wrong, but I didn't answer him. I supposed Aglaia had been as self-aware, as
alive
when she first showed up at our door. But then she had been like any of the wandering heroes we've had come to our island, scattered over the eons: temporary, disconnected from us. Sharing a boat in the middle of the sea, telling me her secrets, she had become someone individual; I knew her now.

I couldn't kill her. I wanted to, still. Oh, how I wanted to let her sink out of my sight, to forget her voice and the fiery way she had looked at me. I wanted never to think about this girl again.

Turning my face to the depths of the sea, I cursed the wonder that had made me take the spell away. Why had I needed to know? She was only another mortal, another poor creature caught up in our web. I knew what happened to such creatures. There was only ever one end.

I shoved the rope back under my seat, and I took out the fishing lines. Aglaia smiled sweetly as I showed her how to bait a hook, and I scowled and wished her safely drowned. But after the sea had granted us three fat fish, and they were slapping
against our hull, mouths gaping as this girl's did, watching them, I brought her back to our island, and I helped her from the boat.

That afternoon my sisters and I sat in our usual places and worked. Aglaia waded out along our shore, watching minnows dart and gathering smooth, bright stones. She was piling a small collection in a corner by the blankets where she had slept last night. They were gleaming, empty things—not a speckle or a rough spot in the bunch.

As the sun dipped low, Aglaia put a fish over the fire to grill. She sat on the floor by the pit, watching our latest thread shimmering in the late summer light, passing from spindle to palm to
slice
. She rubbed her new collection in her hands, all over, around and about again. Each of her movements was spare, and exact, and as smooth as the stones.

I didn't tell my sisters what Aglaia had said in the boat, not as we worked and not as we stopped to eat the fish by our fire. After we ate, Serena picked up her hats again. She showed the stitches now and then to Aglaia, who put down her stones to finger the stuff, blinking wide.

Xinot was watching me over the top of her cane. I was sitting a bit away from them, tucking my knees up and folding my face in behind my hair. I could sense my sister's bottomless eyes, her knowing mouth.

“What bothers you, Chloe?” she murmured. The others were laughing at something; or Serena was laughing and Aglaia was joining in.

I didn't answer; I hunched lower.

Xinot curled her fingers, inviting. “You can tell me.”

“Nothing,” I muttered. “Leave me alone.”

She sniffed, but she turned away toward the fire.

As I watched the firelight outlining her dark cloak and curved back, I thought about calling her to me, telling her what Aglaia had told me. It wasn't much, after all. Just a clue, just a hint of something more sinister than the nightmare she had already revealed.
They weren't raiders. They knew me. They knew the secret way in under the village wall.

Oh, raiders were bad enough, and seeing your parents killed, your village ruined. How could this be worse?

But it was. I already knew that, having heard only those few words. It tasted . . . it tasted like hubris, like vengeance, like all those darker paths a life can weave. It tasted sharp and meaningful, like something you couldn't escape.

I knew that it would draw Xinot in, a mystery like that. Even I hadn't managed to keep from chasing my curiosity to the other side of Serena's spell. If my eldest sister got a whiff of what I'd found, she would want to follow this girl, all the way to the end of her thread, to let each drop of destiny soak through her limbs, slide along her bones.

Neither of my sisters was safe from this girl; I mustn't let either of them become attached. Not after Serena's children. Not after what had happened to Xinot later, out on this very island. I hadn't been able to drown Aglaia today, but I swore then that I would keep her from the others. I would take her out in the boat with me again tomorrow, and the day after
that, until I could follow through with my plan of killing her at last. I would keep her bright eyes from Serena's soft heart, from Xinot's need to know.

For that night I sulked, and Xinot left me alone. I listened to Serena talking with Aglaia, and I thanked the gods for the hollowness in her cheerful replies, for the way my sister's spell had hidden the girl who had spoken to me, somewhere far below.

I KEPT MY OATH; I
took Aglaia out fishing in our skiff again the next morning, and then the next after that. I left the rope under my seat in the boat; each time we went, I grabbed it as soon as we were out on the waves.

But each time, I couldn't quite get my hands to tie hers. I tried using my magic; I whispered words that compel flesh to move, and my arms jerked toward the girl, and she watched patiently as I lifted her wrists. But the touch of her skin always broke my spell. I blamed it on Serena's power, twisting along the girl's arm, undoing my own magic. I never tried twice in one morning, though. As my hands fell back to my side of the boat, I dropped the rope to the floor as well. I even felt my fingers relaxing, my shoulders falling back when I reached for our lines and hooks, as if in relief.

Every morning this happened. Each day I swore fervently
that it would not happen again, and each day I was forsworn.

Those first afternoons, as I worked with my sisters on the island, I watched the girl to be sure there was no sign of the bright-gazed mortal I had seen. At least I found nothing to worry me in that. Aglaia was happy to sit in a corner much of the time, humming or sewing away at some project Serena had handed her. Sometimes she'd go on rambles around our island, leaping from rock to rock or gathering her empty stones. In the evenings after we'd eaten, she loved to sit by Serena, who would stroke the girl's hair absently. She did not bother Xinot, and my eldest sister generally behaved as though she was not there.

I kept her by my side as often as I could; I spent many hours out on our rocks with her, scaling fish or skinning vegetables. She would look out over the waves, never toward the mainland but off past the end of the island. I would listen as she began to hum her strange, haunting tunes. There were never any words in Aglaia's tunes, not any that I understood. But her singing voice was unbearably lovely, like the last lingering notes of a harp song.

One night, about a week after she'd arrived, I watched from an opposite corner of our house as Aglaia was drifting off to sleep.

We do not sleep, so we do not dream, but we have heard of the things that you mortals dream. Illusions, wrapped in longings and fears—your dreamland is a wide, dark everywhere. You do not know the things we know or taste magic on the wind. You dream, though, that you are all-powerful;
that you fly; that your lives are as important as the gods'.

Mortal dreams lie on the surface, but they tell deeper truths. As Aglaia breathed slow and slower, I watched the empty blankness that smoothed her face melt away. I saw the dreams begin to flicker across her eyes, down to twitch her mouth. She smiled, not with the perfect sweet smile she had in the daylight. She smiled small and knowingly. She frowned, as though she was thinking and as though the thinking caused her worry. She remembered.

The thoughts drained from her face, and her eyebrows drew up, her mouth opened. She did not cry out or move; the memories froze her. She wept as she dreamed; one silent, glistening tear slipped across her nose.

She knew. Even if she did not know her own name during the day, when she dreamed, she somehow knew again the horrors hidden away.

Serena was there, a shadow between me and the girl. I looked up, and she was frowning. “You mustn't watch her so, Chloe,” she said. “A human's dreams are private. We've no right to see the things she dreams.”

“You are right, sister,” I said at once. I held out a hand, and she helped me to my feet. “We should not pry into the girl's mind. We should leave her alone.”

I followed her out to the wind, and I let it tease my hair, but I did not hear the prayers it delivered; I did not feel our darkness flowing beneath my skin. There was another sound itching: it was Aglaia's soft singing, echoing here and there through my mind. I breathed in deep; my hair twisted back
and my dress blew forward. But all that night I could not relax; I could not lose myself as I was used to do.