The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel)

by Stephanie Keyes

  “Kellen, I’m dead in a sense. But in Ireland, many believe that when you die, you go to the faeries. That’s where I am now. We are in the realm of Contentment, but I call it Heaven,” my mother had said. She’d opened her arms wide then, letting me step into them. “Shh.” She’d held me close, rubbing my back the way I remembered from my childhood.

  Tai reached over and touched my shoulder, pulling me out of my reverie, then came over to sit next to me. I pulled my mind back to the present, to the more pressing nightmare.

  Tai had brought with him a small teapot that I hadn’t noticed before and poured me a fresh cup. Picking the cup up off the hearth, he handed it to me. The tea scalded my tongue as I drank it. Tai set the teapot down and placed a colorful rooster tea cozy on top of it.

  “I’ve never run into anyone that had known Stephen before that I trusted…but I trust you,” I said.

  “Why would you go and do something like that?” Tai’s voice held a note of humor, and I had the feeling he was messing with me.

  Should I ask him again? Leaning forward, I opened my mouth to begin again, trying to imagine what I could do to convince him. Would I need to rehash the entire story of my mother and Faerie? Tai’s voice startled me from my thoughts and I turned to look at him.

  “We were from the same village, your da and me. We didn’t have the same friends, but we knew each other, sometimes went at one another’s throats.”

  “You knew my Gran? My Grandda?”

  “Aye. I knew your Grandda a bit better, but your Gran…ah, she was a looker,” he said, nostalgia in his voice. Clearing my throat, I shifted uncomfortably, waiting. “Anyway, when Stephen was young—”

  “How young?” I asked.

  “About eight, maybe? Anyway, he disappeared. We’d been talking and walking together on the lane after church, and I was telling him about the wee folk that I’d heard the night before. It was a full moon and I could hear their flutes from my window, see. Your Da, he kept telling me that he didn’t believe, that he wasn’t sure they were real. Your Gran, bless her, kept trying to tell him, but he would not listen to a word of it. He bragged that he was going out to climb into a rath that very night.”

  A rath was a faerie fort, sort of a gateway to their world. They were supposedly all over Ireland. You didn’t go looking for them unless you were looking for trouble. Swallowing another gulp of tea, I found that it had cooled slightly and I could now drink it comfortably.

  “He wanted me to walk up to the thing with him. He’d found it when he was playing with his friends. I would not go, though. I could feel the evil from the thing, the badness of it. He made fun, of course, but I still wouldn’t go near it. I told him not to, either. I went home. The next day he was missing. His parents were mad with worry, just mad with it. I knew that he went and climbed into the rath at night. His poor parents.”

  “He sounds…normal.”

  “Oh sure, he was a nice lad. He was always helping others out. Very kind. Just a little too adventurous for his own good, he was. Oh, and his mother…he would have done anything for her, even as he got older. He just adored her.”

  “So what happened? He got out, of the rath, I mean, so everything must have turned out all right.”

  “No. Something got out. But it wasn’t young Stephen, I can tell you that.”

  Tai’s words floated around in my mind as I tried to process this.

  “He wasn’t ever the same afterwards. He was…different.”

  Was that why Stephen had been so rude, so condescending to my Gran? He went to Faerie? If that was the case, why hadn’t that happened to me when I went down there? Had I changed? Was I like that to others but the same to myself?

  “Tai, I’m sorry to bother you with all of these questions about my father when I should have been learning about the second part of the prophecy.”

  Clearing his throat again, Tai stood up, his tea gone. “This all has a lot more to do with the second part of the prophecy than you think.”

  A feeling of dread settled in the pit of my stomach. How much more was there to know? More important, what would I find out?

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CALI—ATTACK

  “Okay, you were a goddess for years, Cali. Surely you can figure out how to run a steel beast,” I said aloud as I sat inside the vehicle that I was borrowing at Walter’s urging. The frigid interior of the car did little to protect me from the wind and I shook violently, afraid that Cana might appear beside the car at any moment and kill me. Sure, I could burn her if I needed to. Yet something told me that I needed to keep the element of surprise on my side until the last possible moment.

  Something about the car jogged my memory and I remembered Kellen telling me to look for instructions in the air-o-plane bathroom. Maybe this thing came with instructions? Searching around inside the car, I looked everywhere, in every possible niche.

  “Ridiculous.” Surely, people forgot how to drive from time to time and needed to be reminded? But no, there were no instructions. “Ahh!” Screaming in frustration, I put my head down on the round part coming out of the front of my seat. Kellen was alive, but possibly not for long. There isn’t time! This isn’t fair! Why did this have to happen to us?

  Closing my eyes, I imagined that I held Kellen in my arms, breathing in his scent, rubbing my cheek against the rough wool of the sweater he’d worn that day. Wrapping my arms around myself, I hugged my body tightly, trying to remember and trying not to fall apart. I couldn’t fall apart, not yet. Not until Kellen was safe.

  A rapping at the window caught my attention and a scream nearly escaped my lips. A man stood there, making an odd downward motion.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” My brow furrowed as I tried to understand, but the man just shook his head and kept pointing down. Resigned, I tried to get out, but I found I didn’t know how to open the door. Putting my head down on the wheel in frustration, I whispered, “I don’t know what to do!”

  The click of the door alerted me that the gentleman at the window was either now going to help me or possibly kill me. A gentleman with a kind face had opened the door and now crouched down beside me. Lifting my head, I met his eye. “Are you going to kill me?”

  Though his face was barely visible in the light of the full moon that shown against his tall frame from the back, the whites of his eyes stood out in relief in the darkness. “Um…no. It’s just that you seemed a little confused.”

  “Who are you?” I asked. I stared hard at this man, trying to affix him with a mean glare in the event that he’d lied about wanting to kill me. He shrank back a bit as though afraid of me.

  “I’m…I’m Fred. I live in this house and this is my car that you’re trying to…um…borrow.” Swallowing, he stepped back a bit more.

  “I left a note.” My voice had an irritated tone to it that I hadn’t intended.

  “Thanks for that note that you left me. That was a very nice note. I’ve never seen handwriting that pretty before,” he said.

  My temper interfered with my brain, causing it not to function. Kellen was in danger and this man, no matter how polite, blocked my way. At least he would have if I had any idea about how to run the car.

  “Walter told me that I could borrow this car, that you wouldn’t mind.”

  His eyes seemed to widen again. “Oh, you’re one of them…”

  I wasn’t sure what he met by one of them. Maybe one of the faeries? Either way, he seemed to fear the group that he referred to as them. It made sense to use that to my advantage.

  “You refer to the fey, the faeries?” I asked. “You know about us, then?”

  “I know nothing. I don’t want to be…uh…I don’t want to be involved.” He bounced uneasily, rolling on the balls of his feet as though he felt too cold to stand still.

  “Yes, I am, then,” I said.

  His emotions seemed to be warring with one another—probably his need to protect his car versus his need to protect himself. “Would you like me to hel
p you?” Fred asked, making some sort of odd hand motion.

  Considering my newfound power, I thought about speeding things up by scaring him just a bit. Maybe I’d set fire to something small…Then I chided myself that no matter how I intended it, it would be an abuse of power.

  Pushing the idea to the back of my mind, I decided to try for a different approach. Letting the tears fall, I watched this man’s eyes widen yet again and his hands come up in front of him. “Now, now. It can’t be that bad. What can I do to help you?”

  “I need to drive this contraption.”

  “You…? Uh, I could drive you,” he offered, looking as though the idea terrified him.

  “No. What you must do is sprinkle as much salt as you can find around the perimeter of your house, then go inside and shut the door. And stay inside,” I warned him through my tears.

  The fact that he didn’t question my directive spoke volumes, as though he’d been given that advice many times before. He nodded. “I have salt. Let me show you how to get it started first, though.”

  And so began a rather frustrating driving lesson with Fred. Fred had more patience than I did, for he explained repeatedly about the “shifter” and the “brake” and “gas”. Once I’d pretty much gotten the hang of it, I left him behind, driving—albeit with some inconsistency—out of his driveway.

  The car jerked as I drove, at least until I remembered that I needed to use the long pedal on my right, and then it was going entirely too quickly. “Ahh!” Stomping my foot on the pedal on the left, I slowed down, jerking to a stop. “Okay, take a deep breath. You can do this.”

  I took my foot off of the left pedal again and very gingerly tried the right pedal. Though it took longer than if I’d used magick, at least I moved. As long as no one realized who drove the car in the first place, I could get there.

  Worry nagged at me. I’d taken too much time with the car. Walter would have been found out by now, wouldn’t he? Also, when would dawn approach? The clock on the dashboard read four-thirty, but although I could tell time—one of the basic functions that came with my mortality—I didn’t have a sense of what that meant.

  Following Fred’s directions, I pulled onto the main road and drove. The road wasn’t hard to drive on, but wound its way up the mountain on a narrow curving course that took me through the dark woods. When I came to a small building with a guard in it, he just looked at the car and waved me on. Fred had warned me that I would need to keep pressure on the gas or Cindy, which was the name he’d given his car, might get stalled.

  However, as I continued to drive, getting better every moment, Cindy seemed to be cruising right up the hill without a problem. Adding words of encouragement, I patted the part that Fred had called the “wheel”. “You’re doing so well, Cindy!”

  The car continued up the hill for quite a while. Though I had to work to steer on the winding road, my confidence increased the further Cindy and I traveled. “Good girl, Cindy!” As if on cue, Cindy decided that she no longer had any interest in continuing and the car sputtered and jerked. The higher we drove, the worse the sputtering became.

  Fred told me that I would have to drive seven miles to reach the top. I had no idea how long or far that was. What if Cindy quit before then? Pressing my foot down on the long pedal, I tried to get her to go faster, but it made no difference. “Go, Cindy, go!”

  Then, as we hit a slight plateau, Cindy apparently decided that this was the end and simply rolled to a stop in the middle of the road. I didn’t care for Cindy very much at that point. Deciding that I could do nothing further with her, I reached for the handle, opened the door, and exited like Fred had shown me. He would have to come collect his car later.

  Turning, I started walking. My clothes weren’t enough to keep me warm and I plunged my hands in my pockets, trying to keep my fingers from freezing. Then I remembered Fire.

  “Fire, warm me,” I whispered. Flames didn’t spark from my hands, but I felt heat pour through my body. It worked. The feeling that Fire was with me reminded me of my family, my birthright. Though my parents, my sister, and my brother were not with me physically, I did not carry on alone. They were with me in spirit as I called on this element—the element that would help me find my Kellen.

  Picking up the pace, I walked faster, scanning the area as I searched for anything that might help me. Up ahead, a corner came into view. I made it around the bend and came face to face with an army of winged people, flying at the ready. There were hundreds of them, hovering in mid-air, their bows all pointed in one direction: Mine.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  KELLEN—TRUTH

  Moving closer to the edge of my seat, I regarded Tai, who paced the room.

  “When young Stephen disappeared, his parents…they went mad with it. Looked everywhere, they did, but there was no sign of him. Your Grandda, he…” Tai seemed to choke up as he spoke of my Grandda. Maybe Tai’s own father had come to mind?

  Tai began again. “Your Grandda went out looking for him and it tore him up inside.”

  Staring at Tai, the gears turned in my mind. “He told you all this?” It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that an adult would tell an eight-year-old.

  Tai looked up and into my eyes. He seemed to be carefully considering his next words. Slowly he stood, and his posture changed as if he were an older man instead of one who appeared to be in his thirties. His eyes never left my face, their deep honey-tinged brown color reminding me of a lost puppy dog. As I looked on, he aged right in front of my eyes, his youthful skin gaining lines and coloration from the effects of sun damage, his middle looking fuller, softer. Tai shuffled from side to side for a moment before he spoke again.

  He glanced at the floor and then back at me. “Kellen, I know all of this,” he said.

  In that instant, I knew too. Though he might have looked different, the mannerisms, the voice, the cadence of speech were all the same. It had been many years, but there was no mistaking it. It all came back to me.

  “How did you come to be here, Grandda?”

  At my mention of the name “Grandda”, Tai’s eyes widened before crinkling up at the sides, a warm smile lighting his face. “You always were smart as a whip, boy.”

  I’d never known his first name. He’d just always been “Grandda”. If his name had been in any of the paperwork for Gran’s will, I hadn’t seen it. “Why didn’t you just tell me it was you?”

  Grandda’s face seemed to portray all the worry, all the concern of the past years. “You’ve been through too much. I didn’t want you to go into shock.”

  A laugh escaped my lips. “I’m past the point of shock. I should be in therapy.” Running my hand over my face, I asked, “Are you still…alive?”

  “No, I’m…I’m what they call a ghost. A spirit. A lost soul.” He winked at me, as if this idea amused him.

  “But why? You always seemed to have had a good life. Why would you be lost?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Because I made a deal, a deal that would get me my son back. In exchange, I have to stay here. Here, instead of with my beloved wife.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a small framed photograph about the size of a business card. Turning it in my direction, I glimpsed a picture of Gran when she’d been younger. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  Smiling, I took the picture from him and looked at my Gran. “Yes,” I said as I handed it back to him. “Am I dead?” Another sip of tea went down my throat.

  “Nah, nah. This is just…an interlude, as they say. As soon as you leave, you will no longer be safe.”

  Taking another sip of my tea, I processed this information for a moment. “So what happened with Stephen?”

  “Something you should know about your father is that he’d been the most wonderful son up until that day that he disappeared. He definitely was his Ma’s boy, and I loved him, even though he wasn’t my son by blood. I loved your Gran and so I loved her boy as my own, raised him as my own.”

  “What did you do when
he disappeared?”

  “Lost my mind. When you’re a parent, well…it’s unimaginable. It’s your worst nightmare come true a hundred times.” Grandda’s voice sounded thick with emotion. Holding my tongue, I sat there, waiting for him to continue.

  “He’d told some of his friends about the rath but he talked to me about it the most. When he went missing, I immediately knew where he had gone. Every night I would leave an offering at the rath. A bit of leather, bread, pretty much anything that I supposed they might like. Yet nothing happened for weeks, and we began to fear that we would never find him.

  “Then on the thirtieth night, a little man was waiting for me at the rath. He thanked me for my gifts and told me that I would be granted a boon of my choosing. He made quite a few suggestions—livestock, prosperity, and more. However, all I told him was that I wanted my son back. I remembered later that I should have set stipulations. I should have asked him to be returned exactly as he was.”

  “He wasn’t?” I supplied with surprise.

  “No. The Stephen that came back wasn’t…right. He wasn’t himself. He hated us, for one thing. The worst part was how he treated his mother. So cruel, so, so cruel…I don’t know if she ever got over that in her whole life. She was devastated.”

  “After that first night I returned to the rath again and again. I wanted my real son back, not this changeling, for that’s what I truly believed that we’d been given. Imagine knowing your real son is trapped while an impostor stays with you.” Grandda looked down at his tea.

  “What did the changeling do that was so horrible?”

  “That’s just it. You never caught him doing anything, but you felt like it was just a matter of time before he did. There was something in the way that he looked at you. Like he knew all of the secrets of the world and you were only in the way. He was cold. After the closeness that he’d shared with your Gran, she couldn’t handle it. I’d find her out by the cliffs at night sobbing, just crying her eyes out. When Alistair found us and offered to take Stephen with him to get to know his brothers, we readily agreed. I hate to say it, but it was such a relief getting him out of the house.”