Beneath the Guarding Stars

by Everly Frost

“I’m sorry, Ava, this must seem very cruel to you, but we are entrusted to make wise decisions. We will seek a solution that is of the greatest benefit to everyone involved, weighing up all interests, including yours.”

  “So it’s unlikely that I’d change their minds anyway, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Probably.” She watched me eat the rest of the sandwich. My throat was scratchy and swallowing was difficult, but I knew I should eat while I could.

  Finally Ruth said, “It’s time. Come with me.”

  I followed her from the room into the long corridor outside it. The corridor led back to the data storage area, a long walk away, but halfway along Ruth stopped me where there was a join in the wall panels that I hadn’t noticed before. She palmed the wall and a door opened into a small waiting room, complete with two chairs and a small table pushed into the corner. Opposite were two large doors.

  When we reached the double doors, Ruth gestured to a chair. “Wait here. I’ll go in first.” She paused. “I trust you not to go anywhere, Ava. There are cameras in this waiting area that connect only to the room inside. We can see this spot and it wouldn’t look good if you ran.”

  “What if someone comes along?”

  “Nobody but the Councilors have access to the corridor outside or these rooms here. Not even our staff know about this room. This is where we hold our most secret meetings. Which is why…” She cleared her throat with a disapproving look. “Which is why your ability to walk into the room of long sleep was so unexpected. Nevertheless, don’t be afraid. You’re perfectly safe.”

  She’d said that to me before.

  As she opened the doors, I caught a glimpse of a long table and six other people gathered around it, Naomi included. She glanced my way, the expression in her dark eyes unreadable as the doors closed behind Ruth.

  She was gone for a really long time. What began as fidgeting turned into the need to pace, and before long I was walking the short distance back and forth in front of the doors.

  Finally, Ruth returned and ushered me inside. When I entered the room, she gestured for me to stand in front of the table and went to sit on the far right end of it. Naomi was positioned in the middle as though she was to be the main spokesperson. Peter and Zachary sat between her, Ruth and Jonah on her right with the remaining two Councilors I’d never met before—the ones from the central regions. On the table in front of Jonah was the purple leaf with the long tail, like a silent threat, looking for all the world like a stingray with an extended stinger.

  Sitting at the end of the table, Ruth’s shoulders drooped. She seemed resigned.

  Naomi said, “Ava, the Council has come to two decisions. The first is about Seth. We’ve decided to tell you because you have a right to know what will happen to him.” She paused. “He has been sentenced to living death for his crime. He will occupy a glass coffin for the rest of his natural life. He will not be awakened.”

  Her eyes glistened, and as much as I didn’t trust her I sensed genuine grief in her voice. “This is a sad day for Starsgard. A sentence like this is very rare. Only a great atrocity can warrant this. The pre-meditated murder of another citizen is just that: a very great crime.” She swallowed. “Do you have any questions about that?”

  The coffin had taunted me. Seth would occupy it now, but I wondered who it had really been meant for. “The empty coffin,” I said. “Was it meant for me?”

  “No, Ava. It was meant for someone else but he never occupied it.”

  “What did he do, that person?”

  Ruth cleared her throat as though she was about to speak—or perhaps to tell me my question was out of order—but Naomi interrupted. “He escaped before the sentence was carried out,” she said. “That will never happen again.”

  I took a quick breath. I’d definitely struck a nerve. “Who was he?”

  The Councilors remained silent.

  I drew myself up, trying not to shake, trying to keep calm, trying to ignore the way my voice choked, swallowing hard. “You said you’d come to two decisions.”

  They all looked to Ruth, and it seemed she would be the one to tell me my fate, not Naomi after all.

  “We’ve realized…” She took a deep breath. “I’ve realized that keeping you here was not in your best interests. We won’t send you out of Starsgard, because that would be a death sentence. You can’t return to Evereach, but you can’t remain in the south with me either. We’ve decided that you will go north to Tower 177.”

  Naomi couldn’t contain herself. “Where she belonged from the start! Not here among those who don’t understand, those who fear and seek to hurt her. If only you’d listened.”

  Ruth’s face filled with hurt and Naomi inhaled, pressed her lips together, and pulled herself back. She held up a bejeweled hand in a quiet gesture. “Forgive my outburst. I’ve also made mistakes. I shouldn’t have sought to use Michael’s misfortune to try to change your mind. It only caused you to mistrust me. I apologize, sister.”

  Ruth’s lips quivered and a tear escaped as she tried to blink it away. “We’ve both tried our best. Our goals are aligned. Ava must be where she belongs.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought they’d sentence me to a life underground, maybe to live and die among the trees in the data storage room, but this…

  “No, wait, you can’t send me north. Ruth, you said it was dangerous there. You said you used to test weapons and some of them are still active.”

  “Ava…”

  “No! You said I’d die there!” My hands shook. “Did you lie about that? Were you just trying to keep me here? I can’t believe it. They could have helped Michael straight away and you told me not to go north and now … now…”

  The Councilors were silent. Not one of them moved or spoke, but it was as though their thoughts were louder than their silence.

  Ruth cleared her throat, her voice soft. “I didn’t lie to you, Ava. The tower is in ruins and there are many dangerous things there. But even weighing all of that, it’s still the safest place for you right now. It’s secluded and out of bounds to everyone. Nobody travels beyond the snow belt. It isn’t the life that I wanted for you, but it’s the best way to protect you now.”

  “To protect Starsgard, you mean.”

  As I searched their faces, I knew there was no arguing with them, no changing their minds. I would not have the chance for counterargument or alternative solutions after all.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll go, but only if you tell Michael that I’m alive. You don’t have to tell him where I am but I want you to tell him I’m alive.” Alive but gone, and I will find a way back to him.

  Naomi frowned. “You’re dead, Ava. There’s no way we can agree to reveal that. Not to anyone.”

  “Then you’ll have to put me in a glass coffin. Because I would rather be dead than—”

  Zachary had been watching me carefully. “If we tell Michael you’re alive, are you certain he will choose to leave his family and come with you? Because if you aren’t, then we can’t take the risk.”

  When I’d first talked about going north, Michael had said he’d come with me. He hadn’t hesitated. I remembered the look in his eyes each time he saw me. I remembered him telling the book club that kissing me was like kissing starlight and he was afraid it would slip away. I wouldn’t slip away from him without giving him the chance to choose. At the very least, he deserved to decide for himself.

  “Yes,” I said, with as much certainty as I could inject into my voice. “He’ll come with me.”

  Naomi shook her head, her earrings jangling. “How will we explain his disappearance?”

  “He’s already estranged from his mother,” Ruth said, and I could see a moment of hope in her eyes. “He’s slept on the floor in Ava’s room every night since the incident.”

  “But if he suddenly leaves, what will people think?” Naomi asked. “That she’s alive and he’s gone with her?”

  “You can say that he left to find a new
beginning—leave the memories behind, all that stuff,” I said, trying to sound convincing.

  “And when his brother wants to visit him?”

  “I don’t know.” I tried to think. “He can head to a nearby tower and meet his brother there, can’t he?”

  “No, Ava, you can’t wander in and out of Tower 177. It’s much more complicated than that.”

  “There must be something you can do.”

  Naomi leaned forward and her voice was cold. “He can’t come with you because there are people who will look for him. His mother may have left him once but she won’t do it again. We can’t take the chance that anyone will find out where he really is. Tower 177 is a deserted remnant of a long-ago war and nobody—nobody—may know what’s really there.”

  I had a thousand burning questions: what was really there? And why didn’t they want anyone to know about it? And if it was really so terrible, why were they sending me there as though it was the safest place for me and I belonged there? How could a terrible place—a place they seemed afraid of—be safe for me? Then I realized: Tower 177 must be the place they put their terrible things, put them away where they couldn’t hurt anyone else.

  I was one of their terrible things.

  “There has to be a way,” I pleaded. “There has to be.”

  Nobody nodded or offered any suggestions. Not even Zachary, whose expression had become closed and unyielding.

  Ruth stood, her dress swishing. She crossed the distance between us and took my hands, hers warm and mine cold. I wanted to pull away, to run, run as fast as I could up to the surface and into the light to find Michael. To tell him I was alive. To let him choose. But there was nowhere to go.

  Ruth said, “You will travel with Naomi north by train, but not even her staff can be allowed to see you, so I’m afraid your method of travel won’t be the most comfortable.”

  Agony turned my words into harsh barbs. “How do you propose that I go by train when you don’t want anyone to know I’m alive?”

  “You’ll be in a box.”

  “Stuffed into a chest?”

  She shook her head. “Not that kind of box.”

  Naomi also stood, her gold bracelets gleaming. “After his sentence is carried out, we’ll transport Seth north as well. He will sleep under a northern tower, far from here.”

  There was silence around the room. It seemed that was all there was to say. They wouldn’t tell Michael the truth and I was going north.

  Jonah rested his hand on the table, an inch above the purple stinger. As he lowered his arm, brushing the surface, the tiny follicles along it were triggered by his touch. Arachne said that was the safe side. As he lowered his palm over the body of the stinger, it adhered to him and the tail twined around his forearm. Once connected, he stood, rounded the table, and approached me.

  I backed away. “No. Not again. Please.”

  “I’m sorry, Ava. I’m really, truly sorry.” Ruth’s eyes were glassy pools, but she did nothing to stop what was happening.

  I thought about fighting it, about running. I wondered how far I’d get before I hit a dead end or bumped into a staff member—and then the world would know I wasn’t dead. If people knew I wasn’t dead, then someone else would try what Seth had tried. Eventually, someone would succeed.

  The leaf descended, and this time I noticed fine black threads like the ones throughout the underground walls and plants. I tried to clear my head, to have the presence of mind to say one last thing before Jonah closed my eyes for me.

  I gasped just in time. “I never told Michael that I love him. Please make sure he knows.”

  Jonah’s arms caught me as my legs gave way and all the light was gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  MY COFFIN wasn’t glass after all, but wood. I could smell the rich maple and I hoped they hadn’t cut down my family’s data storage tree to make it.

  Jonah had carried me through the underground, draped over his arms, and placed me onto something soft but confined, where the scent of maple leaves overwhelmed me. I’d fought to open my eyes, to struggle against him, but while my body remained paralyzed my other senses were heightened. His footsteps pounded, overloud, while Naomi and Ruth followed, their voices low, consoling murmurs.

  Naomi promised to look after me. Ruth said she knew I’d be safe now.

  I didn’t believe them.

  I also didn’t think my parents slept like this. I didn’t think that being awake but not awake was how the long sleep was supposed to work, and once again I wondered about the black threads in the leaf, the same threads that were in the data storage walls, in the fuel marsh, even in the cherry blossoms outside Tower Seventeen. I wondered about what Jonah had said the day I arrived, about the moss being corrupted.

  Jonah straightened me inside the coffin. I could tell by the roughness of his hands and the scent of his hair that it was him. Ruth planted a kiss on my forehead, soft and gentle. Then Jonah called for his staff and I sensed a group of people enter the room.

  “Is everything ready above ground?” Jonah asked.

  “Yes, Councilor.”

  “Then her final procession begins. Carry her carefully.”

  Someone shut the lid, cutting off the light, and I tried not to panic as I wondered how I’d breathe without air. The Councilors must have thought of that, because behind my eyelids there was a small patch of light in the shape of a swirl. I guessed there was a hole in the coffin, maybe disguised by a decoration on the outside. The color of the light changed as I ascended. It flashed and wobbled as the staff carried me, blinked out when they stood close by, and became brighter as we exited elevator after elevator, until there was a hum of voices and a final sliding door.

  The coffin became still. A few moments later, light washed over me and all sound stopped. I guessed I was in the atrium at the bottom of Tower Seventeen, but I sensed I wasn’t alone. In Evereach, when someone’s final death day came, there was a ceremony—held in a church for those who believed—or a civil ceremony for those who didn’t. All their descendants attended and afterward the person was buried or cremated according to their wish.

  It seemed this was to be my ceremony, but nobody made a speech like they would in Evereach, gushing about my lifetime’s achievements. There was shuffling like many feet forming a pattern. A single hand cut through the silence, resting on my shoulder.

  Luke’s voice said, “Thank you for dancing with me. Please forgive me for not being smart enough to see what was happening, or strong enough to escape and warn you.”

  Something light rested on my stomach and I inhaled the scent of roses.

  I wanted to tell him it was okay, that I’d loved dancing with him too, that I appreciated his friendship and the fact he’d never seen me as anything but normal, but a moment later his hand was gone and another replaced it, this one equally warm on my cold skin.

  “Thank you for talking with us about mortals and listening to all our stupid questions.” It was Clara. Her hand brushed my cheek, another flower rested down, and then she too was gone.

  There was another shuffle and two small hands brushed me, little fingers this time. One of them—maybe Lilith—said, “We forgive you for scaring us. We know you didn’t mean it.”

  Moira gave a hiccup and a sob. “We’ll miss you. We promise to look after Michael.”

  One after another, hands came and went, some asking for forgiveness, others giving it. One of them, Natalie, said, “We forgive you for taking away our leader, but we thank you for revealing his true nature.”

  And Leah followed it with, “We won’t forget how you danced with the ribbons and taught us that strength lies in beauty, grace, and determination.”

  All of the hands were gentle, a final touch, and each one left a flower, filling my coffin with the scent of roses and lavender.

  Then Michael’s mom said, “Ava…”

  My heart missed a beat as her voice wobbled. If Michael’s mom was here, then he might be here. If I could move, give a sign…


  She said, “I want to say … want to say thank you for loving Michael and for bringing him to Starsgard. Please give me the strength to heal the wound I caused him.”

  Her voice faded as she left a flower and turned away.

  Then there was a pause. It lasted so long that I thought my heart would burst.

  A shadow descended over me.

  “Ava.”

  Michael’s voice almost ignited me. If his skin connected with mine, with all the energy running through him, I’d wake up. The spark of regeneration that always made my skin tingle when he touched me was strong enough to wake me. I wished for it with everything I had. I willed his hand to fall, to take mine and pull me from the prison of sleep.

  But my name was all he said. In that one word was everything he felt for me. And everything he’d lost.

  His shadow receded and I wanted to scream and shout, but the only sound was one last voice.

  “I know I blamed you.” It was Arachne. “But I never wanted this.” Her hand brushed my shoulder, but when she placed her flower, she pressed it into my hand as though it was a peace offering. “Good-bye, Ava.”

  There were no other words. Someone closed the lid and the coffin wobbled again. A train whistled in the background as though it was waiting for us. It had to be one of the inter-regional trains Ruth had spoken about.

  The press of bodies receded and the air cooled. We exited the building and Naomi’s voice was clear in the silence. “Place her coffin in the second-last car with me. I’ll be traveling with her to her final resting place.” Her voice lowered as she said, “Is the other coffin secure?”

  “Yes, ma’am. In the first car as instructed.”

  “Thank you.”

  I wondered if Seth had had a similar ceremony to the one I’d had: people who needed to forgive or be forgiven before they said good-bye. I guessed I’d never know. I’d never heard if he had a family. His family was the dance troupe, and judging by what Natalie and Leah had said to me, they would have forgiven him. I didn’t blame them. Nobody could live with hatred and anger all their life and not turn into the thing they hated.