Wandering Star

Salt grass tossed like an angry sea, casting illusory waves that would swallow any child who dared to cross them. Such a treacherous obstacle had no meaning to Signea. She was adjusting her grip on a crumpled ball of frosty blue silk. Overcast dulled any shimmer that the priceless fabric would have emanated.

A storm was coming, that was for certain.

Her task was to wade past the dunes before incoming rain turned sand to muck or her mother would have their servants string her up with the linens. Tendrils of black hair clumped over her face and skewed her vision. She made no effort to free it from the weight of her eldest sister’s gown. Greedy burs snagged the tattered hem of her dress and yanked her back in rip currents.

A hazy glow radiating from the barn encouraged her to brave the field despite nature’s omen. Their esteemed stable was carved from sunken ships and set far enough from the shore to not be drowned by swelling tides no matter how furious the tempest, yet its convenient proximity enabled the training paddocks to be filled with volcanic sand.

The precariousness of her predicament rivaled those distending nimbostratus clouds; sheer terror awaited should she not barricade herself inside the stable currently one occupant above capacity.

When another gust from the west struck her freckled face, she gasped; lifting her stained skirt with the few fingers she could afford to free. Then she sprinted. The bottoms of her bare feet were so accustomed to the terrain that they no longer bruised or bled from sharp sticks and shell fragments. To glance over her shoulder and ensure that no silhouettes were scouring the grounds for her would be disastrous. Instead she pressed for the water, pressed for the barn that kept her secret holed up inside like one of their fifteen horses.

Well, it was once her secret.

A single outside party knew...and his cryptic caution exacted the same sting as those grains of sand slipping between the creases of her eyelids after each howling gale. The sky itself demanded that she abandon her endeavor and return to the safety of Farer Hall, but Signea rebuffed even with Aneurin’s warning abuzz in her ear.

“I don’t believe you,” the boy teased, winging a large shell into ebbing tide. By the crook of his lips, one could infer that he held no ill towards her fish tale. Not even as she huffed and kicked up enough sand to film over the both of them. Not even when his forest green jerkin was covered in sea dust did he scowl or scold. “I’m sorry...!” A chuff of laughter was about all that he could emit to remedy their looming argument. The pair bore a striking resemblance that siblings or perhaps cousins shared, as opposed to lifelong friends of a staggering twelve years.

She folded her arms tighter across her chest and sneered. Luckily the squall kicked her dense understory of tangled hair enough to eclipse any visible disdain.

“Pixie,” he sighed, carding a hand through his long black hair. Then he peeked behind them to keep an eye on her old grey Fell Pony, whom she insisted on riding bareback. “No star would dare walk the earth, never mind allow you to house it. They are not your corn dollies...especially not with what’s out there.” Aneurin squeezed his eyes shut to prevent the wind from blitzing them with granules that would take hours to remove. He continued ruffling his hair clean. “If you really have found one...”

His eyes, bluer than meltwater, panned nearby dunes and even the barn for traces of Freida or one of her manservants traipsing about. All those staffed at Farer Hall were male -- and volunteers, no less. The phenomenon completely eluded him. He resided leagues away on a conical island in the south.

Confident in their solitude, he grasped her shoulder.

“You must set it free,” Aneurin said. He leaned so close that the tips of their noses almost bumped; deepening his voice to a sibilant whisper, “Before it’s too late, promise me that you will.”

“It’s just stories, Ni,” she dismissed, narrowing windburned eyes to tiny slits. The ends of her dark lashes snared loose strands of hair as they slithered across her face. Aneurin’s sinewy fingers plucked them free. Kappa the pony scoured the shoreline for blades of dried grass to fill his potbelly. “To keep us from letting peasant girls into our homes-”

“That’s not at all what Mother says,” he murmured, digging his fingers into the bony curve of her shoulder. He lolled his head to the left and prepared to speak over the roar of the ocean.

“Her Majesty is a witch,” she reminded him curtly, standing on her tiptoes and broadening her chest to negate how the saturated sand had been sucking her down to true height. “You’ve been learning her black magic, haven’t you.”

“Pixie,” cloaking vexation with a clenched jaw, the Prince glanced at the surf before he fell upon the blade of his own tongue.

“Answer me,” she demanded, folding her arms across her chest and taking a haughty step back. “Have you or have you not been practicing dark arts?”

“I’ve been training in archery,” he rebutted, moments from rolling his eyes, “and stop changing the subject because you know you are in the wrong.”

She kicked wet sand onto the legs of his trousers. Acknowledging would bring him far more agony than the situation already wreaked.

“If you truly have found a wandering star,” he coaxed, “we can release it together. How’s that sound?”

She groaned. Squishing wet sand between her toes was the only healthy catharsis she could engage in.

“Remember the rhyme-”

Another sneer from Signea stoked his consternation. He nearly shook her until their gazes locked, though his reproach was implacable.

“Signea...”

She curled chapped lips to exaggerate her distaste even as they harmoniously recited, “When the brown earth glows from stars in plight, the darkness will come and steal away the light. Turn your face and always lock the door. In the ire of the black, all will be no more.”

The closer she drew to the wooden structure with great vaulted ceilings and open-air windows, the sparser Freida’s rosemary grew. It was a hardy plant that could survive sodden conditions. Violet petals clung to the tattered hem of Signea’s gown like dewdrops. A few even drifted into the brambles of her hair.

Keening whistles on aggravated winds continued to push her back as if Aneurin himself conjured the storm, but she held sturdier than eagle wings. The weight from Duna’s gown sagged her arms, her hair netted more flora than the enigmatic gardens of Gimle, and that flickering light only glowed brighter from deep inside the hull. Her grandsire, who modeled the property after his northwest port on Noatun Bay, and his men had scrubbed the old timber planks so clean that not a single barnacle sullied the architecture.

Dark clouds plumed, bloated, and rubbed like tectonic plates. Their omens rumbled the earth. Signea grunted while tossing the fabric until her face was eclipsed. Despite their training from the youngest, most esteemed horse-master in Nordaland, all fifteen horses restlessly paced their stalls. There were no hearths for obvious reasons, though Signea needn’t the convenience of one to know they were leery of the only condemned stall’s inhabitant.

“I’m coming...!” she assuaged from behind the doors carved out of an old galley. The gown was slung over her shoulder.

Calloused hands hooked around the cool brass handle and then tugged the sliding door just enough so she could slip in like a fly. The horses ceased fretting from her scent alone. Freida futilely burned every herb on the continent to remove the effluvia of horse from her daughter’s skin, hair, and clothing. Those beasts carried such a pungent odor, incense was a mandate or one would faint in the foyer.

Fifteen sets of marbled eyes glittered from the glow in stall sixteen, though that wasn’t what caused the child’s lips to pout. Every horse was thinly filmed with perspiration and panting as if she’d spent the afternoon running them ragged in the desert.

“It’s okay!” she told stall sixteen, slanting her eyes in hopes that they would adjust to the dramatic shift in illumination sooner than later. “It’s only me. I’ve returned, as promised.”

Fishing nets swayed like moth-eaten tapestries, dragging fingers of shadow across the witch-hat ceiling’s planks. Every gull’s nest had been abandoned. Signea only noted their absence when a loose rope grazed the back of her bare shoulder. To prevent a fire, several bronze sconces with small hearths built inside glass cages were bolted to the columns.

She padded towards the first stall on her left. It belonged to an old Clydesdale named Aster. He worked a plow to irrigate the land. He was too massive to pace as violently as the others, yet by laying one hand upon his cheek Signea could feel damp fur moistening her skin. She stood on her tiptoes and cooed until he lowered his head; leaning into her touch as a sign of reassurance despite the blistering heat that plagued only the semi-confined, dark space. Several others expressed their distaste for the shift in climate by tossing their heads. Kappa was whinnying at her from the far left stall. Signea dropped a kiss on Aster’s velvety muzzle before continuing along the drag. That aisle exposed completely when the moon was bright, but today belonged to the storm.

“Lilli...?” she tried not to shout, but the lack of response and distress of her horses called for a crescendo. “Lilli, I’m here! It’s me...Signea!” After rounding a wooden barrier, Signea halted at the stall’s threshold and presented the gown. “I’ve brought you a clean dress.”

The entire back-end of the barn, even the shadowed beams and decorative net above them, was bathed in pale blue. Signea had worked up quite a sweat from the moment she entered, yet grinned sunnily enough to juxtapose the androgynous, very naked figure. It crouched in the corner behind a smoking bale of hay. Lilli’s knees tucked to her chest, unnaturally flaxen hair shrouded her alabaster skin, and with eyes as bright as desert stars she returned Signea’s smile, albeit with a twinge of reluctance. Dry lips parted. Lilli seized an awkward moment to correct the shape her mouth took. She then spoke so airily that Signea strained to hear, “Sweet thing...” the pitch was most certainly feminine, but her motions were ghoulish. A twinkling, waif-like arm proffered towards the child. “Bless you.”

Had her cheeks not already ruddied, Signea would have blushed. She didn’t wait to preen herself as soon as Lilli had given her a reprieve.

“I called for you as soon as I came, Lilli,” she reprimanded, strutting into the open stall to hand that gnarled figure her sister’s gown. “Why did you not answer?”

Peaty smoke’s ascendancy in translucent ribbons towards the vaulted ceiling perturbed her enough to kick a bale of hay with her bare feet; sliding it over as much as she could to best avoid a fire. The distraction allowed that figure to pull herself onto trembling, knobby legs. Lilli tried determining how best to tug the gown intended for a buxom young maiden over her head. Signea went to free silver hair from its trap inside the dress, but the flickering figure gasped.

“No!” Lilli’s howl trounced that of the wind. Her jaw dislocated. Her spidery body stretched so high that the child screamed and staggered backwards. Had it not been for an ajar stall door, she’d have tripped and fallen onto her rear. “I burn wee hands.”

Angry snorts from those inside their stalls were followed by sharp scrapes of metal across wooden planks and the beating of hind legs against sty dividers. The spectator peeking past a narrow crack that Signea left in the sliding doors was far from convinced their situation had remedied. Soundlessly he backed from the barn and raced for Farer Hall.

“Sssssh!” Signea panted, wiping droplets from her brow and repeatedly slamming her fingers to her lips. Steam passed from the horses’ nostrils like fumes and rose into those black pockets between nets. Lilli curled wispy fingers to her lips; practically quaking beneath Duna’s gown that appeared heavy enough to break her in half. Signea mimicked the sound of a sneezing horse while leaning against that same door that had obstructed her fall. “I should have brought you something to eat, I’m sorry.”

“Fret not, little one.” Hunching forward, Lilli lifted her silken swamp of loosely waved hair from beneath the fabric. Like the rosemary petals that shook from Freida’s hair and planted across the fields, Lilli left behind shiny granules that embodied more luster than all the jewels beneath the earth, yet scorched whatever they touched. “I neither eat nor drink.”

“Not for long.” Though she hadn’t moved, Signea panned all three wooden walls that her wraith-like friend had been leaning against. The nearest chestnut horse, her mother’s favorite, pinned his ears back and bared teeth that Signea was certain could crunch bone. He was massive: easily eighteen hands with a white star on his forehead. “Zander!” she scolded. Reluctantly he returned to his bucket and drank. The barn was sweltering. Lilli could barely stand. “When will you walk?”

When Lilli bowed her head, long hair slid over her shoulders like iridescent curtains. Her cheekbones were so prominent that Signea nearly patted her own to ensure normal people did not look so dead.

“I...” contradicting the fact that she drew no breath, exhaustion poured from Lilli’s mouth like bottled sand, “I am not certain.”

“Well, perhaps I can teach you to ride.”

One of Zander’s hind hooves collided with the wall nearest Lilli. The star leaped.

“Cut it out!” Signea shouted in tandem with a brisk gust of wind. Very fine sheets of cool rain swirled past massive open windows, though they did little to truly relieve the horses. Had lightning not begun to break the clouds, Signea would have put the horses in turnout.

“Animals are wise to reject my presence outright.”

Another draft lured the child’s eyes back to her slumped new friend, though Signea did not so much as allow a shift in her pulse no matter how daunting the refurbished ship was against a storm. The structure would not collapse, but that didn’t make it impervious to those gargling groans vessels uttered against currents.

“Offering shelter was foolishly brave of you-”

“Fortune favors the brave,” Signea declared, standing upright. The distance between sprawling thunder and the veins of white-blue lightning dwindled by the second, though only the horses took notice. “That’s what Mama says.”

A scratchy chuckle that climbed each rung of Signea’s spine expelled from the willowy figure with hair that thinned each time Signea turned away. Lilli was nearly skeletal, wan and hollow at what should have been a burning iron core. Such a grotesque contrast to the lovely figures Signea was always told to marvel at from afar almost elicited a grimace from the child.

“You,” Lilli drawled, “You know not. You know not what waits for me. For the brave who dare hide me...”

“Let it come,” she sighed, plopping onto the floor and stealing straws from a hay bale. “I’m not afraid.”

“You should be.” Finally lifting blank eyes, it took a disjointed step forwards; oscillating until its fingers curled like dead spider’s legs around the divider. Its hair dissolved, lips dried, and the heat became far more oppressive for Signea. Another string of purple light accentuated the barn’s nebulous luminescence. Signea was busy twisting strands of hay into little men. “Tell me, little one...” Lilli casted a spray of light over the child’s makeshift dolls until they started melting. “What do you know of the darkness?”

Continuing to forge her battalion of straw warriors against Lilli’s spiteful display of power, Signea glumly replied, “Mama won’t tell me. Just the rhyme.”

“When we break free of Its barren, soundless walls...It follows us wherever we land.” Lilli’s wilting halted Signea’s construction. Consequently the child trembled, sniffling to clear a stuffy nose and then turning to observe the expanding storm clouds behind them. Fields always harbored the most sublime weather conditions.

“Then why fall?” Signea asked, sliding her fingers across her melted dolls and debating whether or not to touch a few locks of shimmering, stringy hair. “Why risk life and limb of an entire world?”

Gleaming fluid sprung to those moon-blank eyes and Lilli almost hacked, quaking like a lone leaf in January clinging to its mother branch. An indistinguishable nose crinkled as it spoke past unevenly formed teeth, “To exist.”

Misty-eyed and heavy in the chest, Signea proffered a hand. Then she rocked onto her haunches, cupping Lilli’s cheek until the stench of rot and charred flesh evoked a scream. Smoke unfurled. Reflexively Signea fell flat on her back, cradling her bleeding palm that had been robbed of all flesh.

“Wretch!” Lilli’s screech engendered Zander and those near him to rear and kick at their paddock barriers; streaking furious shadows against lightning veins and the star’s natural haze.

A tear sprang to the child’s eye, though in lieu of weeping Signea rolled onto her hands and knees. Then she grit her teeth. The star wailed and cowered in the far corner. For Signea, flaring her nostrils helped dispel pain. She would need more clean bandages than all the ankle wraps stored in the barn to dress it.

“I’m sorry!” she shouted akin to a grunt, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Lilli!”

Rushed apologies hadn’t at all ceased Lilli’s caterwauling. Dagger-sharp nails raked at her own synthetic hair, ripping sparkling strands out by their roots until droplets of white light splattered like blood onto the planks. The boards soaked, though it went unnoticed by Signea until the horses stridently whinnied their apprehension.

Shock stifled the child’s voice as if she never had one. Each scream from the horses sounded further away than what preceded, like she’d been thrust underwater and held no matter how violent her struggle. Calmer supernovae existed than the glint in those bodiless eyes. They observed without remorse as Signea continued to bleed out. Every second of exposure further muddled her vision, stirring the colors until all she could discern was smoke and black. If not for the clatter of a feed bucket followed by seawater splashing against the kindling floor, she’d have fainted. Her next words were unintelligible and irrelevant to the lanky figure next to her.

“Pixie! Pixie, come here -- you’re hurt!”

The poor thing was on hands and knees crawling for her life. Bloody prints painted the floor a demented mural as he gathered her into his arms. His long legs spread behind her like a cricket’s and then he slid her quaking body against his.

“Let me see,” he cooed, sticking his head over her shoulder. “Let me see your hand, Pixie.”

Wearily she complied. Knowing his chin rested upon her shoulder eased Signea into lolling her head against his; allowing the scent of ocean air to take her away. Take her to her grandfather’s lush courtyards which she would wander and completely lose herself for hours. Take her through the forest, towards the sea...

“Pix.” A teardrop slipped from his face to her shoulder, though he couldn’t express sorrow for long. The way that skulking creature was eyeing him like she would soon take an enormous bite from his throat...it jarred the boy backwards with Signea held between his legs like a large doll.

When he tossed the sliding doors open with a thud that nearly rocked them off their hinges, Aneurin forgot to close them. Thus, he allowed a piercing whistle to make their hair stand on-end. Signea’s bleak eyes hadn’t shifted from Lilli even as the celestial body scampered on all fours towards them; hissing and snarling at who Signea hoped was Aneurin. “You keep back!” he barked, teeth bared and eyes agleam from Lilli’s resonating light.

“Easy on Lilli, please!” Signea begged, beating him as best as she could with the heel of her bloodied hand. Flecks of black fluid (blood appeared quite black in the moonlight) splattered onto his face, though he was too preoccupied with the burning star to notice.

“That thing is not your friend, Sigs,” he could barely see the damage, but its grim reality filled his eyes with bitter tears. “It’s torn a hole in you!”

“And I touched her...!” She extended her good arm as straight into the air as she could. “Come, Lilli -- it’s alright...”

“No!” Aneurin shouted.

He couldn’t reach much of anything but a pitchfork and even that took several bats to jar from its lean against a wheelbarrow. Lilli scampered backwards from the clinking noise. Aneurin was quick to snatch it in his good arm and stare daggers at that monster. Blood seeped through their clothing. Signea’s gown was a crimson smock, though it appeared darker than the night sky.

“Why are you even here?” Signea squirmed, barely able to distinguish the screaming horses from Lilli’s sobs. “Do your parents never wonder where you are?”

“I couldn’t leave,” he said, teeth clenched so tightly that it resembled a growl, “Not when I suspected you were telling the truth.”

“Thanks!” she grunted. After twisting despite her disorient, she rolled onto her stomach.

Another bloody handprint oozed between divots in the floor. Tears burned Signea’s eyes, though she wouldn’t shed them in front of him. Her elbows shook, knees buckled, and yet she crawled closer to Lilli. Aneurin was left with no choice but to point the jagged end of the pitchfork at Lilli while sneaking behind Signea. Then he hooked an arm around her waist. When swept off the ground, she screamed. The wrath of the sea itself crashed upon them when an otherworldly bellow ricocheted off each wall, sending the horses into inconsolable hysteria. Lilli skittered backwards. Signea screamed. Aneurin jumped, clinging to Signea tighter and pointing those prongs in the way of the doors.

A branch of lighting snapped across charcoal skies to illuminate the svelte figure with sea green eyes. Her sopping wet mane clung to the fresco of shells and pearls that adorned her gown. Sand dollars and starfish fastened her billowy skirts. Saturated strawberry blonde hair flowed behind her in vibrant rivers. Signea shimmied so the front of her gown rubbed against and stained Aneurin’s jerkin, too. Her good hand crumpled the fabric into a ball. Signea grew sick to her stomach far more from Freida’s presence than any subject of a nursery rhyme. The Seafarer’s only daughter was, to both the boy and the distressed star, a sight so otherworldly the stars themselves wept...and Lilli did. Strangled bellows did not perturb the woman with a serpentine glower. Oh, how for one moment Freida wished for a gorgon’s stare. She bore minimal resemblance to the youngest child. Her elder eight were all cut from the same diamond.

Silence coiled around the children’s ankles, anchoring Aneurin as he gazed upon a walking monsoon. He wouldn’t have been shocked to learn that she was the conjurer, for there was no force in all the world comparable to Freida’s rage. In the absence of moonlight, jade irises served as beacons. She did not so much as glance at the children huddled together like fledgelings. Signea’s disappointment parasitically burrowed beneath her mother’s skin, though Freida couldn’t be bothered to tear her scathing glare from that wraith.

“Lady Freida!” Aneurin finally mustered the gall to call to her, eyes wetted not from the fear that scratched Signea’s retinas. Anxiety caused him to jar the pitchfork, but should that rangy being approach, he’d skewer it with a steady hand.

The fairest creature on Earth turned her siren’s lure to the boy. Then swiftly as a sword, she stepped inside. The train of her frock train left foamy residue against aging wood, but her approach was solely to render Lilli stricken. Signea sobbed, angrier than the thunder cracking across the backs of their heads.

“No, Mama...!” she pleaded, squirming against Aneurin.

Before that weeping star, Freida stood prouder than the figurehead at the prow of her father’s warship. She commanded the attention of all three, though Lilli’s knees batted together upon recognition of her own inevitable end. The horses ceased to stir, even deafening thunder reeled back into its supercell. Not a swish of a tail nor an uneven breath from Signea defiled Freida’s silence...not until the tides of her choler tempered.

“You will leave,” Freida said, smoother than the ocean at optimum placidity. Without trepidation she looked Lilli in the eye, even as Signea began to voice her dismay. “Immediately.”

Freida’s impassive, yet vile countenance exhausted the star’s iron core. Lilli heaved, shrinking and shriveling much to the children’s horror. Signea lunged to tear her mother back by the gown. Aneurin dropped the pitchfork to hold her.

“No! No!” She clawed at his arms, shrieks cutting past the quiet induced by Freida. “Mama, you mustn’t!”

A disciplinary hand undulated to quash her griping. Signea was just as cacophonous as the star. Aneurin’s twiggy arms could only hold her so taut.

“Mama, no!” Signea’s pleas fought to no avail. The backs of Aneurin’s hands and forearms were raw and bloody, though it hadn’t even occurred to her. He barely noticed aside from the stings that pulled tighter whenever he moved. “Mama, she’ll die!”

Freida sneered before facing Lilli, who had begun to smoke...or was that the wood? Torrential rainfall pelleted against the barn’s roof, muting Signea’s screams and Aneurin’s folly attempt to assuage them.

“To the forest...” Freida spake, “towards the sea...”

Smoke curled around them in peaty rivers, disgruntling the horses. The animals tossed their heads and snorted to garner attention.

“Follow the hymns of the wisps...”

“No!” Signea cried, jabbing her elbow into Aneurin’s jaw and kicking at him with bare feet. Lilli could not for the life of her remove completely blanched eyes from Freida’s stare.

“Hear your name whispered among the trees,” as Freida grinned, Lilli clutched her temples and howled.

The star sprinted from the barn in a blinding streak. Signea watched after her with extended, bloody arms. Freida did not turn to watch the star flee with the same haste used during her descent from space. A trail of sea foam defined her return journey to the sliding doors, though the very real scent of burning wood gave all three pause. In Lilli’s place was now a voracious fire. Infernal arms climbed every surface within reach. Trammeled horses screamed, rising onto their hind legs and kicking at the stall doors for their lives. Signea and Aneurin took refuge in the other’s arms, yet the boy managed to slip the latch to the stall door behind him.

“Hold on!” he shouted, ducking to shield Signea’s body as a bay mare galloped from her stall. When his palms crashed on each side of her, Signea rolled out from under him and tucked beneath the bay’s hooves with impeccable timing. Her daughter’s dance with death hadn’t at all fazed Freida. She watched the child’s hand slap to Zander’s stall door in hopes of unlatching it.

“Signea!” Aneurin gasped. Scaling the fire, he opened another two stalls to save the horses nearest him. Ablaze chunks of wood crashed from the ceiling as smoke gathered in a chalky fog. “Pixie, stay where you are!”

Fully anticipating defiance, Aneurin tore open another stall door and clucked his tongue for the horse to gallop past Freida. She was a fixture in the doorway; locking gazes with her weary daughter, who had to lean against the stall’s door or she’d fall. Only out the corner of his eye could Aneurin watch mother and daughter duel. Signea bared her teeth, but a greater bout of lightheadedness blurred the flames’ definition. Zander began to nudge her, kicking so violently at his stall that the wood caved. Freida’s arms gathered closer to her flat midsection, though she shifted her focus between Zander and Signea. A thousand silent curses warned the child not to do it...and so Signea pulled the latch.

Kappa whinnied from the far stall, stretching his neck as best as he could to be noticed as Aneurin freed every animal on his side. He heard him, however, Signea absconded with his attention. Thickening smoke filled his lungs and nostrils. Harsh coughs singed the lining of his throat. A hulking shape cantered down the aisle with Signea hanging on. Crimson fluid smeared across the horse’s fur and matted into his mane, yet with tears in her eyes and the world a grey blur, Signea used bare feet to spur Zander out of the barn.

“No!” Aneurin tore after her as she followed the twinkling dot across the high grass.

Such an onslaught of tears filled the boy’s eyes that they flushed purple. Zander was the fleetest of foot. If any horse could best a devil, it was him. Freida caught the boy’s shoulder before he could tear across the field, where several horses broke for the semi-translucent servants. Freida’s men were making way to the burning barn with halters and lead lines. A strong gust kicked Freida’s hair behind her as if it were dry, though she did not cease to watch Zander disappear. Horse and rider followed the light between blackened folds of evergreens that the children were cautioned to avoid at all costs. The forest was vast. It smothered most of the west coast in prickly pines and a nameless terror. Aneurin, Signea, and their friends oft dared one other to creep as close as possible. None could pass the first tree.

Aneurin found himself transfixed by Zander and Signea’s pursuit, but a wave of heat against his back forced the boy to rush inside. Beams sailed to the ground. He avoided being struck despite the screen that occluded him from seeing much of anything at all. Thumping hooves against wood eased his lifting the nearby latches, setting horses free one by one. Kappa continued to whinny, confining himself to a corner as his own bale of hay caught flame. Shielding his eyes, Aneurin felt his way along every stall; ensuring that the latches were lifted. Kappa’s scream curdled his blood. Fire ate the walls of that far stall. He gasped in preparation to brave falling planks and fight flames to get to Signea’s beloved Fell Pony. Looking up helped him determine which beams were the weakest as he edged closer.

A hand with the strength of ten men drew him back. Sea foam snuffed the fire. Her gown was dragging, yet didn’t ignite. He could hear the pounding of shoed hooves against the soil, trampling high grass as they made way for the hands to lead them to safety, yet the men were shouting -- orders, most likely. Warily he craned his neck to find the diametric opposite of the woman he’d known his entire life...all the red pigment had vanished from her hair, leaving a gold twice as radiant as sunlight. A deep green webbed hand with little claws curved over his shoulder and gripped until the skin punctured. Her skin was like clay, bones prominent -- even her ribcage he could spot peeking from behind the flimsy fabric of her gown. Enlarged orange fins with fringed edges replaced her ears. Her plush lips drained of all blood. He shivered, ignoring the flames as they began to lick his boots.

“Leave him,” she commanded, breath earthly strong, “Siguna brought this terror upon us all.” One final look was cast to the pony before she forced Aneurin to desert him. Together they fled from the barn. A section of the roof caved and a final scream pierced his eardrums. He wanted to struggle, he tried, but she clucked her tongue to soothe his guilty conscience. Kappa continued to whine as he immolated, the only animal trapped inside now as much a casualty of the flames as the barn itself. “You know not what waits.”

Glassy eyes swept across the line of trees, she trembled, and then her grip on his shoulder intensified. He didn’t wince, but fought any tears that would emasculate him while looking up...still haunted by the pony’s agonized screeching. Enormous thuds from crumbling walls no longer fazed him. He already failed Signea. In Freida’s company, melancholy blanketed him quicker than the rain.

“From birth, we pray to the darkness.” The stench of fish and salty air overrode all precipitation and howling winds that lifted thick golden locks behind her like a cloud. “The primordial black. The abyss from whence came all creation.” Black slivers dragged across Aneurin’s face, but she lifted a webbed hand to spare him of the nuisance. “Siguna has ignored this. She has risked our entire world to sate her curiosity.” What reminded Aneurin of duck feet scraped his shoulder, tearing the fabric of his jerkin with unintentional ease. He could hear horses being corralled into a far paddock whilst a slew of men emerged from what he perceived as thin air to put the fire out. The barn was beyond saving. “You are to go after her,” Freida’s command soothed him like a warm bath, “or I will tell your father that you neglected to speak sooner.”

Shoulder-height grass flattened beneath Zander’s hooves as the stallion galloped towards the line of trees. Negative space between each ashen trunk expanded as he drew nearer. Signea was about halfway up his neck, woozy and in such a sorry state that she barely felt the agony shooting from her skinless, blood-drenched hand. Not once had she checked behind her to note the state of the barn, what became of Aneurin or even her mother. Lilli was far enough that Signea could no longer hear keening.

Accelerating rainfall was able to drown the strip of fire left in her wake by the time Zander reached it. His mane was Signea’s only barrier between life and death; her good hand clutched as much of it as she could. Black clouds continued to plume. The hammer of the god spooked Zander. He bucked; nearly tossing Signea over his ears had she not clamped on with what strength remained in her. White veins briefly illuminated Lilli’s final steps until the forest consumed her.

“Come on!” Signea jammed her bare heels into Zander’s side as the animal challenged nature herself. He didn’t even wear a bridle and yet foamed at the mouth, weaving between rocks and fallen fence posts. Sprawling countryside had now become their greatest adversary.

Zander’s hooves struck the ground in perfect harmony with the storm’s war drums. Signea, too, regained her posture. Blood had begun to wash away, revealing exposed tissue and enormous, sallow blisters. The limb was clutched to her chest, but she couldn’t bend a single finger. She didn’t look, she didn’t want to look. Each stride elongated and she encouraged it, remaining in half-seat and relieving the animal’s back. The trees concealed Lilli, but Signea had enough of an idea on how to proceed should Zander arrive in time.

The star shook off a glittering trail that shouldn’t have possessed any luster due to clouds and the shade provided by the forest. Not a moonbeam struck the soil. A victim of weak ankles, Lilli hobbled from trunk to trunk; too apprehensive to turn and observe how obvious the evidence she left behind was. Clashing hooves sent her stumbling over brambles and tearing past finger-like branches that snagged Duna’s gown. The weight was harrowing, but she tugged the fabric from malicious nettle and carried on. Mad eyes scoured the empty forest for any sign of life, any other person to sucker into shielding her from the unavoidable. None of the dried needles scattered across the forest floor caught flame, yet were blanketed in frost after her every step.

Freshly thrown from her horse, Signea trailed the star. None of Lilli’s hazy bioluminescence revealed her, though crunching needles beneath Signea’s bare feet piqued the star’s attention from afar.

“Who goes there?” Lilli staggered until a root knotted into an arch and tripped her.

Signea clapped her good hand over her mouth to prevent frosty vapor from giving her away. Whistles amongst shifting trees and the amassing black kept both living creatures concealed. Tears burned Signea’s eyes. Her bleeding hand stuck to the fabric of her dress. From a distance, she stalked without any effort to scout what may have been creeping up from behind. She didn’t turn to see where Zander had cantered off to either.

The pale halo encompassing Lilli dwindled. Signea hadn’t taken into account just how far they wandered until she noticed a curtain drape over the horizon. Oily darkness unfurled from the high branches and bled down each trunk, spreading like spilt ink and incinerating any hope Signea had of navigating. She shivered and felt her teeth chatter as she proceeded with both arms held out. Lilli’s glow offered them no respite.

“Lilli...”

Ghoulish whispers kissed the air like freshly fallen snow. The dread in that fallen star’s expression struck Signea in the throat. She repelled from tree to tree to keep up with Lilli’s bare feet as they crunched fallen pine needles and left a shimmery path.

Disembodied, mournful hymns guided Lilli deeper. Each note dragged the branches higher, weaving veiny lianas like thread until a network of sharp thickets and black loomed above them. Signea had been too concerned with the gathering dark to feel her good hand dampen. Once the warm fluid squished between her fingers, however, Signea gasped; snapping her attention to the trunk. Black blood seeped into grooves in the bark and spread across her palm like poison until she wiped it against her stained dress.

“Lilllliii...” the forest wheezed in litanies scratchier than the needles against Signea’s battered and bare feet. Exerting such energy rendered her even more woozy and disoriented. The darkness yawned, obliterating distant trunks and stacking impossibly high. Lilli followed the wails, “Lilli...! Lilli...!” Iridescent tears burned her eyelids. Gangly arms pulled as close to her chest as physics would allow. Behind them was naught but darkness: immutable, preternatural, absolute. Should they turn back, both child and star would be forever swallowed by the Void.

“Lilli...!” Shrill, discordant mutters carried on the air, both caressing the burning space beneath Lilli’s ears and urging her deeper into the black.

Signea no longer heard anything save Lilli’s name echoed into nothing. She tried to open her mouth, but found her warning shouts to be of no avail. Space is a vacuum, after all. Lilli could not sweat. The star’s arms and legs rattled like snake tails. Signea attempted inching towards her, but nearly cracked her skull against a shadowed tree. Hastily she grasped the bleeding bark while stepping over raised roots. The deepening black frosted her breath and even the drippings from her nostrils. Phantom winds barreled down the makeshift channel, cutting into Signea’s eyes and lifting Duna’s gown to Lilli’s knees, yet she pressed on; holding an arm in front of her face.

“Lilli...!”

The forest’s plea devoured subtle calving of glaciers and festering thunder as it sucked back into the atmosphere. Soaked trunks creaked and groaned in competition with the unrelenting breeze. No animals skittered for shelter, no shadows slipped among the high branches. Signea listened to her own blood pattering onto the forest floor.

“Lilli!”

When her name lashed at her spine like a bull whip, Lilli gasped; scouring the forest for any sign of movement. Signea noticed the star’s desperate search, but was too weary to let herself fall behind the tree she propped against.

She was spotted.

Lilli snapped upright with a twist. Then she unhinged her jaw, pointing accusingly. Hollow eyes burned brighter than ten thousand dead suns. They were the only objects Signea’s blurred world sharpened. The child whimpered; far too weak to hide from the creature with gangling arms and an ellipsoid toothless maw. Lilli’s screech...no tale of a wailing wraith could ever rival it. Signea rested her forehead against the trunk and allowed the forest to paint it with black creeks. The injured hand remained limp, useless until amputation should she escape the forbidden forest.

A branch the length of Farer Hall snapped. It sailed to the ground with a thud more foreboding than brontide. Wood splintered all around them, though the pair was unable to locate its origin. The air had grown cold enough to clot Signea’s bleeding, but darkness expanded; piling higher until it swallowed the moon. No bleak glow from the sky uncovered a path. There was no up. There was no down, left, nor right. The folds of awakened trees bloated into one great wall, inhibiting them from taking another step. Her heart in her throat, Signea trailed that petrified star out the corner of one eye whilst her other faced the black.

“Lilli...”

Reverberations reached Signea’s beaten feet, though Lilli’s distress call cut past the soundless pocket like a soaring meteor. As if being ripped asunder Lilli staggered back, weak in the knees and aghast. Signea was too busy observing Lilli’s struggle to fully turn her attention to whatever had reduced the star to a wailing heap of dust and neutrinos. She wouldn’t have bothered to look had Lilli not been dragged. Wobbly legs remained stationary, but the ground pulled her closer. The star screamed for her life, but that did not reduce how swiftly she and Signea were being reeled like fish on a line into the void. The child’s eyes bulged.

Two hazy blue rings marked the end of their road, the end of their lives, and all that followed. Their pale glow tore past the chasmic holes no less dense than a set of collapsed stars. It wore no recognizable expression, The Abyss; treacherous in the way dark matter repleted empty space between the stars, beautiful in the manner that black holes lured entire worlds past their gaping maws. Standing barely taller than Signea, the pallid creature cloaked in woven shadows paralyzed Lilli with a leer that rammed into the fallen star like a scorpion’s tail. Heavy, igneous-caked talons plucked in no particular rhythm, but there was a whir; a pulse from ancient binary star systems lost in space-time. Darkness spilled from the hem of its frock, obliterating the thawed ground and devouring blackened trees.

Phantom winds lifted human hair (far too light to be black, yet not vibrant enough to burn red) around a face that wouldn’t shift if the planet combusted. Lilli’s spine snapped backwards. That blunt crack almost rent Signea from her skin as the star was dragged closer to an inevitable end. Signea screamed, though her weakened state caused her cry to mimic a strained whistle. Gravity did not relent its chokehold. At Signea, It glowered: two dead suns marring a face cursed by beauty. It was not the monstrosity that wives’ tales described...save for the eyes and claws. Its plush lips curled to reveal a collection of jagged teeth. Signea screamed, but clapped over her mouth to snuff it out. Lilli’s skeletal fingers nearly brushed the ground while she begged for mercy. Such incessant squawking forced the child to turn her face against the tree, but observe the petite figure until It vanished.

Within a blink It was closer, grin only broadened as a single talon pressed to its mouth.

“Sssssshh...” stealing Signea’s breath with a nefarious simper, It dissolved into billions of obsidian shards; swirling around Lilli faster than a bolt of lightning and then consuming her like fire ants. A rusted pin wedged itself in Signea’s heart, urging the child forth as if her screams could alleviate Lilli’s agony.

Suddenly it was all over. Signea was gobsmacked, frozen in terror. A pair of long arms snugly coiled around her waist and then tore her back with a force that knocked the wind out of her.

“Signea!” Sinewy fingers fidgeted until he had a firm grip around her gown no matter how frantically she flailed. “Pixie, no!”

“Ni...?!” Without peeling her attention from the darkness that took lovely shape once more, she craned her neck and shouted, “Let me loose!”

“Don’t struggle!” Trapping her against his front as tautly as possible, he flitted light eyes to the thickening blackness where Lilli once stood and hauled Signea away.

“Aneurin!” an animal’s blind fury decorated her growls as she batted at him; failing to note how the Void turned its nebulous gaze upon them. “Aneurin, no!”

“Sssssssh...” he hushed, clapping a hand over her mouth.

Aberrant heat tinted their cheeks. Signea’s injured hand was cupped into both of his. She winced while squeezing her eyes shut to numb the pain. Fleetingly she glanced at her fleshless palm.

“Hold still,” he could barely hear his own gentle command, but hovered his left hand above hers; careful not to touch the bubbling tissue. Torn between dwelling on the searing pain in her lower arm and Aneurin conjuring ribbons of translucent light that spread over the surface of her hand, Signea gasped. Her terror, however, was momentarily rivaled by a complacence so potent that he had to curl one corner of his lips.

“You are learning magic!” she scolded.

He did not break concentration. Upon first contact, she winced. The heat had became sweltering -- as if they were drawn into a star’s iron core. The children exchanged worried glances and then looked to that ageless Void in woman’s skin. As for Signea’s hand, the film of tissue that coated her palm was eddied, rough, and so leathery that it looked withered and charred. She screamed; baiting the Black until another spike in temperature piqued Its focus. Darkness turned to the right and dropped its jaw to hiss at a formless presence that returned it before evanescing. Rock-caked talons flaring, It bared rows of jagged canines and then snapped those raptorial jaws shut.

Silence enveloped them. Signea gagged. Undistracted, the black-eyed nonentity honed its stare upon the children. Signea tried to scream, but Aneurin covered her mouth. Panic compelled him to rotate her body and command, “Don’t look at her! Don’t look--”

From preternaturally black sclera, hazy rings clawed past the boy’s retinas and crawled inside to tear him asunder. They made their bed between the shadow and his soul. It was quiet where he traveled...almost peaceful. No war nor poverty nor famine tarnished the great beyond. Each breath lingered in wispy clouds. Cool air dried the sweat from his brow, stiffened the ends of his long black hair, and drained his waxen complexion. Ghosts of incinerated trees wailed louder as the petite creature ensnared him with a glower potent enough to steal his breath. Tears swelled Aneurin’s darkening eyes, his hold on Signea slackened, and he yearningly canted his head at an ageless Abyss more sublime than Freida.

Heavy black talons sifted the air, stirring darkness until the cracking of fully grown trees convinced Signea to cling to him tighter. He didn’t look. He couldn’t. Trembling lips and chattering teeth only lured the Void closer, though It didn’t physically budge. They pulled closer. It hadn’t moved.

In those empty tombs he saw eternity. He saw the void, billions of stars as they screamed their last and tore holes in space-time. The world around them collapsed, weighing so heavily on Aneurin’s eyes that they, too, filled with smoldering black. Hot tears stained his cheeks. He didn’t remember to sniffle. The Abyss dragged them closer. Its held that maddeningly impassive expression, yet those eyes: blacker than the darkest night and more vast than the universe itself...filled with everything and nothing simultaneously. He saw death, he felt life, creation and destruction, air and fire and desert storms...and then nothing.

Without breaking eye contact, It vanished and took the darkness with it. Immense pressure lifted from their shoulders as the forest reemerged. The children were in one piece, though not a speck of dust memorialized Lilli’s existence. Aneurin dropped Signea and then crawled away. What remained of him was no less maimed than her hand. The forest cradled them both, though he peered unblinkingly at the spot where he stared down the Abyss.

“Aneurin...?” Signea looked up to find that he was still staring, whiter than snow and lost behind the eyes. She gasped, “Aneurin?!”

Whoever answered was not the same boy that braved the banned wood to find her.

“She spared us...” he croaked, peering beyond the trunks of semi-awakened trees for any trace of It. “She spared us. Signea, she spared us...”

Too horrified to correct his misused pronoun, she crawled on one arm so the two could huddle against a rotted trunk. Moonbeams refused to penetrate the canopy. Owls cooed. Deep shadows ensconced them.