by Rebecca Hahn
“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.
When she’d closed the door behind her and pulled back her hood, she stood there looking from one of us to another, scrunching her face in thought. We waited, paused in our work. Xinot was perched at the end of our bed, her scissors held in one hand, the thread in another. It curled over to Serena, who was seated between the bed and the open window, and then stretched toward me, in the room’s other chair before the fireplace, my spindle at my feet.
The thread gleamed, of course, a spider’s web of starlight. Against our dark draped cloaks and darker eyes, it stood in greater contrast. A whisper, a fishing line, a flutter of a bird’s wing.
At last Aglaia said, and her voice floated softly through our room like a shared thought, “I mean to kill him tomorrow night, after the wedding. He suspects nothing. I will be his heir, and any baby I bear after me.”
Yes, we said.
She said, “Yes, it will be so?”
No, we said.
“No, it will not be so?”
No, we cannot tell you that.
Aglaia said, “You know his thread. You know the time and shape of its ending.”
We cannot tell you that.
She demanded, “Do I succeed?”
We remained silent.
She looked about at us all, and I could see her anger, clear and sharp. Something twisted inside me, but there was nothing more to say, nothing more to do.
She said, and it was almost not a question, it was so heated, “Why are you here?”
We didn’t try to answer her.
After a few long moments, she left us, without saying another thing.
Endymion’s city had never seen such a wedding. It began with the sunrise, and it lasted long into the night. The rumors had all been true, though they did not begin to describe the pageantry this prince put on for the marriage to his destined bride.
There wasn’t one grand feast, but four—one upon waking, one at midday, one at sunset, and a last at midnight, after the couple had gone to their marriage bed. There were honeyed figs and dates rolled in crushed nuts, sweet rolls and salty breads, lentil porridges, chickpea stews, lamb served with every sauce, fish so tender it crumbled in your mouth. The wine was everywhere; Hesper brought us a sampling, and though it didn’t reach the heights of our wine in its glory days, it smelled of fresh spring grasses and tasted of sunshine.
The plays and the games began right after the morning feast. Puppet shows on street corners, dramas in the city squares. There were ball-throwing games and balancing games and all manner of sport—wrestling and racing, swordplay and javelin throwing. Children ran from one end of the city to the other, and their parents didn’t try to stop them. Everywhere, bakers passed out sweets and brewers poured beer.
In the more sophisticated sections of the city, the greatest actors in the land performed comedies, and virtuosos sang ballads composed for this occasion, featuring the noble prince and his beautiful bride. Aglaia and Endymion sat on a platform at one end of the city’s main square; they held hands all day long, and there were flowers in their hair. They watched jugglers juggle and acrobats leap. They danced, to drums and flutes and lyres, smiling and laughing as they stepped and spun.
In the afternoon, Endymion’s men pledged their faith to Aglaia. They knelt before her, and they kissed her fingers, and she smiled at them.
Before the sun went to bed, all the bells in the city rang, and all the revelers stopped what they were doing, put down their drinks, and looked to the sky. In the main square, Endymion bowed his head and held one arm around Aglaia. He had offered her this moment of silence to remember her parents, her older brother and her younger sister, all the people of her village who had so tragically not lived to see this day.
She stared straight ahead, our girl. Her eyes were dry, and she leaned into her new husband’s embrace as though it were the only thing that mattered in the world. When the bells rang again, she turned to him, and she kissed him softly on the lips. He brushed a hand against her cheek, so gentle. Everyone watching could see the love for her in his eyes.
They ate their sunset meal as a bard sang of Endymion’s greatest battles, of Aglaia’s bright eyes, her neck, her skin. They danced again afterward, with each other, with the lords and ladies under the stars. The celebration was still in full swing when Endymion pulled his bride close and said something in her ear.
She ducked her head, smiling. He took her hand and they walked back through the streets, not bothering with horses or with a carriage. Their people stood aside for them, murmuring blessings, reaching out hands to touch Aglaia’s skirt and the ends of her hair.
As they reached the prince’s house, I took his thread from my bag and placed it on a little table that stood in one corner of our room. We gathered around it. We had been listening to it all that wedding day. The shutters were open; the curtains were drawn back. It was a new moon night; it was Xinot’s night. It w
as so still, not even the stars were whispering. Xinot took the middle position in front of the thread, and she reached out her left hand to Serena, her right to me. We stood with our backs to the window, cloakless, our hair beginning to drift.
Endymion led Aglaia through his house, up stairs and down corridors, murmuring flatteries in her ear. She laughed softly, and her eyes sparked. They turned a corner, passed through a door, and entered his bedroom.
He let go of her hand to shut the door behind them, and she turned, waited for him, watched as he lifted his head to smile at her.
Fool. He did not know it, but we did. This was her night.
It was her destiny, and it was her due. We could not help her with it, but we could approve. We could lift his thread and hold it close as she smiled back at him, as she became exactly what he wanted her to be. As she drew her hair, bright as the stars, across one shoulder, and he stared. As she went to the table set with crystal goblets and the day’s spring-smelling, sun-tasting wine.
She did not need us for the poison. She did not need us for anything. He could not see the powder she slipped into his glass; it was dim in the room, with only a banking fire and a dark-red lamp. He was not watching for it, anyway. He was not watching anything but her.
She didn’t even need to kiss him again, the death that she gave him was so fast.
As his thread began to flicker, as it started shedding sparks, we placed it on the table and turned our backs, so that he would be alone at the end.
Twelve
IF SHE HADN’T BEEN AGLAIA—IF she hadn’t already won their hearts, received their pledges of faith, entered into their ballads—there might have been more questions about Endymion’s death.
When she woke them in the middle of that night, though, with a scream that carried into the streets, bringing those who had finally gone to bed out of their homes again, their hearts racing, their nightdresses flapping in a chill wind—when she showed them Endymion’s body, undressed, lying in their marriage bed, and she wept as though there was nothing left of her but her tears, her shaking hands, and her pain—when she begged them not to take him away, clinging to Endymion’s house guard like a shivering leaf, reaching for the prince even as his soldiers lifted him up and carried him from the room—there was not a person in the city who didn’t believe her.
We heard it through our window, the whispering in the streets.
He was so happy, it overcame him.
His heart burst with the love.
At least he died knowing that she lived and that she had married him.
“He got what was coming to him, didn’t he?” Hesper said, and we each smiled at her, just a bit. She chuckled darkly. “Good for her—and good for you, I suppose.”
“We had nothing to do with it,” Serena said.
“No more than you have to do with anything,” Hesper said. “Still. It was well done. I heard the fear in her voice as she talked of him.”
Aglaia kept to their marriage room, those long, hot days leading up to the funeral. I asked the sun to look in on her there, to keep her company. There was no need. My friend never left Aglaia’s side if he could help it.
When they burned Endymion’s body in a mighty pyre outside the city, everyone went, even the beggars, even Hesper. We sat alone in the city’s strange, heavy silence, and we spun and measured and sliced to keep our hands busy, and she told us of it when she came back. Of the lords and ladies, dressed all in white, as sumptuously as they had for last week’s wedding. Of the funeral cakes and the dark-red wine the soldiers passed out among the crowd. Of the children who ran beneath their feet, still nibbling on sweets, still laughing, though even that was muffled in the heat.
Our girl stood at the front of it all, in a gown so white it blinded, so you almost couldn’t see the circles beneath her eyes, the pallor of her face. She was heartbroken, the people said, one after another after another. She only kept on for his sake, because he would want her to.
And for ours. It was an old clockmaker who said it first, Hesper told us. A little old man who spoke with such conviction that his words soon threaded all through the crowd as well.
She lives on for us. She is our princess. She will lead us now that he is gone.
When Endymion’s body was only ash and the wood was heaps of coal, Aglaia turned from the smoldering remains and made her way back through the crowd, over the fields, into her city. She nodded at the people that she passed; she gave them her hand to touch.
I will care for you, it was reported that she said. You are mine now.
And then it was over. From that day on, Aglaia ruled her people from Endymion’s house, and they followed her willingly. She didn’t come to see us again; she didn’t need our help. She never had. Her thread shone long and bright as ever.
So why did we linger?
The people cheered when Aglaia went into her city. We watched as well, our shutters open to ease the stifling air, our faces halfway hidden behind the pale-blue curtains that wafted, lazy, in the warm breeze. We did not let her see us. We did not leave our room, except to ask Hesper for a bit of food now and again, when she forgot that we were there.
Aglaia came down through the streets many times in those last summer weeks, to shop in the colorful markets or to walk along the golden fields outside the city. She wanted the people to feel that she was touchable—not only a beautiful woman from a story, not only their princess, but one of them. Just a girl from a village.
She told them only a few weeks after the funeral that she was going to have the baby. She had to; she was showing, no matter how loose-fitting her clothes. They didn’t question her. No one remarked on how fast she was growing. She had married their prince, so the child must be his, and it would lead them someday.
It was their dream come true; it felt to them the answer to Endymion’s tragic death, the renewal of their hope, the beginning of a grand new tale. After she had told them, their love grew so bright that little children followed Aglaia whenever she came out of her home. They threw flowers to her, and they sang songs. She laughed and sang along. Her face glowed; her eyes shone; her hair rivaled the white stone walls for blinding glory.
We knew that she was happy. It should have been enough to send us back to our island. We should have left her there to her happiness, and we should never have bothered her again.
It was what the thread wanted of us.
When we worked, it tingled against our palms. It was growing impatient, the darkness that we served. We had left shelves of threads to grow lonely on our island; we had thrown ourselves into the path of this girl, when we were not the type who walked mortal paths. It had been a pulling sort of path, so it had made some sense for us to watch it for a time. But now things were settling and Aglaia’s steps were slowing. There was nothing for us here anymore.
On windy nights, when we sat before our window and listened to the prayers sweeping through, we felt our magic, like a current, tugging us back to the sea. Especially in those dense summer days, the thought of our cool sea breeze prickled beneath my skin. When I closed my eyes, I could feel it dusting my cheeks with salt, whipping my hair to life, filling me with the deep, unending power of rolling waves. It missed me, and I missed it as a lonely man misses the touch of a hand on his. Remembering was loss; it was bitter pain.
Ah, but that was why we could not leave. Aglaia had come to her destiny; she had avenged her village and she was to lead her people. They would follow her. The men who had followed Endymion would follow her for his sake; and they would not betray her, for Aglaia and Endymion were more than mortal to these people. They were heroes; they charted their course through the stars.
But though Aglaia’s steps were slowing, though she was settling, we could not quite believe her struggles were at an end. She was still beautiful. She still saw her world with bright, clear eyes.
And she was happy. Where was the pain?
We told ourselves it would only be until the baby was born. Six more months, and some w
eeks. We’d wait through the autumn and the rainy winter; when spring came, Aglaia would have the child, and we would leave.
We paid Hesper for our room, so we couldn’t waver anymore. She counted the coins and wriggled her nose at them. “This isn’t a pregnancy,” she said, squinting at us. “This is a half year only.”
Xinot shrugged; Serena smiled. I looked away from her, out the window.
Hesper counted the coins again. “Is it not his?” she said excitedly. “Is there some other lover, someone she deserves, who’ll come and marry her soon enough?”
Serena said gently, “You know we can’t tell you that.”
“Can’t?” said Hesper. “Or won’t?”
Serena only shook her head.
“Ah, well. Life’s more fun that way.” Now that Endymion was dead, now that Aglaia was happy, even Hesper thought our world a fairer place.
It was a long winter, or so it seemed to us. We worked more than we had in many ages, to keep from thinking, to keep from screaming great earth-shattering screams at our confinement.
We took shifts at the window in turn, depending on whose moon it was. There was so little space to lean out and breathe the darkness, and we each wanted it all to ourselves. So we split it into thirds: my turn was from the new moon until it was two-thirds full; Serena’s went through the full moon until it was one-third waned; and Xinot came back to the empty sky again. It was difficult, those other two-thirds of the month, not to see the stars, only to hear the prayers that managed to sneak in on a draft. But the joy of having the sky to myself for the other third nearly made up for it. To see my moon, glittering and fresh, soft with her potential—it reminded me of who I was, of what I loved.
We also got into the habit, as the months drew on, of tossing Xinot’s fish bones when we grew especially bored.
We’d sit in a circle near the fire, as we had when we’d tossed the bones for Aglaia. It didn’t matter the time of day: a pause in our work, an empty moment in the middle of the night, after a meal. One of us would move to the floor, and the others would follow, and Xinot would reach into her pocket for the clattering things.