Above the Star

by Alexis Marie Chute

  “TV.”

  Nameris continues. “If your will is strong and your heart is brave, this creature will uncover your inherent gift. Mine is the ability to know the truth—or falsehood—of the spoken word.” Nameris frowns at Tessa. “What are you hiding?”

  The weathered face of a man in the current used the same words Nameris now utters. Tessa’s palms grow sweaty. “What is the name of this creature you speak of ?” she finally asks.

  “You see? She knows something!” Nameris shrieks. “Out with it!” His flames roar inches from Ardenal, who stands between Tessa and the raging Olearon. Ardenal does not flinch.

  “His name is Rolace,” Ardenal answers coolly.

  “Rolace.” Tessa nods and so does Nameris, confirming Tessa’s honesty. “I saw him,” she confesses.

  “Where?” Azkar demands. “Did he come to you?”

  “Sort of.” Tessa shrugs. “I saw his face. In the water.”

  The Olearons turn and whisper to each other.

  “What? What is it?” Tessa asks.

  “We are unsure of the trustworthiness of the one you perceived,” the Maiden replies.

  Nameris wonders aloud, “How can a message of truth come from the waters of corruption?”

  Ardenal puts a warm hand on Tessa’s back. “What did he say, Tess?”

  “Well,” Tessa fidgets with the belt loops of Ardenal’s jumpsuit, “Rolace told me that Ella is alive, that I should not give up.”

  “What else?” Nameris probes. “There is more you are not sharing.”

  “Rolace told me I should find him. That if I bring him what he desires, he will give me a gift that will help me find Ella.”

  Lady Sophia snorts. “Is he going to make you like our fire-haired friends?” she asks with distain, then glances at the Olearons. “No offense!”

  “He didn’t say.” Tessa pauses. “But if that is what must happen, then so be it.” She gulps down an uncomfortable lump in her throat.

  “It will be okay, whatever happens,” Ardenal whispers to Tessa, but the Maiden’s long hearing catches his words.

  “You cannot guarantee that,” the Maiden snaps at Ardenal.

  Nate exhales sharply and declares, “I will protect you, Tessa. With my life.”

  Ardenal laughs once in response. Valarie crosses her arms.

  “Rolace is mostly good, but there is a side to him that I cannot read,” admits Nameris. “He opened me up to my gift; maybe that is why he is unreadable to me—and for that I fear him.”

  “The only thing I fear is losing my child. Without her, I will lose myself, my reason for breathing. There is something special about Ella. The world needs her. I am grateful you have all agreed to help thus far.” Tessa balls her hands into fists. “So, let us finish what we set out to do.”

  “I am yet to have children of my own,” the Maiden admits, “but I feel the love of a mother is deep with you. I will help you save your child, if indeed it is not too late.”

  “Us too,” Harry vows.

  Ardenal takes Tessa’s hand. “You know I will do anything for you and Ella.”

  “I am sure we are all in agreement,” says Kameelo impatiently. “Let us travel to Rolace. If he said he can offer this human a way to find her daughter, it will also assist us in reaching the Bangols much faster—to attend to our purposes concerning the Millia.”

  “And if it turns out the water assumed Rolace’s face and spoke lies to the woman? What then?” Nameris challenges.

  “Then we continue on. Zeno will help us find the Bangols,” Tessa offers.

  “Or,” adds Eek, “Rolace’s anger flares toward us for our intrusion. He captures us in his web and eats us, one limb at a time.”

  Lady Sophia gasps and faints onto Harry. Donna and Valarie roll her body aside and help the disheveled man stand.

  Azkar turns to Tessa. “What did Rolace want in exchange?”

  Tessa’s eyes dart to Nameris. He studies her face’s every twitch and crease. “He wants me to deliver to him—with my bare hands—the Banji flowers.”

  Chapter 31

  It seems like we have been flying forever. My shoulders and neck are angry at this hard clay basket. Thank goodness for the sack—I never thought I’d have felt that way, but it’s been my only pillow, blanket, shade . . . everything. While I’m thankful to be out of it and breathing the fresh air, I wish I could stand and stretch. Our balloon is guarded by three others that float nearby, so I’m limited to lying or kneeling to avoid being seen. Maybe they’re guarding me, but I think it’s more about Luggie.

  I drew a picture of an airplane to give Nanjee and Luggie an idea for faster transportation, but they didn’t get it. They’re attached to their butterflies, which I understand. They are really pretty.

  Tuggs continues to holler over to Luggie from his balloon. He is grooming Luggie to be the next king. That old Bangol irritates me. Luggie does everything for Tuggs, but it’s never enough. If my parents talked to me with Tuggs’ tone, I’d scream—if I could scream like a normal person, that is.

  Luggie told me how he killed an Olearon kid who was lost in the forest—his dad made him do it. That’s dark. Luggie has bad dreams about it. Every night he sees the tiny flame, the fresh red skin. He hears the little voice. I cried. For the kid, yeah, but mostly for Luggie. He is kind. Sweet, actually . . .

  Tuggs has got Luggie executing traitors, too, crushing his own kind with stones, then cleaning their blood off their rock amphitheater. Though Nanjee is older, Luggie is the favorite. But I think she has the better jobs. She is learning to write in their ancient language—not English—the history of the Bangols, at least the part where Tuggs came into power, which is a pretty horrible story.

  Tuggs crushed the head-stones of the king before him. Instead of simply overthrowing that Bangol, and letting him run away in shame, Tuggs chased him. Tuggs skinned the old king and filled him up with pebbles. He brought the body out to the edge of a long dock, out over the ocean and in front of everyone. He pretended that the king gave him his throne, then made it look like the dead king jumped into the sea. There were some that knew, for sure. Nanjee and Luggie knew, though they were young.

  Luggie is nothing like Tuggs. He’s thoughtful; he shares his food with me. I love that spongy bread. I probably eat too much of it. Luggie really tries to figure out what I want to say. He doesn’t read English, like Nanjee does, which is a shame, so I find my sign language coming in handy—at least my ability to do charades and mime. I guess I should have listened to Mom and studied harder. Still, I can make Luggie laugh. He’s got the best smile.

  When my hands and drawings fail to say what I mean, Luggie talks to me. He’s teaching me about the Bangols. They didn’t always hate the Olearons. It wasn’t that long ago that they were like family, or close enough. Then the Millia showed up and messed with everything. It all comes back to the Star, he tells me.

  The Olearons and the Millia are convinced that the Bangols are poisoning Jarr-Wya, but why would they, Nanjee and Luggie say. The Bangols came from the island, it is a part of them. They love the clay and stones and soil. I believe them, though I’m keeping an open mind. Thanks to Tuggs’s recordkeeping, the Bangols realized that the land grew sick after the Star crashed into their sea. After. Old Tuggs plans to defeat the Star and harness its power, though only his kids know that he has no idea how.

  While Tuggs isn’t all bad, he is all crazy. And paranoid. This other Bangol, named Winzun, one of the sons of the last king, was banished through a Tillastrion to another world, but—get this—he got back here somehow. He was all vengeful, which makes sense to me, but Tuggs got wind of it. He did the same thing to Winzun as he did to Winzun’s dad. But this time, ugh, he left the body in their amphitheater until the skin was eaten away and all that was left was bloody pebbles.

  Oh Luggie. I don’t understand how someone so good can come from someone so bad.

  I’ve been thinking about all that Luggie and Nanjee have told me. I’ve pieced it tog
ether. Winzun was Zeno’s brother. That must have been how Dad got here. Tuggs has really messed up that family; killing them, banishing them. Luggie and Nanjee don’t have good things to say about Zeno and Winzun, but I feel for them, though I’d never say that aloud, even if I could talk. I’m sure Zeno is furious, hence convincing Grandpa Archie to get here—at all costs.

  I showed Luggie my scars from surgery. The small one on the back of my neck, below my hairline, was from the biopsy. The bigger one, the one that didn’t heal as well, is called a hypertrophic scar. It’s red. Raised. Ugly. That’s why I never wear my hair up. It’s from when the doctors cut me up to remove as much of the tumor as they could, to buy me more time. I could have gotten steroid injections to make the scar less grotesque, but Mom thought I was dying, so what’s the point, right?

  This bothers me because Mom should understand. When she was a kid, around three or four-years-old, she had bad scoliosis in her back. She told me that her spine was curved like a switchback highway. The doctors operated and straightened her out. She saved her money from then on, at first a penny here and a penny there, so that when she was eighteen-years-old she got her scars fixed, decreasing their purple puffiness. I’m sure if I got my scars fixed I would feel less paranoid about how I look—or maybe not. I’m thin and pale from the cancer, but Luggie doesn’t know any different. Heck, his skin is grey!

  It’s hard to communicate cancer with a drawing but Nanjee and Luggie see the effects of my headaches and nausea; they see me get dizzy, even when Luggie is doing a good job of flying the balloon. Sometimes my hands don’t work to hold the paintbrush. They quiver and spasm. I spilled ink on myself this morning. It looks like my shirt is bloodstained. At least it wasn’t on the bomber jacket from Grandpa Archie.

  Luggie touched my scar. No one outside of the hospital except Mom, not even Grandpa, has touched it. I’m so used to being prodded by the pediatric neurologist, the radiation and pediatric oncologists, and the endocrinologist—and all the nurses that I now know by name, who feel like my friends. But they don’t touch me like Luggie touches me. He is not examining me. He is getting to know me. He looks into my eyes. He holds my hands when they tremble. Nanjee rolls her big yellow eyes at us and leans over the edge of the clay basket. I think she’s giving us privacy. Luggie is like me. His life is not really a life. He is ruled by something. For me, it’s cancer. For Luggie, it’s Tuggs.

  Chapter 32

  The company veers east around the towering avalanche. As they hike, they form a plan. Archie is content to listen as he and Duggie-Sky walk hand in hand. He does his best to answer the boy’s questions, though they are incessant. “Let me listen, little fella. If you keep chattering, Grandpa Archie can’t hear. I’ll explain it to you once the grown-ups are finished, all right?” The boy nods and puffs his cheeks at Archie. The old man and little boy walk in silence for a time.

  Finally, Archie turns to the child at his side. “Okay, here’s the plan, Duggie-Sky. You ready? Good! So, the Banji flowers—which you are not allowed to touch—are magic, but not a good magic. They make people go loopy . . . they make people see things that aren’t there, do things they shouldn’t do, and go places where they shouldn’t go. That’s why we all can’t pick the flowers willy-nilly—even if we want to. Only Tessa will pick them, since she’s got to hand them over to the man-spider to get her gift—to help us find Ella. Got it so far? Good!

  “They will prepare Tessa to hold the flowers. She’s got to pick and carry them, skin to skin. They’ll use Arden’s belt to fasten tight around Tessa’s grip of the Banji. So she doesn’t drop them. That fabric from her skirt is to protect her hands from the belt—Tess, soon you’re not going to have any skirt left—uh-oh, Duggie-Sky. That’s what’s called the ‘wrath of a woman.’ See her glare? Never mind.

  “Tessa may feel lost, even with us, Duggie-Sky. You’ve had nightmares, right? Well, from what the Olearons said, it’ll be like she’s trapped in a nightmare. But she doesn’t have to be scared—you don’t have to be scared, ya’ hear me? The captain here kindly volunteered to guide Tess, to keep her from falling. I would do it myself but I’m your guard. My son will protect Tessa and the captain—and we all will keep them at the center of our group.”

  “I missed you, Dad,” Ardenal says as he passes Archie and Duggie-Sky on the path. Archie beams. For the moment, even though nothing is as he ever imagined it would be—and Ella is still a captive—Archie is content. The mysterious enchantment of Naiu has begun to work its way from his invigorated hands that clutched the Tillastrion to his elbows and shoulders.

  When Archie carries Duggie-Sky—which is more frequent than he and the child had agreed on the stairs of the glass citadel—his arms do not tire. Even his heart drums forcefully in his chest. Its rhythm put Archie to sleep when they camped near the creek—after he secretly read more in the Olearons’ cryptic records. Archie hadn’t had time to study the words on the glass as thoroughly as he had hoped, because Tessa soon began to stir when Archie was only a dozen paragraphs in. Archie had quickly tucked the glass beneath his ribs and shut his eyes tight. He fell into a deep sleep not long after, though what he had read replayed in his mind all that night in contorted dreams.

  The 29th Lord of Olearon was born as Telmakus of the sea guardians. He was exalted to the throne on the eve of the 28th Lord—his father—Teemun’s passing. It was then that Telmakus was six-thousand sunsets young. As was his duty, in his birthright of royalty, Telmakus strove to unite with his sole companion.

  Telmakus did not find his Maiden among the living Olearons during that obscure, murky season of history on Jarr-Wya. There were none Telmakus recognized from his last life. Thus, he abandoned his throne—and his guardianship of the Sea of Selfdom—to depart the city. He traveled inland and upwards, climbing high the great mountain: Baluurwa the Doomful, as it had been described for countless sunsets.

  Every night, as Telmakus ascended, he reflected the moonlight from a shard of oval glass he fused to his left palm. The reflection caught in the glossed mirror mounted to a blue timber pedestal at the topmost step of the city’s citadel. The Olearons of that time then rested deeply, safe in the comfort that their Lord was watching down on them from Baluurwa.

  Their peace lasted twenty sunsets, until the moonbeam-beacon ceased. The night was smut-black. With fear of the loss of another Lord, the Olearons untied their flames, their city nearly molten in their blazing plea to Baluurwa. Even the day was grim in contrast to their light.

  The kin of Telmakus recorded the sunsets of his absence—and of their grief—in burns across their chests. The warriors hastily raced to the foot of Baluurwa and climbed, where the Doomful crushed many Olearons beneath its vengeful stones. The warriors, however, were indeed successful; they discovered Telmakus wandering, his regal breastplate cracked and his traveling jumpsuit torn from his ruby flesh. Vines were coiled around his ankles and tangled in his hair. They reported his disorientation at the citadel, mentioning his claims of finding a clay pearly-painted opulus blossom—a formed and fired guilder-rose globe—inside a white-wooden case, secured with a brass bolt.

  Telmakus ranted of using what he discovered was a device, and of a parallel place to Jarr-Wya, to the Olearon’s land and the island surrounded by the lonely expanse of sea on every side. He recounted a world recorded in an outlandish measurement of time, like persistent, unbroken knocks; and of creatures, pale and powerless, and unreasonable in their fear. He returned with the proclamation that he had found his love, though she had perished, drowned, and was now present in his body.

  The Lord was not the same after his journey. He grew fat in orders and in girth. One sunset, Telmakus disappeared once more. This time, the warriors did not hunt for him. There were rumors of his brother, Dillmus, rising to be the 30th Lord of Olearon. It was soon confirmed that his transformation was already a quarter complete when Telmakus returned, thin, and disagreeable. The Olearons questioned and examined their 29th Lord—something had left him, that was appare
nt, though he would not say what, only that he had met with a diviner who lived in the crooked tunnels of Baluurwa.

  The Olearons condemned Telmakus, stating that the one he spoke of was Laken, the last of the evil she-race called the Steffanus. The Olearons had battled the Steffanus and defeated all but one that escaped: Laken. The Steffanus were striking with their rich amber mane and taunting blue-red eyes, with their smooth voices. Laken, like her departed sisters, could see through the veil of parallel sunsets, across Jarr-Wya’s seas, and into future days.

  There were some Olearons who begged to know Laken’s vision, and others who silenced Telmakus before he could speak Laken’s words in their company. Dillmus, who now lusted for his half-earned title, flared with his demands in the face of Telmakus, the one Olearons still hailed as their Lord. Dillmus hurled balls of fire at his eldest sibling and sent slithering coils of scorching chain around Telmakus’ neck. The blood-incarnation of Telmakus as Lord of Olearon, and his bewitchment to the Steffanus, afforded the ruler immense power over the half-Lord.

  Telmakus embraced Dillmus with hate, crushing his bones and rupturing his brother’s control over his flame until it seared throughout the edifice of the gathering. Many wise Olearons perished that sunset. Dillmus was never spoken of again, and the memory of Telmakus—who grew so power-loving that, in the sunsets which followed, his flame tore him apart, severing his body into a hundred pieces—was altered in the public history of the Olearons. Telmakus’s knowledge too, was declared forbidden from speaking, but was recorded in secret and discovered by the 30th Lord, now recorded in this black history so that Laken’s oracles may be confirmed or disproven in time.

  Chapter 33

  “What is this? Sand?” Valarie asks nervously. At first no one pays any mind to her question. She repeats herself louder, a look of both annoyance and defeat across her scrunched forehead and she lets her brown hair fall over her eyes as she looks away.