Above the Star

by Alexis Marie Chute

  Tessa gasps.

  Archie turns from his conversation with Duggie-Sky to look in the direction Valarie gestured. It is true. The tree cover thins and the ground beneath their feet transitions from moss to granules of sand.

  “Yes,” Azkar eventually answers. “But do not worry; it is not the sand of the Millia.” Valarie sighs, relieved. “This desert is like an island amidst the land. It is one of the ill effects of the Star, though harmless. There is no enchantment in these grains, only their sharp cut when the wind blows it into your eyes. We Olearons have not named this desert, or the others like it, as we hope for their impermanence. Alas, we must cross it to reach the great tree of Rolace.” Valarie nods thoughtfully, staying close on the heels of Captain Nate, who walks beside Tessa.

  “Wait!” Ardenal declares. “The desert—it has broadened since we were here last! Azkar, look! The Banji—they are disappearing! They grow sparse very quickly along our path.”

  Nameris examines the sky. “We still have a few hours’ journey left this sunrise.”

  “If we travel to Rolace and do not find the Banji on his side of this desert, we lose time. We would be forced to return here, to this place,” frets Eek.

  The Maiden answers the worry with calmness. “We must collect the Banji now, but Tessa—” the Olearon regards the human, “that means many hours of holding the flowers. I have never known anyone to touch them for that long.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Nameris clears his throat. “Your arrogance will not protect you—”

  “Careful, Nameris!” Ardenal warns.

  “She should know,” Nameris shoots back. “The Banji are an offshoot of a magical, wicked race that grew from a flower themselves. They gave the Banji as a gift to impair their enemies so they could slice them in two with ease.” Archie covers Duggie-Sky’s ears. “The strength of their Naiu should not be taken lightly.”

  “I understand,” Tessa responds evenly.

  “I think we all understand, Nameris. Back to practical matters: Once we bind the Banji to Tessa’s hands with fabric from her dress and my belt, we could then secure her hands to her body,” Ardenal suggests, unfastening his belt. He and Tessa had changed back into their own clothing a mere half-hour after Tessa’s dress and coat had hung to dry against Ardenal’s skin.

  The company test Ardenal’s suggestion, but find his belt to be too short to bind both hands and body—the waist of an Olearon being quite narrow—and so Nameris offers up his belt as well and they loop the two together. The Olearons slip off the tops of their jumpsuits and wrap the arms around their waists. “See, this will work!” Ardenal beams. “She will be incapable of thrashing about and dropping them in her madness!”

  Tessa nods nervously, though in agreement. Archie watches helplessly. He pictures Ella’s blond hair and her freckled nose. In his mind, Ella remains Duggie-Sky’s age: four, spirited and chatty. He again remembers her laugh, before the tumor stole it. “You are strong, Tess,” he says. “You can do this.”

  “Thanks, Archie.”

  Ardenal stands on Tessa’s left, Captain Nate on her right. Once Tessa plucks a bouquet of fuchsia Banji, the men enact their plan, careful not to disturb the pollen. Tessa’s voice is small, “Oh no.”

  THE magic of the Banji is instantaneous. Tessa feels the discombobulation begin in her fingers; a prickling sensation on the inside of her skin. Her fingertips twitch on their own before the spasm morphs through her hands and wrists in a bolt of tingling energy. From her elbows to her shoulders, her chest to her core, Tessa’s body hums in a writhing, twisting, tickling, unrelenting itch. The energy and power of Naiu works its way to her every ending points; her head and the tips of her hair, her toes, heels, ears, lips, eyelashes, and nose. The Banji’s scent is deep and rich. The olive-green pollen wafts up into Tessa’s nostrils. She sneezes loudly, blowing pollen squarely into Nate’s face as he draws near to observe her reaction to the flowers. He staggers, his pupils dilating, his head bobbing side to side.

  “He’s been affected! Quick!” Azkar gestures to Kameelo, who stands nearby. Azkar’s voice is like thunder in Tessa’s ears and she turns away from its blast. Kameelo catches Nate around the waist as he tumbles backward.

  “Let me go! Help!” Nate screams, thrashing his fists behind his head and at his sides to connect with Kameelo. “I’ve fallen into the fire! I’m burning! Someone save me!” He wedges himself free, turning to his captor. With a look of confused terror—with savage eyes that flit erratically back and forth, and exposed teeth that he clenches hard—Nate attacks the flaming Olearon. The instant Nate’s fingers clench around Kameelo’s neck, he retracts them and wails, “I’m melting! I’m melting!”

  Kameelo struggles with the fighting man, a hint of exasperation across his youthful red face. Eek runs to his brother’s aid. Valarie too sprints over to help, but Nate looks at her with alarm. “A pale demon!” he shrieks, and punches Valarie square in the nose. Blood sprays and she flops onto the sand.

  Lady Sophia yelps at Valarie’s blood, which sprayed across her face and gown. Donna pushes Lady Sophia aside to kneel with Valarie, tipping her head back and stroking her frazzled hair.

  “Not like that!” Harry barks. “Pinch her nose and lean her forward.”

  The Maiden of Olearon swiftly approaches Nate from behind, moving soundlessly. She pulls off her belt and tosses it to Eek, who nods, removes his own, and connects the two. The Maiden meets eyes with Kameelo over Nate’s shoulder, and he tips his head in agreement with her when he perceives her intent. The Maiden hefts into the air a bulbous root, broken free from a nearby tree, and strikes the captain squarely over the head. Eek pounces and Kameelo turns. Eek straps Nate to Kameelo’s back. The Maiden drops the root to the ground with a thud.

  Chapter 34

  Tessa, under the spell of the Banji, discerns the fight within the company to be far from resolved and rages against Ardenal, laboring to free herself from his constraints. “Can’t you see I have nothing?” she spits at him. “I have only lonely problems, that’s all—and those I’d gladly give to you! I’m alone in this world—in every world—can’t you see that?”

  The Maiden steps forward. “Ardenal, deafen your ears to her,” she warns. “It is the Banji. Tessa’s thoughts are warped.”

  “No, Ardenal, take it all in,” Zeno chides, standing at the edge of the group, watching with amusement. “You should have taken you wife with you when you came to Jarr-Wya many sunsets ago, and me as well, of course. We can all blame you for something.”

  “Silence!” Azkar growls at Zeno and wacks him on the head with the stick, which becomes hooked in the Bangol’s head-stones.

  “Must mind your manners when addressing a king—right Archibald,” Zeno fumes, retracting his lips, exposing his fine-ground, spiky teeth, and snarling at Azkar. Zeno contorts his head sharply to one side, his stones snapping the stick into two splintering pieces.

  “You know what will not break as easily?” Azkar charges forward, but Archie lunges between him and Zeno, blocking the flaming warrior. The Olearon takes a confused step back. Zeno, at first startled, unconsciously exposes gratitude—for a moment only—across his pinched face, before assuming an expression of nonchalance.

  “Zeno is right!” hollers Tessa, startling Azkar, Archie—and Zeno himself.

  “I am?”

  “You should have brought me with you, Arden,” she continues. “I would have found Ella’s cure by now.”

  “Enough,” the Maiden orders, but Tessa’s revelation—amplified by the enchantment—causes her to resist Ardenal with maddening resolve. She sends sand spraying at her feet, forcing herself, and Ardenal, inches further into the desert, though Donna still tends to Valarie on the edge of the sand.

  Tessa cracks her head against anything near. She thrashes with her legs as she continues to speak. “When my daughter dies, that will be it. The last love I have, sliced from my chest. Then what? Nothing! You—you fire-thief—you’re robbing me, stealing Ell
a’s cure and my hope for a future. . . Let me go!”

  “There is truth in her words,” Ardenal reflects sadly.

  “As the Maiden said: Enough pandering to the Banji,” Nameris grumbles. “If she will not walk willingly, you must carry her.” Tessa, disgusted by Nameris’ suggestion, sprints a few paces farther before Ardenal’s firm grip slows her to a shifting, twisting shuffle. For a moment, she does not advance, though her limbs continue to quiver and her eyes dart erratically to and fro.

  Meanwhile, an anxious Duggie-Sky runs to Archie’s side, the old man lifting the child and carrying him out of the apex of the commotion. Archie shields the boy’s eyes with his arm, though Duggie-Sky—still curious—yanks himself above it to watch the crazed human, impatient Olearons, amused Bangol, and the wounded on the messy, bloody path. Archie shifts from foot to foot, queasy at the sight of Valarie’s mangled face. Finally, he abandons the effort of blocking Duggie-Sky’s gaze. “You’ve witnessed worse things than this on the Odyssey and on the Millia’s beach, little fella—though I hope for no more, for your sake.”

  Harry uses his golf shirt to wipe Valarie’s blood from the distressed and quivering Lady Sophia. “Human, you must reserve your mighty voice for the appointed time,” the Maiden cautions the lamenting singer. “We cannot know who has been alerted to our whereabouts after your theatrics.”

  In contract, Valarie whimpers quietly. She and Donna sit together. Valarie holds her nose, slowed from a profuse flow to a trickle, though the flesh around her eyes is already blotchy and swollen in raccoon-ovals of blood beneath her skin. Tessa stares at Valarie—as if Valarie’s facial features have been reorganized in a hideous arrangement—and the cruise director glares back.

  “And you two, are you fit to continue?” the Maiden asks Valarie and Donna. The women nod.

  Nate droops, unconscious, against Kameelo. “Be careful to control your emotions,” warns the Maiden as she marches past. “If you let them rule you, your new friend will be roasted.” Blood from Nate’s oozing wound drips onto Kameelo’s flesh, where it simmers gently. Eek presses his finger to the place the root connected with Nate’s skull and seals the cut.

  “Let us be off. There is not a moment to waste,” continues the Maiden, finally, as she starts trudging up the gradual hill of sand. One by one, the others follow in her long, agile footsteps. Ardenal directs Tessa, steering her by the shoulders with his large hands.

  “I’ll keep a watch out at the rear,” Archie blurts. “The rest of you look like you’ve got your hands full.” Zeno squints suspiciously.

  Once the Olearons and humans have passed—along with Zeno, who is again prodded along by Azkar, despite the Bangol once more resorting to his rudest objections—Archie crouches quickly to look Duggie-Sky in the eyes. “Promise to keep a secret, little fella?”

  “Yeah, Grandpa Archie!”

  “Shh! I don’t want the others knowing about this, all right?” Duggie-Sky nods. Archie yanks off one shoe and uncurls his sock from his ankle. He puts the sock over one hand. “Blech—is this the smell my Suzie complained about for years? I really should’ve helped her with the laundry!” Archie grimaces. Duggie-Sky watches Archie with a worried frown as the man kneels in the sandy dirt and—with his socked hand—collects a small bouquet of Banji. With his free hand, Archie pulls the collar of the sock down his wrist and over the flowers, making sure any jostled pollen drops at his feet, not on his skin.

  “There,” Archie says, pleased with himself. He holds the sock like a bag with the Banji contained inside. “Now, let me roll this up. Duggie-Sky, grab Grandpa Archie a few of those big leaves, like the ones you were jumping for earlier. Yes, those are the ones. They’ll make a great barrier.” Archie wraps the rolled flowers and sock inside a layer of foliage. “Hmm. This looks a tad suspicious. It needs a disguise. Can’t be too careful. Aha!” He fetches his soiled handkerchief, encloses the leaf-wrapped sock within its folds, and tucks the bundle deep into one of his trouser pockets.

  “Why do you want to go into a bad dream?” Duggie-Sky whispers, on the edge of tears.

  “You never know when this stuff will come in handy,” replies Archie as he pats his pocket. “A secret, remember? Now let’s catch up before they notice!”

  Chapter 35

  The company trudges through the sand so that the comfort and protection of the forest is distant behind them. Tessa watches her feet, a peculiar look on her face. “They seem far away,” she says. “How did they grow so small? Ah! My legs! They’re endless! Sucked deep into the sand!” She screams, but Ardenal’s fingers slip over her mouth. With the ever-increasing enchantment of the Naiu-laced Banji, Tessa feels the red muzzle convert her breath to steam, which scalds her lips. She whips her head back and forth, fighting to be free.

  “Be quiet and I’ll take my hand away.” Ardenal speaks calmly, but Tessa follows the sound of his voice, cranking her neck to look at him over her shoulder. Ardenal deliberately removes his fingers one by one.

  Tessa smiles, pausing to turn her body to face Ardenal, then she chokes on bile. “That one over dar; he wus right,” she moans as her eyes are locked with the Olearon’s. “Youareademon!” Her words slur together, and she arches her spine in an uncomfortable dip away from Ardenal. His hands brace her hips as her head plunks backward onto the sand. “Someone, save me!” she howls from the bridge position.

  “It’s the Banji,” Ardenal repeats. “Whatever apparitions you see, they’re your imagination only.”

  “Look! The sand! It’s consuming me!” Tessa snaps back to upright and points to her feet, which are sucked down deep in the golden granules.

  “It’s all an illusion—” Archie starts to say as he catches up, then hesitates. He blinks. Tessa is, in fact, sinking farther than normal into the sand.

  Ardenal hoists Tessa upward by her elbows, but, even once reset again on the surface, her feet, ankles and calves continue to submerge swiftly. “Do you see this?” Ardenal calls to the other Olearons.

  Before they can answer, Tessa interrupts. “I see a ship!” she shouts and points, confusion and horror tightening across her face. “There! Its sails are crimson and its wood is black. It’s coming this way!”

  “Another delusion,” grumbles Azkar—until he observes it as well.

  The black-wood ship that has appeared in the clouds and sails through the dusty blue sky, crashes onto the golden hill with a splash of sand. It parts the desert as if it were warm butter. Its long flags ripple in an unfelt though raging breeze in the distance, billowing its sails toward the company, perhaps also summoning the newly arriving mist, slinking along in their direction.

  The Maiden raises her voice, which for the first time is laced with dread. “It is the strength of the Banji! Whatever cursed hallucination Tessa conjures becomes our reality.”

  “It comes for us!” cries Tessa, as if in answer, and she attempts to run, but—like all in their company—she has sunk thigh-deep in the sand while watching the sky turn the sinister color of ink. The smoke-like clouds began with the mist, as far-off wisps, which grow and amalgamate into one jet-black tornado. The circling draft, now felt on the skin of the company, touches down on the sand a few hundred feet away and begins to suck it upward into the void. Tessa shelters her face from the pelting grit. “We are going to be torn apart!”

  “She’s remembering the Millia, the day we crashed on the island,” Donna shouts above the wind, sand crunching between her teeth. The company is now waist-deep. Duggie-Sky climbs to Archie’s shoulders and clings to his white hair—what is left of it—and his perspiring forehead.

  The Maiden of Olearon strains and rips herself from the sand to slide along its surface on her chest, with her legs and arms fanning wide. She crawls to Ardenal and Tessa, cupping the human’s face and insists, “Listen to me, Tessa Wellsley. If you want to save your Ella, look at me.” She captures Tessa’s wandering attention, fleetingly. “Imagine the storm retreating! Send it away, Tessa.”

  “It is too strong.
I have no magic!” Tessa begins to weep.

  “Fight it! Battle the storm!” Ardenal yells as he struggles to push the sand away from where it has risen to Tessa’s shoulders.

  As the ship approaches it catapults bloody cannonballs at them, which ricochet off the sand with a splash of gold. The first volley of cannon fire misses its mark, but the second is closer, revealing the cannonballs to be something much more menacing. As they roll closer, they prove to be skulls, scratched and broken but showing glimpses of white beneath the crimson that matches the ship’s malevolent bloody sails. They leave a damp film on the sand.

  “She’s remembering your wretched ship,” Zeno sneers, scowling at Azkar and Nameris.

  “Picture it away!” yells Eek. “Human, please!”

  Tessa ignores him, never breaking her fearful rapture with the scene before her. She screams, “The Millia! They’ve come for us!” As soon as the words leave her mouth, a huge quantity of sand between the company and the ship is sucked skyward, growing into a sparkling, shifting village.

  “How did we get here?” Senior Karish demands. “A curse!”

  The Millia leader, morphing into the form of a four-legged beast, leaps out of a wall and roars. The village transforms into two hundred similar seething, snarling forms. They scrape their clawed paws along the face of the desert, unaffected by its quickening drag.

  With Tessa quivering at the sight of Senior Karish and the hungry pack behind him, the quicksand halts suddenly, leaving only the noses and foreheads of the humans, and the full heads and necks of the Olearons, above the surface. Zeno, who had scurried up the back of Archie, perches on one shoulder of the old man, while Duggie-Sky has shifted to sit on the other. Bangol and child feverously dig away the dusty grit at Archie’s stubbly upper lip and chin, clearing space for the old man to breathe through his mouth. The Maiden, the only one free of the golden grip, still lies prostrate on the surface, as if weightless.