A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck

by Jade Brieanne

  He smirked in greeting as he took a seat. “You’re too old to start being a hippie. Next, you’ll be pulling out a guitar to sing about our revolution while wearing plaid and then I’ll have to stop talking to you.”

  Pythia uncrossed her legs, stretching them to the edge of the rug before leaning back on her arms. “Never learned how to play. My father tried with a sitar. Tried. He said my fingers weren’t patient enough, that I wasn’t patient enough. The pungi was the only thing I could learn. It fit with me being a “snake charmer” and all,” she finished with her own grin.

  Lucan hummed in answer, putting a toothpick in his mouth and twisting it between his teeth. His gaze dipped from her to the incense burning at her feet. “Talking to your daughter? Had to open your…your…”

  “Avadhuti. My central channel,” she answered. “I felt Elle calling to me so I rushed to the roof. Ose didn’t have any new information other than Ahn’s trial. Aria’s demarcation event hasn’t happened yet, so maybe, hopefully, something is wrong and it won’t happen. That would solve so many of our problems. It was just me and her. So, no I’m not a hippie, just a terrible mother.”

  Lucan sighed. He always sighed when she said things like that and she didn’t care that he didn’t agree with her assessment. She knew her own truth. Nonetheless, he reached out, grabbed her hand, threading her fingers with his as if he knew he was right, she was wrong, and he would stay until she believed him. “How old were we when we left Caeli? I can never remember. It was so dark. There was so much…death.”

  “Too young, you even younger. I tried so hard to convince myself that I was old and wise at the time. That I was mature enough to handle being a young mother, a spiritualist, a warrior…a rebel.” Pythia Del pursed her lips. “I was so stupid.”

  Lucan looked down at her. “Do you regret it?”

  Pythia Del drummed fingers in thought before answering. “Regret is the wrong word. Do I wish I could have stayed? Yes. Do I wish that there had been another way? Of course. But do I regret doing what I had to do? Trying to find a way so that no one would have to feel my sister’s pain? No, I don’t regret it.”

  “Lunah…” Lucan recalled, sobered.

  “Lunah and Elle resembled Pythia Phi and me so much that you would have thought they were the twins and not us. But Lunah was stupid, foolish. She thought she was a bird. Thought that she could fly and live in the trees, jumping from branch to branch. We told her, ‘Later Ụwa is not your home, Lunah. The trees are not safe, Lunah. Stay in the temple, Lunah.’ She never listened.”

  Pythia Del felt Lucan squeeze her hand. It was comforting. “I remember her memorial. I use to wonder, in my stupidity and naivety, if it was so grand because she was the niece to the great Pythia Del. That it was so extravagant because Caeli hated death and loved Lunah more. The moment I learned the truth, it just hardened my heart even more.”

  “You can’t take other’s pain, Lucan. It isn’t yours to bear.”

  “When I took this position from my grandfather, it became my burden to bear. That’s why I continue towards this war. To show Caeli that maybe for once they should glance upon their children as they do humans, with love and compassion. When I’m the leader of The Fallen, it will be exactly as I say.” Lucan paused and brought Pythia’s hand to his lips. “We will see Caeli again. You will see your daughter again. I promise.”

  “I know, Lucan,” Pythia Del said, looking away and up at the stars. “I know.”

  They sat in silence so long that if not for his warm palm against hers, she would have forgotten Lucan was even there. Pythia Del could hear someone playing the violin somewhere in the distance. She knew the song–it sounded so much like funeral procession wails. Adagio, Sonata number 1. The song was sad, heartbreaking but Pythia Del knew this wasn’t the time to wallow in her own sorrows. She turned to the man next to her, glancing at his profile, admiring it, enjoying the distraction. “Where is Shen?”

  “Waiting,” Lucan answered. “Soon, we will be heading to see Daoyi. He is preparing everything for us. The ritual will begin tonight.”

  Pythia Del carefully pulled her hand from Lucan’s grip before she stood. “I’ll go collect him.”

  “Del?” Lucan said as she began for the door.

  Pythia Del paused.

  “I’m sorry for taking so long to come to you. I…just couldn’t stand showing up in front of you without a way. Shen is that way. I wished you believed me.”

  Pythia Del thought about the years that went by without a phone call, letter or summons. Their relationship was complicated, built on trust and shared despair. They were a home the other could return to, one that felt familiar. But he was not hers and she was not his. If, no…when they returned to Caeli, Pythia would be the spiritualist she was born to be, and Lucan would be the leader legacy called him to be. They could not exist in the same worlds. They did not believe in the same things. As always, she humored him. “If you believe Shen is the way, then he is.”

  She stepped through the doorway that led to the stairs. The stairwell had a dank smell to it that clung to the walls. It wasn’t her favorite smell. Feilong’s home was clean smelling, almost too clean, like a hospital, except for this one stairwell. Drove her mad.

  “Don’t get attached to him,” was said so quietly in her wake that Pythia Del almost didn’t hear it.

  She paused for a moment to hide her satisfied smirk. “Jealous?” she asked as she looked back at him over her shoulder.

  “I wouldn’t call it jealousy,” he said petulantly. The face he pulled was the closest thing Lucan would get to a pout.

  “Call it what you want. You are the sun, Lucan. I am the moon. What would I want with a mere snake?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Feilong’s Home Basement

  Brooklyn, New York

  Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

  Shen glanced up at the wall. A small schoolhouse clock was centered on the grey stucco wall opposite of him. 11:47 pm.

  Shen rotated away from the wall to stare out of the small iron bar lined window. The twin bed they gave him wasn’t the most comfortable thing to sit on and the springs poked him in the butt, but the only other furniture beside the dresser in the basement level room was a stool and it was currently occupied.

  Other than his habitually present guest, there was a cat that would “visit” Shen every other day. It would claw at the bars of the windows and mewl, the cries sounding like pity. Shen was under the impression that the cat thought Shen was trapped and it was trying to free him.

  He wasn’t trapped…but he wasn’t free, either.

  All of this was a game, to see if these people could get him what he desired. The test was this: he wanted to leave this place but he needed to kill Jin Amaris. It galvanized him in everything he did. He couldn’t explain it to anyone, not even to himself. The one place he found solace from his maddening thoughts of revenge were his dreams. They were beautiful, a window into their relationship before she ripped their lives apart.

  When he was awake, he couldn’t escape it. Charlie was right. The flame of revenge would never be extinguished. It was the reason he agreed to stay in this basement hidden away like some kind of pariah. It was the reason why he agreed to Pythia Del’s bullshit antics as she tried to force feed him history. It was the reason he hadn’t tried to stick a knife in Feilong’s gut. His needs.

  She used to be one of his needs.

  He stopped before he worked himself up. They hadn’t given him a plan yet but one thing The Eleven had given him was a headache. Shen had run across a lot of different people in his life and those people had made life hard, but nothing compared to how The Eleven raised hell for a supposedly heavenly purpose.

  Daily life with rebel angels had a maddening synchronicity to it. Although Lucan rarely spoke to him, like words, which he was beginning to think the man didn’t like, he showed up bright and early every morning with something for him to read. Most of it was confusing Taoism nonsense that he could
n’t wrap his head around. Pythia Del showed up only when it was necessary and that was to force more crap into his head. Sheeda and JiJi stopped by when they were at the heights of their boredom. And Lucan prayed they didn’t get bored often.

  Feilong tried once or twice before deciding he couldn’t be bothered with him, Kevin thought he was an idiot and made it a habit to visit right after lunch just to insult him. There were a few whose faces he would see on occasion like Seven, who’d stick his head in the door to look in on him with pity, like Shen was some kind of wayward child. Clara and Dalia were barred from the basement after Clara said she wanted to use him for target practice and Dalia had tried to help.

  They were some weird ass angels. Their actions, their way of life, all of it led to a lot of questions that of course, no one was enthusiastic about answering.

  Except for Solar. Solar of Later Ụwa was more than happy to answer any question, even the ones Shen didn’t ask.

  “Caeli is split into four parts,” Solar explained from the top of the stool. “Au Courant is that place you visited when you got a whiff of old girl Dellie’s vapors. What you didn’t see was the rest, the big three, the meat and potatoes of Caeli: Elysian, Aeon Terra and Later Ụwa.”

  “So you guy have like a country…in another realm? Why?”

  “You think humans invented the concept of a society, of a country, or a governing body? Please.”

  Shen nodded like he understood.

  “Later Ụwa is the best. Elysian is nothing but metal and water and Aeon Terra is an empty desert…or it was the last time I saw it. Later Ụwa is a jungle. Just us and the mystics and nature, man. Nothing but trees with leaves the size of your head, crystal clear lakes, and mountains. We even got a volcano.” Solar reached over and slapped Shen on the shoulder. “Hey! When we get back I’ll take you to it! It was forced into dormancy after someone uhm…died but I mean, c’mon, it’s a volcano.”

  Solar was very knowledgeable. It was a gift and curse because Solar was also loud, Solar didn’t sleep in, and it seemed that Solar had adopted him as some kind of pet, so he opted to spend all of his free time in Shen’s quarters.

  “Here ain’t too bad once you get used to it. Nulls, that’s those of you who have no spirit mass, are kind of cool, although Lucan’s not that fond of you. He’s jealous of you really, but I’m not getting into that. Feilong doesn’t like you either but consider yourself lucky. Feilong wanted you to sleep outside. The girls talked him out of it.”

  “Isn’t he so kind?” Shen muttered.

  Solar’s lip hitched up to the side and his eyes narrowed. “No…he isn’t. Here,” he said as he reached into his back pocket. He withdrew a thin, burgundy colored leather book. “I bought you another book.” Solar tossed it and Shen caught it before it flew over his head.

  “Yay, me.”

  “You gotta make a choice, man. Either you continue to sniff Dellie’s shit or you read the books. It’s the only alternative I can get ‘cha.”

  Shen pulled a face before peeling back the front cover. “At least it’s in English,” he murmured as he looked at it. Embossed in gold letters across the front was “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.”

  “Tibetan Buddhism?”

  Solar smiled. “Tibetan Buddhism.”

  “Help me out here,” Shen started. “I’m starting to make some sense of your ridiculous history and I’ve got enough background on your dumb war to understand how stupid it is to try and start another one but the thing I don’t get is…you. All of you. You’re like a religious melting pot. Next, you’re going to tell me that the Dalai Lama was an angel."

  Solar winked. “Part angel.” Shen frowned and he laughed. “You gotta remember, one angelic parent, one human parent. Different cultures, religions, all mushed up. Sort of like weed and this cigar.” Solar paused to pull a small ziplock baggie out of his pocket and held up a purple and silver foil packet with a picture reminiscent of a White Jesus on the front. “Separate but equal power, you feel me? Can’t get high without both.”

  “That was the worst analogy I’ve ever heard of in my life.”

  “Hey, opportunity called. I just answered,” Solar said as he concentrated on rolling the blunt. “Still doesn’t change the fact that weed and cigars weren’t destined to mesh. Cannabis was intended to be a medicine and this cigar came from a leaf they used in religious ceremonies. I ain’t sick and this ain’t no ceremony but when you dovetail ‘em,” Solar sang as he lit the end and took a long drag, “miracles happen.”

  “That’s your explanation? For the entirety of your theological beliefs? Weed?”

  “Yeah? Our beliefs are derived just like Nulls. No Mutare is allowed into The Glory Beyond, so it’s more faith than fact. Like, check this. The basis of human’s belief in us angels is through Abrahamic religions but take Pythia Del, Hindu is her thing. Dalia and JiJi are pagans. Seven is a tossup, nobody knows what his mom worshiped. Someone said she was a witch, but I don’t believe that because he wears a rosary, so maybe Catholicism? Lucan’s thing is this swazy mix of Kemetism and Christianity that I cannot understand to save my life,” Solar held out the blunt for Shen to take. He hesitated but accepted it, pulling on it in one long drag, the end lighting up orange. Solar nodded and grinned as white smoke seeped out between Shen’s lips. “People got it wrong with this religion shit, man. God is God. Interpretation is cultural.”

  Shen’s head tilted back against the wall as the drug entered his bloodstream. “And whose interpretation am I being subjected to today?” he said, pointing at the Tibetian book with this chin.

  Solar grinned. “Durham’s main man.”

  Shen accepted that easier than he thought he would. Most of what he’d learned had been for entertainment sake, a carousel through each and every last one of their sob stories as they belabored the catalyst in their exodus from Caeli.

  For Feilong, being dishonorably discharged from Mutare ranks after he attacked the human he was supposed to save. Lucan, his parents. Kevin was angry his father wouldn’t acknowledge his mother while Durham, Sheeda, Dalia, and Jiji all lost a parent to Azeal’s coup d’état. Clara was an anarchist and Seven stated he unwisely picked a side in a war that demanded that he did. Everyone knew about Pythia Del and her niece.

  Solar, as he’d found out, was a politician at heart.

  “Politicking ain’t hard, my friend. You see, we need more than just 12 people who sit at a table and make decisions for the whole of Caeli. There should be more than heredity and how easily you whoop ass that gets you on the council. The people of Caeli should be able to vote. Democracy! I’m talking democracy! Lucan promises to implement that should we win.”

  Shen grinned. He loved when weed made people philosophers. “I get it, you’re pissed, but that doesn’t really explain how you all plan on winning?”

  Solar took another drag then shrugged. “I know the why, not so much the how. You’re going to have to ask–”

  A knock on the door jarred Solar into a coughing fit as he rushed to put the joint out. “Oh, shit. That’s probably Sheeda. She’s going to kill us for this!”

  “Us? Isn’t it your weed?”

  “No! It’s hers! Help me hide this!”

  The door opened and the smoke billowed out of the room, hiding whoever it was that came looking for them in a cloud of white.

  “This isn’t what I expected to walk in on but then again how can I be surprised?”

  “Shit,” Solar said under his breath. “Not Sheeda. Vapors Lady. Look she doesn’t cough or blink or nothing!”

  Solar threw the hand clutching the blunt behind his back and waved with the other “Hi, Dellie.”

  “Solar,” she intoned. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  Solar smirked as he brought the blunt from behind his back and put it out on the bottom of his shoe. “Yeah? I kinda was. Earthly pleasures and all. Have to enjoy it while I can.”

  Pythia Del stepped into the room but didn’t come all the way in, propping hersel
f against the door frame. Shen looked at her from his bed, watching how the light from the hallway shrouded her in a halo. But that wasn’t really what made him look at her. He was accessing her, more like it. He didn’t get her.

  She didn’t seem to be as angry as or as vengeful as the others. This all seemed to be a means to the end, rather than a burning mission for her. Considering she was one of their leaders, it struck Shen as odd. She struck Shen as odd.

  “I hope that in the midst of your indulging,” Pythia Del said, eyeing Solar, “You did what I sent you down here for.”

  Solar scratched his head. “And that was…”

  “Honestly? The pacting ceremony?”

  “Oh! Yeah, that! Right! I mean, of course, I did!” Solar stopped when she raised a brow at him. “No,” he shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I gave him a book, though.”

  “You are useless,” she sighed. “Go upstairs. Lucan needs you to stop by the warehouse. We haven’t heard from Sheeda, Clara, Seven or Kevin. They aren’t answering their phones.”

  Solar perked up. “A mission?”

  Pythia Del shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “About damn time! Enough talking! Time to take action!”

  “Yes, yes,” Pythia Del said as she grabbed Solar’s arm and ushered him out of the room. “Action. Upstairs. Bye.”

  “I’m going, I’m going,” he muttered as he began to leave. He stopped short and turned to Shen. “When I get back, we can talk about The Creator and their different personalities. Dissociative identity. It’s wicked.” Then he was gone, his exodus made complete by the solid click of the door closing.