When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy) (14 page)

As I walk toward the back entrance, I think of gathering Nathaniel and taking us to the grotto to talk things over. Even if Cathedral Reims won’t have me back, there are other convents on Norbury--though not as prestigious as the one in Malva. I’ll allow Nathaniel to stay here with Father, but I must do everything in my power to become professed because it is the only way to bring myself closer to Deus in a way that I hope will free Nathaniel and I. We can’t undo what we were born as, but I can only hope Deus will view us in a favorable light and allow us into Paradise when we die.

So I climb the stairwell to the second floor, sweep down the hall, and find Nathaniel in his room at the end, looking out at the snowy hills through his window. I knock on the doorframe. “Nat, would you like to go to our grotto? I know you wanted go to when it was warmer, but spring is so far, and I really want to go there.”

He turns around, his eyes glowing with this suggestion. He gives me a toothy smile, and I notice a small gap on the bottom row of his teeth. He beams. “I lost a tooth yesterday! Father told me to put it with Mother’s things, so I did. I would show you the tooth, but Father put Mother’s things away, in her special drawer. He only wants it opened if we have more special things to put in there.”

I smile. That may have been a form of closure for Nathaniel to put a part of himself with a part of Mother, although I can’t imagine how healthy it is for Father to cling on to items that should have been buried with her. “Let’s go to our grotto then.”

When we arrive at our grotto, I’m grateful not much has changed, except the icicles hanging from the entrance and the snow littering the dirt floor. Using my hands like shovels, I push snow off a rock shelf and settle a fleece blanket on it. We settle ourselves on the blanket, and I look around the cavernous grotto, at the striations in the walls from where nature has chipped away. Oliver would love this place. Then I remember Oliver abandoned me and I haven’t seen him in several days and don’t know if I will ever see him again. A pain swells in my heart, one that should be for Mother. His eyes float in my mind. They’re bright pieces of silver and not the usual watery gray. His complexion, too, is more flushed in my mind’s eye. It’s silly how we romanticize things in our heads. Even Oliver’s lips are fuller, more supple, a peach I could--

I shake my head, internally chiding myself for thinking of Oliver in that way. We are friends, mere friends, with suppressed feelings. Oh, Deus, what is wrong with me? I’m craving him too strongly. Mother was right: absence can make the heart grow fonder. Foolish heart.

“Sister!”

Nathaniel’s voice pulls me from my reverie. I turn, and Nathaniel is clutching a stained, white string in both of his hands. “Cat’s cradle?” I say.

He nods and goes about forming the labyrinth of crisscrossed string, leaving just enough space to put my hand through. Every time we come to the grotto we play cat’s cradle. There is something to be said about tradition, the way it brings people together, and the way it brings on feelings of nostalgia. This is one moment for me as I put my hand through, Nathaniel tugs, and the string falls limp around my wrist. This little game of cat’s cradle brings on feelings so hard to describe that frustration tugs on my heart knowing that in spite of everything looking the same, not everything feels the same.

I sigh, letting the string fall from my wrist. “Not even the grotto feels the same,” I say, getting up and going over to the mouth of the grotto. The rolling, snowy hills stretch into the horizon, meeting at the focal point of our mansion.

We used to play tag, hide-and-go-seek, tell stories to one another, eat down here, and sometimes sleep here, and there is nothing about this grotto anymore that makes me want to do any of that. I know this isn’t because I’ve gotten older either, but because I have allowed myself to detach from this place in order to connect more with Cathedral Reims.

Nathaniel stands beside me, resting his head just beneath the crook of my arm. “What do you mean it doesn’t feel the same?”

“Nat, I never wanted to come home.”

“I know.”

At this moment, I feel like I could talk to Nathaniel as though he is my age and not some eight-year-old. “I just don’t know how to react to any of this, Nat. I haven’t cried at all about Mother. And then Oliver told me the Professed Order is going to put Sister Colette in an asylum, and I may never see her again. You know how close her and I were. And, and--”

I scan the horizon, trace the wispy clouds in the sky and scale to the tops of the pine trees. Colette and Oliver would love this place. I ball my fists by my sides, trying to suppress the shaking that wants to come out of me in waves.

“You want to go back to Cathedral Reims, don’t you?” Nathaniel asks, looking up at me. “This place doesn’t feel like home to you, does it?”

I shake my head, biting my bottom lip. “I’m sorry. I know how much you’ve wanted to come home for so long. For me to not feel that at all, you must hate me.” I feel lonely, a desolate wasteland in my heart.

He grabs my hand, squeezes it. “No. But what are you going to do?”

“I can’t stay here, that’s for certain.”

“Father won’t like that.”

“I know.” A choked sob crawls up my throat, and my voice comes out cracked. “I want my old life back!”

Thinking about Colette and Oliver and Cathedral Reims, even the pain I endured there, I can no longer hold the tears back. They don’t simply slide out involuntarily, but they gush out, water bursting through a thick sheet of ice. I slide into the snow, tighten my overcoat around me, and sob. My body racks with the effort, and I swear the tears feel like they’re freezing on me, but I don’t hold them back anymore. Nathaniel sits down beside me and embraces me with his small arms. He even makes shushing sounds like Father does. This makes me feel like a child, but Colette did once tell me that if I’m going to cry, then I should cry like a child because there is no better way to be.

I cry for a while, until my head feels like it will burst from the headache pulsing across my forehead. The tears soon slow, then die down altogether until there are only little sniffles left. I wipe myself of tears, my face burning in the cold from the salt rubbing away at my skin.

“I’m going to go back to Cathedral Reims in a week, Nat, and I’m going to request they allow me back in. If I show up there myself, and maybe if I plead, they’ll take pity on me. If not, I’ll find another convent.”

Nathaniel picks at his nails. There is less blood. Isis must have done something for him. Or maybe being home. Regardless, he hasn’t let Mother’s death affect him too much. “Why do you want to be a nun so badly? It seems so painful. I know you have welts from your back, and I know Mother Aurelia did that to you.”

“You’ll understand when you find something you’re so passionate about you’ll do anything to obtain it, even if that means bleeding for it.”

“I don’t want to be passionate about anything then.”

This comment brings a small laugh from me. “Passion is the reason we live, Nat. When you’re little, the world is so open to you that every day is something exciting, but as you grow older, you find you have to search for other things to be excited about, things that are more complicated than a rainbow in the sky, or a flower unfurling from its bud. Certainly you still appreciate those things, but it’s not the same.”

Nathaniel looks out at the horizon, seemingly lost in pondering. He then snaps his eyes back on me. “I think I understand what you’re saying. I think…” He sighs. “But I think I already feel that way.”

He rests his head on his knees, and this action alone tells me I’ve robbed three years of Nathaniel’s life by taking him to Cathedral Reims, three years he could have used to be a child, to explore the world more, to know himself better. Instead he’s spent that time in a stuffy Cathedral, learning about Deus, doing endless chores for the sake of doing chores, and being teased by that Ann girl. He doesn’t look at the snow with the same wonder I did when I was his age. Cathedral Reims sapped that from him.

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Nat, I’m sorry for doing this to you. I never should have taken you from here. And now Mother…”

Nathaniel looks back up at me with eyes full of too much knowing. He shouldn’t have to know at such a young age that people can be so weak they spiral into devastating addictions that kill them. “Mother wasn’t your fault. But is that why you had us run away, because Mother was who she was?”

I’ll let him believe this lie. “Yes, yes I did.”

“Then maybe it was best.”

I run my fingers through his hair. “Start acting your age, Nat. You’re scaring me.” He beams.

“Oh, what a sweet little moment between brother and sister. I didn’t have any siblings. I was an only child, later hated in life by my parents.”

Both Nathaniel and I whip our heads in the direction of a familiar voice. From behind a boulder resting against the side of the grotto emerges a familiar face, only this time he looks too human.

Chapter Fourteen

“Shame about your mother. I assume she died? I tried to kill myself once, through opium.” My mouth drops open. “Oh, opium overdose? Is that how your mother died? Opium was too slow for me. I ended my life a much quicker way. However, had I known I was going to come back as this, I probably would have let the opium kill me because then I might still be alive, if you can really deem addicts ‘alive.’”

Nathaniel wraps his arms around my waist, clinging to me tighter than a corset. I let him, too stunned to do anything else. Asch is…dead. Asch is dead. This means that all those other shadow beings must be dead too. I look Asch over, noting that his hair is a deep brown, his skin tan and his face scarred from whatever his previous life did to him. He looks at Nathaniel and I with piercing, green eyes. “What are you?” I ask.

Nathaniel quivers, digging his nails into me. “Y-you can see him too?”

Of course anyone can see Asch now. If that vision, or whatever I experienced on that train, is true, then these shadow beings have made themselves visible just by taking the blood of someone alive.

As my hand goes to the top of Nathaniel’s head, his question truly registers with my mind. My little brother has been seeing these things the entire time at Cathedral Reims. This is why the Professed Order insisted he was out of sorts. This is why he must have gone into shock a few days ago when we confronted Ann. He was trying to keep them a secret, just as I kept them a secret from everyone but Colette.

Asch smiles. “You can thank the witch who so happily sacrificed herself so that I could be visible to this world. She was difficult to find, but she had full control over her fire, so she wasn’t hard to spot.”

I squeeze Nathaniel. “Get out of here. Go home. Lock yourself in your room.”

Nathaniel lets go. “I-I’m too scared.”

Asch looks away from us with indifference. “I’m not interested in you, boy. Purgatory wants you left unharmed. Same with your sister, though I can’t for the life of me imagine why he would want a potential resource wasted. Our numbers are already small as it is, at least compared to the living.”

Who is this Purgatory the shadows keep speaking of? Perhaps their leader? If so, what does he want?

Nathaniel laces his fingers through mine. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

I untwine my fingers from his. “Go, Nat. You heard what he said. He won’t harm me. I’ll be all right, but I don’t want you here.” I doubt Asch doesn’t mean harm, but if I can use his lie to get Nathaniel away, I will.

My little brother pulls away, and hesitates. I nod, and he runs, looking back at me once before disappearing off into the hills.

I turn toward Asch, arms crossed. “What are you?” I ask again.

“A Shadowman. A dead witch. An abomination Deus created to reward witches for suffering in life, when really it’s not much of a reward because we suffer with Maladies that torture us in other ways. Apparently our Maladies are supposed to remind us how mortal we still are, but I think they ensure we obey Deus.” He pauses. His grin widens. “You’ll be one too when you die.”

The words materialize too fast for me to retract them. “That’s a lie. I won’t turn into one of you. How could I?”

Asch laughs. “No matter how pious you are, you will die into a Shadowman.” He then looks down at me. “Only witches can see Shadowmen. Do you believe me now? That’s how we remain undetected from the world.”

I quiver, digging my nails in my palms to keep from lashing out. “What reasons do I have to believe you?” My tone darkens. “You and your little cohorts have been following me around Cathedral Reims, wanting witches for Deus knows what reason.” I stop trembling, feeling bolder after having said that. “Now that you know I’m a witch, you can do what you want with me. I’m the one you’ve been looking for, aren’t I, the other witch you’ve been desperately seeking out? Well, here I am. What do you plan to do with me?”

Asch tilts his head. “I already said Purgatory wants you unharmed. But don’t change my mind. I’ll gladly accept an afterlife of nothingness if you choose to further agitate my nerves. We have been looking for more witches, and we would be more than willing to take you on, if he weren’t so infatuated with you. But we were following your little friend.”

One-by-one, my nails come out of my palms. My arms fall slack at my sides, and I just stare at Asch, unsure of how to react to this. They have been following Colette this entire time.