by Liz Williams
Stella stared at her. “What?”
“He is on his way.”
“How can that – why is he coming here?” But she remembered the figure she had seen, his white cold face.
“He needs something which he cannot have,” said Algol.
“Or everything will die,” said Procyon.
“He does not mean to,” said Spica.
“But he must be stopped. He must be taken onto a path.”
Stella felt as though something very heavy had been dropped onto her chest.
“But how can we stop a comet? And my mum –”
“We will do it together,” Spica said.
A blink, and they were gone, just as Stella was starting to feel a little more comfortable in their presence. Cool prefects, not headmistresses at all. Excited and alarmed, she ran down the stairs to tell her sisters.
Serena
This, then, was Bee’s curve ball, thought Serena. Unless, of course, something else happens. She had faith in the Behenian stars, though. If they thought something could be done, then it could be done, and they surely knew more about this strange realm of living stars and walking comets than anyone human. The stars would let them know when the time was right, although the thought of the comet both elated and frightened her. She did not imagine a huge, flaming ball crashing into the planet, no apocalyptic Doomsday scenarios, no Hollywood blockbusters. The comet would be something else – someone? Had Alys known this? Firmly, Serena tried to stuff all this to the back of her mind and concentrate on her show, now a mere forty-five minutes away, but it appeared that the back of her mind was already stuffed with worries about Ben.
Bella, newly retrieved from the station, had already asked the direct question.
“Is Ben coming?”
“Yes. But later on.”
“And is he bringing that girl?” Bella scowled. Her mother gave an inward sigh. No chance of keeping anything from Bella, too sharp by half.
“Who told you about that?” she said, trying to sound vague.
“Someone at school. Sorry, Mum. Janie Bower. She said her sister saw them at a gig in the Elephant and Castle and they were all over each other.” Bella pulled a face.
Serena felt as though a slender blade had been rammed into her heart.
“I don’t like him any more,” Bella said.
“Sometimes this sort of thing just happens.”
“But why?”
“I don’t really know. It just does. I will be polite to Ben, when he shows up, Bella. It’s called the moral high ground.”
“I think you should kick him in the shins.”
Perhaps, Serena thought as she hung dresses on the folding rack, perhaps Bella was right.
Time was Serena’s friend, though. She had to get on with it; they had a show to do. Nell was helping her and Serena didn’t know if Bee had discussed the situation already, but suspected she had. Nell – practical, sympathetic, calm – would be a good person to talk to, but not right now. Serena stepped out of the marquee and found a line of women, ranging from Bella to the seventy year old friend of Caro’s.
“I’ve organised them!” Bella said.
“Great! So, all of you ready for your close up?” There was giggling. Serena explained how it worked. “We’ll be modelling in rotation. First one on – who wants to be first?” No one did, so Serena took charge. “Would you go first?” she said to the older woman, Margaret, tall and rangy in hippy-patched jeans. She reminded Serena of her mother, perhaps a decade older.
“Sure.” Margaret’s eyes widened. “Never done it before, though.”
“You’ll be fine. Just walk with a bit of confidence, bit of sass.”
“Like this?” Margaret strode up and down.
“Yeah, that’s great! So, up and down the catwalk, back behind the curtain, and I’ll hand you your next outfit. Don’t worry if you tear something, drop everything on the floor or give it to Nell, I’ll sort it out. You’ll have three outfits each. We’re only doing a little show.”
There was no time for a rehearsal. Serena forced herself to relax. If something went wrong, it would be funny and everyone would laugh and be in good spirits. It would not be a disaster. Do not be a perfectionist. This is not Paris or Milan: it is boards on bales of hay. Deep breaths! She went into the marquee and found that it all looked perfectly calm. Chairs were out, borrowed from the village hall. The catwalk itself, covered with sheets, ended in two small pillars with a vase of cascading roses on each. Serena stood for a moment, remembering to breathe, and then the first few people started drifting in.
By the time the marquee was full, with people both seated and standing at the back, Bee hopped onto the catwalk and gave a brief speech.
“Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for coming. It’s a chilly day but it’s a lovely one, isn’t it? I’ve got to give you some safety information –” she followed this with a few comments about parking and where to go if a fire broke out “– and then just to say that it’s not a gig, or a fete, or a party, but it’s a bit like all of those. It’s Apple Day! And here’s Ward Garner, who’s going to open it for us.”
Serena noted that a lot of the faces in the crowd did not belong to the village, and so appeared impressed (Mooncote itself having long been used to Ward and his celebrity friends, and smug about how little notice they took of him). Ward was brief and funny and made Serena feel a bit better about the whole thing. She climbed onto the catwalk and took the microphone from him gratefully.
“It’s not Paris, is it? But it’s better than that. It’s Somerset! We can do better than Paris, can’t we?”
There was a shout from the back about the Wurzels and Serena knew then that it was going to be all right, just a bit of a laugh, just as she kept telling herself. Margaret sashayed out, resplendent in green velvet and a coronet of leaves, accompanied by ribald whoops from a group of her female friends. Serena slipped backstage to find a teenager wrestling with some straps.
“I can’t get it on!” she wailed.
“That’s because it’s back to front. Don’t worry.” And Serena forgot about comets and love, about everything except getting her models into their clothes and out there and back.
Luna
Bee and Luna had been hard at work over lunchtime, preparing bowls of soup and crusty bread and cake. They’d be serving at four, but for now, there was another little lull and Luna thought she might as well watch the fashion show. She lurked at the back of the tent and watched as Serena’s models, mainly trying not to laugh, traversed the catwalk. They looked lovely, in Serena’s trademark floaty-hippy clothes, and one of the teenagers was wearing gumboots: egg yolk coloured Hunters. An older woman standing next to Luna gave her a significant look and said, “She can get away with that frock. Don’t think I could.”
Luna laughed. “Neither could I. I’d look like a fat baby chick.”
“Now she’s really lovely,” the woman said. “But I suppose fashion designers do know a lot of professional models.”
Luna took one look at the tall woman in green stepping onto the catwalk and felt a plummeting sensation, as though she’d entered a falling lift. For it was not a model, but Spica, splendid in her emeralds. There was a small, awed hush as she strode down the walkway and some sporadic clapping.
“Oh my God,” said Luna, involuntarily. She turned to her neighbour, planning on some kind of damage limitation, but suddenly Dark was at her shoulder. Her neighbour had turned, too, her lips parted, but she did not move and looking around the marquee, Luna was both relieved and alarmed to note that no one else was moving either, save for Spica. The Behenian star was past them now, holding out a trailing hand, then gone.
Serena
In all the stories Serena had read as a child, when this sort of out-of-time thing happened, no one got left behind. Everyone got to go to Narnia, if they were important. But it was curiously interesting to be the one who was left, Serena thought. She could see none of her sisters, or Nell, but her cousin had
nipped back into the house to find a safety pin. She walked slowly around the perimeter of the marquee. Emily was halfway down the catwalk, her gold and silver mesh skirt drifting behind her, but frozen. The audience, too, were quite still: snatched out of time in the middle of lifting teacups to their mouths or chatting to their friends or glancing at their mobile phones. Serena looked over a man’s shoulder at his iphone and saw that it was 1.21, unchanging. She went outside and looked up at the sun, caught in an amber moment of emergence from behind a cloud. The air was quite still. Nothing moved. How long would this last, Serena wondered. Going back inside the marquee, she returned to the curtained-off backstage area and checked on her models. Would they get stiff? Or would time, when it started again, simply move on from this stolen moment? She tweaked Georgia’s lacy dress, straightening a little, but the fabric fell back into its original incorrect folds. Serena stepped back and saw Dana Stare.
“Hello,” Dana said. She gave a tight little smile. “Well, this is all a bit weird, isn’t it?”
“What are you doing here?” Serena whispered.
“Don’t you mean: why can I move about and talk when everyone else can’t? The rules don’t apply to me, love.”
“Nor to me,” Serena said, coldly, although she did not feel that she understood what Dana was talking about. It hit home, though. Dana’s pale face flushed into two crimson spots, high on her cheekbones so that she looked like a china doll.
“I suppose you think you’re special. You and your sisters. It’s not just you, is it? It’s a lot of us.”
“Maybe you’d like to explain it to me, then.” She would not ask Where’s Ben.
Dana’s chin lifted.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” She walked a little further into the room and picked up a scarf, fragile with embroidered rosebuds. “Pretty. Not my thing, though. Your stuff’s nice, I suppose, but it wouldn’t suit me.”
“There’s something for everyone,” Serena said, trying to keep her voice even. And if they could actually have some sort of conversation, it might keep Dana here, away from whatever else she was plotting. But perhaps that was the point, to keep Serena herself moth-pinned to the board of time. Where was Dana’s brother? “Dana, what do you want?”
Dana snickered. “What do I want that I haven’t got already? Like your man? I want lots of things, Miss Fallow. Lots and lots. I didn’t just come here to gloat, you know. I came to ask you something.”
Stella
Outside the marquee, Stella found that Algol had paused at the gate which led into the orchard. The star had appeared at her shoulder, when Stella was bending over the sound equipment, and beckoned, so Stella had gone. Now, the star glanced back and opened the gate. Normally, this led onto the lawn that ran along the driveway. But now Stella saw that the drive, and the house itself, were no longer there. Instead, stretched endless fields, bright with frost and moonlit under the darkening sky. Ahead, was the high wall of a moor. And the gate itself had changed: it was the lych gate, now, but there was no sign of the church or the graveyard. A skull had been set high in its eaves and on either side it was crowded by a blackthorn hedge, the spines sharp as talons.
Ahead, down the bright path, a little group progressed, carrying a coffin high on their shoulders. They wore top hats with black streamers and Stella could hear the whisper of bells, like a Morris side.
The gate creaked as they went through. Stella thought it might be a warning and she listened carefully for the voices of the blackthorn hedge, but the thorns were silent. Once through the gate, the air grew colder and purer: no tang of diesel or even the natural smells of the countryside here. Stella glanced back and the gate was no more than an outline against the roll of the land.
It was like walking in dreams, or those times when you’d been thinking about something and realised that you were actually driving, that all the time you’d been reacting automatically to the sights and sounds of the road. Stella was starting to lose track of time and she didn’t like that. She pulled out her phone but, not entirely to her surprise, the screen was blank and dead.
Ahead strode the glimmering star. Every so often she turned her head and the diamonds twined into her hair flashed and sparked, as if picking up light from the land. Stella was keeping a sharp eye out for any movement – Alys? – but the land seemed empty, motionless and still. There was no breeze. The sky was a deep, clear green, like that moment after sunset, but as she looked back to the west, a single bright star had become visible, hanging in the heavens like a great lamp. Elsewhere, it would have been Venus, the Evening Star, but here? Stella was not sure.
She thought that she had only been looking at the star for a moment, so it was with dismay that she stood alone on the track.
“Fuck!” She turned and ran down the path, up and over a slight rise, but no-one was there. Stella balled her fists. “How could you be so fucking stupid?”
She forced herself to think. The choice was actually simple: go on or go back. Don’t leave the path, like Red Riding Hood. Who knew what wolves roamed the land?
But as she hesitated, on the pivot point, Stella realised that she was not to be given a choice after all. Around her the landscape was fragmenting. Shards of green grass and black earth swirled upwards, tornado-spiralling. Stella put her arm over her face but the shards whisked painlessly through her flesh. Panicked, she wondered if she herself was starting to disintegrate. They sparkled like Algol’s diamonds and above her, the sky grew black.
Serena
“What did you want to ask me?” Serena said to Dana Stare.
“I have a question, about your grandfather, actually.” For a moment, Dana sounded almost friendly. She flicked a strand of hair from her face and leaned against the trestle table. “Was it him who summoned the stars?”
“He was an astronomer,” Serena said.
“I know that,” Dana was impatient. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I’ve no idea. They’ve been around ever since we were children. I don’t know where they come from.” This was only partly true; Serena was sure that they had something to do with the gemstone box. And the Behenian stars had been attached to the house for generations, coming and going as they mysteriously pleased. She wasn’t going to tell Dana that. Dana was looking at her narrowly. Serena kept her eyes wide and, she hoped, guileless.
“Didn’t you think it was a bit odd?” Dana asked.
“I suppose so. We weren’t supposed to mention them to anyone else.”
“But you Fallow girls don’t do what you’re told, do you?” Dana smiled. “I like that. So it’s cool. Did you mention the stars to Ben?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Dana laughed. “He might think I was a bit of a nutter, mightn’t he?”
Serena said nothing. Then she said, “Why do you want to know?”
“Oh, come on. An old house haunted by a bunch of beautiful star girls?”
“So how did you know what they were?” Serena countered.
Dana looked like a sly child. “I know all sorts of things about people. Your sister’s boyfriend, for example.”
“Oh? Which one would that be, then?”
“Good question, because none of them are quite what they seem, are they?” Dana came across and for a moment Serena thought that the girl was going to touch her. Dana raised a hand, as if she was intending to stroke Serena’s face. Close to, her skin was flawless, with no sign of make-up. Serena forced herself to stand her ground. But Dana’s hand fell to her side. Her nostrils flared, briefly, and Serena realised with revulsion that the girl was smelling her.
“And are you what you seem, Dana?” she said.
For a moment, something flickered in Dana’s eyes. That’s got you on the run, Serena thought. Then Dana laughed. “Hold that thought, eh? Time’s on the move again.”
And Serena looked up as an excited model flung herself through the curtains.
“Leave you to it,” Dana said. “The show must go on,
eh?”
Stella
Stella stumbled through a snowstorm made of emerald glass. She wasn’t even sure what she was walking on, but the whirling shards were herding her, driving her forwards. She hoped she was still on the path but how to tell? Little by little, however, she became aware that the shards were starting to settle. Soon, they had sunk to waist height and she could see both above them and through them. She was walking on bare earth, studded with tough grass the texture of wire. It was soaked and so, therefore, were her Converse trainers. Stella tutted, hoping they would survive the adventure. They were her favourite pair. Around her, the landscape was flat, all the way to the horizon. She could see the gleam of water in between low banks and tussocks of reeds. A marsh, with occasional stands of stunted alder and willow.
“Why are you here?” a willow said to Stella, in a small, whispering voice.
“I don’t know! I was caught up in – something. Like a storm. Where is this place?”
“The marsh.”
Well, that was helpful, thought Stella.
“Well, I want to get out of it.” The prospect of missing her footing and ending up in an actual bog, being sucked down, the Great Grimpen mire, Baskerville territory again… “Which direction should I go in?”
“Follow my sisters,” the willow said. “See, the line along the dyke? Follow them and you will come to the shore. Perhaps a boat may be waiting.”
Stella did not find that reassuring. Old stories of boats that carry the dead were floating in the back of her mind. Telling herself to get a grip, she nodded.
“Thank you, willow tree.” And again she started walking.
It was cold but not freezing; the water that ran in long ditches and pools between the earthen banks was not skimmed with cat ice. It will be all right, Stella said to herself. It will. She found the dyke and, clambering slightly, made her way up onto it. From here, she could see a line of changing white: the surf. So, the shore was not all that far away, and all Stella had to do was follow the dyke with its willow guardians.
