The Starless Girl

by Liz Delton

  She turned back and saw the beast rear up on its hind legs, claws outstretched—and without a second thought, Kira turned the handle and plunged through the doorway and into darkness.

  Chapter Three

  The Bridge

  Kira jolted out of sleep and sat bolt upright. For a split second, she thought of waking in her new bedroom in Ms. Elm’s house, but she quickly realized it was nothing like waking on an unfamiliar hillside.

  And then she remembered the door. She whipped her head around, remembering running straight through it to escape the creature. But there was no door on the hillside. Neither was there a creature made of darkness, for which she was relieved.

  Yet she had no idea how she’d gotten on this hill, when she’d just been in the woods. Had she taken to hallucinating?

  She took a few breaths and clutched her knees to her chest, staring around at the hillside. It was bare of everything but grass. In the distance, she saw a stream running alongside some woods and a few mountains beyond. Nothing looked familiar, though she hadn’t seen much of North Noxbury by daylight.

  “Well, it’s not that big a place,” she said and heaved herself up off the ground.

  Some time had passed—how long had she been asleep?—and the sun was approaching the horizon. She hurried down the hill, hoping she’d somehow blacked out and wandered to this hill from where she must have imagined the creature.

  There were a lot of things she hoped she’d imagined lately. If she wasn’t careful, people might start to think she was crazy. When she found Ms. Elm again, she would have to make up a story about where she had been.

  Kira ran a hand over the outline of the library card in her pocket as she scurried away from the hill, eager to get back before it got dark. She would have to look for her library book, too. Hopefully, it wasn’t too damaged from the throw. She remembered watching it sail through the air and the alarm at the book not hitting solid flesh, but flying right through the shadowy creature. She shivered and clutched her black cotton jacket tighter about her.

  The stream that ran along the edge of the forest was bordered by a stone wall, the rocks dark with age and covered with splotches of green. It looked almost ancient. She followed it for a while, looking for something familiar, all the while glancing over her shoulder, keeping an eye out for anything strange. She didn’t want to see any more dark creatures; she was certain of that.

  Up ahead, she spotted a bridge. In her daze to get away from the creature, she must have crossed there. Her clothes were completely dry, so she couldn’t have crossed the water any other way.

  The wooden bridge seemed out of place for North Noxbury. It arched elegantly over the water, the red paint of its elaborately carved sides faded from sun and weather, but the black planks seemed sturdy enough.

  A strange feeling began to creep up her spine as she put a hand on either side of the railings. How could she forget crossing this bridge as she had fled the forest? An answer began to form at the back of her head, but she refused to give it any thought. She was just spooked from whatever it was she had seen outside the library—if it had been real at all—and she’d blacked out. That was the only explanation.

  Kira mounted the bridge—only wide enough for one person—and walked up the steep incline to the center. She stopped and looked into the slow-moving water, studying the moss growing on the rocks on the embankments. Her gaze flicked down to her own reflection in the deep pool below the bridge, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach.

  A woman stood right next to her. Kira straightened and took a hasty step away. There had been no one there a moment ago.

  The woman’s hair fell well past her waist, the black strands so silky they almost looked wet. Her makeup made her look extremely pale behind the strands of hair that half-hid her face. She wasn’t very young or very old, and she wore a long red dress, which fluttered as though in a breeze, though the air was still.

  “I’m sorry,” Kira apologized. “I didn’t see you there.” The strange feeling had gotten much stronger. “Here,” she said. “Let me get out of your way.” She kept her voice even, but every instinct was telling her to get off the bridge.

  She turned to go back, but the woman in the red dress now stood at the foot of the bridge, where Kira had come from. She said nothing, only stared at Kira with dark, empty eyes.

  Kira’s chest swelled like a balloon. She turned back again, only to find the woman back on the other side of the bridge. No matter which way Kira turned, the woman was there, blocking her way. Kira glanced over the side of the bridge and into the water, her hands shaking. The pool beneath the bridge looked deep and dark.

  She turned back to the forest, and the woman was there again. Kira took an experimental step forward, and the woman began to move toward her. Kira turned around again, stumbling this time, yet the woman approached from the other side now. Kira gripped the railing in the center of the bridge, hard, her breath coming fast.

  As the woman got closer, she began to change. Her hair was sopping wet now, dripping water onto the planks of the bridge.

  Kira turned in the other direction. The woman was so close Kira could see that her lips were blue. Her flowing red dress rippled as though it moved through water. She raised a pale hand.

  Kira hoisted herself up, ready to leap over the railing, but then—

  “No, don’t jump!”

  It wasn’t the red woman. She turned at the noise, her hand in the midst of changing shape into a claw. Someone thundered up on horseback, their face obscured by a dark metal helmet.

  The horse and rider reached the foot of the bridge. The red woman stood between Kira and the rider.

  “Let her go,” the rider called imperiously, gaining only a hiss from the red woman.

  The rider drew back a free hand, then a small silver-white blade flew from it.

  The bright blade whizzed through the air. The red woman shrieked in rage, dissolving in a burst of water before the blade could strike. It spilled all over the planks of the bridge and dripped down into the canal.

  The silver blade still flew. Kira couldn’t move, frozen with panic. And just as suddenly as she saw it coming for her, the blade disappeared.

  Kira stared at the newcomer, listening to the sound of water dripping from the bridge. A moment’s hesitation—which way should she go?—and she leapt off the bridge, toward the rider, and back the way she had come. Her feet stumbled to a halt in the grass as soon as she was clear of the bridge.

  Her rescuer was dismounting. Kira was too shaken to do more than watch. She was slowly coming to a realization about the strange feeling she’d been having but wasn’t ready to form the idea into real thought. Not yet.

  The rider held a long silver staff with a shapely blade on the end, and the helmet was not the extent of the armor. Hardened leather extended out from the shoulders, rising at the ends. Arms, legs, and torso were covered in leather plates and straps, and the hands were similarly protected. A silver crescent-shaped buckle bound a white sash about the waist. Kira couldn’t take her eyes off the bladed weapon.

  She tried to find something to say. It took a while for her to remember the right words, she was at such a loss. By this time, her rescuer had removed her helmet and was shaking out her long hair.

  “Thank you,” Kira finally said, having found the words and the strength in her voice.

  The woman propped her helmet on the horse’s saddle and said, “You must not be from around here.”

  Kira raised an eyebrow at the woman.

  “Everyone in the Light region knows not to cross that bridge. That’s one of the most dangerous water spirits in the Realm of Camellia.”

  Chapter Four

  Light and Shadow

  That strange feeling snapped into place as the woman’s words sank in. It was as if she’d known already.

  A thousand thoughts swirled in Kira’s head as she stared at the woman. She reached out a hand to steady herself on something, but the nearest thing was the railin
g of the bridge, and once she saw that, she balked, stumbling forward a few paces.

  “I’m lost,” Kira said, knowing the words to never be truer.

  The woman’s mouth turned up in half a smile. “I’m Anzu.”

  “I mean—I’m Kira,” she added, snaking a hand into her pocket and feeling the outline of her library card with the tips of her fingers. It helped stop the shaking a little. Her eyes darted behind Anzu as she realized how dark it had become.

  As if she had been looking for it, she spotted the glowing fox over Anzu’s shoulder. It sat a few paces away, looking in their direction as if studying them.

  Her heart began to race, but it was less out of terror than excitement now. Here was the creature that had been there from the start! And now, here it was in this strange place, the Realm of Camellia. Kira could hardly believe she was no longer in North Noxbury, but the evidence was overwhelming.

  Anzu glanced over her shoulder. “Ah,” she said, nodding to herself. “You must be on your way to the temple.”

  Kira bit her lip and nodded. She saw no reason to contradict her savior, not when one glance at the hill she had woken on revealed no secret door, no way back to North Noxbury. With a jolt, she realized that the hill was clearly outlined in dim light. The cursed vision had returned.

  Was it cursed, though?

  “You can see it?” Kira asked, nodding toward the fox.

  “Of course,” Anzu replied. “I’m a Light knight. You must be coming from the Shadow region.” Anzu nodded at the woods behind them. “You’re lucky to get out of there alive.”

  Kira pressed her lips together and nodded. The sudden realization that another person—some kind of knight, even—could see the strange light made the idea that she had somehow been transported from North Noxbury slightly less terrifying. Kira thought back to the door in the woods, covered in purple blossoms; it was no rabbit hole, but it had done the job.

  Kira wanted to ask Anzu what the fox was doing there, but she kept her mouth shut, not wanting to make the Light knight suspicious of her. Before anything else strange happened, Kira wanted to learn just what exactly the glowing light was—since it turned out she wasn’t cursed.

  “Not many people with Light magic make it out of the Shadow region alone,” Anzu was saying, appraising Kira. Her eyes lingered on Kira’s clothing in a perplexed sort of way. Kira dropped her hand, which had been fidgeting with the zipper of her jacket.

  “The temple,” Kira said, eager to distract her. “How far is it?”

  “Not far,” the warrior replied. “I can take you.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. I was on my way there anyway. I’ve just finished dealing with a situation over in Dorogon and need to make my report to Mistress Nari.”

  Anzu cocked her head over her shoulder and addressed the fox, “Unless she already knows?” The fox tilted its head in question. Anzu smiled and shrugged. “You never know. She’s got messengers all over the place.”

  “Anyway,” the knight continued, “I’ll take you. Are you tired? I was going to keep going through the night. Do you mind? We’d get there by morning if we meet up with the Kaidō Road.”

  Kira thought about this, studying the landscape of this strange new place. The hill from which she’d come glowed faintly in her vision, whorls of grass outlined in starlight. Without the door, she had no reason to stay here—not when things like the woman on the bridge lurked about.

  Deciding she was not at all tired—if anything, she was wide awake, her nerves buzzing with tension—she said, “Let’s go.”

  ***

  The glowing fox followed them the entire way. Kira was dying to find out what it had been doing in North Noxbury the night before the dark-creature attacked, but she remained silent. Anzu seemed to think Kira was from here, and she wanted to keep it that way, for now.

  It wasn’t until an hour into their journey that Kira realized the coincidence that Anzu—and even the terrifying woman on the bridge—were Japanese, too. Or they appeared to be, since Kira had no idea if this Realm of Camellia had a Japan or had heard of the place at all. Kira herself had never been there, but she thought her mother had grown up there. Kira had never known for sure since the past was one of those forbidden topics they never talked about, right along with the subject of Kira’s dead father. And now Kira would never know.

  The knight didn’t talk much as they plodded on. The night grew darker as they went, highlighted by the mysterious light. The sky, too, was brighter than it should have been. Kira couldn’t tell if there were more stars here or if the glow of her new vision made them brighter than usual. Either way, the sky was more glitter than black space.

  Kira had never ridden a horse before, but Anzu had insisted that she ride. Luckily, the horse, Panji, was gentle and kept to a slow pace.

  As she got used to it, Kira started to find her new vision rather useful. She didn’t think she would have agreed to go on through the night if she couldn’t see the faint outline of every tree and rock as she now could.

  Every so often, they passed what Kira could only assume were shrines along the road. In the darkness, she could see the outlines of the small structures. Even with her new vision, she couldn’t quite tell what they housed. Many of the shrines had flowers in jars or other things placed in front of them that Kira took to be offerings, but she couldn’t make them out. Kira wondered what they were all for but didn’t want to come across as uninformed to Anzu.

  More than once, Kira jumped when she spotted things moving in the dark, but Anzu could always tell what they were and assured her they were harmless. The warrior seemed to be keeping a keen eye on their surroundings.

  “Just a rabbit,” Anzu remarked on one of these occasions.

  Kira grimaced from her perch atop the saddle. Anzu had obviously seen her flinch.

  “How long have you had it, then?” Anzu asked amiably.

  Kira paused, but this seemed like a harmless question. “It started yesterday.” She kept her voice even, but every nerve in her body was tingling. She had so many questions.

  “Yesterday? My, you move fast. But I suppose if you’re from the Shadow region, you’d want to get out quick once you realized you had Light magic.”

  Kira nodded absently, wishing Anzu would keep talking. She didn’t know which of her thousand questions was safe to ask. So she settled on, “How long have you had it?”

  “Since I was about your age. Maybe a little older. My parents brought me to the temple, and I trained for, oh, around ten years before becoming a knight.”

  Ten years? Kira had only wanted to go to this temple to figure out the mystery behind her new vision—she wasn’t looking for a decade of knight training!

  How would she ever get back to the real world?

  “Stop,” Anzu commanded the horse. It halted in its tracks, and Kira froze in the saddle.

  Anzu’s hand grabbed her calf. “Get down, now,” the knight whispered, her voice full of warning.

  Kira did her best to slide off the horse, landing on her feet by Anzu, who gripped her by the shoulder.

  “It looks like Shadow mages.”

  An unpleasant ripple cascaded down Kira’s spine, though she didn’t know who these people were. Anzu’s tone was enough to scare her.

  “Get around the other side of Panji.” Anzu pushed her toward the front of the horse. “We’ve no cover.”

  Kira ducked under Panji’s neck and put the horse between her and Anzu—and whoever else was lurking in the night.

  “The Ga-Miri raiders would never come this far west. It’s got to be the mages, but I don’t know what they’d be up to on this part of the Kaidō Road. Did anyone see you escape?” Anzu directed this last part at Kira through the horse’s legs.

  “N-No.” She wasn’t about to tell Anzu where she really came from. The Shadow mages couldn’t be after her, could they?

  Kira crouched by Panji’s hooves. She slid one hand onto his soft leg and peered past Anzu. There was
a small outcrop of trees beyond the dirt track they had been following, where Kira was horrified to see the glowing outline of four figures. Two were horses, and the others were people-shaped, crouched down by something on the ground.

  “Just stay still,” Anzu whispered. “They shouldn’t be able to see us in the dark if they’re Shadow. And I don’t see any sign of Light magic…”

  Confused, Kira squinted, watching. If Anzu believed her to be from the Shadow region, why wasn’t Kira to be feared? Was it because she could see the light?

  All of a sudden, the two crouching figures stood up and strode directly toward them. Terror rammed against Kira’s chest, her heart thudding against her ribcage. Shadow mages or not, Kira’s terror didn’t care. It was like she was back in New York, a pair of strangers coming down the sidewalk toward her in the night. The fear was the same. Her mother had made her carry pepper spray. She had never used it, but it had made her feel safe. The small canister was tucked snugly in her backpack, in Ms. Elm’s attic bedroom.

  “Hold,” Anzu whispered. The knight standing firmly before her gave Kira strength, and she drew a shaky breath.

  The night had become cloudy and would have been dark for anyone who couldn’t see the starlight shining in everything. A chill ran through Kira as a brisk wind swept across them. The wind blew the dark clouds above, revealing the moon, and with it Kira and Anzu’s position.

  The two stalking figures stopped, surprised. It became evident they hadn’t intended on heading toward them; it was only a coincidence.

  Panji stomped his foot. Kira had been clutching it too tight.

  “Keep quiet and stay here.”

  Anzu went out to meet the strangers, who had continued to advance, now decidedly heading for them. The knight strode out with no apparent fear, her shoulders straight, her head high under the heavy helmet. But she was empty-handed.