Comet Weather

by Liz Williams

  The voice was impatient. “Don’t you keep up with these things? Lerninsky’s comet. Once every few hundred years, so you won’t see it again. Although that depends.”

  “I’ll be a little blue star myself by then,” Stella said, and walked home in the badger-light.

  She took the orchard path to the house, the long grass fringing wet against her shins. By now the moon was hanging up in the apple branches and more stars were coming out. Stella looked towards the house and thought of supper: the glow of the living room light, which she had left on, was just visible through the window. So the figure stepping out from under the apple tree made her jump.

  “Who the hell’s that?” She brought a warding hand up; too many years spent in clubland not to be willing to thump someone.

  “I’m sorry, mistress,” a voice said. “I mean no harm. I thought you were Bee.”

  Stella saw black clothes, a white collar. Dark wore a pearl in one ear and a neat black beard. Maybe early thirties? Also rather good looking, Stella noted.

  And she could see the glow of the window through his chest.

  So. One of the no-longer-living, then. Somehow, she shied away from other words: dead, ghost.

  “No, it’s Stella. Who are you?” But she was starting to relax.

  “My name is Ned Dark.”

  “You’re a – friend of Bee’s?” Stella asked. She sat down on the canted apple tree, the one that the spring gales had brought down in a shower of snowstorm blossom.

  “Yes. We meet most evenings.” He sat down beside her, a respectable distance away.

  “Can you come into the house?”

  “Most of it.”

  “Oh,” Stella said, “Did you live here, then?”

  “I was born in Hornmoon. But I died in –” he frowned. “I can’t recall. I was at sea. Dark and Drake! We used to make light of it.”

  “You sailed with Drake? Oh, wow!”

  “They were exciting times,” Ned Dark said, modestly.

  “And now you’re stuck here in a mouldy old apple orchard,” Stella said, sympathetic. “Do you miss the sea?”

  “Sometimes I’m there. But usually, here. By choice, I might say.”

  “That’s all right, then.”

  “You don’t look like your sister.”

  “No. Different fathers.”

  He smiled. “Ah, Fallow women.”

  “Oh dear. Did we have the rep in your day?”

  “’Rep’? The women of the family are known to be – independent of spirit.”

  Stella sighed. “We’re sluts. It’s all right. I’m used to it.” She studied his face, the slope of his nose. “Are you a Fallow, then?”

  But Dark shook his head. “No. My father was called Dark, as am I, and my mother was a Horne, from down the valley. She was a milkmaid here. This was more home to me than the hovel we lived in.”

  “I went to school with some kids called Horne,” Stella said, and Dark smiled.

  “Then they’ll be my family, still. But my home was here, and the sea.”

  It was growing cold, the air dank, and Stella shivered.

  “You should go inside,” Dark said.

  “Are you coming with me?”

  He shook his head. “I’ll stay out here. The comet’s coming, did you know?”

  “Grandpa told me.”

  She bade him goodnight and left him standing under the apple trees in the dying light. When she looked back, he was a shadow, and then gone. She opened the back door to a cacophony of dogs. She had always felt safe here, the heart of things, but knowing that Dark was out there in the orchard made her feel safer yet. She considered, briefly, going to the pub, the Hornmoon Arms, and she thought this was a good sign: ready to face what passed for the outside world again, after her nun-like seclusion of all of twenty-four hours, but then she decided she couldn’t be bothered, with that or social media. Facebook could wait. Music, however, never could: it was all about the vibe. She loaded a trance remix onto YouTube and bopped around the kitchen as she fed the dogs and the clamouring cats. Then she diced vegetables for a pasta sauce: tomatoes, onion, flat chestnut mushrooms and garlic. Stella could only cook a couple of things, but she did them properly and she usually didn’t burn them. She stood back and surveyed the results, feeling adult and sensible. Looking after yourself and all that. When the sauce was simmering on the stove the phone rang. Stella’s hand hesitated above it for a moment, then she picked it up.

  “Bee?” A woman’s voice, familiar.

  “No, it’s Stella. Bee’s in London. Who’s that?”

  “Oh, Stella! Good to hear you. This is Caro. Caro Amberley. I’m losing my voice – I think I’m coming down with something. I was hoping to speak to Bee, but if she’s not there… How are you?”

  It seemed odd to be chatting to Ben and Jamie’s mother, as if Alys was still there, and everything was normal. At last Caro said, “It’s a bit complicated to leave a message, but I wanted to run an idea past Bee. I mentioned it to her a few days ago. But since you’re there, I’ll run it past you, instead. You do events, don’t you?”

  “I’ve done some events planning, yes. Festivals, mainly. Raves.”

  “I remember. You did that little music festival up at Oldstone, didn’t you? For the leukemia charity.”

  “That’s right. Moonrise.” It had gone well; well enough for Stella and Luna to have considered making it a regular thing. But then Alys had disappeared, and Luna had gone on the road, and everything had fallen apart.

  “The thing is,” Caro said now, “We’re having this apple day, like a festival. Just a really little thing. Bee’s probably mentioned it. And I know it’s way too late and we should have asked you ages ago, but I was wondering…”

  An hour or so DJ-ing in their own orchard did not sound too bad. Stella had no firm commitments between now and Christmas; it would give her the excuse to stay.

  “Bee mentioned Apple Day, yeah. I’d be up for that.”

  “If you have any thoughts…”

  “Classy,” she said at once. “You want to make it classy. Posh food and a good marquee. Make it something to remember.”

  “That’s what we’re intending. We had a little play planned, actually, but now the woman who runs the Am Dram society here fell out with some of the people who were going to be in it, because someone’s sister had an affair with someone else’s husband, and, well…”

  “Am Dram ensued,” Stella said, in order to take the moral high ground and not interrogate Caro on local gossip, even though she almost certainly knew the protagonists and was secretly dying to find out.

  “Yes, quite. Do you think – I know your sister must be really busy…”

  Stella knew that she meant Serena. “A little catwalk? I can ask her.”

  “Jamie and Laura will help, obviously, and Richard. Ben might come down if Serena’s involved.”

  Stella found a pen and a pad, and started making notes. When she had put the phone down again she sat for a moment, staring into the fireplace. She could see someone out of the corner of her eye, but this time chose not to look. It was good to have a project. Despite what her sisters said, she was not like her mother, always drifting. Alys, languid, had never bothered with good works, except insofar as Caro or other women friends dragged her into things. Stella remembered her helping out on village jumble stalls, tall and elegant, smiling vaguely as she handed over hideous china cats, or fir cone Christmas ornaments, or knitted shapelessnesses that other people had made. But she had never taken the organisational initiative, unlike her friends or, indeed, her daughters. Serena had been focused on fashion since she was a tot: first the local college to do textiles and art, then Central St Martin’s, then her own business. Stella remembered her cutting up an antique quilt to make dolls’ clothes, at the age of seven or so. The ensuring row had been remarkable: Alys could be fiery, when roused, although she had a very long line to anger. Stella herself, never the most ambitious of girls, had done enough events to have C
aro request her help now and had once had a chance at being a champion swimmer – never quite good enough, though, but she had given it a go. Even if she had been secretly relieved when it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen; bit too much like hard work, thought Stella. Mind you, the number of times she’d heard oh, a DJ. But when are you going to get a proper job? Bee kept the house going, had been a trained librarian before the bloody council had closed the library, and still ran her second-hand book business from home. Even Luna had once been planning on a career in environmentalism, before life had whirled her away into the loops of the Gipsy Switch. But Alys, butterfly Alys, fluttering about the ancient house, had never really bothered with ambition once her modelling career was over, except insofar as looking after Abraham was concerned, and her daughters. Stella had always got the impression that Alys had wafted into modelling by accident; probably you could do that, all those years ago.

  But basically, they had all been very lucky. The house was theirs, inherited, and if you had a roof over your head, you were privileged, right at the top of the heap, and no point in denying it.

  Stella had not thought to criticise her mother, particularly. Everyone to their own path, and all that. But now she wondered whether Alys had actually been all that happy, if Abraham’s death had not thrown her into more of a spin than they’d realised. The hiking trip, so out of character. Bee, Stella and Serena had talked about it to Caro, shortly after Alys went missing: if her mother had confided in anyone, Bee had said, it would be Caro Amberley. But she had apparently told her best friend very little, least of all a destination, and Caro was at as much of a loss as everyone else.

  “Oh, Alys,” Stella said aloud. “Where the hell did you go to, my lovely?”

  Bee

  “He’s probably just down the pub,” Bee said. Serena, back at the studio, was sitting on the sofa, glaring at the screen of her mobile phone. Bee hated seeing her sister like this, the barely-hidden agitation, and over a man at that. However, she’d made a few mistakes herself, in her twenties; enough to put her off until Dark came along. So now she could, perhaps, afford to be smug: Dark was, after all, long dead, and safe. There were, he’d told her, no ghostly girls who’d prove a rival for his affections, not even the Behenian stars.

  “They’re like my sisters. All of them. But I don’t see a lot of them. And they don’t say much. You might have noticed that.” For the star spirits tended to keep their own counsel, inscrutable and austere.

  Now, Bee said, “How’s it – been going? You know, with Ben?”

  “I thought it was all right. We’ve had a few ups and downs… It wouldn’t be the first time his eye has been caught by someone else. You know that, anyway. He promised it wouldn’t happen again, but… Anyway, I was getting this funny feeling that things weren’t quite right. But now there’s this girl. Dana, I told you about her. She’s been setting her cap at him.”

  “That sounds so old fashioned,” Bee mused. “I suppose we are, though. Comes of growing up with Abraham and no TV. I hear things he used to say coming out of my mouth. I talk about the wireless, for god’s sake. I shouldn’t be living in the twenty first century.”

  Serena ignored this. “Believe me, there’s nothing old fashioned about Ms Stare. She looks like something out of The Matrix. Although that probably is old fashioned now, isn’t it? Time goes so quickly. Oooh.” For her phone had shrilled in her hand.

  “Laura? Hello. No, he isn’t. I don’t know where he is. Sorry? He might be. Bee’s here, by the way. Sure.” She passed the phone over.

  Bee said, “Laura – yes, in London, with our cousin. Stella’s at the house. Are you? She’ll be pleased.”

  To Serena, ringing off, she said, “Laura’s going over to see Stella, tomorrow. Some idea of Caro’s, apparently.”

  “I haven’t seen her for ages,” Serena said.

  “She’s just the same.” Laura floated before Bee’s mind’s eye: tall like her mother Caro, but white-blonde and cocoa-eyed. Nothing like Jamie or Ben, except in height. If Bee didn’t know better, she’d have suspected Caro of Fallow-like impropriety, but Caro and Richard were as solid as a pair of apple trees, their marriage as enduring. Impossible to think of Laura without thinking of horses, centaur-esque. She was a show jumper, the reason why the kitchen door at Amberley was starred with multi-coloured rosettes. It occurred to Bee that Laura may well know this Dana Stare, and she thought she would ask her. As if her sister had read her mind, she said,

  “Dana said she knows Laura. Said they were really close.”

  “She can’t be that bad if she’s a friend of Laura’s.”

  “That’s what I would have thought, but – well, she is bad, Bee.”

  At this point, Nell came back into the room, with a stack of books. “I’m going to mail these back home to myself, Bee. They’ll bump up the luggage allowance too much, and they’re too heavy to carry about.”

  Bee saw Serena retreat into herself, away from worries of Ben. “I’ll open some wine,” she said, drifting in the direction of the kitchen. “Bee, can you find me some glasses?”

  Bee went over to the white-painted cupboard with its border of roses, and opened it to retrieve the glasses. As she was reaching up, she heard Nell say, “Oh my God!”

  Bee turned. Her cousin was staring open mouthed at the door. The star Spica stood within it. Her black hair was weeded with a skein of emeralds; she held a sprig of sage, green against the darker fir of her gown.

  “Ah.” Bee said, horrified, and the breath broke the spell: Spica was gone.

  “One of Serena’s models,” Nell said. She sat down abruptly onto the couch. “Sorry. She gave me such a shock; I wasn’t expecting anyone to be working this late. But what a lovely dress. Serena is so clever, isn’t she?”

  At this, Serena came back in, holding a bottle of red.

  “Serena, I was just saying to Bee, that green dress on your model was so pretty.”

  “The green –?”

  “And matching it with those herbs like that – are you going to do that with all your models? That’s a really neat idea. The natural world picking up the colours. Kind of like a sympathetic fallacy.”

  “Um,” Serena said.

  Quickly, Bee added, “She caught a glimpse of Spica. With the sage.” Understanding, and a trace of alarm, flickered in Serena’s face.

  “Oh! Yes, the green dress. It is nice, isn’t it? She’s, er, yes, been working late. Final fitting. For a show.”

  “Just gorgeous,” Nell said, and accepted a glass of Shiraz.

  “Can I borrow you for a minute, Bee? You’re better at these things than I am. I’m not sure how long this lasagne should go in for.”

  In the kitchen, Serena hissed, “What was she doing here? They never come here. I’ve never seen one of them.”

  “I don’t know! And they were all over the house, when Nell came. Stella saw one of them. But Nell didn’t say anything.”

  “Didn’t you tell her?”

  “Tell her what? The tea’s in the left hand cupboard, the hot tap in the bathroom is a bit dodgy and, by the way, you might see these lavishly dressed women carrying plants wandering about the house, but don’t worry, because they’re not human. They’re stars.”

  Serena gave her sister an owlish look. “Point taken.”

  “I was hoping that she wouldn’t be able to see them, and in fact, I didn’t think she could, because she didn’t mention it. But she obviously can.”

  “But why here?”

  “Haven’t a clue, Serena.”

  Serena collapsed into a chair. “Damn.”

  “We’ve gone over this – they started coming when Grandfather was a boy, at the very least, but Abraham thought they were probably there before that. I mean, we always said that the dresses look sort of Elizabethan.”

  “They are Elizabethan. I know my fashion history. You think they’re connected to the gemstones in that box, don’t you? You’re probably right. Grandpa thought so, too. And Grandpa said
that the Behenian stars were called that in the Renaissance, the ones that move across the sky from season to season, the main stars of the sky.”

  “The ones that show up tend to be the ones that are actually overhead at the time.”

  “Could Spica have been some sort of warning?”

  “I hope not. Where’s your phone?”

  Bee waited for a few minutes, the mobile pressed to her ear, until with relief she heard Stella’s voice.

  “Stel? Everything all right?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Bee told her.

  “I haven’t seen Spica yet,” Stella said. “Wonder why she showed up at Serena’s? She’s never had a particular thing about Serena, has she?”

  The star had not, as far as Bee could recall. Luna, now – Polaris (magnet and succory), had often been seen sitting by her cradle, watching over her, dangling the sprig of succory over the baby’s brow. And Polaris, Bee remembered, was also linked in astrology to the moon.

  “Two other things,” Stella said now. “Caro rang. She wants to have some music at Apple Day. I’ve said I’ll help.” She hesitated. “If it’s okay for me to stick around for a bit.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “She wanted to ask Serena if she could do a little fashion show. I said I’d ask her. And –” Stella paused. “And I met Dark.”

  “Oh.” Bee was aware of a complicated array of emotions: relief that she didn’t have to explain Dark to her sister, a flicker of homesickness, and the faintest touch of jealousy, not of Dark or Stella themselves, but for the fact that Dark was no longer her secret alone.

  “It’s fine,” Stella said. “He’s really interesting. And I’m not ungrateful that he’s around.”

  “Why? Has anything –”

  “No. Well, Tam Stare brought your money back. For the car. I’m sure he’s cool, but –”

  Bee shared the ‘but.’

  “Dark will help, if you call him. If you need.”

  “I think he would,” Stella said.

  Luna

  Luna was up on the Ridgeway, high over the rolling world. At this time of the day, midweek in October, the landscape was deserted apart from a small ploughing tractor, furrowing down a long slope in a flurry of gulls, and the little black box of her own trailer behind the layby hedge. She could not even see Sam or Moth; they would be inside, Sam putting the kettle on. While she was out here, up under the blowing sky. The wind tasted of rain. Luna’s heavy boots were clogged with mud, the wet chalky earth making the trackway hard going. To the west, the unlikely pudding basin shape of Silbury Hill was a green cone against the fields, with Avebury and its rings of standing stones beyond.