Star Eater

by Kerstin Hall

  “Any better?” asked Millie.

  “A little.” The world appeared less shiny. I straightened and rubbed my forehead. “But it’s such a waste.”

  “No, it’s necessary,” said Osan. “Do it again.”

  I wove a second net around the first. With the fog lifting from my thoughts, I could sense how tainted and warped my lace had become. I burned off a little more.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  Osan let go of my shoulders. “Apology accepted. So long as I never have to hear about ‘the patterns’ again.”

  I sat up. I still felt groggy, but the sensation was no worse than a bad hangover. “I, uh … Was I saying all of that out loud?”

  Millie offered me her canteen again. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Have some water.”

  I drank, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “How much do we have left?” I asked.

  “Three canteens,” said Osan. “But the vegetation is getting greener. Hopefully we’ll find fresh water before nightfall.”

  I shut my eyes for a few seconds, then nodded. “Let’s carry on, then.”

  We moved slower than before. I was frustrated by my weakness, and the thin layer of delirium that still coated my brain. Millie and Osan were patient with me and relentlessly positive, but we had lost a lot of time; it was long past midday. If Celane was still pursuing us, she would be closing the distance fast.

  The path meandered downhill, and the earth became softer and damp as we passed into a fecund wetland. White lilies burst from the peat, and water pooled in shallow, stagnant puddles. The rich smell of decay hovered in the air.

  And yet there were no frogs, no fish, no insects. The silence seemed deeper here; it pressed up against my eardrums like I was moving underwater. The further we walked, the more the water rose, and the path began to give underfoot. In places it crumbled away entirely, leaving gaps where we were forced to wade through black silt. The broken stretches never extended more than ten feet, but my sense of vulnerability always increased as we stepped off the path. We were being watched.

  Osan abruptly turned to the left, away from the curve of the path. Mud sluiced up to his knees.

  “Hey,” I called. “Where are you going?”

  He stopped.

  “Osan?”

  “Sorry.” He was quiet for a while, not moving. “I must have been confused.”

  He returned to the path, and we continued. After that incident his behaviour seemed normal, but the moment stayed with me.

  Step after step, one foot in front of the other. I tied my shoes to my bag and went barefoot. The wetland seemed endless; mud sucked at my ankles hungrily, dragging me down. Time blurred into a haze of shambling exhaustion as the sun gradually slunk toward the western horizon. We could not stop here. The sky was clear; once night fell, the temperature would plummet. So we continued through the indeterminable expanse of swollen grasses and sedge, the fat reeds bobbing as we trudged past, the deceptive softness of the soil that abruptly gave way to water, sinking us knee-deep in sludge.

  The idea of navigating the maze of pools in the dark scared me. It would be all too easy to lose our way. And it would only take one misstep, one error—

  “Slopes upwards,” said Osan.

  I lifted my head. The sky over the mountains had turned orange. “What?”

  “We’re walking uphill. That’s good; we must nearly be at the end of it.”

  “Thank the Eater,” muttered Millie. She pulled her foot out of the mud with a scowl.

  My own feet were ice-cold and aching, but the weight on my shoulders lightened. Osan was right. We had been gradually climbing for a while; I had just been too fixed on the ground in front of me to notice.

  Despite our fatigue, we moved faster. The ground dried, and the reeds were replaced by scrub, then small trees. A few stars winked in the pale evening sky.

  “Up there,” said Millie. “There’s a building.”

  Along the ridge of the hill, a dark square stood silhouetted against the sky. I sagged with relief. I was so tired that I could hardly stand; the idea of shelter and warmth and rest was almost enough to bring tears to my eyes.

  “Go on.” Osan gave me a small push. “I’ll see if I can find anything to make a fire.”

  I hesitated.

  “It’s fine,” he said, sensing my unease. “I won’t stray again. Go.”

  I followed Millie up the hill. For the first time, the path split—one way led up to the house, and the other snaked away over the verge. I struggled up the final rise and gasped. A vast lake, dark and glittering, gleamed with the last rays of sunlight. Further along the water’s edge lay a wide beach dotted with sun-bleached trees, all long dead.

  I squinted against the light. I could have sworn I saw larger ripples peeling away from the shore.

  “It’s not a lake.” Millie gazed over the water, her expression thoughtful. “It’s a reservoir.”

  The stone building sat beside the path, right on the waterline. Thick moss coated the walls, black and slimy where the stones met the water, fuzzy and green higher up. The roof was entirely gone, open to the air, and the entrance had collapsed.

  “A boathouse?” I suggested.

  “It looks ancient. I wonder when someone was last here.” She turned to study the marsh stretching into the distance behind us. “It makes you wonder what all of this looked like before.”

  Sunlit hills, green spreading forests, soil so fertile and rich that plants overran each other, the melody of water over rocks, and a city that glowed, flowers of every shade, every colour. I said nothing. The memory hung over the present like a honeyed glaze.

  “At any rate, Celane won’t be able to travel any further before morning.” Millie nodded to herself. “No one would dare cross that marsh at night.”

  I wasn’t so sure. I scanned the landscape, straining my eyes as I searched for any sign of smoke or movement in the distance. I could see nothing beyond the wetlands, and yet I knew she was out there. I felt tied to the Reverend, like there was an invisible chain around my neck and she held the other end. Although she was little more than a stranger, I knew Celane, understood her, recognised the shape of her convictions and ideals—because they were the Order’s convictions and ideals. She was not like Verje, self-interested and sadistic, and so I didn’t fear her as a person, not exactly. Instead she stood in my mind as the Sisterhood made manifest, both in its failings and its glories. She was the Order, and I knew her as well as I knew myself.

  In that, she terrified me in a way that nothing else could, because, in the depths of my heart, I could not quite believe that Celane was wrong for wanting to martyr me.

  “El?”

  I shook myself. I just needed to stay out of her reach a little longer. Millie was looking at me, her head tilted to one side.

  “Want to check out our lodgings?” she asked.

  The boathouse’s interior was divided into two rooms: one leading to a stone jetty, and the other overgrown with flowering weeds and vines. We set about clearing a place to sleep.

  Osan returned as we finished, carrying an armful of scrubby branches. He set them against the far wall where the light would be obscured from outside. Building a fire was much easier with the drier tinder—by the time the sky had darkened, we had a pot of water bubbling away over the flames.

  I leaned against the wall, warming my hands and feet, my chin resting on my chest.

  “Are you feeling okay?” asked Millie.

  “Just tired.”

  She pushed a cup of beans and a strip of dried meat into my hands. On the other side of the room, Osan was sorting through our supplies. Planning, rationing, keeping busy. Millie sat down beside me.

  “Do you think he’s still nearby?” she asked.

  No need to ask who. I shrugged.

  “He was trying to do the right thing,” I said.

  She poked the fire with a stick, sending sparks scattering. “Yeah. I know. I just wish h
e’d given me a chance to say goodbye.”

  “You wouldn’t have let him go.”

  She fell quiet. The fire crackled and the water hissed softly.

  “After our parents died, I was meant to take care of him,” she said, staring into the flames. “I knew that. And I failed.”

  “Millie—”

  “I ran away. I was the only one he had left, and I abandoned him.”

  “You were fifteen.”

  “He needed me to protect him.” She drew her knees closer to her chest. “Afterwards, I promised myself that I wouldn’t ever let him down again. I wanted so badly to make it up to him. And I couldn’t. Couldn’t save him from this either.”

  “But we’re going to,” I said forcefully. “I’m going to fix him, you’ll see. We’re so close.”

  Millie’s downcast eyes reflected the firelight, flickering orange. In the distance, an owl hooted, and a draft of cool air blew through the entrance to the room.

  “We both know I’d make a terrible counsellor,” I said softly, “but trust me on this: you never needed to earn Finn’s forgiveness. And when you see him again, he’ll tell you that himself.”

  She breathed out slowly.

  “Hope is a dangerous thing,” she murmured. “But I want you to be right.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  ONCE MILLIE HAD eaten a little, she seemed to relax. Despite the missing roof, the space between the mossy old walls had grown warmer and it was almost cozy. I tended to the fire, then laid out the ground sheets and blankets. When Millie set down her cup, I pushed her to the warmest corner, furthest away from the entrance.

  “I’ll join you soon,” I said. “I just have to help Osan finish packing for tomorrow.”

  She nodded. “El?”

  “Yes?”

  She looked down. “No matter what happens, thank you for trying.”

  I stooped and kissed the top of her head. “Get some sleep.”

  Osan was rearranging the supplies for a fourth time while pretending that he had not heard our conversation. His face was drawn and tired; he seemed older than when we had first met.

  “I want to talk to you,” he muttered as I joined him. “Alone.”

  I made a subtle questioning gesture.

  “It isn’t an emergency. Just want to ask you something.”

  I glanced over at Millie. She had curled up on her side with the blanket tight around her. Her eyes were shut.

  “In a few minutes,” I said.

  He nodded.

  I carefully filled our canteens from the pot, then collected more water from the edge of the jetty. The moon had yet to rise, and the lake beyond the boathouse was vast and dark and quiet. The water lapped against the smooth stones at the base of the house.

  I returned to the fire and set the pot back over the flames. Millie’s breathing had eased and her face was slack. I smiled slightly. She must have been exhausted to fall asleep so quickly. A stray lock of her hair had slid across her cheek, and her forehead was smudged with ash.

  “El?” said Osan from the entrance.

  Outside the boathouse, the temperature dropped sharply, and I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering. A yellow semicircle of firelight gleamed through the gap in the crumbling wall. Beyond that, the landscape was only illuminated by the stars.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Osan stood, looking out at the water, his back to me.

  “You still aren’t telling the truth,” he said.

  It was not an accusation, just a statement of fact, but I noticed his fists were balled. I stayed silent. He turned to face me.

  “Last night, you were only worried about our provisions lasting long enough to reach the mountains,” he said. “That struck me as strange. Almost as strange as the fact you concealed the possibility of curing Finn. Why hide that?”

  “Because I might be wrong.”

  He shook his head. “You promised Kamillian that she would see Ceyrun again. You haven’t once mentioned your own future—because for you, it all seems to end at the mountains. So please, I’m begging you, tell me what is going on.”

  My throat was dry.

  “El.”

  “A debt of blood,” I said. “That’s what Cyde told me. If the Renewer pays the debt of blood, it could mean the end of Haunts.”

  A log shifted inside the boathouse, and the firelight flickered.

  “You can’t be serious,” he muttered.

  “If this works, there will be no more martyrdoms, no more Renewals, no—”

  “No more you,” he interrupted angrily. “You expect to die, don’t you? I thought we were helping you escape the Order, not leading you to your new martyrdom.”

  “It isn’t like that.”

  “Isn’t it? Then tell me where I’m going wrong, because I don’t see it.”

  “Osan, please,” I whispered. “Please stop.”

  “How could you lie about this?” He raked his hands through his hair. “I thought we were friends.”

  “I didn’t want to burden anybody.” It was difficult to breathe. “And if I can’t escape the Order, if I can’t escape the Haunts, then this is all I have left. Maybe I can set things right. That’s worth something.”

  He was silent.

  “I’m sorry that I lied.”

  “I can’t accept this. I can’t just—” He broke off.

  I didn’t know what to do. I just stood in front of him, ashamed and weary and defeated. Osan swallowed and shook his head.

  “I need space,” he muttered. “Go back inside.”

  I wanted to tell him to stay, it was too dangerous for him to wander off into the dark alone, but his expression stopped me. I nodded.

  He turned and walked away from me.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated, softer.

  Inside the boathouse, Millie remained soundly asleep. I adjusted the blanket to cover her legs, and she mumbled to herself. Would it be better if I told her? I felt so heavy. I trudged over to the fire and sat down.

  One way or another, it would be over tomorrow. Regrets, doubts, fears: they were pointless now. Worse than useless. Distractions. The flames burned steady in front of me.

  I took my mother’s letter out of my pocket. The envelope was a little creased, and one corner had folded over. I smoothed it out, then slid one fingernail under the seal and opened it. Inside were two pages.

  My dearest Ellie,

  I stopped for a moment. I could see my mother sitting in her study with the lamp burned low, her pen scratching on the paper, and it was almost too much. I breathed deeply.

  My dearest Ellie,

  By the time that Shaelean Cyde gives you this letter, five years will have passed since my martyrdom. I want to believe that you are doing well. It is strange to imagine you grown-up, when in my mind you will always remain my serious little girl.

  By now you will probably have found a place for yourself, and maybe some measure of happiness. In delaying the delivery of this letter, I hope to give you time to come to terms with everything. I know it won’t be easy; you are too young and no one is ever truly prepared to bear the Sisterhood’s burdens. And yet I also know, without a shadow of doubt, that you will be strong enough to survive what is asked of you. Because that is who you are.

  I suspect you will be angry. You will probably have worked out that my early martyrdom was no accident, no coincidence. I meddled in the wrong affairs and asked the wrong questions. In truth, ever since the fire that killed Finn and Millie’s parents, I have made myself a target—and with my latest efforts, I went a step too far. When Shaelean told me about the possibility of ending the Order, I lost sight of caution.

  But that is not why I’m writing this letter.

  Ellie, we both know that I made many mistakes in raising you. I have been cruel and temperamental and impatient. Before you came along, motherhood was only ever a source of fear. I feared my own martyrdom. I feared that you would inflict the same wounds upon me that I inflicted upon my mother.
I feared that I would hate you.

  And I know that I have not been the best mother, but somehow you have blossomed in spite of me. You, my Ellie, my serious, clever girl, were a gift I never deserved. Even facing the end, I know that this is true.

  I love you. I am so proud of the person you have become.

  The letter was unsigned. I carefully folded the pages, tucked them back into the envelope, and put it into my bag. My shoulders trembled, and I stepped out of the building to catch my breath.

  The cold air cut like a knife, but I inhaled deeply anyway; I invited the chill into my lungs, I let it hurt. I had always known it would hurt. My vision was misted with tears. The moon was bright on the water, a yellow disk floating in space, and the blurred stars wreathed the sky in specks of light.

  “El?”

  The voice was soft, floating up from the direction of the beach. I was so disoriented that for a moment I thought I had imagined it.

  “Finn?” I rubbed my cheeks with my sleeve. “Finn, is that you?”

  “I’m over here.”

  “Where?”

  “Down here.”

  Confused, I hurried toward the water. Pebbles rolled under my boots, loud in the silence. The old trees threw long shadows over the ground.

  “I need help.” The words drifted out across the lake.

  “But where? I can’t see you.” I came to a stop at the water’s edge and cast around. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I’m hurt.”

  My throat tightened. His voice seemed to come from the trees further up the beach, but I could not be certain. It was painfully quiet, and our voices moved strangely between the water and rocks and trees. Why couldn’t I see him? I took another step down the shore and then stopped dead.

  “Fuck,” I whispered.

  Too quiet. It was still too quiet. And I was nowhere near the path.

  “Finn.” My voice trembled. “I need you to tell me where you are.”

  “Come quickly!”

  I did not move.

  “What was your grandfather’s name?” I asked.