by Liz Williams
“Bastard!”
“Yes, but Luna, this is the thing. I’m the last person to give an arsehole a pass but I think he genuinely believed it. I think he’s been got at.”
“By Dana?” This from Sam.
“Yes.”
“I have been asking around about the Stares,” Sam said.
“And?”
“Not much. I told you someone said they weren’t popular.”
“What a surprise.”
“But there are people who are travellers who know them. And they’re not connected. You know, the travelling communities of this country – you might not like them, and there’s a lot of bullshit around them – and from them – but they are communities and they’re not very big ones, either. Even the New Age lot have got to know a lot of other groups over the years. There are real divisions in the culture. But people do talk. Yet there isn’t much talk about the Stares. I’m going to speak to my gran but she doesn’t do phones.”
“Don’t blame her,” Stella said. “We could drive up and see her, maybe?”
“There’s other ways of speaking to people,” Sam said, after a moment.
Stella looked at him narrowly. “You don’t mean pigeon post, do you?”
He laughed. “I don’t mean the written word at all.”
“We’ve got to try again,” Serena said. “Maybe we could all go. Back to the churchyard, I mean. Take weapons.”
For gentle Serena to suggest this was, Stella thought, a measure of her alarm.
“Like what? Kitchen knives? We’ve got a shotgun somewhere. In the attic, I think. Granddad had one. Do you suppose,” Bee said, “that if you shot one of those polecat things, it would turn back into one of the Stares? Like those stories of witches who change into hares and get shot in the leg when nicking some farmer’s lettuces like Peter Rabbit, and then there’s an old lady rolling about on the ground clutching her knee?”
“I’ve always been against the fur trade but I wouldn’t mind a fur hat, actually.”
Serena gave a horrified laugh. “You can’t turn Dana Stare into a hat!”
“Hey, just watch me.”
Bee
Later that night, Bee again woke with a start. She’d been dreaming but the tail end of her dream whisked away, dissolving in the dawn. Beside her in the bed, the impression of Dark remained, but he himself was gone. She had grown used to loving a ghost: sometimes physical, as real and alive as one of her sisters, with at least the illusion of heartbeat and breath, sometimes as insubstantial as a moth. But there was no time to lie in bed and remember. Bee got up, padding across to the window and throwing the curtains open, eager to see what sort of day had started and hoping she would not see anything untoward in the yard.
It was still early, and the mist of last night had not yet faded. It hung around the lower branches of the apple trees, and wreathed the muted glow of the beech hedge along the drive. The hills were lost in shadow but there was a thin scarlet line along the eastern horizon, heralding the oncoming sun.
Perhaps, Bee thought, it might yet turn out to be a fine day. Wrapping herself in her thick dressing gown, she went downstairs to a chaos of cats, all demanding food. She doled out breakfasts, shutting the oldest cat with his special diet in the pantry while the rest yelled, milling about her feet. The kitchen, still warmed by the Aga, was a cradle of light against the morning dark and the breath of cold air when she opened the door. Bee made tea and sat down with a list.
Apple Day. Lots of things on the list: food, equipment, times, things to do. Under the list, she found another one: Serena’s list, meticulously noting clothes and the order in which they needed to be packed and brought out of the car. Serena must have left it in the kitchen overnight. Her handwriting was small and loopy, easy to read.
Organisation, thought Bee. She liked organisation. It saved time, effort, stress. Not always achievable, though, particularly with an event that you’d never run before. She wondered what the curve ball would be, then wondered again, aloud to Serena, who had come into the kitchen wrapped in an ancient fluffy pink dressing gown. Her aureole of blonde hair stuck upwards, wetly, and she brought with her a waft of something expensive for the shower.
“It could be anything,” Serena said. She sat down at the kitchen table and accepted a mug of tea. “Some kid falling down a well.”
“God, I hope not! This is Apple Day, not an episode of Lassie.”
“Look at some of the stuff we’ve got going on. More like an episode of Supernatural.”
Bee had not seen this particular TV show but she knew what her sister meant.
“I’ve been looking forward to it but now I’m getting to the stage where I’ll be glad when it’s over.”
Serena grimaced. “Know what you mean. I’m like this with shows. But then, halfway through, and you suddenly realise you’re enjoying it. Usually. Do you have a schedule?”
Bee did and she handed it over.
“So,” Serena said, studying it. “The first music’s at three and I’m on before that.”
“Yes. The music will go on again after dusk, obviously, the Classical stuff, but not too late because people will be bringing kids and wanting to get them to bed. Or have dinner. Or go to the pub. Your catwalk is at two, as we agreed, when there’s still a lot of light.”
“I hope it doesn’t rain.”
“It won’t rain. It’s too cold.” Bee wrenched open the door to let in a breath of frost.
“Oh, it is cold! I’d better get dressed. Bella’s dad’s taking her to Paddington. She’s due into the station around eleven. Who are my models, do you know?”
“Some of them are friends of Laura’s or Katie Mount’s. The young ones. But a couple of Caro’s friends agreed as well and one of them is in her seventies.”
“Good. Shows everyone you don’t need to be sixteen and three stone.” Serena got up.
“Is Bella going to take part?”
“Yes. She likes modelling.”
“She’s a very pretty girl, Serena. Do you think she might do it professionally one day?”
“Nope. Well, she might change her mind. But at the moment she wants to be an engineer. Or maybe a deep sea diver. She’s obsessed with David Attenborough. Always watching things about the ocean.” Serena glanced at the clock. “I’d better get dressed.”
Bee could already hear the shower running. Serena disappeared to be replaced by Stella, and soon after that, Luna. By half past eight, everyone was up, dressed and ready to engage. Sam strung fairy lights through the branches of the apple trees and, with considerable enthusiasm, found and cleaned Abraham’s ancient shotgun, which had indeed been in the attic.
“We don’t have a license.”
“It’s just for the tree.”
“I thought that was for Wassail? You’re early.”
Bee had suggested a kind of pre-Wassail, a little ceremony to greet the harvest, and the shotgun would be fired into the branches of a tree to drive evil spirits away, just as with the proper Wassail in January.
“Be careful with that,” Stella said. “I don’t think Mum ever fired it. She levelled it at the Hunt once, though.”
Sam gave her a wary glance. “We know it can be fired, yeah?”
“Not as such.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll give it a go.”
An hour later, there was a thunderous report from the orchard and a lot of male laughter. Bee, removing a loaf from the breadmaker, recognised Dark’s voice and smiled to herself. Shortly after this, Caro’s muddy 4x4 pulled into the yard and various Amberleys spilled out. Bee had been worried about this, but Ben was not among them. She pulled Caro aside and asked the direct question.
“Look,” Caro said, uncomfortably. “I’m aware Ben and Serena have split up and I’m really sorry and sad about it, but I don’t feel I can interfere –”
“I completely get that. They’re both adults.” Allegedly, Bee did not add.
“– he is coming down, and he is going to perform, but he’s
not due to get here till later. I know Serena’s show is at two, so…”
“She knows he’s coming.”
Caro appeared relieved. “This is so awkward. But when I asked him originally, I didn’t know about – all of this. Well, obviously, since I gather this is quite recent.”
“I just hope there isn’t a row. Bella’s here, you know. I’m going to be really tactless now and ask what you think about Dana Stare.”
Caro opened her mouth and shut it again. “It’s not tactless. I’ll be honest. I don’t warm to her. Laura doesn’t like her, says she can’t be trusted. That’s my gut instinct, too. I suppose I can see what Ben sees in her.”
“She’s very decorative.”
“She’s been very sweet. When I’m around.”
“And when you’re not?”
Their eyes met.
“What about her brother?” Bee asked next.
“Helpful. A bit too eager to please, but you know, he might just be trying to help his sister out.”
“You don’t think that, though.”
“No, I don’t. Laura said to me that suddenly they always seem to be there, you know? And they do. I can’t quite get my head around how they do that.”
Especially when one of them, at least, is in other places at the same time. “No,” Bee said slowly. “Neither can I.”
Midmorning. Pans of chilli and soup and vegetarian curry filled the Aga. The kettle was on a permanent boil, adding a fortune, no doubt, to the electricity bill.
“This kitchen,” Stella said, “smells fantastic. Why don’t we just open a café?”
Bee felt red in the face and unpleasantly damp. “No way. Are you going to be here for a bit? Could you keep an eye on this for me while I get a breath of fresh air and see how it’s going in the orchard?”
“I’ll do it,” said Luna.
Released, Bee wandered out into the yard, the flags still glistening with the last of the frost. The mist had lifted now and the sky was clear and cold and pale. At the far end of the orchard, where there was a wide, treeless strip of grass at the back of the marquee, various men including Sam were swearing over the erection of a little stage. If they peeled back the wall, the audience would be able to sit in the marquee and listen to the music. Talk about the gender division of labour, Bee thought, then saw that Stella had joined the crew and was bouncing about giving instructions regarding sound equipment. Leaving them to it, Bee wandered down between the trees, admiring the fairy lights and inhaling the deep, damp scents of earth and rot. Later, come January, she would come out here one night and Wassail the orchard properly, with Dark, giving thanks in the cold and the quiet. There was a terrible crash from the stage and a shout from Stella,
“Just make sure it extends round the back! Otherwise we’re going to need a longer cable.”
Bee winced. Three hours to go before one o’clock and she was starting to feel the first twinges, half anxiety and half anticipation. The curve ball. What would that be? She imagined rows between Serena and Ben, the sudden appearance of a Behenian star, a broken ankle. Too much to worry about and not enough time to pack it all into: so stop. She paused in front of a tree and contemplated it. There was a hollow three quarters of the way up the trunk, an oval with a thick rind around it, like a disease. But it wasn’t a disease, just part of the ageing tree. This one was close to a hundred years old and sometimes, in spring, Bee and Dark heard chuckling and muttering coming from inside the hole, as the infant owls shifted position in the nest. But now the hole was silent and, as Bee watched, the black oval began to contract. For a moment, Bee was reminded, rather uncomfortably, of vaginas dilating and contracting. Then the hole shut with a snap and the tree itself began to dwindle, thinning down to a tender tip with a single leaf, shrinking until it was knee-height. What the hell? – thought Bee. She glanced quickly around the orchard. It looked quite different now. Some of the trees were no more than saplings, but some were gnarled and ancient, unfamiliar to Bee, who could have drawn the usual trees’ shapes from memory. She walked here at least once a day, after all. This was the orchard – when? A hundred years or so ago. She could not see the house from here but there was barley on the hill, summer-bright, and as Bee watched it changed to winter ploughing, then hazed with green. All around her the trees were shifting, growing, dying. The old tree in front of her was now entirely gone. If she scrabbled in the grass, perhaps she would find a pip, tiny and black as a robin’s eye. Bee blinked and the old tree was standing in front of her once more, unchanged.
“Well,” said Bee, aloud. “That was odd.”
Stella
Stella had a great deal of experience in telling men that they were doing it wrong. Pissed off with Ben though she might be, she wished he were here – that his band were here, because they at least knew how to set up a sound system.
“Look,” she said. “Don’t put that amp there. I’m not trying to show anyone up, right? But I’ve done this a lot.”
To be fair, they were listening, although Stella was afraid they were just being polite. So she grabbed a handful of cables and set it up herself. Quicker by far. And they’d have to do it over again in the gap between the band and the orchestra. Stella wasn’t much of a cook and she didn’t want to interfere with Serena’s show, because Serena was very picky about what she did and didn’t want, but this she knew and she could help, along with lugging equipment about.
Ten minutes later, she stood back and surveyed the stage, which by now was actually looking like a stage on which one might host an event. Thank God for that. Stella had that mid-term feeling of things coming together. She looked down the orchard but Bee must have gone back into the house.
At midday, she made a large and uncomplicated cheese sandwich and ate it in her grandfather’s study, out of the way and perched on his revolving chair like a child. Bee had tidied up a lot – the piles of papers and notes that Stella remembered from Abraham’s day were no longer there – and Nell had gone through a lot of the historical books for her research, but otherwise the study had been left intact. The tall bookcases were still filled with scientific journals and books on astronomy, military history, and the myths and legends that Stella had pored over as a child. None of them had gone to Sunday school, but Abraham had made sure that all of them were familiar with the denizens of Olympus, the gods of the Nile, the skylords of the North. She smiled with nostalgia, remembering. She could still see the thick orange spine of Larousse’s Encyclopedia of Mythology, in its familiar place. Another anchor, tethering her wandering ship to its mooring. Get today out of the way, Stella thought, and then think about what’s next. Hibernation, maybe.
She tidied up the remains of the sandwich and went out of the study. As she did so, someone’s long skirt whisked around the corner of the bedroom in which the moonhorse stood. Stella quickly followed, depositing the plate on top of a bookcase, and peeped around the bedroom door.
Three of the Behenian stars stood in a cluster around the rocking horse. One wore a dress the colour of sunshine, her hair wreathed in buttercups. A necklace of dark green agate was about her throat and she had yellow eyes like a cat. Her companion, leaning in close and whispering, was dressed in white velvet with a crown of diamonds and carried a posy of hellebores, and the third was Spica, wearing green and emeralds. Stella thought the others were Procyon and Algol, respectively: she found it hard to keep track, which gem, which flower, which star. The Behenian girls seemed amused: even Algol’s pale inhuman eyes were sparkling. She looked right through the doorframe and gestured to Stella. Come in. Stella, feeling suddenly as though she’d been summoned into the headmistresses’ office, went awkwardly inside.
She had never been quite so close to the Behenians before. She had seen them all her life, discussed them with her sisters, but it was as though they inhabited another, parallel realm, gliding alongside the family, barely interacting. They had a habit of vanishing when looked at directly, just as some stars burn brighter when seen sidelong. Now, standing righ
t next to them, Stella could see for the first time how unhuman they really were. They were wearing their bodies as Serena might put a dress on a model, a pin-tuck here, a straightened seam there. Their eyes were emptily blank as though they did not use them for sight, decoration only. They were, nonetheless, very beautiful, with the bones sharp beneath their flawless skin and the silk-flow of their hair.
“Hi,” said Stella, feeling like a complete idiot. They all looked at her, with that unnerving gaze, then resumed talking among themselves. At least, she supposed they were talking. It sounded more like the noise water makes, bubbling over stones, or the distant hush and rush of the sea. The sounds did not match the movements of their smiling mouths, either. They were pretending to speak, she thought. Then a voice said, inside her mind,
“You are his granddaughter. Which one are you?”
“I’m Stella,” Stella said. The words felt difficult, forced out past the nervousness that constricted her throat.
“We find,” said Algol, “it difficult to tell. We hope this doesn’t offend.”
“We all look alike?”
The star inclined her head. Diamonds tinkled like tiny chandeliers, sparking fire. “At times. We hope this does not offend,” she repeated. This time, her lips moved in time with the words.
“It’s fine, that’s cool,” Stella stammered.
“You are having a celebration?” Procyon was looking out of the window where a marquee was in the final stages of erection.
“Yes. Apple Day. We made it up, sort of.”
“Harvest end?”
“Yes. You know about that sort of thing, then?”
“We watch,” the star said, “as we circle the sky.”
Stella nodded, dumbly. How do you make small talk, with a star?
“The comet is coming,” Algol said.
“I know. We’ve seen it. Look, my mother –”
“No,” the star said patiently. “I mean he is coming here.”
