Above the Star

by Alexis Marie Chute

  Chapter 28

  Tessa is alone at the creek. Nate is asleep on the ground. Valarie’s arm is over him. Was it a dream? Strange, she thinks, the smell of his hair is still on my fingers. Tessa stands and straightens her clothes. All the sleeping bodies are as they were when she first awoke.

  “Young one,” a deep voice says, making Tessa jump.

  “Ardenal!” she yelps, but he does not stir.

  “Over here,” the voice calls. “Come to the water’s edge.”

  She spins around, but all is still as she creeps over the rocks. Slowly, cautiously, she approaches the water, which continues to rush loudly by. All of a sudden, the clear water begins to cloud with white sediment. A drooping face carved with wrinkles appears beneath the surface of the current. Tessa gasps and stumbles backward, but the voice calls to her again.

  “All is right, young one. You need not fear me,” it rumbles deeply.

  “Who are you?” Tessa’s voice trembles. Long white hair falls from the old man’s crown. His eyes are commanding.

  “My name is Rolace,” the deep baritone quakes beneath the rush of the creek.

  “What do you want?”

  “I see your secrets through the enchantment of the river. You hide many mysteries in your soul.”

  Tessa backs away, wrapping her arms around herself as if she wore her lifeline like a garment. Then she changes her mind. “What do you see?” she asks.

  “I see an abandoned child.”

  “Ella?”

  “No. Not your daughter.”

  “Me.”

  “You carry a heavy burden.”

  “I don’t need parents. I don’t need anyone.”

  “Why lie when I see you for who you really are?”

  “You still have not told me what you want.”

  “I feel your fear for your child. You worry that if she is dead, your loneliness will overcome you.”

  Tessa quickly brushes a tear away, hoping the face does not notice.

  “Your daughter is alive!” Rolace declares.

  “Ella . . .” Tessa smiles without shame, beaming at the stream. “Where is she? How can I find her? Tell me—which way should we go?”

  “Your daughter’s whereabouts are not for me to see. I do know, however, that the Bangols have used their power over the stones to cause a landslide down the east side of Baluurwa. There the rocks pile high. You will not be able to find them inland hugging the base of the mountain.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Find me,” Rolace instructs. “I will give you a gift, like I did Ardenal, and this will allow you to find your child.”

  “What kind of gift?” Tessa kneels on the stones, bending low, pleading to Rolace with clenched hands. “How do I find you?”

  “The gift is a secret you will soon uncover, if your will is strong and your heart is brave. Ardenal knows the way.” The face of Rolace begins to wash downstream in the roaring creek. “Bring me what I desire—let it pass untainted by cloth or wood or stone, from your skin to mine—and the gift will be yours.”

  “What do you desire?”

  “Bring me the—”

  Rolace’s voice is drowned out by a large rock that plunks into the water, sinking immediately to the riverbed after sending an icy spray into Tessa’s face. Her hands slip on the damp edge and she falls face-first into the glacial river. Instantly, the rushing current envelops her body and carries her along, her knees and arms banging against the jagged shadows beneath the stream. Her head smashes into something, and all is blackness.

  Tessa’s mind wanders in the endless void. There are whispers in the water, uttering words in high-pitched hisses: “We know your secrets! We know your secrets!” Tessa struggles to right herself and looks from side to side, but all is cloaked in gloom. “We know where you come from! We know your origin!” Tessa stretches out, but her feet find no solid ground, her hands find nothing to cling to.

  I have always lived beneath the surface, she thinks, then abruptly shakes her head. No, that’s not true. How long have I been down here?

  “We know your deception! We know you, Orphan!”

  Putting her hands to her face, Tessa scratches her eyelids, believing that something has blinded her, like the thin, slinking film-creature of the Olearons’ lilac smoke. When she senses she has drawn blood by the sting of her skin, that she has clawed her own flesh, she stops and is still. Without knowing which way is up—if there even is an up in such a place—she surrenders to the whispering creek, revolving through the blackness, free of time and space.

  “We heard the desire of Rolace! We know, Tessa! We know all your secrets, Sad One! Give yourself to us! We know your secrets! Open your mouth! Yes, open your mouth! Do it and we will tell! Yes, the desire of Rolace! Open your mouth!”

  Without hesitating, Tessa spreads her lips wide. Water floods into her mouth and down her throat. She tries to cough but the icy flow reaches forcefully through her lungs. She notices a lightness in her mind, though her body is pulled—toward what, she cannot tell. What have I done? As Tessa wonders this, a singular word, simple yet unfamiliar, lodges in her consciousness: Banji.

  “Now you know,” the water hisses. “Die!” The words cut like a blade of Olearon glass through her mind and even her ability to think fades to murky nothingness. At her last fleeting thought—Ella—Tessa becomes aware of pinpricks on her skin. They grow to stabbing, agonizing pain that increases like a thousand needles—until someone grabs her arm and hoists her by the elbow. The weight of the water falls away, but it is too late. All is carbon black.

  Chapter 29

  I kissed Luggie. It wasn’t anything fancy. I wanted to show him how I feel. We have been cooped up together since we took off from the south. He and I have talked—in our own way—non-stop. I’m happy in his company. He’s not judging me like the guys at school. I feel normal, sort of—which is all I want. We are just a boy and a girl, getting to know each other. Sometimes I forget he is a Bangol. He’s very attractive. Ugh, Mom is going to be so angry—and Dad too. I know what he thinks about the Bangols from what I read in his notebooks.

  When Mom packed up all Dad’s stuff, I’d go up there, to the attic. My favorite time was after classes were done for the day. Grandpa Archie would fall asleep on the couch in the afternoon sunshine. When I heard his snore, I’d drag over the step stool, climb up, pull the string to release and lower the wooden stairs, then ascend to the attic. I’d often wear one of Dad’s sweatshirts. It made me feel better, though I know that’s cliché.

  I read all of Dad’s notebooks—until the day that Grandpa Archie found them. He became protective of the attic, obsessed with it, though he thought I didn’t notice. I was feeling worse by then. I would pretend to fall asleep on the couch and let Grandpa climb up the wooden stairs. He’d stay up there till we heard Mom’s car door. I’ve never seen an old guy run so fast as Grandpa did then. He’d slam the stairs up hard. I’m sure the mice in the attic thought it was the end of the world.

  At first, I felt bad, going through Dad’s stuff, as if he were dead and I was digging up his gravesite. But I knew something puzzling was going on. I still remember that last week before he left.

  Dad started to come home for supper. He stuck around before work to walk me to school. That was a big contrast to how he had been for years—since my diagnosis. Right around the time the doctors told my parents to prepare themselves, that all the radiation and other treatments were not working, Dad started looking me in the eyes again. It made me nervous. It was like I wasn’t a ghost anymore.

  That was when he gave me the plant. Mom said Dad was in denial. “Why give her something that will outlive her?” she screamed at him. It was called Golden Creeping Jenny. I loved the name. He said he picked it because he knew I liked scary stuff. The plant was like a vine, growing leaves in green bowties. Already they were spilling over the side of the pot.

  Mom called Dad a child. As if he believed in Santa. She had given up on me, but showed i
t by suffocating me with love. That last week, Dad repeated, over and over, “There’s got to be a way.”

  Mom was exasperated. “Why are you torturing me with false hope?” she’d sob.

  “There is always hope,” Dad assured her, which perplexed me. I was listening from my room. They thought I was asleep. I was so confused! Was I dying or living? But when I heard Dad talking to Mom that night, after he gave me the Creeping Jenny, I decided I liked his fantasy. I felt horrible, but I kept thinking, Dad had hope and so do I.

  Even after he left and Mom was deeply depressed and there was nothing I could do. Even when throwing up corroded my teeth and I had to go to the dentist—a lot. Even when it would take me an hour to walk the two blocks home from school because, that day, my legs were so weak. Even when the headaches made learning anything in grade nine nearly impossible. Even when my body was polka-dotted with bruises because I couldn’t avoid banging into stuff. Even when my first—and only—boyfriend broke up with me, his pity only lasting so long. Even then, I kept thinking, Dad had hope and so do I.

  Chapter 30

  Ardenal beats Tessa’s chest with his fists, pounding upon her bleach-white skin. “Oh god! I can’t look!” Lady Sophia shrieks and turns away. Ardenal’s flame is a whisper of smoke and his red jaw clenches, sharp like his cheekbones.

  “Come on, Tess, come back to me!” he pleads.

  “Out of the way,” Nate barks. “You’re doing it all wrong!” The captain crouches beside Tessa but Ardenal does not budge. Nate elbows him and reaches for Tessa. Ardenal lays a red hand on Nate’s forehead and shoves the man away with one swift gesture that sends the human flying into a tree. Nate groans loudly and curses.

  Ardenal presses his hot mouth against Tessa’s blue lips and breathes into her the heat of his flame. Again, he pounds her chest, but this time water erupts from her bloated lungs. Coughing follows, then a wheezing suck of air, and she startles and stares wide-eyed at the faces blocking the light above her.

  Nate joins the group expressing their relief. Rubbing the shoulder that slammed against the tree, he wears a happy, though reserved grin.

  Lady Sophia pushes Valarie and Harry aside to get a better look. “Oh, good heavens! Tessa, you’re alive! I—” she wails.

  “Banji,” Tessa interrupts.

  “What was that, dear?” asks Donna.

  “Banji.”

  “How do you know that word?” Nameris demands.

  “The water told me,” Tessa blurts between coughs.

  “The river is a liar,” Azkar says slowly. “It lured you closer and would have risen to flood your lungs if I had not broken its hold.”

  “I thought you said the water could read a person’s secrets,” Tessa says, looking at Nameris, then the Maiden. “It knew things about me, things I have not told a soul.”

  “Truth and lies are indecipherable on the whisper of the water. It uses those secrets against you, to play on your weaknesses. What did it tell you?” asks the Maiden.

  “That’s not important.” Tessa sits up and the humans and creatures take a step back. “What is important is that we find Ella—and stop the Bangols, right?” She rises and stands, shivering, her clothing drenched.

  Ardenal detaches the belt of his blue jumpsuit and removes the vibrant fabric so that he is standing in a pair of soft muslin shorts. The Maiden turns away, but the Odyssey passengers stare at Ardenal’s smooth, crimson skin and blooming muscles. “Please, Tess, take this,” he says, passing her the jumpsuit.

  Tessa accepts the garment and, accompanied by Donna, steps behind a wide tree to change. When they emerge, Tessa has fully rolled up the sleeves and legs of Ardenal’s jumper to fit her petite figure.

  Ardenal smiles at her. “You look cute.”

  “I’m drowning in this,” she says, and Ardenal smirks.

  “Give me your clothes.” He holds out his hand and Tessa drops her wet dress and jacket over his arm. Ardenal drapes them loosely across his shoulders and says, “They’ll be dry soon.”

  The company resume their march. “The Bangols have run this route before,” the Maiden says sadly as they pass through sections of hacked trees, the branches looking as if they’ve been sawed off with dull blades.

  “These creatures destroyed every living thing in their path. Look at this,” says Lady Sophia, pointing to a massive oak. “This tree must be a thousand years old, and now its bark is splintered. What did they do, use it as a scratching post?”

  “Beasts,” is the Maiden’s only reply. Zeno tips up his nose.

  The group divides into pairs as their path narrows, and Tessa finds herself walking beside the Maiden. “Do the Olearons have families like humans—you know, husbands and wives and children?” she asks the graceful creature at her side.

  “Yes, we do,” the Maiden replies. “Our couplings form lifelong bonds that even death cannot destroy. When one partner passes, their spirit comes to inhabit the form of the living lover and the union is made even closer.”

  “So, what happens when the second partner dies?” Tessa stumbles on an exposed stone and the Maiden catches her. “Thank you.”

  “When both Olearons in the pairing are ready to begin their next journey, they find themselves in a new land, in new forms. Yet, no matter the separation, they always discover each other again. They may not know for what or for whom they search, but a yearning guides them. When together, they sense it. It is a perfect unity that binds them forever.”

  “That sounds . . . lovely.” Tessa peers over her shoulder at Ardenal, who eyes the trees as they pass, alert for potential danger. He does not notice her gaze, and Tessa wonders—turning back to stare at the path ahead—if the kind of love the Maiden describes could exist for humans. Or, are two people only meant for each other for one season in time?

  Tessa again peers behind her. Ardenal is talking with Archie and Zeno, beyond range of her hearing. Her father-in-law had promptly fogiven Ardenal, trusting him without suspicion. Even if he is Arden—and as crazy as that is, I believe it—what does that mean? Tessa wonders and clenches her fists. She’s spent years scrubbing her heart clean of its attachments to Arden, hardening it against the very thought of him.

  Nate catches her attention. He walks a few paces ahead of Ardenal and assumes she is gazing at him. He returns her probing expression. Tessa blushes sheepishly, remembering what happened—or what she imagined happened—by the creek. Maybe it was the water I drank, she reflects suspiciously, and her disappointment at that thought surprises her.

  Then, Tessa sees Valarie. She walks beside Nate, glaring at Tessa with her jaw clenched, her lips compressed into a thin line, her eyes narrowed. Tessa’s head snaps forward, but she can feel Valarie’s loathing crawling up her spine. Nate had told Tessa, when they flirted and drank on the floor of the Odyssey’s bridge, that he had a relationship—if you’d call it that, he had corrected himself—with his cruise director. A year had passed since he’d reciprocated her advances, but that didn’t stop her from knocking on the door of his quarters during Nate’s personal hours. I should have stopped, and I feel terrible for it; I didn’t intend to string her along, he said.

  “Look!” Azkar’s voice snaps Tessa out of her wandering thoughts. “An avalanche!”

  Ardenal runs to the front of the group and peers ahead. “The Bangols and their evil magic!” he spits. “They have destroyed a huge area of forest! If we walk around the wall of stones to venture north it will take us two extra days.”

  “A day and a half if we walk by night, the way ahead lit by our flames,” the Maiden offers.

  “I cannot keep up this pace,” Lady Sophia groans, her forehead glistening with sweat and her clothing looking looser around her waist.

  “We could go over,” Nameris suggests.

  Kameelo shakes his head. “It is too high and unsettled. We could inadvertently launch another avalanche and crush one or more of our company in the slide.”

  “One way or another, I am getting past it,” Tessa blurt
s. “Even if that means I go alone. It breaks my heart to imagine Ella all by herself. Without her medication, the pill bottles drown on the ship, she must be in terrible pain . . .”

  “I am a fool! I went back for the books, but not for Ella’s meds,” Archie curses.

  Tessa takes a step toward the avalanche, “Onward and upward.”

  Nate steps forward, extending a protective arm to support Tessa. “What other options do we have? It’s obvious there is little time to waste mulling it over. We need action.”

  Eek, who has been very quiet since they left the river, speaks up. “Pardon me, human,” he says in a low, rumbling voice, staring down at Tessa. “We do not know for certain that the child is alive. I have survived the ruthlessness of the Bangols. It is unpredictable and bloodthirsty. They may wish us to believe they hold captives, to lure us to them—what reason do they have to feed them, to guard them from becoming prey in the night? We cannot proceed as a rescue party. Our mission is set out before us. Defeat our enemy. Purge the land.”

  “She is alive,” Tessa retorts. “I know it. Ella is alive—but they’ll kill her if we barge in and attack.”

  “You know something.” Nameris’s black eyes grow wide as he approaches Tessa. “What do you know? And who spoke it to you?”

  “I feel it.”

  “Speak the truth!” Nameris barks at her, his flames roaring to life. Tessa cowers beneath his heat.

  “Stand down, Nameris,” Ardenal orders, covering the distance to Tessa in two long strides. “Never again speak to my wife like that!”

  “Ardenal, you know my gift. It is as tangible as yours, though less visible. She is lying.”

  “What is your gift, Nameris?” Donna asks timidly from her place beside Harry on the edge of the group.

  “There is a creature in our land that has the head of a man but the body of an enormous arachnid.”

  “A spider?” Duggie-Sky pipes up.

  “How on earth do you know that word, little fella?” reels Archie, patting the boy on the shoulder.