Above the Star

by Alexis Marie Chute

  “Is that all? A bowl and a ball?”

  “Imbecile! Never presume such simplicity!” Zeno barks. “This clay vessel I fired myself, in a kiln as hot as the sun, and imbued with the enchantment of Naiu, the magic of my world, which possesses the soul of the elements.” Zeno removes the sphere and hands it to Archie. “Hold this—be careful!”

  “Whoa, heavy!” Archie exclaims. “What’s it made from?”

  “Glass,” Zeno answers. “With precious metal—rhodium—at the core.”

  Archie cups the sphere in his hands and marvels at its warmth, as if a fire smolders within it. “Now what?” he says.

  Zeno strokes the lip of the clay vessel, exhaling long, with a whisper, into the pine box. As he taps the center firmly but delicately with one sharp nail, he sends the bowl spinning. It revolves so quickly that all imperfections in the terracotta blur into irrelevance. Not once does the clay graze the inside walls of the box; instead it spins perfectly balanced on an invisible axis. Archie leans in. He can feel the breeze from the vessel’s revolutions caressing his cheeks. The bowl maintains its pace, never decelerating, never increasing its rhythm.

  “It’s mesmerizing,” says Archie, without thinking.

  “You will see even greater beauty in Jarr-Wya,” Zeno replies without looking up. “Now, pass me the sphere.”

  Archie is reluctant to release the glass ball. He covets it like no other object he has ever desired in all his life. Once he slips it into Zeno’s waiting hands, Archie stretches his fingers wide. He stares at his thick, wrinkled palms in awe. “They feel new.” Archie laughs. “Like they are agile young roofer hands again!” Zeno stares at him, but Archie understands the look to be pride, not irritation.

  Zeno clutches the sphere above the spinning vessel, then allows it to slip into the rising current. Archie expects the ball to hit the bowl with a clatter, but the sphere hangs, suspended on the calmness at the epicenter of the animated device. The sphere begins to cloud and evolve, altering in color from a clear, silvery gloss to a milky cream, then to a brilliant white. With a flash and clap of air that is both blinding and deafening, the sphere deepens to a pulsating sapphire hue. With that, the electricity in the cabin crackles and sparks fly from the surging outlets. Then the lights go out.

  Chapter 7

  Cumulus clouds swiftly float, trapped, within the radiating blue sphere. Archie leans back on the mattress, his eyes imprinted with the afterimage of the galaxy within the glass. His wrist is still bound to Zeno’s, and throbs at the contortion as the creature runs his hand, and Archie’s, through the air. As Archie’s sight clears, he sees that the black cabin is illuminated in sapphire—and emerald, where the light from Zeno’s yellow eyes refracts through the blue. The clouds within the sphere are projected on every wall, but as Archie’s fingers, mirroring Zeno’s, reach for one, he startles at its density and dampness. The wind begins to pour out of the box in every direction. Archie feels it creep inside the sliver of space beneath his eyelids.

  With a brash snap of the lid, Zeno closes the box and seals the latch. “Embrace the device, Archibald!” Zeno orders, and Archie lays his hands on the rough wooden lid, which is astonishingly, blisteringly hot to the touch; it takes all his will to resist recoiling. The cyclone of air rushes out the seams of the box, along with the mutating sapphire light, which is at once peacock blue, then indigo, and finally a dull oxford denim color that only slightly brightens the black room, like a nightlight, but for the direction of Zeno’s gaze. A lemon-green aura radiates around the creature.

  Together they steady the device, which balloons in girth yet decreases in mass.

  “My hands!” screams Archie. “They burn!”

  “Steady yourself, Archibald!” Zeno cries. The wind blasts Zeno’s canvas hat from his head, pinning it to the art poster hanging on the wall behind them.

  Archie’s vision warps as the device enlarges—his hands with it—then shrinks to the size of a pin prick, and again, morphing as if its angles, its very form, is undecided. It is all Archie can do to steady his grip on the Tillastrion as it channels unseen energy in a spasmodic battle for equilibrium. Archie cries out and feels his strength wane. Zeno’s presence disappears to him but for the creature’s two glowing eyes, which also appear in flux, separating and rotating around the box in a peculiar orbit.

  The shifting focus—magnifying and exaggerating, then diminishing, and again but in new slants—dissects the old man’s mind and his brain throbs freely, extracted from his skull, with his skin floating loosely like a scarred canvas. “Am I going mad?” Archie yells into the vacuum of wind both sucking inward and thrusting out from the Tillastrion. Hours seem to have passed when Archie’s voice returns to his ears and answers, “Mad indeed, my man, mad indeed!”

  Suddenly, everything halts. The cabin is midnight-black, starless, and still. Archie is no longer clutching the Tillastrion. He touches his face and the back of his head; both are intact. Silence plugs his ears and grows louder, into a vibrational hum that electrifies his heartbeats. He curls his body, bringing his knees to his nose, and rocks back and forth. “No more, no more!” he screams. He presses his eyes closed, though he sees blackness either way.

  The hum stops. The pounding in his mind instantly ceases. Archie opens his eyes slowly, and they take a moment to adjust to the lights now shining through the cabin’s lamp and out the bathroom door. He pats the duvet he still sits on, as if his reality was in fact the dream. He snaps into awareness when he notices Zeno is no longer perched beside him. The twine has been burned from their wrists.

  Archie rises to his feet, wobbles, and collapses as he takes a step. He pulls himself into the chair beside the desk, reminded of the renewed strength in his hands from the sphere. He squints around the room as a moan rises from the far side of the bed. Steadying himself on the furniture, Archie rounds the mattress to find Zeno lying prostrate on the floor. The creature’s gray hands tremble. The box is gone. All that remains are shards of pine, shattered clay, and orange dust. The glass sphere has vanished entirely.

  “Zeno?” Archie demands. “Zeno, talk to me! Are you all right? What happened?”

  “Where are we? Am I home?” Zeno gasps, staring at the ceiling. “The air . . . the air does not smell right. Help me up!”

  Slipping his hands beneath Zeno’s arms, Archie hoists the creature like a child, plopping him down on the bed. Zeno looks altogether puny and weak. His eyes, now dull, scan the cabin. “It did not work.” He trembles. “It did not work!” His thin eyelids fold over his protruding eyeballs. His mouth gapes and his head tilts back in what Archie can only liken to the silent scream of a toddler. He pats Zeno’s back, feeling compassion for the homesick creature.

  Zeno composes himself and his eyes pop open with a flash of yellow. He straightens and slides off the bed to collect his canvas hat, which he tugs over his stony skull. Without a second glance at Archie, the creature slowly trudges to the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I must make another. Build a Tillastrion and wait for some other human from this world to take me to Jarr-Wya.”

  “Let’s go together. I will help you. We can try again!”

  “No. There is not enough magic in you. The Tillastrion is fueled by Naiu and desire. It seems your love for your granddaughter was not enough,” Zeno whispers.

  The little creature lets the door bang loudly behind him.

  Chapter 8

  Weeping overcomes Archie and he buries his face in the bedcovers. In his mind, Archie watches Ella—when she was a little girl, before the wicked caress of cancer—run through the green space by her elementary school, crickets singing as the warmth of the setting sun reddens her bouncing hair as she twists and twirls. He can hear Ella’s laugh, a melody that plays in Archie’s heart greater—he feels—than a hundred songs performed in harmony by the greatest orchestras. Then he sees Ella in her creaking-metal hospital bed, her head shaved smooth, her cheeks sunken, her eyes vacant. There is no sound th
ere.

  “Ella!” Archie cries, “I’m sorry! I am so sorry, Arden. I failed, like I knew I would!” Archie rises from the bed and beats the pillows till they split. His arms do not ache with the weariness of age. He tears the art from its hook and hurls it across the room, where it dents the opposite wall and its frame cracks. Energy, anger, and despair coarse through his muscles in spasms. He flings the covers from the bed and stomps on them as he marches to the bathroom.

  Breathing hard, he leans on the sink, looking at his face in the mirror. He does not like what he sees: a feeble, powerless man who has accomplished nothing of meaning in his life. Scooping up the pill bottle Zeno had tossed into the sink, he throws it hard at his tortured reflection. The container bursts and red-and-white pills erupt around the bathroom, bouncing off the walls and ceiling before settling on the floor.

  An earsplitting shriek interrupts Archie. Then another. “Now what?” he grumbles, ignoring the pills beneath his boots as he walks to the door and peers through the peephole. Passengers are sprinting through the hall, smashing into each other in their panic. Wide-eyed parents carry frightened children. There is a familiar rumble of footsteps on the deck overhead. “What is the camera club moaning about?” Archie wonders.

  “Zeno!” he blurts, realizing that the creature must have been spotted. Archie races out of his cabin and joins the mob squeezing through the clogged hallway. He turns down the corridor toward the Odyssey’s grand staircase. “He’s probably been captured trying to leave the ship,” Archie says to himself. When he reaches the bottom of the stairs, however, Zeno is not there, nor at the top.

  The fat cameraman leans on the upper railing of the staircase and yells down to his group, “This way! Follow me!” He then sprints outside through the sliding glass doors.

  “Oh dear,” Archie frets, “this is going to be a circus!” He imagines Zeno pinned to a corner of the railing, being photographed like a zoo animal. Hopping up the stairs as fast as his rickety legs will carry him, Archie charges out onto the deck, which he realizes is tilting significantly to the port side. What he finds there are three hundred passengers crowded painfully against the railing, standing motionless, blubbering, and clutching one another. Archie struggles to look beyond them, to what they are watching on the ocean.

  What he does see, in the brilliant orange of the setting sun, is the absence of Lanzarote. “Where’s the port?” he asks the people beside him, but they only whimper. The ship had not been scheduled to raise anchor for another three hours after he and Zeno had returned with the Tillastrion. “How much time has passed?” he ponders. “I didn’t feel us leave the harbor.”

  Archie shoves his way closer to the railing. “What is everyone looking at?” he asks a young couple. They are clearly not jeering at a scared creature. The woman points. Archie scans the sea in the fading light of the sun that paints the ship. Footsteps grow louder behind him as the camera club jockey for the best portion of the deck, pushing their way into the crowd, but Archie is unmoving.

  “Is the sun on fire?” he whispers. “No . . . but how?” A lump wedges itself in his throat, silencing him. The sun is not only on fire, but is bursting and sizzling with flames.

  “What is happening?” an elderly woman shrieks behind Archie. All eyes watch as the flames reflect and dance on the eerily still water.

  “It’s getting closer!” yells a man. “Run for cover!”

  Archie finds a spot against the railing as hysterical passengers retreat from the deck. He holds his breath and refuses to blink, keenly watching the horizon. A moment before, the red glow had emanated from the divide between sky and sea, but now that is not the case. The glow takes form and rises like flaming daggers into the amber-tinged atmosphere. It continues to alter in shape from round to angular as it approaches, though Archie guesses it is still many miles away.

  “Is it . . . ?” Archie’s eyes grow wide.

  “Yes, Archibald,” Zeno says calmly beside the old man. “A ship.”

  “With sails of fire!”

  “I owe you an apology, Archibald Wellsley,” Zeno says. “It turns out your desire was more than enough.”

  “What do you mean?” Archie asks slowly.

  “Your love for your granddaughter is so great, you brought the whole ship with us.”

  Chapter 9

  “I brought the whole ship? All these people? And now a boat of fire is heading right toward us?” Panic rises in Archie’s voice. “What have I done?” he cries, shaking his head. “Oh no! Ella! Tessa!” Archie runs to the tail end of the crowd pushing their way through the ship’s sliding doors, looking for safety. He is blocked at the first set of doors, and the second, and the third. He gives up and rejoins Zeno.

  “It is the ship of the Olearon warriors. They hunt us.”

  “Olearon?”

  “They are the guardians of my world, of Jarr-Wya.”

  “Are they evil?”

  “I grew up believing so. But I do not fear them. The Bangols have had dominion over the Olearons for many generations, although I do not want to be seen by these.” He gestures to the boat that is shrinking the distance between them. “They will take advantage of finding one of my kind alone and vulnerable—let alone the rightful king of the Bangols!”

  “I can smell it. The fire. The burning,” Archie whispers as the flames devour the damp salty air. Archie and Zeno watch the fire and its curls of smoke that twist, bend, and fold, slipping upward. “But not only that,” Archie continues. “There is also something sweet now. Or floral-smelling? I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Your nose is better than mine, Archibald. I must be off!” Zeno scurries around the bow of the ship and slips between banging knees, disappearing from Archie’s view.

  The only people remaining transfixed by the hellish apparition, unwavering at the cruise ship’s railing, are the camera club members. Telephoto lenses poised at attention, they cackle greedily as they photograph the approaching ship. The fat cameraman gives his friend a high five.

  Not only is the approaching boat so close that its smell grows stronger by the minute, Archie can also decipher its black mast, proud and menacing. Beneath its puffing—always burning but never consuming—sails of fire, tall, thin, shadowy forms hustle around the deck. They too are robed in flame.

  “Look,” a passenger hollers.

  Archie stares hard and then understands what the fire-creatures are readying. He backs away as he yells, “Run! Run, everyone!” He finds an opening between bodies and squeezes himself through the crowd toward the doors.

  A ball of fire—the size of a small car, Archie guesses—is catapulted toward the Atlantic Odyssey. It sizzles and pops, launching sparks like fireworks to the left and right. It arcs, rolling through the air, picking up speed, transforming into a wild inferno. At first, no one screams, no one flees. Then—as Archie imagines the brevity of life and the reality of its immanent end blankets the passengers’ minds—terror rips through the crowd. The people’s cordiality turns savage as they shove and kick and flight each other for escape through the doors. Families are separated. Children’s screams pierce the air, above the holler of angry men and the wail of women who plead, “Please, please,” over and over again though no one is listening. The weak and the timid are trampled underfoot and blood dampens the deck.

  When the sliding doors jam, and people are crushed within their entryways, the movement on the deck—bottle-necked and blocked—slows to a dizzying halt. All eyes turn back to the fireball, which, for a moment, eclipses the sun, though is no less blinding. As the fireball descends like a shooting star, people narrow their eyes at its light. They hold their breath. They hold tight to whatever or whomever is nearest.

  The Odyssey, with the crew and Captain Nate at the helm, had begun a retreat as soon as the flaming boat was spotted. The Captain had accelerated the ship in a sharp turn away from its pursuers. Thus, when the fire ball hits—with a thundering clap and a jarring crash downward—it ricochets off the rail and pl
ummets into the sea with a fifty-foot splash. The impact tips the ship 135 degrees into the air at one end, the other sinking deeply into the tepid water. More than one hundred passengers stumble and slide overboard before the vessel rights itself in the water. The fireball does not fail, however, to mortally wound the ship, tearing a gaping hole in the stern and through three full floors, which remain enveloped in flame despite the partial immersion. The Odyssey also surrenders a broad section of portside railing and, along with it, every member of the camera club.

  Chapter 10

  Archie runs through the carpeted halls, turning sharp corners in unfamiliar corridors without slowing his gait. He had entered through a less congested door, far from his cabin, and now must navigate his way to his family. “Ella!” Archie huffs, winded. Children cling to the backs of their parents, who run like Archie; men throw punches for life preservers; others loot the gift shop display fridge and shelves. Weeping is the constant sound—echoing from every corner of the ship—so that Archie no longer hears it at all, but for the shrill screams that break through the noise every minute, like a metronome. Each pained, bloodcurdling wail into the crowded hallways makes the throbbing lump in Archie’s throat grow larger, wedged there, unable to be swallowed.

  Archie pauses, leaning against a wall, and watches as passengers either barricade themselves inside their cabins or carry their hurriedly collected belongings toward the life rafts. The hall is littered with dropped clothing, broken laptops, sneakers, and toothbrushes. The air conditioning has stopped functioning. Heat quivers Archie’s vision. The odor in the hall is thick. Acidic vomit. Excrement. The metallic scent of fresh blood.

  “What if the lifeboats on the starboard side are destroyed too?” a crying woman asks her friend. They cling to each other as they run, panting through shallow breaths.

  “I guess we swim,” the second woman responds. Blood oozes from a flesh wound beneath her right eyebrow.