Fire in the Star

by Kamilla Benko

  “Sophie!’ Claire said, the word coming out with a puff of white. “We need to move, now!”

  “We’re not going to make it,” Sophie said softly, back still turned. “Not unless …”

  And at last, Sophie looked up and back at Claire. Her dark eyes seemed too large for her narrow face, and the silver ringing them seemed to catch Claire like a hook. Now Claire was the one who could hardly breathe.

  “Claire?” Sophie asked, her entire body a question.

  Claire couldn’t speak, even though she knew the answer—had known it a long, long time, since even before they’d ever climbed up a ladder, back when she’d tried her hardest to ignore her parents’ late-night whispers behind the bedroom door. Back when she’d purposefully overlooked the fact that Mom and Dad had taken off work for an entire summer, not just to clean out his aunt’s manor but so that they could spend a last summer with both their daughters.

  Claire had known the answer even when she sought out the Spyden, and she had been secretly relieved to have to change her question at the last moment. Because even though she’d known the answer, she had been too cowardly to have it confirmed. Even now, she couldn’t speak it out loud.

  There were some things even magic could not change.

  Claire met Sophie’s eyes and nodded.

  Fumbling, Sophie set the moontears on a twisted stump. They gleamed in the morning sun. They had each grown to be the size of a river stone, fitting comfortably in her palm. Faint pink stars had started to appear in the lightly purpled moontears, stars that did not look unlike the little pink scar situated at Sophie’s collarbone.

  Sophie looked up. “Claire—are you sure?”

  Claire knew she could take it back. One word and she could stop it all. But she knew what was needed: a change of heart. So instead, she said, “I’ll be all right.” The truth had never hurt so much.

  “I love you, Clairina,” Sophie whispered; then she smiled her wild smile, showing all her teeth. Sophie began to run, and Claire tore after her, even though this time, she knew she would never catch up.

  Sophie moved faster and faster, her stride lengthening, stretching. She seemed to loosen like long hair released from a ponytail, unspooling like a silver ribbon, unfurling like a blossom, strengthening like tempered steel, and sparkling—sparkling, sparkling, sparkling—like a jewel.

  Like a star.

  Like a sun.

  With a cry, Claire fell back, flinging her arms up and over her watering eyes, as the world turned blinding white.

  For a moment, nothing seemed to exist. It was as though the light had swept away the entire world along with Claire’s five senses. But somewhere in that infinite vastness, Claire heard the tiniest of sounds: a hum. Slowly at first and then quickly, the hum elongated and rounded into a note and then into a melody that found its way into the heart-shaped hole in Claire’s chest … and filled it.

  Joy—swift as the winds, deep as the seas, bright as all the suns in all the skies in all the worlds—engulfed Claire in a warm embrace. And with the joy came courage.

  Slowly, Claire lowered her arms from her face. The light was still there, but this time, Claire refused to look away. Letting the tears stream down her cheeks, she focused on the brilliant haze. Though she had to squint, she thought she could make out the arch of a neck, a ripple of mane, and then—

  A spiraling horn—clear as sunlight—dipping down to brush the moontears.

  The melody burst into a harmony.

  Claire laughed in delighted wonder as she caught a glimpse of five horns and five flowing tails before they galloped up the mountain, moving so fast that they seemed to be only streaks of light. They looked like shooting stars in reverse, and Claire questioned how she and all of Arden hadn’t realized sooner what the unicorns truly were: wishes come to life.

  And then they were gone, vanished somewhere into the jagged peaks and clear blue sky. The only things the unicorns left behind were a mess of hoofprints stamped in the mud and a single purple ribbon.

  Claire swooped down to pick it up. The mud easily slipped off the Woven Root material, and she quickly wound it around her pencil before placing it into her cloak pocket. The spark of joy remained in Claire, though its warmth was less without the unicorns’ song. In fact, everything was colder. Much, much colder.

  The wraiths.

  Anxiously, Claire scanned the jagged peaks again. There was still no sign of the unicorns, only snow and the blue dome of the sky.

  But wait. Claire frowned. The glare of the sunlight on snow had intensified, and the snow line seemed closer than before. And then she heard it: a rumbling. The sound of not one unicorn, or five, or even a hundred—but thousands.

  They galloped from the peaks, spilling down the mountainsides as though an evening sky had been tipped over. They poured out over the rocks like infinite rain.

  A herd of unicorns.

  A blessing of unicorns.

  An avalanche of unicorns.

  They were a blizzard of flowing tails and whipping manes, a flurry of diamond hooves and dark-jeweled eyes. Crystal horns as sharp as the points on a crescent moon and as brilliant as ice on fire pointed upward to the stars they’d come from.

  They were a storm of starlight.

  Stunned by the glory, Claire couldn’t move—or take her eyes off the unicorn in the front. This unicorn galloped with the graceful sway of the magnolia blossoms outside their shared bedroom window. Of dance parties in the living room. Of the millions upon millions of everyday moments that made up their lives as sisters.

  Without stopping her gallop (and probably not without a little bit of magic), the unicorn bowed her head, and Claire wove her hands into the mane and heaved herself up onto the unicorn’s back. The scent of watermelon hit Claire. A summertime smell.

  I promised not to leave you behind again.

  A grin broke across Claire’s face. This wasn’t a faded memory or a guess at what her sister might say—it was Sophie.

  Hang tight! Sophie said, her voice chime-like around the edges, and Claire did.

  Claire had ridden a wyvern, escaped on a chimera, and flown through the clouds with a cloak, but none of it had prepared her for what it was like to ride a unicorn. A unicorn wasn’t like riding the wind. It was becoming the wind. A lightness filled her, and she felt she might float away if she was not tethered by the tresses of unicorn mane wrapped across her fingers. All around her, the unicorns surged forward, their diamond hooves pounding out Arden’s heartbeat as they galloped down the mountains to where the wraiths had already begun their attack.

  CHAPTER

  28

  Starscrape Citadel had been swallowed by shadows. Skeletal shadows that howled, tore, and raged. Shadows so thick that Claire wondered if she was not looking at creatures but instead a hole, a void, a nothingness.

  And yet.

  Here and there, there was a flash of white marble. The Everless Wall still stood, helped along by the most ancient oaks’ strength woven with the hardness of steel. Helped along by the magics of each guild, from each preamble to the wisest grandmaster.

  “We’re coming!” Claire shouted, even though she knew she was too far away for anyone to hear. “Hold on!” She leaned low over the unicorn’s neck. The silvery mane whipped back, tickling her nose. Any moment, the unicorns’ magic would make all the guilds’ magic stronger.

  Any moment, the magic in Mulchbombs and Sunlight Ropes and Sun Swords would be able to cut into the shadows, stronger and more powerful than ever before. A tiny seed of light suddenly flitted from a tower. Claire was still too far away to see, but the unicorn could, and she pressed into Claire’s heart the vision of a bird, woven from the mossy fuzz of a marimo, shining with a pearly light, its beak edged with sword steel that could glow in the night and cut back the wraiths.

  Nett’s marimo, shaped by Thorn and edged with Fireblood’s tip.

  For a moment—a single, magnificent moment—the little bird withstood the storm. But just before Claire c
ould let out a ragged cheer, she saw the wings of light bend, and the bit of alchemy was sucked into the vortex of shadows.

  Gone.

  Swallowed whole.

  The wraiths were space without light, swallowing it, devouring it, like the black holes that lurked in space, eating stars.

  “Stop!” Claire screamed out to the unicorns. “Go back!” But the unicorns galloped forward. Once, Claire had seen a single unicorn sweep away a plain of these monsters with a swoop of his horn, but now … Claire imagined another unicorn, shoulders as large as boulders, with a blue sheen to her creamy coat, charging at the solid shadows, only to be blown out like a spark.

  Claire tugged at the unicorn’s mane. “Please! You have to tell them to turn around! It’s not working!”

  It wasn’t unicorns who defeated the Wraith Queen.

  “What?” Claire shouted, confused, but the unicorns surged with them, brighter than sun on snow—a burning brilliance that should have blinded Claire but, somehow, made her see everything. Remember everything.

  Her first evening with Terra, after a day of disappointments, Claire thought that maybe she’d run out of magic. “Magic never runs out,” Terra had told her. “It’s always there, in the material. Magic is really about seeing, about finding the possibilities.”

  An evening Claire should have been practicing but instead chose to follow Sophie down a forbidden set of stairs to a chamber full of red-stone warriors. An army, they’d thought. But no. Jasper had said it was a memorial—one that commemorated all the Gemmers whose bodies were never recovered from the battlefield.

  And now Claire understood why those Gemmers’ bodies had never been recovered.

  They had never died.

  “A changing of hearts,” Sophie had said. “Estelle saved herself.”

  Claire knew what needed to be done.

  “Let me down!” Claire shouted, and the unicorn beneath her swiftly dropped to her knees. Claire flung herself off and hit the ground, rolling to the edge so she wouldn’t be trampled. Without the unicorn’s touch, the wraiths’ cold prickled against her skin, but she was not afraid. Claire was loved by a unicorn, and she knew, somehow, that she would never again be in danger of a wraith’s touch. And with that knowledge in her mind, Claire threw herself onto her hands and knees and plunged her hands into the earth—into Arden.

  She gasped.

  Magic—hot and fresh—bubbled, trilled, surged, and sang at her fingertips.

  The hum that had first scared Claire in the chimney had become a familiar friend, but now it was gone, and in its place was a symphony: a concerto of tectonic plates, chiming gemstones, and warbling pebbles. The magic of Arden spoke to her, singing a story of all the possibilities of Arden—how the smidgen of clay near her thumb could be crafted into a perfect grail, how the boulder a few yards away could shoulder the weight of a new and airy palace on a hilltop, how the wyverns hidden in the heart of the mountains were ready to return.

  But Arden was made up of more than just rock. The unicorns’ song and the rush of renewed magic seemed to momentarily blur the boundaries among the guilds of magic, and Claire could hear, only slightly less clearly, the clarion call of metal running through the soil, the green thrum of roots twisting between metals and minerals as it made a gentle promise to nurture the fibers that could be spun into warmth and protection.

  Metal was in stone was in green was in cloth.

  With the return of the unicorns, Arden itself had awakened, and it joined in the unicorns’ song, telling a story of all that Arden had been, was now, and could be—something brighter and stronger than any one of them could have ever possibly imagined.

  Claire had an entire world of magic at her fingertips. Arden’s fate was in her hands. Her heart skipped a beat. There was no way she could do this! It was too much!

  The unicorn next to her reared up, a silver scythe against a blue sky. Don’t be afraid! she proclaimed. You are not alone! Four diamond hooves stomped back on the earth, and the unicorn who had been a girl lowered her head to let her crystal horn rest on Claire’s shoulder. And all across Constellation Range, the unicorns continued their gallop toward the Citadel’s peak.

  The symphony of magic swelled.

  Claire, the unicorns sang, change the world!

  And pushed by unicorn song, Claire did.

  With her fingertips, Claire found a tendril of heat sent up from the world’s heart, a delicate breath that wove in and out of underground pools, coaxing life into even the deepest and darkest places, where nothing should have been able to exist.

  You can do it, Claire. You’ve already done this before. An image of the Sand Dolphin leaped into her mind.

  Claire smiled. “You mean we can do it.”

  After all, Sophie had always made the world around Claire come alive. Sophie had always sparked Claire’s courage. Sophie had always been a unicorn.

  And they would always be sisters.

  Together, the sisters of Arden urged the tendril of heat—of magic multiplied by a thousand unicorns—toward the Citadel. With the crystal horn on her shoulder, Claire could feel the magic twisting and turning as it made its way through the ground to Starscrape Citadel and then underneath it.

  It moved faster and faster, spreading like roots as it passed under one chamber of craftsmen, and Claire could hear Tiller call to Spinner call to Forger call to Gemmer to help one another against the fury of wraiths. But that wasn’t where the magic needed to go. Instead, it flowed past them and down deeper and farther to another chamber, one that could be reached only by a spiraling staircase that had been roped off, marked as forbidden. And as the magic moved, it gathered strength, swelling like a wave, and then—

  Thunder rolled out over the peak as the Everless Wall collapsed.

  Claire’s ragged breath caught in her chest.

  The wraiths had broken through. Arden’s last defense was now only a ring of dust.

  Not just dust, the unicorn said with a gentle prod. Look.

  Claire fumbled once more for her spyglass and brought it to her eye. Something moved within the clouds. Giants.

  Statues.

  Claire let out a joyful shout as row after row of red-stone warriors shrugged out of the dust and surrounded the Citadel in a protective circle, forming a barrier between the wraiths and the people.

  The Memorial of the Missing had awakened.

  Or, as Claire had realized, the memorial of all those Gemmers who’d gone on a unicorn hunt and whose choices had twisted them beyond any human recognition, corrupting them into shadow. The only thing left of their humanity was the memorial sculpted by the loving hands of those Gemmers who were left behind, with no knowledge of what had happened to their friends and family members. The sculptors from three hundred years ago who, at the direction of Prince Martin, who’d been a friend to unicorns, had preserved the best aspects of those hunters so that they, too, might have a chance to feel sunlight again.

  The wraiths, confused, shifted back, away from the strange marching statues, but the unicorns charged forward. Their horns brimmed with light, illuminating the wraiths’ former selves carved into the stone.

  But one unicorn did not go forward. She stayed behind with Claire, and they watched together from the higher peak as the white ring of unicorns rushed toward a red-stone band to squeeze out the dark shadows between, a circle of darkness that grew thinner and thinner as the unicorns’ light grew stronger.

  For a moment, Claire thought she could hear a bubble of laughter—of joyful recognition, of reunion with a long-lost friend—as the wraiths saw and remembered who they had been and could be again.

  A changing of hearts.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t laughter at all but only the chime of diamond hooves on rock.

  Still, Claire was sure of one thing: the dark was lifting. Slowly at first, but then like a thunderstorm giving way to rain and then a gentle patter, it lessened until it was nothing at all. The shadows were gone, replaced by misty rainbows that hu
ng over the mountaintop.

  Estelle’s promise, at last, had been fulfilled.

  The wraiths had been reunited with the sun.

  The stone statues, their mission done, settled back into their stationary state, though they remained circling Starscrape Citadel, replacing the Everless Wall that had separated the Gemmers from the rest of Arden for three hundred years. A new kind of memorial, one not of loss but of being found again.

  “Where are the unicorns going?” Claire cried out. They had not stopped running. Instead, they were streaming down the mountains, flowing like rivers into the rest of Arden.

  Do not fear, her unicorn said. We are here to stay. We will seek out all those suffering from wraith-burn and will heal them.

  She stood behind Claire, and Claire was aware of her solid warmth as she leaned back into the creature. The unicorn lowered her head and rested it on Claire’s shoulder. Again, Claire felt joy and courage flow through her, but this time, they were tempered by something else, which made the emotions less fierce and more soft—comfortable, even. Peaceful.

  Claire turned and threw her arms around the unicorn’s arched neck. “We did it,” Claire whispered fiercely into the mane. “We did it.”

  “Purr-ka!” At the sound of the familiar chirp, Claire let go of the unicorn and looked up. Gryphin was soaring in the air, making dizzying loops, as though marking the spot where Claire stood. Claire looked down the path to see people spilling out of the Citadel.

  Claire brought the spyglass to her eye. Spinners danced with Tillers while Forgers dropped their weapons and stared in awe at the flick of tails rushing down the mountains. Gemmers, meanwhile, stood in family groups, a little bit shy as they studied the new wall. Adjusting the lens slightly, Claire saw the spotted face of a Tiller scribe chatting animatedly with a Forger apprentice who wore pigtails, while next to them, she saw the familiar face of Master Pumus bending down to help a Spinner collect the ribbons she’d thrown into the air in celebration.