The Star Shard

by Frederic S. Durbin

  "I can't go yet," Cymbril told her, shaken though she was. "I don't have everything I came for."

  Miwa made a displeased yowl and bounded two steps higher.

  "Go on if you want," Cymbril said. "I have to buy one more thing."

  She turned back toward the crowds and tents, wondering how she could find the right place. Well, asking had worked once. She began to search for someone who looked fairly safe—or at least less dangerous than most.

  A few women cradling bundles in their arms were lined up at a shop window beneath a sign that read: "HANGELINGS EXCHANGED—ALL DEALS FINAL." The bundles wriggled and thrashed, and from within the booth came a chorus of wailing and snarling that did not sound good.

  Miwa returned, moaning and getting underfoot, determined to herd Cymbril out of the market. When Cymbril clucked her tongue in exasperation and marched toward the nearest booth, Miwa hissed and hurried off in a new direction, lashing her tail.

  "Thank you," Cymbril muttered, and followed her.

  They passed along the main thoroughfare. It was impossible to see much of anything but the strange Night Marketgoers, shrouded and hooded, winged and furry, some with claws, some with tails twining out from beneath their hems. The aromas of hot food and spices mingled with incense and the odor of wild beasts. Some of the night folk regarded Cymbril surreptitiously or took no notice at all. Some stopped in their tracks to gawk.

  So I don't blend in anywhere, she thought. Her shining hair and olive-gold skin set her apart from the Rake folk, and her humanness made her stand out among the Night Marketgoers.

  Ahead Miwa turned into a side avenue of fewer shops and less traffic. Leaving the throngs behind, Cymbril followed between two rows of trunks to a round enclosure like a forest clearing.

  Four archways allowed entrance through a ring of trees and walls of lattice fence. Roses bloomed all over the trellises—large, heavy-looking roses that mysteriously thrived without the sun. Inside the fence, four tree trunks leaned together, the spaces between them chinked with rocks and mud to form a hut crowned with bare, stubby branches. Moss and leaves spread underfoot, with only limbs above. This was entirely a forest clearing, with no vestige of the Thunder Rake.

  Purple light flickered inside the hut. Its single window was the counter of yet another shop. Miwa growled again, her head low.

  Cymbril stooped to pet the cat. "I'll be as careful as I can," she whispered, not liking the look of the place herself. But Loric had assured her that she was in no danger as long as she came to do business. Gathering her courage, she stepped through the fence and crossed the glade, her slippers crinkling the leaves. There was a chill here, the hint of autumn coming behind the summer that was young in the rest of the land.

  She stood before the counter, a board with fire-blackened edges laid across the window's stone sill. Inside, she saw a curtained doorway and crowded shelves of jars, bottles, a balance and weights, lidded boxes, and a few urns. The unearthly purple light wavered on the walls. Cymbril couldn't find the light's source. It was a warmthless glow with no lamp to cast it. The shop had a simple herbal smell like that of any kitchen's spice shelf.

  She leaned toward the counter, not touching it, trying to see more of the interior on either side. The shopkeeper must be in the back, behind the curtain. Cymbril supposed she should call out but felt suddenly fearful of breaking the silence. The impulse rose in her to leave with the skeleton key and count the evening a success.

  Behind her, she saw Miwa hiding outside the trellis, the cat's green eyes just visible through the vines.

  Yes, Cymbril thought, I think I'll go now.

  Turning for a final glance into the shop, she yelped.

  Just on the counter's other side, two ancient women sat in chairs—the women, the sisters with three eyes between them: Atymnia and Fennella. This was their shop, at the heart of their Night Market. How they'd come to be settled there in a single instant, Cymbril couldn't guess. Needles of ice prickled her spine. They still wore yellow, but not the dingy hue they wore beneath the sun. Their scarves shone with the fire in the eyes of wolves.

  The Eye Women spoke one after the other, their words nearly overlapping, as if their minds were intertwined.

  "She's come."

  "The songstress."

  "The chick."

  "The Thrush."

  "The finder."

  "The one who sees."

  "With coins in her purse."

  "To buy."

  "To buy of us, sister."

  And both dissolved into laughter, a dry and tiny sound, like spiders coughing: Ith, ith, ith, ith, ith.

  "F-fair evening," Cymbril stammered. "I've come to buy Nixielixir."

  The two withered heads turned toward each other. Then came the laughter again: Ith, ith, ith.

  "The elixir of Nixies—"

  "—under the sea."

  "Beauty she seeks."

  "Skin like moonlight under the waves."

  "Hair that billows in the watery wind, thirty fathoms below."

  "Eyes like stars and the wells of the Deep."

  "Beauty that hardens the heart like coral."

  "But not for herself."

  "No, surely, not for herself."

  Ith, ith, ith.

  Ith, ith, ith, ith, ith.

  Cymbril didn't know what to make of the flood of words. As she gazed back and forth between them, she was sure the third eye traveled. The sisters' faces squinted and twisted as they spoke. First one would widen her eyes, exposing two red-veined orbs with ink-black irises. And yet, in the next heartbeat, the same woman had one eye closed and shriveled, and her sister had two eyes. Now right, now left, without using their hands, they passed the shared eye back and forth as they seemed to pass their single mind. Cymbril had the awful notion that it was not the eye that wandered to and fro, but the emptiness of the socket—a hollow well, a black pit of loss that the crones traded and cherished, each desiring to wear it in her head.

  With a fearsome suddenness, the sister on the left pounced to her feet and set a small stoppered bottle on the counter. It stood there glinting in the purple light, the dark liquid inside swirling from the motion that had brought it there.

  Cymbril stared. There had been no hunting among shelves. She could only conclude that the woman had known beforehand exactly what Cymbril had wanted to buy.

  "The price—" said the old woman.

  "The moon is half-past full," said her sister.

  "So the cost is dearer."

  "Six coins."

  "Six coins it must be."

  Now there was no laughing.

  Cymbril nodded, in no mind to question or haggle. She pulled open her coin purse and began to count.

  Her heart sank. "I don't have six." She felt around inside the purse, hoping she'd miscounted. But there'd been only seven coins to start with. Two for the skeleton key, with change back, and one to the doorman. She didn't have nearly enough.

  Now the other sister had risen and loomed over the counter.

  "Not six?" asked one.

  "Not six?" demanded the other.

  "How many?"

  "How much?"

  Their wrinkled faces writhed and bunched, staring and squinting.

  With a start, Cymbril saw the fat frog beside her, gazing up with reproach.

  She took a breath. "I ... I have four coins. And five stars." She lined up the coins and the stars on the countertop, shaking the purse to be sure she'd missed nothing.

  Once more the sisters swiveled their heads to peer at each other. Then the three eyes blazed at Cymbril.

  One sister snatched the bottle, and Cymbril was sure she meant to take it away. But instead, she held it out while the other sister scooped up the coins and stars.

  "The sale is made," said the first, wiggling the bottle until Cymbril took it.

  "The difference is exacted," said the other.

  Cymbril knew enough of marketing to question what she'd heard. "What's been exacted?"

 
"The price," said the second.

  "Four moons," said the first.

  "Five stars."

  "And the difference."

  "What difference?" Cymbril asked, looking down at herself. She had the sudden cold fear that she'd be missing a finger or a leg.

  "Nothing of yours."

  "Nothing you'll miss."

  Cymbril wasn't satisfied. She felt angry and more than a little scared. "I have to know, or I'm not buying this. What is exacted?"

  Atymnia and Fennella stood like a mass of storm clouds behind the counter.

  "The worth of six half-moons," muttered one.

  "Six," agreed the other.

  "Nothing more," said both sisters together. "All is fair."

  "Now go."

  "Fair and done."

  "Take what is yours."

  The sisters sat back down in perfect unison.

  Trembling, Cymbril watched them. The fat frog was uncomfortably close, unblinking, his sides pulsing with his breath. After a long moment, she pulled the drawstring, closing the purse that was still tied to her wrist. From the countertop, she picked up the blue bottle and the twine-bound box that held the key.

  Step by step, she backed away from the tree hut, watching the old women in the purple window. When she reached the rose fence and turned away, she was sure she heard, far behind her, a faint ith, ith, ith.

  The look on Miwa's face said, I hope you're happy. For her own part, Cymbril was hoping the doorkeeper wouldn't demand another coin to open the door again on her way out.

  Chapter 10

  The Exacted Difference

  The Rake opened its gate the next morning at Gallander, a settlement that sprawled around the knees of an ancient hill fort. A council hall stood where the fortress had once dominated the summit, and the steep sides of the hill were terraced into gardens. Cymbril's favorite feature of Gallander was the weathered ring of standing stones on an outthrust arm of the hill. The people—possibly giants—who had placed the stones were long vanished, and the circle was draped in a profusion of grapevines. The wine made from these grapes was the chief attraction of Gallander's midsummer festival, or so Cymbril had heard in the market.

  When she'd been eight years old, Cymbril had tried to escape in Gallander. She'd slipped away from her music teacher and crawled off into a field of tall grass. Even now she could remember giggling as she rolled down a slope through the green stems, butterflies and grasshoppers dodging out of her way, while people in the marketplace shouted for her. She'd gotten no farther than the stone circle. It had seemed to call to her with a silent melody, a song she felt deep in her core rather than heard. Itchy from the grass, tired from her escape, she'd drawn up her knees and sat with her back against a rough, cool stone. She'd watched clouds drift in the dazzling blue, changing their shapes. She'd gazed at the lines of soldiers and merchants looking for her, fanned out across the fields. Finally it was one of the Knights Fountainers who had discovered her, speaking kindly as he offered her his hands, and then hoisted her into the saddle of his magnificent black horse with a white star on its forehead. Riding back with him to the market, Cymbril felt she could see the whole world from that saddle, as if it were somehow higher than the soaring decks of the Rake.

  On this visit to Gallander, the sky drizzled rain all day, raising white mist from the gardens, filling the air with the smells of slick black leaves and sticks shiny with damp. At the dawn gathering in the ramp bailey, Rombol announced that the market would be held indoors. So as lightning flashed beyond the windows and rain splattered the sills, the merchants scrambled to convert their wagon procession into rows of stalls.

  Amid the traffic and shouts, Cymbril skillfully disappeared before she could be given a task. She'd resolved to deliver the Nixielixir early so that she could quit worrying about it. With irony, she thought about what a relief it was to be among mundane merchants again, where no one had wings or tongues that forked.

  Even after getting back to her bunk, she'd slept poorly, her mind too full of memories and questions. It still bothered her that the Eye Women had finished the sale without her agreement—and that they'd spoken of the "exacted difference" between the cost of her purchase and the money she had. They'd taken the value of six coins (so they said)—nothing of Cymbril's, nothing she'd miss.

  She had examined the blue bottle again and again, holding it up to the light of her stone and pin, pulling out the stopper to sniff its contents. Was it truly safe to give Gerta and Berta an elixir she'd bought from the likes of the sisters? What if it turned them into snails? Worse, what if it was poison?

  A fine time to be doubting the plan now, she scolded herself. Loric knew what he was talking about—she would have to trust him on this. When morning had finally come, she'd stuffed her Night Market purchases into her pockets, along with her own two treasures.

  Dodging among people with armloads of goods, she hopped up onto a barrel and spied, near one end of the gallery, the cloth dyers' booth. Perfect. Berta and her mother were busily arranging the bolts and racks of cloth while Gerta drove their now-empty wagon away toward the ramp that led up to the Hall of Wagons. As Gerta waited in the queue, holding the reins of her swaybacked horse, Cymbril would have all the time she needed. Before moving forward, Cymbril studied the twins' mother, her face careworn and sad beneath her wayward gray hair. What must it be like for her, watching her daughters lose their minds? Unquestionably, the girls were growing more empty-headed all the time. Berta stood with a basket, daydreaming, until her mother scolded her. Gerta dropped the reins and sat counting her fingers. Fortunately, the old horse knew which direction to pull the wagon and where to line up.

  One hand gripping the Nixielixir, Cymbril came very close to giving up her plan. Watching the girls and their mother at a distance, something suddenly became clear to her. All this time she'd tried to imagine what the girls wanted, supposing that would make them happier. What they needed was healing for their minds. Cymbril supposed being beautiful wouldn't hurt the sisters, and maybe happiness would help to restore them. But she couldn't shake off the feeling that she'd bought the wrong thing for them at the Night Market.

  Cymbril kept to the shadows until at least twenty carts had moved into line behind Gerta's, screening it from the view of Berta and their mother. Then she sidled past wheels and horses, waving and smiling up at the occasional drivers who greeted her. Coming alongside Gerta's wagon, she seized the handgrip and swung herself into the seat beside Gerta as if she belonged there.

  "Good morning, Gerta," she said cheerily.

  The taller girl recoiled as if a wild animal had pounced onto the wagon seat. At least she remembers me, Cymbril thought. As a deeper color flooded the girl's face and she began to quiver with outrage, Cymbril clutched Gerta's forearm.

  "I'm here to apologize," Cymbril said. "I never meant you or your sister any harm, and I'm sorry for all that's happened."

  "You—" Gerta spluttered. "You—!"

  "I want to give you a present—a good one this time. Then will we be even?"

  Since Cymbril had a grip on her right wrist, Gerta swung with her left. Cymbril barely caught the fist in her free hand. They struggled in the seat, and the wagon creaked. The horse lifted its head and swished its tail.

  "Girls, girls!" warned the driver behind them, a man in a slouch hat. Two extremely old brothers in the wagon ahead turned shakily to look over their shoulders.

  "Don't mind us," Cymbril called as casually as possible. "We're just talking." Gerta had hold of Cymbril's face now, one finger jammed into her nostril. Growling, Gerta forced her to the seat's edge, trying to hurl her to the ground.

  "Mmmf! Mlet ngo!" Cymbril struggled to pry Gerta's hand loose from her jaw.

  Gerta muttered a string of threats as they both nearly toppled from the seat.

  "Girls!" called the man in the slouch hat. "Do I hafta douse you with a bucket o' water?"

  "We're f-f-f-fine!" Cymbril grated through clenched teeth. With a heave, she flung Ge
rta's hand off her face, and the girl's knuckles crashed against the wooden seat back. Gerta yowled.

  "Listen to me!" Cymbril seized the hand again before it punched her. "I'm here about your hair!"

  Gerta glared, but she held still. "What about my hair?"

  The two old men peered owl-eyed from one girl to the other.

  "There's a way to make it grow full and shiny." Cymbril rushed to get the words out. "Your sister's, too. And your skin. I have an elixir that will make you both beautiful as the princesses in old stories."

  "Little squawking liar!"

  "No! No! It's right here." Cymbril dipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out the bottle.

  She scooted away, gasping for breath, as Gerta snatched the Nixielixir and stared at it.

  Gerta grabbed Cymbril by the collar. "It's nothing but Moonpine dye. What do you take me for?"

  "No, it's Nixielixir—I promise!" Cymbril winced as Gerta tightened her grip. "Smell it! Rub a little on your finger! I only want to set things right between us. I never meant to turn you blue. I'm sorry."

  Gerta held on tightly but looked again at the bottle.

  "'Nixie liquor'?"

  Cymbril nodded emphatically. "It's magical."

  "Let's go!" shouted the man in the slouch hat, pointing ahead. The wagon line had advanced. The two old brothers shifted back around on their high seat, and Gerta picked up her reins, the bottle clamped between her knees. The horse heaved a sigh and clopped onto the ramp. Now Gerta had to keep her other hand on the brake to prevent the wagon from rolling backward, and Cymbril let out a relieved breath, straightening her clothes.

  "Why should I believe you?" said Gerta with a sniff.

  "That's up to you." Cymbril's pride was returning now that she'd handed the bottle over. "I went to a lot of trouble to get it. And just so you know, I use Nixielixir myself." She ran her fingers through her hair, letting it swish across her shoulders.

  That was a bald-faced lie, but something told her it was the way to get Gerta and Berta to drink the elixir. "Look," she added, "you can go on hating me until the elixir works. What have you got to lose?"

  As the horse labored to pull the wagon up the incline, Gerta rode the brake lever. The iron shoes screeched against the axles.