The Key to Starveldt

by Foz Meadows

  And then something grabbed her, and wouldn’t let go.

  She didn’t fight it – there was nothing to fight with – but a sense of unease overtook her; things weren’t meant to happen this way. Something was forcing the disparate pieces of herself back together, cocooning her consciousness in a protective bubble. Awareness flooded her: she was being compressed into solidity, and as she merged together, she realised she had a name.

  ‘Jessica. I’m Jess.’

  ‘Well done, human. You’re also dead.’

  Under the circumstances, she didn’t truly have eyes, or a head, or any of the usual corporeal attributes, only a sort of smoke-body, a shadow copy of who she’d been. Nonetheless, she swung the seat of her awareness around, and was confronted by a green glow, the first thing she had seen since arriving at wherever-this-was. And its voice, if that term still applied, was impossibly familiar.

  ‘Duchess?’

  The green glow bounced and came closer, swirling with internal motion. Almost, it resembled a cat, or perhaps a woman. ‘You called me that, but it wasn’t my name.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Vivari.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I’m really dead, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You, too?’

  ‘I’ve been made incorporeal. It’s an insolent kind of inconvenience, but not fatal. Different to that state from which I’m keeping you.’

  Anger. Jess remembered anger. ‘You’re doing this? Why?’

  ‘Because it is necessary. The living need guidance.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Dead or alive, you remain a seer, one of the Starkine. That aspect of your essence is a connection to the past, the present, the future. Because of it, you are needed.’ Vivari paused. Her tone softened. ‘And regardless, you were loved. Are loved.’

  Memories swirled around her, billowing like air-filled sails. Starveldt. Evan. Solace. Prophecy. Sanguisidera. Part of her felt anxious at how much she’d left behind, as though life were a house she’d exited and unintentionally locked, her keys set down on the coffee table. How do I get back in?

  ‘You don’t,’ said Vivari, evidently reading her thoughts. ‘That life is gone. But once your task is done, you’ll cycle around. Reborn.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They fell silent, there in that nameless place, until Jess, amidst her scattered recollections, thought of a question.

  ‘How will I speak to them? To help, I mean?’

  ‘The Bright One. Electra. She dreams ghosts.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She is a summoner,’ Vivari said. ‘Her gift lies in the act of transition, the juncture of here and not-here. She finds what is lost; and what is more lost than a soul between lives? The dead call out to her, but only while she dreams. It frightens her, and despite all she has seen or done, she doesn’t think it real. But you must reach her. Make her see. Only then can you aid your friends.’

  Electra. Jess closed her spirit-eyes, remembering a blonde-haired girl with a beautiful smile and clever hands, selfless and thoughtful, as quiet at times as she was boisterous, always swathed in colour. Electra, into whose dreams she would intrude – haunting her as the ghost of a dead friend, to contact the only people her living self had truly come to love. And then she would slip away, if Vivari was to be believed, to somehow live again.

  Part of her baulked. Part of her even wept. But there was a flat implacability to death. Nothing she said or did would reverse the bite of the spear through her heart, and without a physical body, the chemicals that would otherwise have governed her thoughts were gone. She was made weightless, a creature of air and memory.

  Jess looked up again, and her world was filled with emerald light.

  ‘Show me what to do.’

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost, thanks to Fiona MacDonald and Genghis, the mighty khancat, for putting up with my eccentricities during the writing and revising of this book. Having a writer living over one’s head cannot be easy, especially when she persists in drinking all the wine and leaving couscous on the kitchen bench, but without the provision of such a welcoming habitat, The Key to Starveldt wouldn’t be the same. Thanks also to those friends and family members – particularly my very patient husband, Toby – who continue to support me in innumerable ways, both large and small, as I stumble along the briar-strewn path to authordom. One day, perhaps, I’ll be able to return the favour by keeping you all in the style to which you’d like to become accustomed, but until then (or unless I win the lottery) I’d forgo the mass order of yachts and convertibles.

  As always, thanks to the wonderful team at Ford Street for giving Solace a home somewhere other than my imagination; to my editor, Saralinda Turner, for her eagle eyes and narrative perspicacity; and to Trudi Canavan, for her support and feedback on the early draft. And finally, thanks to my readers: I wouldn’t be here again without you.

  To be continued in Falling into Midnight