Star Eater

by Kerstin Hall

  I absorbed his words.

  “Not good, is it?” he said.

  I shook my head. “No. But you can always talk to me. I don’t want you to face this alone.”

  The rustle of wet grass startled me, but Finn did not react. I turned and saw that Millie was walking toward us.

  “The fire’s burning,” she said. “Osan said you should come eat.”

  A pot steamed over the flames, where Osan crouched and prodded the rehydrated beans with a spoon. He glanced up as we approached.

  “We probably have a week’s worth of food,” he said.

  “Enough to get to the mountains, then.” I took a cup out of my bag and held it out to him. Osan gave me an odd look.

  “Yes,” he said. “That won’t be a problem.”

  He scooped up beans and handed the cup back to me.

  “I saw rivers while we were descending,” he continued. “With luck we’ll reach them before we run out of water.”

  I nodded and carefully set the cup on the ground sheet to cool. Millie lowered herself down next to me, absently rubbing her hands together for warmth. Finn sat beside the bags, just beyond the glow of the firelight.

  “Hard to believe we’re here, isn’t it?” said Millie. She stared up at the stars. “None of it feels real anymore.”

  I offered her a corner of my blanket. She leaned against me, her head on my shoulder.

  “I wonder if we’ll ever see Ceyrun again,” she said. “I’m thinking of Hanna and Daje. Not that I regret coming here; I just keep thinking that I should have said goodbye properly.”

  I threaded my fingers between hers.

  “You’ll see them again,” I said.

  She drew the blanket tighter around us.

  “Do you have anyone you left behind, Osan?” she asked. “If that’s not too personal?”

  He smiled, and took the pot off the fire.

  “I have friends, some family,” he said. “No romantic involvement, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “That’s definitely what she was asking,” called Finn. “My sister loves to pry. She made an occupation out of it, actually.”

  Millie scowled. “At least one of us needed a regular income.”

  I laughed.

  “Don’t encourage him, El,” she said. “Besides, I don’t pry. I’m just a good listener.”

  “A good listener with an unhealthy interest in other people’s business.”

  “Shut up, Finn.”

  He was laughing now too, and even Millie was trying not to smile. I picked up the cup and started eating. For a brief moment, things didn’t seem so bad. Just for a little while, I could almost forget what had happened, what still needed to happen. The fire crackled. Osan added another stick to the flames.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him.

  He looked at me, and again I had the sense that something was bothering him; he seemed closed-off and guarded. But he shook his head.

  “I’m fine. It’s been a long day, that’s all,” he said. “And I suppose I’m wondering what Celane’s next move will be. I can’t help feeling she’s going to try something desperate.”

  “But El’s out of her reach now, isn’t she?” said Millie. “The Order doesn’t have a way down to Ventris until Aytrium sinks.”

  “If Cyde could build that vehicle, then so can Celane.” He stared into the fire, and the light flickered across his face. “But how quickly? She’s not going to give up on the Renewer’s power; it’s her only hope of saving the Order. And herself.”

  My fleeting sense of comfort and security faded. I set down the cup half finished, my appetite gone.

  “That’s not to say she’ll catch us,” Osan added quickly. “And I’m sure the Commander will be trying her best to get in Celane’s way. For all we know, that battle is already won.”

  I tried to smile. “Maybe. And we have a long head start.”

  But they’ll have Cats. And far more lace. Not to mention that if Celane was desperate before, she would be frantic now.

  Millie nudged me. “We’ll get moving as soon as it’s light. For now, I think we should rest.”

  I nodded, my mind still churning.

  “I’ll keep watch,” said Finn. He rose to his feet. “It’s not like I’ll be sleeping anyway.”

  “Do you want any company?” asked Osan.

  “I’ll be fine. I might wander a little further, see if I can find more wood for the fire.”

  Millie stacked the remaining tinder, and I helped Osan clean up the food and repack the bags for tomorrow. My thoughts kept spiralling back to Reverend Cyde and Lariel, wondering what I could have done differently, wondering what had happened to them. I kept hearing Cyde say that she was relying on me.

  “Hurry up, El,” said Millie. “I’m getting cold.”

  Osan spread out a second ground sheet on the far side of the fire. I lay down beside Millie and she curled up against me.

  “You’re shivering,” she murmured.

  The stars overhead gleamed bluish and bright; the clouds had all been swept away. Aytrium was wholly dark, blocking out the sky to the north.

  “I’m sorry about Lariel,” I whispered.

  She sighed.

  “It was complicated,” she said. “And it ended a long time ago.”

  “Still. I’m sorry.”

  “She wasn’t always like that. She used to be wild, intense, but not—” Millie shook her head. “It’s not like I could ever forgive her for what she did to Finn, but I … I guess I just wanted her to say sorry.”

  “I think she was trying to.”

  “Maybe she was, but not to me. Get some sleep, El.”

  The fire dwindled to dark red embers. Beyond, Osan lay on his side, facing the bluff. My body was tired, but my brain could not stop turning.

  Make it count, Elfreda.

  Was I strong enough? The mountains called to me, a faint aching, a kind of thirst. She was waiting to be made whole. I could smell flowers and feel the brush of her thoughts against mine. The closer we drew to the temple, the more she would rouse.

  Finn returned and quietly restocked the pile of tinder. I watched him from under my eyelashes. He moved so carefully, trying not to disturb us. Millie’s breathing had grown even and slow, each exhale stirring the hair on my arm.

  When he walked away down the path, I waited a few minutes. Then I eased away from Millie and tucked the blanket close around her. She slept on.

  My heart beat faster as I padded beyond the ring of firelight. The air drew goose bumps over my skin.

  Finn sat on the same wall he had occupied earlier in the evening.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  My breath created a cloud of fog in front of me.

  “I love you,” I said.

  His eyes widened.

  “I love you.” My heart raced, but I did not look away. “I love you, and I never want to lose you.”

  He rose and I kissed him, wrapping my arms around his neck and stretching to reach his mouth. He tried to speak, but I held him tighter. The chill of his skin seeped into me; the stubble on his scalp was rough beneath my fingers. I could feel the ridges of his spine and, inside his mouth, too many teeth.

  He broke away. “El, no.”

  “I’ve always wanted you,” I said, short of breath. “But if you don’t want—”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “More than anything, but that doesn’t mean I’ll risk hurting you.”

  I smiled. “To be honest, pain wasn’t really what I was after.”

  He flushed. “El!”

  “Too forward?”

  He spread his hands helplessly. “I’m hardly even human anymore.”

  “Liar.” I touched my mouth. Cold. “You’re still you, and I am still yours, and you are still mine. Please, Finn. Let me have this.”

  “But what if I can’t control…”

  “‘I know what I’m asking for.’” I grinned. With a single thread of lace, I reached for his mind. A
question, an invitation. His eyes went wide.

  “Oh, screw it,” he breathed.

  He pulled me into his arms and kissed me, swallowing my delighted laughter. I discovered that, for all that the transformation had cooled his skin, he still had a little warmth left for me.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  HE WAS GONE when I woke up.

  I had expected it, and I don’t think that Millie or Osan were surprised either. None of us spoke about it. We didn’t say much at all.

  “Go ahead; I’ll join you in a moment,” I told Millie. “I need to restore my lace.”

  She and Osan continued down the path, and I opened my last jar. Breathing through my mouth, I cut the flesh into smaller pieces and tried to swallow them one at a time. As soon as the first sliver touched my tongue, I gagged. Worse. This was much worse than last time. My body recoiled from the meat’s rank sourness, and sweat broke out over my skin.

  I managed to force down the sacrament without throwing up. Lace swelled in my gut and entwined with my nausea. Even though we were running low on water, I drained a canteen to wash my face and hands, and to rinse the inside of my mouth. The smell persisted; with every breath, I could taste Verje’s flesh again.

  I hurried to catch up with the others. Without Finn, we were forced to leave behind almost a third of our provisions. It would be a long, thirsty walk to the mountains.

  Millie and Osan halted their conversation as I joined them. They looked tense, and Millie’s eyes were red.

  “Are you all right?” asked Osan.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Is there a problem?”

  He pointed. “Look.”

  I followed the line of his finger. Overnight, Aytrium had sunk further toward the crater. I strained my eyes. Three white dots glinted against the dark mass of the island.

  “Do you think it’s them?” I asked.

  “Probably.”

  I watched the pale specks descend. They were too far away to see clearly, but I imagined Celane staring down at me from above. I felt her gaze despite the distance.

  “I think that they’ll stay in the air for as long as they can,” I said. “That would be the fastest option. And the safest.”

  “But it’ll burn through their lace, right?”

  “They’ll be able to divide the load between themselves.” I chewed my lip. “They’re certainly going to stay airborne longer than we did.”

  “I guess it’s too much to hope that they’ll be eaten by Haunts when they reach the ground.”

  I shivered. “That’s a horrible thought.”

  “You’re far more generous than I am, Just El.” Osan shook his head. “After everything these women have done, I’d consider it just deserts.”

  “We should keep moving,” said Millie, her voice heavy. “Standing around only gives them more time to catch us.”

  She carried on down the path, bent by the weight of her bag. I cast a glance back at the white specks, then followed.

  The sun rose, throwing long shadows behind us, and the morning chill dissipated. The air tasted fresh and sharp. We stuck to the path, even as it veered eastwards and away from the mountains. Ventris kept still and quiet—this morning there were no insects, no birds, no rustling in the grass—but I remembered the howl that had driven off the last Haunt. We were not alone.

  The Old Ones, Finn had called them, with unmistakeable reverence in his voice. I tried to push the thought of him out of my mind.

  The first building we came across had probably been a farmhouse. The roof had collapsed on one side, littering the ground with broken clay tiles. Weeds grew up around the walls.

  Although I could not immediately work out why, something about the ruins made me feel uncomfortable. When Osan moved to investigate the building’s interior, understanding dawned on me.

  “I remember this place,” I said aloud.

  Like Geise’s Crown, the same sense of having two realities overlapping one another. I blinked. Millie was staring at me.

  “I mean, I have memories of this place,” I said. “Not my memories. Someone, no, many people died. The bodies were brought here. Outsiders…”

  I knew that after the winter the corpses had been stacked up like firewood, eyes glazed and lips blue. The survivors huddled together in a vast camp, their bodies shrunken and emaciated. For each that perished, another would replace them. In my mind their faces shifted and changed, woman morphing to man morphing to child, all feverish with need.

  “They had walked for weeks,” I said. “They were … stopped. Here.”

  I had seen them from a distance, the smoke of their fires. What could they still have to burn, after they had swept through this land like locusts? How could there still be so many?

  Osan touched my arm, and I started.

  “You’ve never seen this place before,” he said gently. “Come on.”

  He was right. My eyes lingered on the broken roof. There had been a red chimney there, once.

  After that, Osan set a relentless pace. By midday, the mountains appeared nearer and more solid. The further we moved from Aytrium, the greener the landscape became. Copses of unfamiliar steel-grey trees sprang from the valleys, and smooth, slender grasses caressed the hillsides. For all its new lushness, Ventris remained oppressively silent. The only animals we saw were birds, specks against the blue, too distant to identify.

  Memories flickered through my head, fleeting and vague. They did not frighten me, although I saw Millie and Osan exchange looks of concern more than once. Hour by hour, the truth revealed itself to me—I began to grow conscious of all the patterns underlying the world, the repetitions and echoes, the way that tree branches mirrored tree roots, the way that rivers fed the land like arteries fed the flesh. It became clear to me that each element of creation possessed a correct state of being, and that deviations from those states were both offensive and glaringly obvious.

  I could also sense her. It felt like I might be able to reach her if I closed my eyes and stretched. I followed the curve of the path with my eyes till it disappeared over the rise of a slope.

  It occurred to me, quite abruptly, that I was a deviation myself. That posed a problem. I frowned. Not an unsolvable problem, but certainly one that would require attention.

  “El!”

  I jumped. Millie shook me by the shoulders.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” she asked.

  “Sorry.”

  “I said drink some water.” She thrust the canteen toward me. “You look sick.”

  “Maybe we should take a break,” said Osan.

  “No.” It came out more strident than I had intended. I tried to sound reasonable. “She wants to reach the temple.”

  Millie tested my forehead against her wrist. “She? Eater, El, what are you even saying? You’ve been raving all day, and it’s scaring me. You aren’t sweating.”

  “Maybe I’m not hot.”

  “You’re boiling. But not sweating.” She pressed her lips together. “I hate asking, but how much flesh have you consumed?”

  “I was careful.”

  “Then what is this? How much flesh, El?”

  “Three quarters of Verje’s heart. And I feel fine.”

  “Listen to me.” She held my jaw. “You aren’t behaving like yourself.”

  This wasn’t right. We should be moving, not talking. Did that mean that Millie was a deviation too? How was I supposed to set everything right when these aberrations cascaded upon one another, multiplying, gathering momentum. We were sliding, we were sliding, and I needed to do something drastic to correct matters.

  “You should let go of me,” I said. I imagined biting down on her fingers, the spray of blood and crack of bone. “You’re upsetting the pattern.”

  “Kamillian,” said Osan, with a note of warning.

  She stepped back, releasing my jaw. I smiled. That was better. Millie looked angry. She held her hands close to her chest, and her cheeks were high with colour.

  “How could I let this hap
pen?” she muttered.

  “No one is at fault here,” said Osan. He scanned the path. “We should try to get her out of the sun.”

  Another ruined building lay a few hundred feet ahead. It was smaller than the farmhouse, and the squat shadows cast by the crumbling walls disturbed me. The sunlight swam like liquid as we approached.

  “This is where they used to bring the tithes,” I said, and then threw up. My vomit was bloody, and the smell of rotten meat overwhelmed me. I clutched my head.

  Osan looped his arm underneath mine and pulled me to my feet. Millie helped him drag me over to the shade. I squirmed in their grasp as they sat me down against the wall.

  “Easy,” said Osan. “Just take a breather.”

  “It’s not right, it’s not right, it’s not right!”

  He held me down.

  “Listen to me,” he said fiercely. “You have gorge sickness. We are not trying to hurt you, we are trying to stop you from hurting yourself. Do you understand that?”

  I bared my teeth at him in a snarl, but at the same time, a sensory memory tugged at me. I knew the feel of these hands on my shoulders; Osan had restrained me before. The last time I lost control. Everything was jumbled, too bright and gleaming and hazy, but that memory cut through the tangled threads of my thoughts. He had held me back during Finn’s execution.

  “El?” Millie peered at me anxiously.

  “Can’t think straight,” I said. “Please help me.”

  “You’re safe, and you’re going to be fine,” said Osan. “But I think you need to burn off some of your lace. Can you do that?”

  I shook my head. I need it. She wants it back.

  He kept his tone even and friendly. “Come on, just a little? Stick with me here, El. Your lace is making you sick, can’t you see that?”

  But she’s already so angry, I wanted to argue.

  Instead I nodded. With difficulty, I grasped my lace and wove a defensive net around the three of us, knitting it tight and dense. The sensation of drawing on my power was all wrong—a horrible, clotted tugging, like dragging a hook through oil and thick mud. I stopped.