The Shadow Behind the Stars

by Rebecca Hahn

  But I didn’t get the chance. As Xinot was stepping back to make room and I was stepping forward, holding out the boy, opening my mouth to speak, the oracle gave a sudden hiss and spun once more.

  She pulled a second, smaller knife from her back; she twisted, sliding it between Xinot and Serena, into the space in the center of us, where the child was. Tad made some desperate sound. Xinot shoved the oracle back, and her knife with her.

  But it was too late.

  The boy was darkening with blood; she’d stabbed him, somewhere in his middle. I don’t think he had the power left to scream, but he held my eyes with his sea-green ones, and there was a pleading there that sent an icy horror through me, because it was the same pleading that had been in Aglaia’s eyes.

  Xinot had let the oracle go; she was breathless, as Serena was breathless, as I was nothing but the trembling breath of this boy. My hands were darkening now, but I couldn’t move; I couldn’t put him on the ground until my sisters lowered us both down to the road, and we all huddled together there, tangled.

  I held him.

  What else could I do?

  I held him, and he pleaded with me, and there was nothing we could do.

  Again, again, again, there was nothing we could do.

  I held him, and his eyes closed, and he went to join the darkness.

  Time stopped happening. Nothing would ever be again; nothing had ever been. Even now, describing this moment to you, I am there again, holding the boy in my arms, and I know that this is the only moment, and it is also nothing.

  Fifteen

  I KNEEL WITH THE BOY, waiting for the world to end. It doesn’t. I try to rage, to feel that fury building, to give myself over to it. But there is nothing but a numbness, an emptiness, a why, why, why?

  I have spent my anger. There is nothing left.

  Beside me, my sisters are keening; I hear them, high and sharp. I know Serena’s pain, as heavy as an ocean, as deadly as a blade. She would have stepped in the way of that knife, even as a mortal; she would have taken the death from this child if she could.

  Xinot’s cry is more purposeful. She has anger left; she has power lashing inside, wanting a target, wanting someone to kill. I see her shaking with it; I hear her cane rattling as she braces it against the rocky ground. The oracle has stepped away from us. She is sliding down the road, watching over her shoulder, holding the bloody knife out from her side. Maybe she did not realize how we would react to this. Maybe she is surprised to see us gathered as we are around the child, bent and crying—a mourning circle, a powerless-looking thing.

  Oh, it is not that we do not have power. It is that we do not use it, and do not use it. It is that we guard the world, again and again, despite the terrible cost.

  Xinot pulls herself to her feet, straight as she ever gets. She glances down the road at the oracle, and for a moment I think she is going to run after her, spend her energy punishing the mortal. But she glances away again, as though the oracle isn’t anything at all. The oracle saw the look too, and she scurries away now, faster than her wary sliding. She’ll obey the commands of our darkness, but she’d rather not pay the price that comes from her devotion.

  What does she matter anyway? Nothing now, not now the boy is dead.

  I lean over him, covering him with my hair. If I hide him behind its sheen, maybe he will still exist; maybe when I pull away, he will open his sea-green eyes.

  Chloe, Xinot says.

  I ignore her.

  Chloe, listen to me.

  I shake my head.

  She says, bending down right next to my ear, Yes. You must. It is time to do our work.

  I shake my head again, hardly understanding. What does she mean, it is time to do our work? We cannot. We cannot even think of such a thing.

  But she pulls me up by the arm, and I am surprised enough not to resist. She turns me around; she opens my pack. Even here, facing away from it, I can see the glimmer of my wool at the edges of my eyes.

  Oh, and I don’t know how it can, but it thrills me, still. Even now, even as I hate it with the numb, dead pain that has taken me over, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. Still something in me jumps to see it glimmering like that.

  Xinot pulls out the basket of wool and my spindle; she hands them around to me. I take them, stunned at the glory, stunned at the way the glory still exists next to Tad, who seeps such horrible black in the starless night. I lower myself back to the ground, beside the boy.

  I am not thinking anymore. I haven’t thought since the oracle spun round with her blade, since time stopped moving in expected patterns, since I stopped being able to feel.

  Serena crouches next to me, crying. That is all she is anymore—a flood of tears, as I am only a numbness. They wash her face, again and again, as the black washes Hesper’s lad’s tunic. My hands move of their own accord, toward the wool, toward my spindle. I listen for the next thread; it calls to me. It does not sound right, though; it sounds like pain and numbness, why, why, why? I don’t pull that thread. I wait. I listen.

  It is a strange thing that I do not hear our darkness. The darkness does not seem to exist in this numb place. Maybe if I started to think again, it would be there, screaming at us to stop, to pay attention to what we are doing.

  I listen for the thing that I want.

  It is far beneath, and it is a long time before I hear it. When I do, I reach down into the basket, searching through. It is not there, and I reach deeper, past the bottom, into a space that nobody knew was there—not even me, who works with the thread every day, who knows more about this wool than anyone. I reach deeper, past the bottom, and my hand slides down and down. I am going to fall in after that, and I reach my other arm back to grab Serena’s hand.

  She holds it tight; I know her thoughts—she has none, just like me.

  I reach; I reach. All around, the wool gleams. I dip my shoulder in, and then my head, following the faint sound of the thing I want. I do not close my eyes; I’ve no wish to, not when our glory swirls like this. I catch my breath at the dry burning of it.

  Then Serena takes Xinot’s hand, to hold herself back as she holds me back. And my eldest sister isn’t numb. She isn’t thoughtless. She’s angry, but it’s more than that. She has moved beyond anger into a knowing, certain choice, and I wonder at the surety she has. I didn’t know that Xinot thought such things. I didn’t know until this instant that she has been willing, all these ages long, to tear apart the universe if she was given reason enough.

  She has never been afraid of that, of everything ending, and listening to her thoughts, I’m not afraid either. The wool I want is calling out to me, deeper than I knew the world could go.

  I come out of the basket and look over at my sisters.

  Serena’s tears are flowing. Xinot is shaking with the choice she has made—not out of fear, and not only out of anger—but also out of joy at the trueness of it, the way it is the only choice we have left to make, and the way that we are the only creatures in the world who can make such a choice.

  They want what I want. They will do anything to get it.

  We grip hands; we will not let go. I don’t look at the bleeding boy. He slid from the edge many minutes ago, and there is nothing real left of him to see.

  I grab my spindle with my free hand and plunge it into the basket. My shoulder follows, then my head. It is so deep, the thing that I want, and I know what I must do. I listen; I follow. I leave the ground behind and dive in after it, and my sisters come too, linked to me, kicking through our glory.

  The world disappears.

  We know this stuff, this glittering mass of magic. It isn’t the web of our darkness. It isn’t the patterns that must never be broken, the unchangeable spun threads.

  This is what the patterns are made of. This is the substance from which everything else is formed, the answers to all the questions.

  Everything is here. Everything that has happened, everything that is happening, and everything that will or c
ould or might happen in the future.

  And not only that, but also things that never did happen, and that never could.

  Aglaia is here, an old, old woman, saddened with many lonely years.

  Tad is here, a healthy little boy, younger than he is now. He kicks a ball through the streets of his father’s city, and he laughs, his hair glowing in the sun.

  You are here, being born and living and dying in a thousand different ways, with a thousand different fortunes.

  Everything has happened here, and everything will happen.

  We forget what we came for. We drift, holding hands, and we are all weeping now at the beauty of it.

  I say, Let us never leave this place.

  My sisters do not answer, but I know that they agree.

  We drift, we listen to the stories of the wool. Everything exists, all at once, and nothing ever ends.

  It is a long time before we realize what is strange about this place.

  We have been listening to so many lives, so much potential. Here, you mortals are unlimited, choosing one path and then the next, loving or killing or creating art so true it sends bright shivers down the back of anyone who sees it.

  Everyone is here, every one of you who ever has or ever could exist.

  There are no gods, though. No sun, no sea, no wisdom. There is no darkness. And there is no us.

  We are nowhere in this place, not being born on our darkest night, not growing our vines on the mainland or watching the waves out on our lonely rock. We do not love or kill or create. We are nothing.

  It is a long time before we notice this, but when we do, I feel a thought trickling into my head, the first of my own thoughts since the oracle spun with her second blade toward the child. My sisters feel it too. It ricochets around and through our minds, until I am speaking it: Something’s not quite right.

  I don’t know what that means; of course everything is right. Everything exists. Everything goes on and on, even after it ends, even after it is gone.

  But that thought is itching at me, and it doesn’t go away, doesn’t change, doesn’t become false or unimportant.

  Something is not quite right.

  As I think it, we drift so far into the wool that I am not entirely sure anymore which is the way out. It doesn’t matter, I try to tell myself and my sisters. There is no need to leave. Everything is here.

  Still that thought itches. It itches so much that I remember what we came for, and I scan the wool again, listening for the bit we’re searching out. We’re so deep we’ve reached it; I can hear it just off to one side. We dive over to it, and I grab the bit, wind it around my spindle.

  Xinot has brought her shears; I see them poking out from her free hand. Serena lets go of me and Xinot; we float there in the wool, ready to work.

  I know now what I was listening for.

  It isn’t a mortal; it’s made of the same stuff, but it has none of the bits that make up a middle or an end. It’s only a beginning—a very first thought, a new breath of air, an instant that starts everything over again.

  I am spinning; I am humming. My sisters watch me, knowing my thoughts.

  This isn’t anything that our world could bear. When we take it out into the light, it will end everything, tear apart the patterns, untangle the web. Once all has gone, this thread will be the start of a new time and a new world. And then we can spin and measure it—all the mortals, every life—exactly as we want. We can form the perfect universe, all comfort and joy. We can decide that no one will die, that lands will expand to make room for the threads that we will pile up on our endless shelves.

  Existence—it will be exactly what we want it to be, with nothing bad and nothing hard and no more terrible questions. No more why, why, why?

  I’ve spun the thread; it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

  I pass the end to Serena. Her humming has not the hint of a false note; her hands are smooth as silence as they measure the thread.

  Xinot takes the place she’s marked. Her shears open wide—I think the wool all around makes room, cowering away from the deadly things. The blades straddle the thread. It lies softly in my sister’s hand.

  I am holding my breath. Serena is staring at the thread, eyes shining brighter even than this place.

  My eldest sister brings her blades together—snap.

  Except there is no snap.

  The moment her shears have closed and the thread has been sliced, it melds back together again, and Xinot is as she was before, her scissors straddling the thread, poised to cut.

  She glances at us, and for the first time since Tad died, there is a hint of uncertainty in her face. Then she turns back to the thread, and she snaps her blades together again, and again the thread is cut.

  And then it melds together, and the scissors spring apart.

  I don’t know how many times Xinot tries to cut the thread. Too many to count. I forget there is anything but Xinot trying, anything but sharp black shears and glittering wool, anything but this moment.

  It happens so many times; if we were human, I think we would maybe have died before Xinot has finally stopped and we are drifting motionless through the wool, staring at the uncut thread.

  At last, Serena says, Maybe if we bring it out into the light.

  It takes a moment to understand what she is saying. She means out of the basket, which is where we are. She means somewhere not surrounded by all this wool, somewhere we used to be, a long time ago.

  I blink, and then blink again, struggling to remember who I was before. There was something numbing. There were questions we could not answer. Yes, I say finally. Maybe our power does not work in here. None of the gods are here, after all, not even our darkness, not even us.

  That is true, Xinot says. Maybe we cannot do anything here.

  So we take hands again, and I hold my spindle, and Xinot holds her shears and the end of our newly spun thread. We dive up, away from the deep, listening for the opening to the world.

  Nothing has happened since we went away. We spent ages in the wool, forgetting who we were, trying again and again to snap that thread. But Tad still lies by the side of the road. I catch a glimpse of the oracle still edging away, up over a hill.

  In entering the basket, we left time behind. Everything happens there, so nothing does.

  Xinot is holding the thread, the one that will start the universe over again. She’s marked the place to cut it, where Serena measured it out. She looks up at us, making sure that we want this, too. “If I cut it,” she reminds us, “everything will end.”

  Serena says, soft through her tears, “And everything will begin.”

  “Just as we want it to,” I say, my voice flat as that numbness returns. “No more pain, no more terrible questions.”

  Xinot looks down at the thread, at her dark fingernails exactly at the end. “No more questions,” she says. “Is that what you want?”

  Tad’s skin is so pale, so glowing, that I think he might be made of starlight. It is a beautiful thing, the way he shines. It is terrible, too, and I say, “Yes, that’s what we want. No more heartbreak.”

  “No more death,” Serena whispers.

  I say, “No more endings.”

  Our eldest sister nods, sharp as her blades. “Very well,” she says, with a sort of darkening joy. “For little Taddeo.”

  “For Aglaia,” I whisper, and Serena takes my hand.

  We watch as Xinot’s scissors straddle the thread, that one last time. We watch as they come down fast, together, slicing through the first thought, the new breath, the instant that will start it all over exactly as we want.

  Snap.

  A burning sea.

  A frozen fire.

  Snow of ash.

  Earth of wind.

  Silent screams and a shrieking silence.

  There is an end to patterns. The world stops spinning. The stars go out.

  The universe tears itself apart, and we are to blame.

  Sixteen

>   FIRE.

  Dark, orange, filling my lungs with heat, my blood with danger. I turn to my sisters, and they are looking back at me with the same fire in their eyes, consuming them.

  We are dreaming of our threads.

  Still, here, at the end of this world, our glory gleams in the dark behind our lids, coil upon coil, stretching far into our minds.

  They are burning. When Xinot snapped that thread, they really did burst into flames out there in our house at the edge of the sea. The waves rise up and the sky falls down and all our glory burns. And still we dream of them.

  It’s as though as we destroyed them, they leaped from the flames into our thoughts. As if we are their safe home now, as if they trust us to take care of them, despite what we have done, despite what we have chosen.

  We can hear the darkness, too, howling all around us, in a panic as its patterns rip apart. Our threads are separate from the darkness, somehow. They are not angry with us. They are not asking for anything; they only spin and swirl and gleam as they have always done.

  We are all three of us in pain as the world crumples. But this, the dreaming of our threads, I think is the most difficult. Even now, none of us can look away from them, our bright glory.

  They murmur of what has been, of what would have been, of what happens now as the world falls apart.

  Hesper is looking out the front door of her inn as streets split into chasms. She knows this is our fault. She is begging us to stop, to make it right again.

  The boy who let us out through the wall is huddled in that dark space with a dozen city folk. They are hoping they will be safe, under so much stone. Of course they are wrong.

  Our island, with its surging waves and rushing sky and beautiful, briny wind, is collapsing, whole rows of rocks falling into the sea.

  Tad is still dead, so we cannot hear his thread. We cannot listen to all the things he might have been.