Above the Star

by Alexis Marie Chute

  “And wherever they’re headed, they’ll get there faster than us in their balloons,” adds Nameris.

  Azkar and Eek kick at the ground, but there is no debris to follow beyond the camp. Nameris turns his eyes upward to survey the leafy canopy for clues. Azkar pokes Zeno. “Where would they have gone from here, Bangol?”

  Zeno frowns at Azkar before clearing his throat and answering, “I suspect they journeyed east. There they may regroup on the long-abandoned rock arches, bridges from land to prison cells above the water of the reckless, sleepless sea. They were built when a shallow tide surrounded the stone shoals, though since the Star’s arrival—around the time of my exile—the saltwater runs high and most are flooded, to my knowledge. They used the cells many sunsets past to imprison the sprites they captured in the fairy vineyards, torturing them for their Naiu and their secrets.

  “Or . . .” Zeno continues, “the Bangols take the longer journey north to the stone castle-fortress in the bedrock badlands. My home near the northern shore. Where my throne awaits me. There, the Bangol army is the strongest and our weapons abound.”

  “If they go north, why fly east first?” the Maiden asks. “Not straight over the mountain?”

  “The weight,” Harry chimes in. The senior, and civil engineer, wears thin-rimmed glasses that frame the wrinkled valleys around his eyes and slide down his nose as he calculates the scene. Harry re-tucks his Hawaiian golf shirt and straightens the cardigan tied by the arms over his shoulders. “It’s the people, that’s my estimation,” he says. “They weigh down the balloons.”

  “That may be to our advantage,” the Maiden reflects. “They will be slower—as long as they keep all humans alive. Knowing the Bangols—though I am not acquainted with Tuggeron—I suspect they fly to their northern fortress. As Zeno alludes, there the stone-heads can prepare for battle from a position of strength. Since we are beneath the mountain, Baluurwa the Doomful, and we must either turn back to the southwest, which is the safer route up the western coast past the sprites, or continue to the east around the mountain’s sharp ridges, I suggest we maintain our swifter northeastern trajectory. The greatest factor being time.”

  The company sets off at the Maiden’s command, keeping the great Baluurwa—that rises steeply at the center of Jarr-Wya—beside them. The Olearons guide the humans, who marvel as the blue forest thins and they begin passing lavender vines winding up slim, white-bark trees unique to the east quadrant of the island. The intense light shines through their enormous, carrot-colored leaves in beams of caramel. Flowers bud proudly between cracks in the thick carpet of patchy emerald and lemon-hued moss.

  “I’m inspired to garden! I do love visiting new places and learning about their people through their horticulture,” says Donna, her white hair glowing blond in the sunlight. She reaches down to pluck a flower at her feet.

  Kameelo quickly stills her hand. “Do not touch the pink flowers,” he warns. “They contain a hallucinogenic that will have you lost, yet happy, in a breath.”

  “Well,” declares Donna, retracting her creased fingers. “At least if you are lost, it’s better to be happy than fretting.” She places her hand in Harry’s and squeezes.

  Harry chuckles. “You always see the good in everything.”

  “They’re a cute couple,” Ardenal says to Tessa. “I pictured us like that. I still do.”

  “If you are really Arden, what does Ella wear every day?” Tessa asks as she continues to hike through the vines and dangling foliage. Tessa has begun to suspect that the Olearon answering to the name Arden is, in fact, who he claims to be. True, he saved her from the black flyer and says all the right things that one who is impersonating another would say in such circumstances. However, it is Ardenal’s mannerisms that are most compelling to Tessa. She watches him as he brushes his dreadlocks away from his forehead. Sometimes he even pushes up his chunky black glasses, though he wears none on Jarr-Wya.

  “That’s easy—” Ardenal answers. “If it hasn’t changed in the last two years, that is. I hope I’m right. Ella wears my mother’s locket with a picture of Archie—Dad—on one side and me as a baby on the other.”

  Tessa’s pace slackens as she looks intently at the red profile, the matted hair, the strong, slender build of the Olearon beside her. Dry branches crack under her shoes.

  “Look out,” Ardenal blurts, pulling Tessa in close to him with one hand as she narrowly misses a low-hanging branch that would have caught her across the forehead. Ardenal keeps his arm around her as they continue, walking slowly, falling behind the others.

  The conversations of the company fade and the woodland sounds grow bold. Wings flap. Something scurries across crisp leaves. The breeze sings through the trees. Ardenal plays with Tessa’s hair, brushing it away from her shoulder. He gently kisses her neck, then her lips. They linger together. The forest breathes deeply around them. Tessa knows this mouth, the way it pulls at her skin, its taste.

  “Hot,” Tessa whispers when they part. She dampens her flushed lips with her tongue. She rests a hand on Ardenal’s chest before taking a step away. She sighs. “You can’t erase all the lonely years with a kiss.”

  “But it can’t hurt, can it? Sorry. I don’t know how to say it differently. I wasn’t present, but I didn’t leave our marriage, Tess—is that better? I was trying to save Ella, to save us all from the heartbreak of losing her. I thought I could slip into this world, use my research to locate the antidote, and come back—that you wouldn’t even know I was gone—because of the time. Time here, time there. It’s wound differently.”

  “I now see that Jarr-Wya is real—that’s undeniable—and I do hope, with all my heart, that Ella’s cure is here, but presence is what makes a marriage. Presence and honesty. Why didn’t you confide in me? It doesn’t matter now. I can’t forgive you for that, for the last two years of bitter absence. You are my Arden, but you are not my husband anymore.” Tessa slowly shakes her head as she drops her hand from Ardenal’s chest.

  “That is not fair. Seriously, Tessa? If I told you what I had been up to, would you have believed me?”

  Tessa is silent for a moment, considering it. “No. I would have thought you were nuts.”

  “Exactly! Like you thought Archie was demented and you were shopping for retirement homes, you would have shipped me off to the crazy-house.”

  “God, you make me sound like a monster.”

  “You’re not, I know you are not. You’re wonderful, that’s why I love you. Why I will always love you. Your devotion to your family is fierce—but still, I couldn’t tell you. You were carrying the weight of Ella’s illness like a martyr, and I knew you would have died in her place if you could have. It consumed you, like my research did for me. If I came home one day and said I had coffee with a stone-headed creature or that I was tracking the appearances of a Steffanus—”

  “A what?”

  “A silver skinned, Amazon woman with wings. If I told you that I was hunting down a tool to take me to another world, you would have. . .”

  “Yeah, I would have freaked. You’re right.”

  “So, can you cut me a little slack, Tess? I never meant to hurt you. I thought I was protecting you.”

  “Thank you, Arden, for saving me in the blue forest, for cutting me free of the black flyer.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “But, despite all you have done, and your noble intentions, you still took off on your own. I know it doesn’t make sense to you—maybe not to anyone—but I’ve felt abandoned all my life. That ache is like my own heartbeat. When you were gone, every day that slinked by, the constant thudding in my chest was a rude reminder: I’m easy to leave. Maybe I am harder now, as Archie always tell me, but time changes people, even if it does move differently here. Look at you.” Ardenal glances down at his red chest and the glowing veins beneath the skin of his hands. “I am not the same woman you married, Arden, and I cannot go back.”

  Chapter 25

  Archie slides the leather e
nvelope out of his shoulder bag as he crouches in the tall grass between two lanky trees in the white forest. He had tip-toed away from the company during a rest break taken at Lady Sophia’s insistence, met with much grumbling from the Olearon brothers. Archie tasked Ardenal with watching Duggie-Sky, while also keeping an eye on Zeno, to satisfy the Bangol’s outspoken demand that he not be left alone with Azkar, or “Scar” as the short creature now heckles his guard.

  Archie lightly caresses his fingers across the smooth glass. He waits. “Blasted thing. Work!” he grumbles. A branch cracks underfoot to his right and the Olearon’s secret history falls from Archie’s hands onto the damp forest floor. He spins around and sees Duggie-Sky running toward him, followed closely by Ardenal. Thinking quickly, Archie tosses his bag onto the glass before the two approaching can notice.

  “He wants you, Dad.”

  “I can see that,” Archie huffs. “Wish I could have two minutes to myself. What’s happening with Zeno? He’s hollering. Go check, will ya? I’d like to relieve myself with some level of dignity.” He waves his hands to shoo Ardenal away, who races off in the direction of the fitful Bangol, obviously spewing insults in whose direction Archie can only guess. Turning to Duggie-Sky, Archie continues, “You stand guard, over there,” he points to a patch of dirt. “Help Grandpa Archie get some privacy.” The boy side-steps into the place Archie had directed, within view of the resting company and near enough to Archie to appease the child, who turns his back to the squatting man and jumps up to pull leaves from low hanging branches.

  “Alrighty, let’s try this again,” whispers Archie and he retrieves the glass from beneath his bag. He polishes it with his coat sleeve, cleaning off dirt and checking for cracks. It is perfect, without a chip. Archie leans his back against a tree and rests the glass on his knees, struggling to remember how he had brought forth the words in the citadel. Archie grazes his fingertips along the perimeter of the jewels and then taps the surface once. Whether there was in fact a trick to activating the enchantment, Archie is unsure, but he is thrilled that whatever combination of motions he had enacted prove effective.

  The glass begins to move with angry looking clouds that darken like a dusk sky. Archie leans around the tree trunk and yells, “Duggie-Sky, you’re a great guard! I may be a while—must’ve eaten somethin’ funny.” When Archie looks back, white words—which he immediately recognizes—have appeared and quiver on the glass. One by one, the words Archie hungrily consumes with his eyes disappear, with new ones curling into place or creeping up from below, so that Archie is ever searching and always connecting two wayward sentences. His vision adjusts to the peculiar patterns and he falls into the trance of the words.

  The 22nd Lord of Olearon—born Devi—on the tenth year of his reign, commanded the capture of a Steffanus. His warriors extracted the following story of the alleged history of the Steffanus race, including their hypothesis on Jarr-Wya’s magical origins.

  What truth can be gleaned from the following is doubtful. This account was first recorded by the 22nd Lord and was added to a secret parchment by the 29th Lord—Telmakus—upon the public scorching of the original testimony. Telmakus wished to prove his autonomy from Laken, the sole remaining Steffanus, while continuing to search her deceased sisters’ words—the very memory of their lives—for clues.

  Thus, begins the transcribed record.

  Naiu—in its fullness of magic—began as a winged being with an expansive, graceful serpent’s tail. Its eyes were made of stars that sat above its round, shadowy-black snout, and lips, which spilled sharp teeth and piercing fangs. Its head was cloaked in equally black fur and its body smoothed with oily, grey and amber features that wafted out across its massive wingspan. It had no need for hind or forelegs as there was no place to land.

  Naiu was peaceful and content. It resided on the currents, only needing the joy of flight. All at once—in a spark of curiosity which it had never known before, nor from where it had now come—Naiu began to create something out of its blissful, silky nothingness. What it made was time. Naiu invented many variations of time and sprinkled them into the velvety black, patient to see what would arise.

  Those castoffs became the first moments of hundreds of worlds that all continued to operate within their own unique time frames. In those places, the magic flourished and blossomed into planets and sub-planets, into plant life and races of cognizant beings, and all things needed to sustain them. Those places were birthed of pure Naiu, but they often split into unstable new systems, producing parallel dimensions with similar though fractured time to their mother-world. These dimensions contained no magic, being lesser derivatives of the other.

  The being—Naiu—had not realized that it gave away its power with each creation. The worlds Naiu had formed collected its magic as they were carried by the currents to every corner of the dimly lit expanse, which was by then, indeed, a swelling collection of many worlds, dimensions, and constellations.

  The human Earth was a derivative dimension—a parallel planet—formed from the world known as Jarr. Earth was void of all enchantment. It remained linked to its mother-world, though ignorant of it.

  Winged Naiu, weak from its gift of magic, fell through and destroyed many planets. It crashed across the surface of Earth and into its mother-world. There, Naiu plummeted onto the island known as Jarr-Wya, finally resting in a cloud of rock-dust at the base of the mountain, Baluurwa, shaped from Naiu’s impact with the land. Naiu could sense that its magic was strong on Jarr-Wya, but that it was not enough to save its form.

  After crashing on Jarr-Wya, Naiu was surprised to see that a human child, one of the first in the parallel dimension of Earth—a baby girl—had stowed away on its giant wings. In Naiu’s last breaths, it cared for the baby, teaching her to walk, to hunt and to kill. Then, Naiu fused with the girl, giving her its wings and tail, and its beauty. She retained the ability to plant herself at death and grow into a flower of many blossoms, of many sisters as Naiu foretold. The human girl and Naiu were the beginning of the Steffanus race.

  The early time on Earth moved caterpillar-like at first, then much quicker than Jarr’s sunsets. Humans evolved and changed rapidly, no longer budding and stretching forth from their fuchsia blossoms that covered their newborn land. They began to mate with each other, their roots and stems shriveling in disregard within their world and within their memory. The humans forgot how they began as a reflection where—in their impetus—their seed had expanded into blue and green and into everything they knew, including themselves.

  The human part of the Steffanus was flawed, selfish, vengeful, and corrupt—separated from her own kind, never knowing family, but her promised sister-selves who would grow from her death. She was lonely. The gloom of Baluurwa shadowed her mind. It cut her skin with its rock. It did not shelter her from the elements. She grew icy cold in body and bitter in spirit. Crooked antlers sprouted from her skull. The first Steffanus chose darkness. The darkness of the caves where she burrowed into the mountain and also the darkness of her heart, though both dark and light did exist in her beginnings.

  Tired of her isolation, she sought out the glow and warmth of the Olearons, but they feared her, and shunned her. They sent their flames to crisp her hair and scorch her feathers. They chased her back to the mountain and banished her there to die alone, or so they thought. The power of Naiu in the first Steffanus was powerful and she did not perish, but became something much worse than death. From her demise, grew a vine so deeply encroached that its roots cradled all Baluurwa.

  The Olearons saw the Steffanus as a weed and wished to rid her from their land. One sunset, the vine—the flower—ceased its flourishing, appearing frozen from reaching its maturity. One thousand sunsets passed and the Olearons forgot the sole Steffanus—until, that is, her sisters bloomed.

  Human time eventually slowed and became regular, counted in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries. Naiu had never intended for such rigorous recordkeeping and
measuring of time—time beginning as a toy and as a happiness, not a burden.

  Earth was a place the Steffanus yearned for and discovered within reach, with the help of the Tillastrion. Being part human and part Naiu, the Steffanus could form a Tillastrion in either world and venture between dimensions, in secret. They learned that their errand must be enacted with duality of spirit; one part drawing on the human in her, the other on Naiu.

  On Earth, the Steffanus tucked their wings and coiled their tails, concealing them beneath clothing. Their beauty as women-kind allowed them many advantages. There they gathered knowledge. In the human world, the prophetic powers of the Steffanus grew. Their return to Jarr-Wya was always marked with oracles that the Steffanus would scratch with their silver daggers onto the glass of the Olearon’s city by night. These were bleak words, only ever partially fulfilled, and most often of evil intent. Many instances, the prophesies the Steffanus—intended for destruction—would be realized in a way they had not hoped. What the Olearons knew with fire-certainty during that unsettling passage of time was that the blood that flowed through the veins of the Steffanus race had not forgotten the slight to their first sister.

  Thus, concludes the transcribed testimony.

  The record also notes that the Steffanus—who informed the 22nd Lord’s warriors of such alleged origins—went on to coil her scaly tail around the neck of a guard to suffocate him. She flapped her mighty wings and sent two others falling backward out of the questioning room and into the training paddocks. The 22nd Lord deemed the Steffanus worthy of death.

  “Archibald Wellsley, I have endured enough!” Zeno’s raspy voice cuts into Archie’s trance. Archie can hear the Bangol stomping his stubby feet and short legs in his direction.

  “Do you wish me to bind your arms? Your legs? Perhaps gag your mouth?” Azkar’s gruff words reply from a few paces behind the Bangol.