Above the Star

by Alexis Marie Chute

  “And,” the Bangol king continues slowly, drawing out his words, “since Ardenal is dead, I won’t be needing this one.” He yanks Ella from inside his balloon, her feet bound with rope and stones, and drops her over the lip of the clay basket. Tessa, watching with held-breath, gasps loudly and weeps at the sight of Ella and the deep blood stain on her bomber jacket.

  “Kameelo, go!” the Maiden yells. The Olearon darts to the edge of the bridge.

  “The child has been saved,” Kameelo stutters, “by a young Bangol—they look to be friends.”

  Tuggeron growls. “You spiteful traitor—”

  “Leave Ella for now,” whispers the Maiden. “We soon will face the infestation.”

  Chergrin, weary and drenched in carakwa blood, appears near the Olearons. “Wait!” he pleads to his king.

  “Sorry, old friend.” Tuggeron shrugs as he exerts force upon the ropes. His balloon jolts higher and disappears into the emerging dawn.

  “Show us mercy, please! Help us!” Chergrin begs the Olearons. Again, the Maiden does not advance. Not even when Chergrin screams in pain, does she move an inch in his direction. Chergrin shrieks again as a carakwa leaps onto his back and hooks its claws into the flesh of his neck. The clicking is piercing. Kameelo covers his ears.

  “Go in peace, Bangol,” says the Maiden as she nods and touches her heart.

  “The vengeance of the Bangols be upon you!” Sickly smelling blood bubbles out of Chergrin’s neck as the carakwa slices it open with its forelegs. The creature begins to feast on the Bangol’s jugular, tearing his muscles apart with its pinchers. Chergrin’s radiant yellow eyes dull to gray and his body collapses.

  The Bangols along the other bridges also scream out in horror as they desperately stab and hack at carakwas with their stone spears and axes. Catapults launch boulders from the wider platforms near the cells. More clay daggers rise from the earth. The broken foundation of the fortress quivers and dislodges, pieces flipping through the air on the breath of Naiu. Other Bangols shoot stones with slings. Some lift the carakwas to their mouths and bite down, burying their blade-like teeth deep into the creatures’ insect-skulls. It is not enough. They weary under the incessant attack. When the Bangols raise their hands to summon Naiu, carakwas invariably leap forth to gnaw off their fingers.

  The Bangols calm themselves, out stretch their arms to each other—as if they reach across the sea between bridges—and close their bright eyes, focusing intently as one unit. A white wind begins to weave around them. A rumble, like thunder, shakes the arches and causes many of the remaining keystones and other pieces of the abutment and parapet to dislodge—but not to fall. They hang in the air. Boulders and stones, too, from beneath the surface of the water, slowly rise, but before the rubble can rocket forward—one by one—the carakwas slice and pinch away the lives of the Bangols, so that finally every shard of stone and piece of earth tumble helplessly back from where they came.

  The Olearons hold fast, standing together, burning as one bonfire that summons the cherry light of the new day. They watch, stoic and solid, as every Bangol is consumed by the carakwas. All that remains of the yellow-eyed creatures are the stones that had jutted through their skin, which now cover the bridges and wash up on the shore. The huge black flyers plunge from above and scrape through the headstones with their protracted claws that grow from the tips of their wings, scavenging for flesh.

  The Maiden—remaining ablaze to ward off the carakwas that continue to pursue them on the landing—retreats to search the cells at the end of the southern bridge. Azkar, Nameris, and Kameelo form fireballs between their palms and hurl them toward the arches and beach, where large numbers of the lizard-beetles burst into flame. Carakwas that venture too close to the Olearons are singed and scuttle backward. A great sizzling noise rises in the air.

  The furious clicks and screeches of the creatures follow the Maiden at her heels as she darts in and out of cells, though the carakwas maintain their distance from her heat. She finds human clothing, excrement, and a bowl of oats shattered on the floor. An ornate, bloodstained book leans against a wall in a tiny vacant cell. It catches the Maiden’s eye. She punts a carakwa back and slams the cell door shut. Her flame is withdrawn into the nape of her neck. She unlatches the book. It is filled with drawings, all signed Ella. As the Maiden flips through to the back, she discovers a secret pocket sewn into the inner cover along the seam of the binding. The pocket is empty.

  Chapter 49

  “Ohhhh, Tessaaaaa!” a familiar, yet warped, voice calls out. “Naaaaate! Arrrrrrchie!”

  Tessa stiffens in the tall grass. “Who is that?”

  “Not an Olearon,” answers Ardenal.

  “Not a Bangol,” Zeno adds. “Obviously. They are all dead, except for Tuggeron.”

  “Or a human,” Archie says, “though it does remind me of the cruise director, Valarie . . . Look! Something is happening to the carakwas!” Archie points.

  The carakwas withdraw from the bridges and water, gathering on the shore. They start to climb over themselves, stepping up on their rainbow shells, hooking their curled claws together, building, expanding, growing taller and taller, and rising in two columns that join twenty feet above the beach, then rise as one. Two offshoots develop on either side and droop. The top forms a head and face. The clicking grows quiet but never ceases.

  “Hello down there! Come out, come out! It’s time to play!” booms a female voice from the massive carakwa figure.

  “Who are you?” the Maiden demands, having joined the other warriors on the bridge.

  “Aww, don’t you recognize me? Should I help you remember?” The monster of carakwas takes a lunging step toward the bridges. Sand quivers at its heavy footfall.

  “Nate: I loved you. Olearons: I obeyed you. Tessa: I followed you across an island, so you could save your precious little Ella. Archie: I listened to all your long-winded stories. Did you ever ask about me? Did any of you even care if I lived or died?”

  Archie whispers, “It believes that all of our company is on the bridges, that the rest of us are hiding in the cells.”

  “Valarie—” begins the Maiden, but she is not allowed to continue.

  “I have a gift for you all.” The four-story-tall carakwa shape takes another long step forward. Its scaly, shimmering arm—formed of hundreds of obedient carakwas—tosses something round into the water, where it bobs and is illuminated by the climbing sun. “You didn’t recognize me at first—but what about him? He’s not all that scary without all his legs, now is he?”

  Rolace’s head rocks in the gentle swell. His eyes are vacant. His neck has been roughly mutilated from his body. The water darkens with his blood.

  “He thought I was dead. You all thought I was dead. Why didn’t you have a scorching ceremony for me, like you did for Olen? Or for Eek? Didn’t I too deserve to be burned? To have my ashes float up into the sky? When Rolace cut open my cocoon, he had a nice surprise. Not a feast, unfortunately. Too bad he could barely see me coming for him.”

  “What do you want, Valarie?” asks the Maiden coolly.

  “What, no begging for my forgiveness?”

  “I doubt you would change your mind if I did.”

  “Speaking of mind—” Valarie chuckles “—each one of my pets here has my brain. My thoughts. My feelings. My memories. My love. My hate. It is our collective knowledge. Hurt a part of me, we will reform. Slight one of us, and the whole hive grows angry.” Valarie laughs wickedly.

  “You see,” she continues, “I have spent my whole life trying to be good. Be the perfect student, Valarie. Be the best friend, even if they don’t deserve it. Be the most attentive lover, Valarie. The perfect host for Constellations. The compliant follower through these wretched forests . . . I have spent my life trying to be good, but only in dying have I discovered that I actually have a different fate—and that I have a huge debt of heartless neglect to repay.”

  “No! Kameelo, wait—” the Maiden pleads, but it is too late.
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br />   The young Olearon soars into the sky and flings a fireball at Valarie. Her carakwa head falls to the sand with a mighty crash. The remainder of her form staggers but does not break, even headless. The carakwas that had once shaped Valarie’s neck, hair, eyes, and nose sizzle and quiver, and finally grow still on the sand.

  “Now that wasn’t very friendly of you,” the rest of the carakwas bellow through their pinchers, clicking vehemently. “But I guess we never really were friends.”

  The lizard-beetles hurriedly unhook their claws and scurry around each other. For a moment, they make one iridescent, lustrous silhouette. They swiftly reform Valarie’s head, but as they do so—with all black eyes focused there—one arm rises suddenly and strikes Kameelo out of the air. His body—still aflame—soars onto the dense canopy of the white trees. Above the clicks, there comes the sound of snapping branches and the crackle of incinerated leaves.

  “You can scorch me ten carakwas at a time, a hundred at a time, but there are millions of me and only thirteen of you, if my math is right. I have only lost eighty-seven to Kameelo’s flame. Does that put it into perspective for you? Now, where were we?” Valarie says, her tone shifting. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, Ella! Since all of this—and I mean every part—has come about because of you, I thought it only fitting that you should be the first to die. Where are you hiding?” Valarie takes another step forward and the sand leaps into the air.

  “This can’t be happening,” Tessa whispers. “We are so close . . . This is my last chance.”

  “No,” Ardenal squeezes tighter. “Never! I have lost you before but not again. Not today.”

  “You told me you release me, don’t you remember?”

  “To live again! Not to die!”

  “I can’t live with myself if I don’t go now.”

  “Arden, don’t let her,” Archie orders.

  Ardenal loosens his grip and strokes Tessa’s hair. He runs his fingers across her cheeks and brushes his lips against her forehead. “You are the bravest woman I know, Tessa Wellsley.”

  “Arden, no!” grunts Arche, panicking.

  Tessa sighs. “Thank you, Arden.” She turns and runs.

  “Come out here, Ella! I want to meet you! Oh, did I say meet? My mistake. I meant eat. I can hardly wait to crunch your bones between my shells!” Valarie takes a monstrous step and then another. She is in the water. The carakwas click impatiently. The creatures that form her feet send bubbles up from beneath the tide. “We are ever so hungry . . .”

  The Maiden grabs the hands of Azkar and Nameris. “Come close,” she commands in a whisper. “I wish time allowed for me to explain more, though you will surely see, soon enough. Many regrets do I have. Alas, we will see each other at the glass city. I am going now—to be with my love.” Without another word, the Maiden pushes Azkar and Nameris over the edge of the bridge. Their expressions betray confusion and fear as they fall, their flames extinguishing as they plummet and the water splashes over their faces.

  “That was unexpected,” Valarie snarls and wades a step closer to the Maiden.

  The Maiden turns her eyes upward to the screeching creature, and says, “I hope this will be as well . . .”

  Chapter 50

  Mom, I’m sorry. I should have listened. This has gotten way worse than I ever imagined.

  Ella, I saw you bleeding, are you okay? Where are you?

  It’s only ink, Mom. I’m in the boat. If you’d call it a boat. I’m with Luggie. He pulled me from the water, cut the stones from my ankles. We were trying to save his sister, Nanjee. She was recovering from our balloon crash in a cell on the next bridge over. We heard her screams when the bug-things came. Then her screams stopped. That’s when Luggie dropped the paddle. It floated far, then sank.

  I’ve reached the beach, Ella. I will swim out and find you.

  I think two Olearons just jumped into the water, Mom. Why would they do that?

  I saw it, too. Now only the Maiden is on the bridge. I have never seen her flame that big, that blue . . . Oh, Ella! Get in the water!

  Valarie swings forward a thick arm with outstretched fingers of linked, ravenous carakwas. They reach for the sole Olearon and shred the air just shy of her face. As Valarie wades closer, the Maiden closes her rosy eyelids and places a quivering hand over her heart. When she reopens her eyes, their twinned blackness glints like the depths of the sea beyond the cells at her back. Tears spill onto her flushed cheeks.

  As Valarie closes her fist of lizard-beetles around the Maiden—and the carakwas pierce her deeply with a thousand claws—the Olearon’s red skin tears apart and white-hot light blasts out. As the heat radiates, the gashes in the Maiden’s flesh curl and burn, and are disintegrated in blue flames. Her lips part and fire rockets out in a smoldering beam, which bends her back sharply between the carakwas’ grasp. Flames project out her fingertips until all the Maiden’s body is engulfed in white-blue heat. As the creatures that form Valarie’s hand wail and sizzle—the arm still raising the Maiden to its gaping, laughing void of a mouth—the female Olearon erupts in a final blinding flash that paints the landscape in white.

  The sound of the Maiden’s explosion follows a moment after. Its vibration rattles the island. The stone bridges remain as skeletons of their former shapes. The trees burn. The sky is obscured by smoke. The Maiden’s body is no more, but for the fireworks of consuming sparks that continue to explode up high, illuminating the lower atmosphere, and trailed by sweeping lines of lavender billows. The screeches and clicks of the lizard-beetles turn into one unified scream. The carakwa figure is ablaze and is instantly consumed, reduced to molten rainbows that crumble and are blown in every direction from impact. The sea, too, is displaced; downward and out, with sprays that reach high into the dawn sky.

  MOM? Mom! MOM!

  I’m here, Ell. I guess I don’t know where here is . . . I hit my head.

  The Olearon—the Maiden—she blew up!

  The light was so bright. I saw her sacrifice herself. Then the fire and a wave of heat—it threw me back into the forest. Ella, are you burned?

  I tipped the boat so Luggie and I were in the water. But my throat—it’s raw. I can barely swallow through the blisters. My ears are ringing but I can tell the clicking has stopped. Luggie’s right ear is gone. The air is full of ash. I can’t see anything. It’s like a snowstorm.

  I’m coming, Ella.

  Wait—there is someone here. An Olearon. I didn’t know they could fly!

  Kameelo!

  Can I trust him, Mom?

  Yes! He can airlift you out. I will figure out where I am—keep talking to me. Sign and gesture to Kameelo. He will try to understand.

  Luggie doesn’t want to go with us. What do I do, Mom?

  Where does he want to go?

  He wants to drown. He’s angry the Olearons let his sister be killed. He’s biting Kameelo . . . Kameelo is bleeding!

  Punch him, Ella!

  Kameelo?

  No, Luggie! Knock him out so Kameelo can get you two out of there . . . Ella?

  I did it, Mom! He’s going to be mad.

  Better mad than dead.

  Kameelo wants me to tell you something. He says the beach is on fire. He can’t land there. The forest too along the shore. It’s raging. He wants you to run inland—as fast as you can. He says we’ll meet you at the glass city.

  Chapter 51

  Archie feels the enchantment of Naiu in his every step. It started with the glass sphere of the Tillastrion, which had strengthened his hands—that was immediate—but it did not stop there. Now, his shoulders are thrust back and square. His spine is erect and strong. His steps are springy as he strides through the white woodland, keeping pace.

  The smell of Jarr-Wya—the same fragrance that Archie first experienced in Zeno’s shop, Treasures, on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands—is thick and intoxicating in Archie’s nostrils. It feeds him with an energy he hasn’t known since his youth. He had sensed this subtle, euphoric enchantment s
ince the day the Atlantic Odyssey was captured by the Olearons and ran aground on the Millia’s beach. None of the humans in his company, not even Tessa, had mentioned the smell, which had lingered in the air even after the lilac smoke of the flaming ship had been carried away by the sea breeze. No human had voiced even one good or ill effect on them from the peculiar fragrance, so undeniably laced with Naiu.

  Maybe they’re keeping it to themselves, Archie wonders. Or, maybe this reaction is mine alone? Archie struggles to place the aroma and its undertones. He spent the countless days on the exhausting journey east, from the glass city to the Bangol’s beach, attempting to find the vocabulary to name it, to no satisfying conclusion.

  What Archie is certain of, however, is that the fragrance—the very perfume of the parallel-world, what small amount of it he knows from his time on Jarr-Wya—smells like home. Home. The word now confuses Archie. He does not speak this revelation to anyone, not even Ardenal, afraid of what it may mean. Archie’s gradual acceptance of the fragrance’s bizarre tingling sensation on his skin, sweeping through his veins, causes one thrilling yet terrifying question to bounce around in his skull:

  When someone from this world constructs a Tillastrion to transport Tessa and Ella back to Earth, do I go with them? Maybe instead I build a new life here on Jarr-Wya, with Arden . . . He cannot help but think of his late wife, Suzie. I have no one to go back for, Archie laments.

  Archie clears his throat and re-centers his intentions back to the present moment. Duggie-Sky sits on his shoulders. The boy’s face is tight with scabs and his tiny hands cling to the old man’s chin which has blossomed into a full white beard since arriving on the island. Nate is beside Archie, weaving between the silvery trunks.

  WHEN the captain ran to find Duggie-Sky, before the Maiden’s blast, he eventually spotted the boy farther north, perched high overhead along the tree line of the Bangols’ beach. Wrapped around a branch, gripping it tightly and shivering, Duggie-Sky had watched wide-eyed, fighting panic, as the thousands of carakwas gathered on the shore. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut at the heart-stopping sound of Valarie’s devilish laugh.