Sing Down the Stars (The Celestine Series Book 1)

by L. J. Hatton

  Not growing up in a world of manufactured dreams, where wishes could be granted with the turn of a wrench, and ingenuity was as effective as fairy dust.

  I took the seat that had been Jermay’s, and he took that as his excuse to go sit with Winnie. He didn’t even touch her, but I couldn’t stop watching them. The clothes she wore were much nicer than the ones Birdie had found for me.

  It was a horrible, petty thought, made worse by the fact that I couldn’t stop it from repeating itself. Winnie had saved my life more than once since she spoke her first words on the train, and I was begrudging her sleeves long enough to cover her scars, all because she looked more like the me I wanted to be, sitting next to Jermay, than I ever had.

  “Were you injured, too?” Sister Mary Alban’s voice surprised and shamed me. I shook my head, wondering if she could see my jealous thoughts on my face.

  “Winnie wasn’t injured, she’s—”

  “Scarred and scared. I know. What about you?”

  I shook my head again. Was this how Winnie had felt those silent years? Maybe there’d been things she wanted to say or share, but the words wouldn’t come. Mine felt stuck in my teeth.

  “Head shaking I can work with,” the sister said; I swirled the mint leaves around my cup before I took a sip. “You’re from The Show, aren’t you?”

  Cold fear poured down my back, at odds with the tea scalding my throat. The woman unnerved me. The way she moved her hands when she spoke was very much like Nim, and her habit of cutting through layers to get straight to the truth of a thing reminded me of Anise, but her eyes were the worst. They were the precise shape and color of mine and my father’s—and Evie’s. Having this person in whom I could see so much of my family sit beside me—and ask the kinds of questions people were supposed to be afraid to voice—was too much.

  “Your friend with the remarkable eyes said his father was part of a circus,” she explained. “It wasn’t hard to narrow the possibilities.”

  “The warden can’t come in here, but what about other things?” I asked.

  “You mean things that are a little harder to notice?”

  “Yeah. Things like that.”

  Holograms didn’t need to bypass locks; they could bypass walls. And hounds . . . Well, they could just knock them down.

  “These walls are old and thick,” the sister said. “We often get complaints from parishioners because their phones won’t work with the doors closed.”

  “Unnoticeables are a bit more advanced than a mobile signal.”

  “So is this.” The sister reached up and took a chain from around her neck. The medallion on the end was warm when she placed it in my hand, and heavier than its delicate appearance hinted at. “It was given to me by someone who wanted to keep me safe in his absence. It’s worked rather well, I think.”

  She slipped the chain over my head.

  “I can’t,” I said, and tried to hand the necklace back, but she curled my fingers around it.

  “St. Christopher is the patron of travelers. He’ll see you home.”

  I opened my hand for a better look at the medallion. It was small and brassy from age; the man engraved on the front carried a walking stick. An etched halo circled his body, and he looked a bit like Jermay’s father—too old to do much protecting.

  “It’s vibrating,” I said.

  “It recognizes your father in you.”

  I flipped it over, and found a maker’s mark, worn smooth and shallow by time as someone had worried the design over and over. I would have known it in my sleep. In fact, I felt like I was dreaming, sitting at that stranger’s table and staring at her familiar eyes while tracing the braided M and R my father left on every piece he crafted.

  “Your tea’s gone cold.” Sister Mary Alban grinned slyly as she plucked my cup from the table. She turned to the stove, putting her back to me.

  “This is my father’s mark. Where did you get it?”

  “It was a gift,” she said, distracted by adding new kindling to the stove. There wasn’t enough of a fire left for the new wood to catch, only embers that were quickly buried when the pile inside the stove shifted.

  “From who?” I pressed.

  “Someone I’ve not seen in a long time.” She started rifling shelves, I assumed in search of something to light the wood. “Keep the medal close. It may not look like much, but appearance is rarely the defining factor of a thing’s usefulness.”

  She gave up her search. “Someone’s taken my matches. I guess I’ll have to do this the fun way.” She flicked her wrist in the air, summoning another dragonfly. This time it flew toward the stove, landed on the tinder inside, and rekindled the fire.

  “Who are you?” I asked her.

  “Someone who would appreciate your not mentioning that little trick. This is a very basic order. The less complicated an adherent’s life, the better.”

  “Then no one else here knows what you can do?”

  “That is the definition of a secret, dear. It’s not as though I go around calling myself Mary Elmo or Mary Erasmus—a bit on the nose given the blue lightning, don’t you think?”

  “Is that what the ‘true flame’ on the front of the building means?” I asked, hoping she’d oblige in telling me more about herself and where she came from. “Simplicity, and nothing else? No machines. Nothing . . . um . . . special?”

  “Now that is a hard question,” Sister Mary Alban said. “There are flames of fire, but there are also flames of compassion and kindness, flames of spirit, even love. I’d say they’re all true.” She paused, glancing between me and Jermay, who was rubbing Winnie’s hands to warm them up. “Most in this order would say that technology and that which runs on new and strange power sources are the temptations which nearly cost us the world, and so—evil.”

  “And what about people with new and strange powers?”

  I looked away from her, uncomfortable with having Evie’s eyes bearing down on me from a stranger’s face. And I already knew the answer. My first act in life was murder. What good is there in that?

  “Evil requires intent. It’s not—”

  Someone jiggled the door latch, ending our conversation. When the door didn’t open, the person in the hall pulled harder, and when that still yielded no results, they knocked. Impatiently.

  Sister Mary Alban motioned for us to stay put, despite the instant urge to run and hide.

  “You might want to put that on,” she told Klok, and pointed at Bull’s coat on the floor. “No need showing more than you intend to be seen.”

  Thankfully, Bull had long arms, and the cuffs went nearly to the ends of Klok’s fingers. Once his metal parts were hidden, and after another knock, the sister opened the door.

  Another woman entered, wearing a brown dress and dressing gown. She was much younger than Mary Alban, closer to twenty than fifty.

  “I expected you to come and tell me what this ruckus has been—” This new woman faltered when she took notice of us scattered around the room.

  “It was a minor issue, and it’s been handled,” Mary Alban said.

  “From the look of things, it was at least five issues, and that’s more than minor.” The woman set her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face, which aged her fifteen years in as many seconds. “Who are these children?”

  “They’re guests. Children, this is Dorcas. She’s a novice in our order.”

  Dorcas didn’t indulge the introduction.

  “What are you thinking, bringing in strays off the street?” she hissed.

  “I think the technical term is ‘aiding and abetting,’ but ‘granting sanctuary’ sounds more pleasant.”

  The sister backed Dorcas toward the door.

  “They could run out of here with everything we have.” Dorcas stepped sideways, snatching up Winnie’s pack from beside the door. She shook it, gasping when th
e top flap jostled open to reveal the tech inside.

  “Running is hardly the way to avoid the people outside, which is their main goal at present,” Mary Alban said.

  “Did you know about this?” Dorcas shook the pack again.

  Her question didn’t require an answer. While Klok had covered himself, he’d done nothing about Xerxes, lying on the floor with his inner workings exposed. Too late, Klok snapped the casing shut, which earned a squawk from Xerxes’ beak.

  “They’re children, and strangers. I took the name of St. Alban—what do you expect me to do?”

  “Let the children in, but cast this wickedness out before it brings darkness to our door.”

  The longer Dorcas was there, the hotter my face and hands grew, until I hid my arms behind my back for fear that they might glow. She was speaking about my father’s work as though it were a contagion. That fury compounded what I’d felt for the loss of the train, the loss of our family, even having Tuck manhandle Winnie while I was unable to stop it, and I was too tired to push down the emotion. It matched the raging burn of the fire from the stove as it flared through the top grates, and the howl of the wind down the chimney.

  Sister Mary Alban’s attention shifted to me, but she didn’t say a word.

  Unlike the times before, I felt a spark inside my chest in response to the unpleasantness. This was a new presence that was trying to help me. It was a solid thing, awaiting the order to rise and knock the stars from the sky. There were no windows. If the stars sang down, we’d never know unless they pierced the roof. I clenched my fists to hold them back.

  Birdie was awake now, and like Winnie, she was staring at me from across the room. While Jermay seemed to be considering whether he should leave the fire, a hand took hold of mine. That was when I realized that Klok had joined me. He squeezed my fingers.

  There and then, it wasn’t hard to see my father’s want for his dead son in Klok’s construction. Klok had the same coloring as me and my sisters, save for the paler scarlike patches serving as entry points for his wires. His eyes were near-perfect duplicates of my father’s, and my father had incorporated more of his own features into Klok over the years.

  Klok squeezed my hand again, and suddenly I wasn’t afraid. I took a deep breath, filled my senses with the mint-flavored steam from Sister Mary Alban’s kettle, and told the stars to wait. To my amazement, they listened.

  Winnie stomped across the room to wrench her pack from Dorcas’s hands.

  “This is mine,” she said. “And it saved my life, so I’ll thank you not to speak poorly of the man who made it.”

  “Men aren’t my concern,” Dorcas said. “Mechanical aberration puts us all in danger. Every bit of this could be alien for all we know.”

  It seemed the only flame that burned in Dorcas was one of fear and suspicion.

  “The Medusae will return, or they won’t,” Mary Alban said. “And they will do so without a care for what a group of scared children carry in their backpacks.”

  “Look at that thing!” Dorcas jabbed a finger toward Xerxes, now sitting at heel between me and Klok. He fixed her with an unflinching stare that was so much like my father’s, I expected to hear his voice come from Xerxes’ beak. A ridge of fine metallic hair stood up along his spine. “It’s breathing. What arrogance does it take to usurp the divine and give life to that which was never meant to walk the earth?”

  “Xerxes makes people smile,” I said. Both women stopped their argument to stare at me. “My father made him to entertain people, and show them what’s possible if you dare to dream it’s so.”

  How was that a bad thing?

  “We’ll leave as soon as we’re able, but for now, we can’t.” Jermay made his move across the room, stopping at my other shoulder. Our hands brushed together at our sides, and our fingers spoke their silent wishes for good luck.

  “If you send us away, we won’t be able to outrun them,” I said.

  “Help us,” Winnie added, followed by Birdie’s “Please.”

  Dorcas wanted to argue—every tense line across her brow said it—but she backed down, just as Bull had done when Winnie and I were cornered in that shed.

  “I won’t stand in the way of charitable ambition, but find your solution quickly. And don’t leave those things lying around where people can see them. You’ll scare our priest to his death.”

  CHAPTER 12

  An adrenaline crash hit hard after Dorcas left, making sleep a necessity, but no one wanted to venture far from the first room we’d felt safe in since the train.

  Winnie and Birdie shared the room’s two-person sofa. Jermay and I pushed a couple of fireside chairs together so that they faced each other. We each sat in one and stretched our legs out into the other. Klok was too big to fit anywhere but the floor, and every time I opened my eyes to change position, I found him sitting up, hard at work repairing Bijou. Xerxes was still small, but moving well. His soft clanging about the room became our lullaby.

  I think Birdie was the only one who slept more than twenty minutes at a clip, and she did it while under Winnie’s arm, hanging on to her hand. I had Winnie’s other one, so that with my legs hooked to Jermay’s we were all in contact.

  I was on my seventh or eighth attempt to find a position that didn’t result in the chair biting me in the spine when I realized Sister Mary Alban had come back from trying to calm Dorcas elsewhere. She was bent down and pulling Xerxes out from between the cupboards with both hands. Klok’s reset had started Xerxes cycling through his complexity programs. The first was imitating a house cat, and he’d been chasing mice.

  Carefully, I slipped my fingers out of Winnie’s and pulled my hand away. I had one leg disentangled and was working on the other when Jermay bolted up in his seat. He grabbed his back where a muscle must have spasmed. I held a hand up to remind him not to yelp.

  Show life had gifted us with languages that didn’t require spoken words; Jermay understood my makeshift signing perfectly. I pointed to the sister, then pressed the air with my hands to tell him to stay put—I wanted to talk to her alone. He nodded and rolled his shoulder, trying to get comfortable again.

  I crossed the room, telling myself that it wasn’t sneaking just because the sister’s back was to me.

  “This is your fault,” she said, but not to me. She was speaking to Xerxes. “I hope you know that. Everything’s gone completely out of hand.”

  Once she’d freed him from the cupboards, Xerxes snapped at her.

  “Don’t be sour. You know it’s true.”

  This was stranger than watching the warden interact with Xerxes during my tour. She sounded like she actually expected an answer.

  “Was all this worth it?”

  She released Xerxes into the room. He coasted over to Klok, then pointedly turned his back on the sister.

  “I’ve not forgotten the last time you did that to me,” she called out to him. “I did forgive you, though.” Then quieter, “I wonder if you’ve managed to do the same.”

  I decided to take a chance.

  “Why do you look like my father?” I asked her. “You have his eyes.”

  “Because he’s my brother, and not in the ecclesiastical sense.”

  “He’s never mentioned a sister.”

  He never mentioned family of any kind, other than the one we built on the road.

  “Magnus made a choice a long time ago, and it wasn’t me. So I came here to protect the ones I cared about—including myself.”

  The sister laid her hand palm up on the table, allowing electricity to seep from her skin. It filled in the shape of her dragonfly like someone carving an inscription with a laser beam, and the golem sat there, beating its wings. She clenched her fist, and it vanished.

  “He was actually working on that traveling coat you’re wearing the last time we spoke—for your mother—but it wasn’t going well. He said
the rhythm was off.” She grew suddenly uncomfortable and motioned toward the hallway door. “May I show you something?”

  I followed her from the kitchen, back into the sanctuary. We’d barely cleared the door when a woman came rushing at us out of nowhere.

  “Did she make it?” the woman asked. “I tried to direct them, but I don’t think any of them possess—”

  Sister Mary Alban cleared her throat, then stepped aside so I was out in the open. The woman’s sudden approach had startled me, and the sister was the closest thing to hide behind.

  “Penn, this is Beryl. Beryl, meet Magnus’s youngest: Penelope.”

  “You said I needed to see something, not someone.”

  Beryl wore dark pants and a shirt, similar in color to a reserve uniform without the camo or patches. She was tall and stocky, reminding me of Bruno Jesek with her fierce expressions, and she was familiar in another way I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Her voice, or the way she moved—something hit a chord.

  “I thought we’d lost you, girl!”

  She swept me up off the ground and swung me in a circle like Bruno would with Birdie.

  “Do you have any idea the scare you gave us when word of the train’s fate spread? And then to find you and Winifred in the state you were in . . . Never thought I’d be happy to see a Commission sweep-up in my life.”

  When she put me down, she kissed my cheek and hugged me again. I felt like a three-year-old being introduced to an overbearing aunt who might pinch me at any moment.

  “Sorry for shouting out there, but it’s always difficult to get through when no one’s got the gift. Oh, what does it matter? You heard me and now you’re here.”

  I backed up a few steps because it looked as if she might try to swing me again.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “And what are you talking about?”

  Beryl looked genuinely surprised. Her eyes shot to Sister Mary Alban, then me, then back.

  “Don’t take it too hard,” the sister said. “She didn’t know me, either.”

  Beryl sank onto the nearest bench.