Wheel of Stars

by Andre Norton

Under the full light there existed a silvery over-casting. She might be looking down at a pool of water which had been disturbed, on which foam was slowly rising. As she shook it out, what appeared to be a short length of fabric, hardly wider than the panels of the nearly destroyed cloak which had lain above, enlarged into a sweep of material that Gwennan could not have believed had been fitted into so compact a folding. Though it was harsher to touch than silk or velvet, the longer her fingers caressed it, the more it clung to her skin. The girl had the odd feeling that there was something in it of the quality of fur—that this was no warp and woof woven on a loom by a forgotten craftsman, but rather had once been organic—alive—and that a shadow of that life still clung to it.

  Unheedingly she swept the other remnants of that battered treasure trove on to the sofa; now she unfolded, twitched, smoothed this find. The oblong of cloth stretched wider and wider. It covered the top of the long table, now it un-creased to hang over the sides—there must be yards of it!

  While, under the light, those silvery, foamy streaks were altering, too. From indistinct swirls which had reminded her of an attempt to picture clouds across some sky, they were changing, drawing together into distinct and definite lines. She stopped, jerked away her hands. Those lines—they were indeed patterns—and she had seen their like before—though she could not truly have identified them one by one. These were akin to those misshapen scrawls which were a result of her attempting to reproduce the hidden marking on the great standing stones. In whatever forgotten language that had been inscribed—its like had been woven into the fabric she now discovered.

  Perhaps the weight of the cloth itself provided the last revelation. It no longer resembled an un-sewn, uncut piece fresh from a loom. There was a last rolling of one edge over the far end of the table. That displayed intact this as a garment, un-attacked by time. What she viewed was a long cloak, not hooded as had been the one Lady Lyle always favored—for the drawn-in neckline formed a band on which the lines of weaving were very closely set, in so intricate a combination of unidentified scroll and hooks as to be hardly distinguished one from the other. What was spaced well apart on the rest of the cloth surface was here concentrated. There was a clasp also—perhaps it had been the weight of that which had pulled the collar apart. The metal was silvery—yet no tarnish dimmed it. Gwennan thought it akin to the pendant she had discarded. Its form bore the semblance of an eye—elongated—inset with a milky stone which had no glitter, just an opaque surface, that surface divided by a single green-blue vertical pupil which might have been a cat’s eye nearly closed in the full glare of the lamp.

  Gwennan stepped back warily. That brooch or clasp—it appeared to center her attention as might a real eye, one acting independently of any body. Perhaps her sudden retreat in some way influenced the cloak as it lay across the board, for it slipped, falling forward in folds to the floor where the shadow cast by the table half hid it from view and she could no longer detect those lines of pattern. Only the eye lay in the open, gleaming, and she had a difficult time convincing herself that the pupil line in it had not expanded as it passed into the shadow.

  She did not want to touch the thing at all, her curiosity swallowed and dispersed by growing uneasiness, or she was sure that this was no remains of Daggert clothing—kept only because of the ever-abiding need for thrift. No, this was something very different and she could not understand how it ever had come to be included among Miss Nessa’s carefully stored scraps and pieces.

  Reluctantly Gwennan stooped, caught at the material, crumpling it together in one hand. Though the cloth felt so coarse and heavy to the touch when she had first unrolled and unfolded it, the garment as a whole was much lighter than she had expected it to be, and she had no difficulty in dragging it up from the floor one-handedly.

  No wind could have found a way into the carefully close-battened kitchen, yet, as the length of patterned green arose, it fluttered, its edging swinging out to brush against Gwennan’s body before she had time to fend it off. Then she had no will to prevent the next happening. Her hands, moved by no orders of hers, speedily brought that green length about her body, settling the cloth straight on her shoulders, letting it trail about her, while the upstanding collar, so stiff that its edge rasped against the underside of her chin, clung in place. By sheer exercise of will she defeated whatever purpose had moved that enfoldment; she did not allow her hands to follow through, to clasp tight the eye brooch.

  The green lengths covered her from throat to within an inch or two of the floor, swirling about her so that when she looked down she could see nothing of her body, only the flowing cloak. Nor did it rest easily on her. She moved her shoulders, took firm grip of the edges, strove to shrug off its weight. There was resistance to her efforts. Her fear, flaring higher, led strength to her pull. Thus at last she freed herself from something as entangling as a net might seem to an entrapped fish.

  That lore she had promised herself she would not again draw into the forepart of her memory supplied a fragment of old legend—the People of the Hills—those who were said to have their own land under the surface of the earth into which human kind could vanish for a night on invitation, and issue forth to discover that years had passed and all they had once known had long since vanished.

  Gwennan managed to drag the garment off her—though it clung with a stubborness which was not that of any woven material she had ever seen or known—almost as if its underside had instantly produced roots to fasten upon her other clothing. The girl pushed it back on the table and flipped over one corner to inspect the lining, see what it was that had seemed to catch.

  As her fingers slipped across the edge of that greenish inner surface she snatched them away,

  put one tip to her lips to lick off a small spot of blood. Some pin long caught there to scratch the unwary? No, when she leaned closer the lamp light showed her no shine of metal. The inner side of that cloak was—

  Scaled skin? The scales set so to inflict a warning cut on the unwary handler?

  The skin, if skin it was, appeared very thin, scarcely more than tissue, and the scales remaining fastened to it lay in irregular patches. This lining was a silver gray but the scales (and those were smaller than most beads) were silver with a black rim, overlapping where they still clung.

  Perhaps it was the heat of the lamp, or her own actions in pulling the cloak so about, but there now an odor began to rise from the huddle of cloth. Not stench such as she had come to associate with manifestations of the Other World. Rather this was fresh and clear—akin to the scent of pine, or one of the other pungent evergreens. It wafted ever strong as she refolded the cloth as nearly as before as she was able. Her curiosity stirred, but her determination to be free from all which was not of her own time and place, kept Gwennan to that smoothing, turning, lying in folds. Stubbornly it would not return to the narrow band of cloth which it had earlier been. Even when she crushed her weight upon those folds they refused to stay together.

  At length, a little out of breath and more than a little uneasy, she gave up the struggle. That eye brooch had fallen to one side in a position which still watched her. Gwennan got up quickly, pushed aside that wretched bundle of the cloak which refused to be refolded. She stowed away the rest of the old and disintegrating finery, returned everything she had found, save that swath of dark green. Since her discovery concerning the nature of its lining she had the greatest dislike for handling it. But she could surely not leave it lying where it was.

  At last she made another half-hearted attempt to reduce it to order. By now the scent thickened—almost she could see that spiralling up as incense smoke. She clutched the folds together as best she could, then made a quick sortie, flashlight in one hand, the roll of the cloak in the other, to the parlor, dumping this new, upsetting discovery with all the rest of that of which she wanted no part.

  When she returned to the kitchen she washed her hands twice over, scrubbing hard, for the scent permeated her skin until she at last used stro
ng smelling scouring powder, leaving her fingers red and wrinkled. Then she turned to the making of a pot of tea, the leaves drawn from one of those packets Miss Nessa had been so meticulous about mixing from herbs. These were supposed to quiet the nerves, to allow one to sleep—

  Snow still hissed outside, but within, the kitchen was as it had always looked from the first day she had arrived at Whitebridge. Gwennan set her mug of tea close to hand, curled up on the sofa with two blankets pulled about her shoulders, reached for the nearest book. Slowly her will began to win the battle. She felt herself relaxing—all that uneasiness and excitement of moments earlier eased away.

  On the third day the snow stopped. Gwennan, impatient at imprisonment, always a little fearful of being drawn to the parlor and what it held unless she could get free of the house, was glad to hear the snow plow again in action. At least she could get as far as the Newtons and perhaps discover when the light and the phones might again tie them to civilization.

  Putting on her warmest and most storm-resistent clothing, she ventured out, though it was necessary to flounder through a drift which had near barricaded her front doorway. The yard was a strange territory with no bushes to be seen, save for mounds here and there. Red Anderson hailed her from the road, waving vigorously. Gwennan answered back, then fought her way out to follow along the path the plow had opened to the Newtons’ where Paul was shoveling paths. The snow had really outdone all previous records for several years, she learned from the battery powered radio of the Newtons’ which filled their kitchen with bulletins and warnings breaking into one another against a constant crackle of static.

  “Town’s gone into hibernation like a bear,” Paul announced as he stamped in. “They closed school for a week. No use you going in, Gwen. Nobody is going to show up at the library, and that place takes too much to heat it. The furnace always was cranky.”

  Remembering the suffering of her toes and fingers during past cold waves, she was perfectly willing to agree with him.

  “Something queer,” Florence remarked as she reached for the coffee pot to fill a mug for Paul, “they’ve been talking about some lights in the sky last night—thought maybe there was a plane off-course. Announcer real excited about it, said they were planning to send up a helicopter as soon as they could to check it out. There was no answer to any signals—and no one has reported a crash. Nobody took off from any field around here either. All those are closed down by the storm. They kept calling back and forth, trying to find out what flight might be missing, but no one seemed to know.”

  “Lights—?”

  Florence nodded in answer to Gwennan’s one word question. “Red ones—and yellow ones, they said. Then they got excited because no plane uses yellow signals—none of ours anyway—”

  Paul laughed. “UFOs again—though this isn’t the season for them usually. If the Martians have any sense they’ll keep away from our storms. And they should have plenty of weather sense, seeing as how they appear to have been navigating our skies for a good long time now. Could be northern lights—”

  Florence shook her head. “These were small—not spread all over the sky, as they told it. And they moved. Well, if it were some plane, that could be down, and it may be weeks before we find out. They said clouds were banking up in the north to come hard at us again. Gwen,” she spoke earnestly now, “why don’t you come on in with us? No sense you staying over there by yourself, if we get really locked in. We got plenty of provisions. You aren’t trying to keep that whole old barn of a house warm are you?”

  “Moved into the kitchen,” Gwennan returned. “I don’t know, Florence—” She was greatly tempted. Not only by the fact, that, for the first time in her life, she had felt herself a prisoner during the past three days—but also she could so get away from everything which reminded her of what she wanted most to forget. Over here at the Newtons she would not be tempted to visit the parlor to look again at what she had stored there.

  “What Florence says is only good sense, Gwen.” Paul nodded. “You go get your things—stay here until tomorrow anyway, then if that second storm doesn’t hit us, you can make up your mind about it.”

  “All right, I will!” Gwennan felt defiant, as if she were answering back against a command from an unseen other, one which she had no intention of obeying. She had clung to her independence for a long time, it had been so much of Miss Nessa’s training. However, if the cold built up and there was another bad storm—what the Newtons proposed was only good sense.

  The second storm did hit and its fury was such that Gwen was glad of company, as it appeared they were about to be caught up in another ice age. She sat in a comfortable rocker with Justinia, the black Newton cat who had accepted her at once, curled in her lap, and listened to the howling of the wind. The radio, which had occupied the center of the table since the beginning of this time of fury gave forth distorted voices between crackles of ear splitting static. Now and then they picked up calls of ham radio operators —asking for help for someone trapped and ill or without adequate supplies.

  Paul stood listening to one such plea, the pile of wood he had brought in still across his arms.

  “It’s a corker this time,” he observed. “Makes me think of that article in the magazine—that one I told you about, Gwen. Seems like one of these fellows got to saying that this was about the time for the world to come to an end—talking about the poles changing around causing tidal waves—earthquakes and such. And we have had a couple of hard winters—this one’s worse than last. Maybe that north pole is just moving down our way now.”

  Florence laughed. “End of the world? I’ve heard them talk about that ever since I was a kid at home. There was some church once that believed that—sold off all their stuff, the people did, put on white robes, and went up on tops of hills waiting to be pulled right up into heaven. Ma always said that no one knew about the future and there weren’t no sense in spending time and trouble worrying about it—that all the worry in the world wasn’t going to change things.

  “If the north pole is going to move down I don’t see how any one is going to go out and say ‘Stop’ and have it do just that. The world’s been bumping along for a good long time. We’ve always had earthquakes—look at them out in California. My niece Margy—she’s been through two that knocked her dishes right out of the cupboard. Broke two of the fine old plates Grandma Henshaw willed her. And there was that volcano out west that blew its top off a couple of years or so ago. We’ve had a lot of things happen—but the world hasn’t come to an end yet.”

  The world come to an end—Gwen was not looking at the table, the Newton kitchen—the warmth and comfort of this room here and now. She hung suspended in space above a sea filled with burning islands, its water steaming away, or heading towards the land in waves too large for any human being to conceive, she saw the earth break apart and spout fire—she saw—death—

  “Gwen, Gwen! What on earth’s the matter with you, girl!”

  The world died as she watched and there was nothing which could be done to stop that fury—nothing—

  “Gwen! You sick?”

  She was being shaken. That picture was gone as if the earth’s fire had crisped it into ashes, the waves rent it apart. Florence leaned over her, her face full of concern. Before she thought, Gwen answered:

  “It happened once—once before—”

  “What happened, Gwen? You feel faint—you look awfully white. Something wrong? You have a pain somewhere?” Florence’s hands were on the girl’s shoulders as if she feared Gwen might slip completely out of the chair.

  “The end of the world.” Gwen was still dazed, still caught in the horror of the Mirror. “There were tidal waves—and volcanoes—the land—everything was swept away.” She blinked then and a measure of common sense returned swiftly. “I guess I read too much sometimes, Florence. There was a book.” Quickly she summoned her wits to manufacture what her neighbors might believe. “It described a theory—that the world has gone through a numb
er of catastrophes which ended most all life, then everything had to start over again. The author had some very graphic descriptions—you could read them and almost see it all happening.”

  “You mean the Flood—like in the Bible,” Florence nodded. “Yes, Paul said there was more in that magazine article he was talking about, how people all over the world had stories of a flood and how just a few were saved—people who had never heard about our Bible either. Sounds like they all had the same story. But that writer who did the book you’re talking about, Gwen, he sure must have written something really upsetting. You looked there for a moment like it was all coming true right in front of you—”

  “Miss Nessa always said I had too much imagination,” Gwen strove to cover up her self-betrayal. “I guess I just get carried away sometimes when I read something like that. I don’t think that we’ll ever know the truth if it did happen—except from the old stories.”

  Paul deposited the fire wood in its box and now came over to pick up the radio, giving it a little shake as if that would subdue the blast of static.

  “More likely some darned fool will set off a bomb somewhere and that’ll be the end this time,” he commented. “We go along just living on the edge of trouble these days. Seems like those who have the say should know it wouldn’t do them any good to start such a war—be nothing left worth the claimin’ afterwards and no one alive to do that claimin’—on both sides.” He sat down and brought out his pipe.

  “We wouldn’t have any more chance of stoppin’ a bomb coming over us now than we would one of those big waves, or a volcano, or the ground opening under us if it took a mind to. We’re not as high and mighty, none of us, as we’d like to think we are.”

  Florence drew her sweater closer together. “That is chilling talk, Paul. What say we get out that old Monopoly game? It might give us something else to think about.”

  Something else to think about. What had they said in her “dreams"—that it was man himself, not nature, who was the threat this time? Gwen’s fingers bit into her palms. Man himself—and could there be any stopping him?