Every Star in the Sky Read online

  “I like it. Your voice is relaxing,” I say, ruffling Bear’s ear with my hand.

  Calico laughs, “Well thank you for the compliment. Though I suppose I owe you an explanation for everything… but I’m hoping you’ll sleep some first. It’ll take a while for me to fix this shoulder here.”

  “I don’t know how to sleep anymore.”

  “Yeah. Uh-huh,” he says dismissively.

  “I haven’t slept in ten days,” I whisper, opening my eyes. He is nothing close to the scrawny boy that King Luther threw at the floor. He has grown quite a bit, both in height and muscle mass. He has the body of a runner, which I can see under his translucent fitted shirt. He has the same long black hair, the same small brown eyes, but damn, is he ever handsome now. I cringe as he pokes a sensitive area of the wound with his fingernail.

  “Oh, sorry. I wish you could sleep. If you slept, then I wouldn’t have to worry about you feeling any of this…”

  “Could you get me a towel?” I ask, staring at the wall. “Or just a cloth. But something damp and heavy.”

  He raises a single brow and leaves, returning a few minutes later with a damp, thick cloth. I take it from him with my teeth, biting hard into it.

  “Keep doing whatever you’re doing,” I say through the cloth, but I don’t think he has a clue what I’ve said. He probably thinks I’m insane. I just nod, as if to encourage him to continue dressing the wound, and I bite into the towel to fight the pain of it all.

  Once he finishes with all of the medical bullshit, he patches everything up with a gauze wrap that he sews to my shirt, so it’s like an ugly white capped sleeve. I don’t say that it’s ugly. I try to think of the kindness that went into making my wound look nonexistent, and my ugly sleeve an intentional fashion statement.

  “I’m going to give you some medicine to see if you can’t fall asleep,” He says as he rustles listlessly through a drawer of darkly shaded vials.

  I spit the cloth out. “You’re not going to kill me or anything, right?”

  He laughs, “Of course I am. I just spent two hours patching up a wolf bite on your shoulder just so I could kill you.”

  “I dunno. I don’t know anything. I don’t even remember why I came here. I know my name and my dog’s name. And I remember wolves. But that’s about it, I think. I can’t think of anything else that I know. Oh! I know your name. You’re Calico Exodus. You’re supposed to be the bad guy but you’re not. I saw it. Elliot Blackburn is the bad guy. Crown prince of Avis. I used to have friends and family, too, but I don’t remember them,” I say, staring at the ceiling whilst I rattle off my nonsensical musings.

  “Maybe you should’ve kept that cloth in,” Calico mumbles.

  I just smile. “I know how you tried to save everybody. I know that you’re the good guy. I saw it. You can’t fool me.”

  “God, are you perpetually drunk?”

  I shake my head, “I’m just very tired and I don’t remember anything and I really want pancakes and orange juice.”

  “Yeah, you’re coming with me,” Calico mumbles, scooping me up easily into his broad arms.

  “Where are we goin’, Mister Exodus?”

  “I think an asylum would be the best place for you, but I’m going to try a bedroom first so you can drink this. C’mon, dog.”

  “I’m not a dog,” I say quietly.

  “Oh dear lord, I’m in hell,” Calico grumbles as he lays me in a soft, white-quilted bed and he tucks my body in. Bear leaps up beside me and curls into the curve of my legs.

  “Open your mouth,” he says, and I do. He pours a sweet-tasting liquid down my throat.

  “Tastes good.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Can you read me a story?”

  I don’t know why, but he does. He digs through some books in the corner and reads me a story about how Heracles overcame twelve trials, and I drift into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  When I wake, there is a note on the side table. Calico’s handwriting is round and slanted forward and a little sloppy. The page is stained with ink.

  Come to the library when you wake up. I have to tell you everything.

  “C’mon, Bear,” I say quietly. I open the door and walk out. Thousands of walls decorated with emptiness, the overwhelming color of monochrome, the taste of copper fear in my throat. I don’t know where the library is, so I close my eyes and let my feet decide. I find my way to a set of double doors, and open them. My luck is uncanny.

  The space within is lit by firelight and a glass ceiling that shows me the moon and the stars, but nothing I feel seems like any sort of reality. He is sitting by the fireplace, long black hair tied off to one side. He wears a silk robe, but leaves it open, exposing his chest like flesh armor.

  I want to touch him and it scares me.

  “Come sit,” Calico says. His eyes are bright like the coming of autumn.

  I fall into one of his plush velvet chairs, and soak in the beauty of where I am and what is around me. The energizing touch of the moon makes my skin feel light, and the smell of my childhood is overwhelming. Weathered yellow pages, succulent black ink, and the smell of the flickering fireplace surrounded by stone.

  I find myself trembling. My entire body. I feel the sudden urge to swim. To peel through waves of water and breathe and daydream.

  Calico shakes his head, “Are you okay?”

  “I feel like… there’s something different about this room. This moment. Like everything seems too real to be real.”

  “Jay.” He is smiling, though it is such a miniscule curl of the lip that it could easily be overlooked.

  “You treated my wounds and gave me medicine. You must’ve retrieved me and my dog from outside. You tucked me in bed and read me stories about Heracles… Who are you?”

  He shudders and looks away. Suddenly our bodies are locked in a room consumed by cobwebs of electricity. “I forgot,” he whispers.

  “Tell me. Please.”

  He closes his eyes. “Well, you were there, weren’t you? When I tried to save Julian. I think… We were born to be bad, certainly-- my brothers and me. But that’s never what I wanted. Maybe the insanity of it all is that I want to help people, and people think I’m the bad guy, and I… That’s not what I want. That’s never what I wanted. I have no control over the crows. They are not my doing.”

  “I know. I’ve known.”

  “And where did this faith in me come from? How have you known?”

  “Because I’ve seen who you are, and I’ve looked into your eyes, and there is no malice there. Only…” I pause, struggling for words. “It’s like the world saw your goodness and fractured your heart, because the world didn’t want your goodness. The world wants… money. Power. That’s why it’s all ending.”

  He stares at me, saying nothing, scrutinizing every inch of me for at least five minutes. The silence feels comfortable.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  I smile softly. “I forgot.”

  He grins, and it’s the most shocking thing I’ve ever seen. His smile is beautiful. His teeth are straight and white and gleaming, and the look in his eyes makes me feel like I am encompassed by an orb of clarity. Everything is here, and now, and okay.

  “I like you, Jay Hart.”

  “I like you too. I’d like you more if you kept talking.”

  He looks down uncomfortably, “I’m sorry, I get distracted.” He lifts his head back up. “I don’t know why the dead people are turning into crows. I don’t know why there’s this plague. I think it’s just the apocalypse and this is how we die.”

  I bite my lip. No. I shouldn’t trust him but I do, with everything that I have, and I don’t know why. He is everything good in the world. I don’t know how or why, but I know. He is beautiful and perfect and ethereal.

  “So this is the end, and there’s nothing we can do?”

  He shrugs, “I don’t know anything about that. But I feel like, if there’s some sort of… some exp
losion of goodness. Then we might be okay.”

  “That’s what Dr. Rolphe said,” I whisper to myself. I look back to him. “What do you think that would be? Some massive prayer or sacrifice, or…”

  “Deno-- er, my… my dad. He said that it had something to do with us. With you and me.”

  “But… But what about my sisters? Your brothers?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about them. But what I do know is that people who have hurt the most-- those of us who have experienced the most and lived-- can sometimes radiate this sort of… rightness. Like that is what the world wanted to see-- to see if we were strong enough to bear the weight of Atlas, and if we could, then we could unite, and tell the others that it’s not all so bad. But that’d be wrong, Jay.”

  “How so?”

  “I have had to quarantine myself in this abandoned manor for years. The birds follow me everywhere, and refuse to leave. It is a constant acknowledgement that I am a pawn made for evil. But I don’t… I can’t be. Maybe that’s what I was born for but that’s not who I want to be.”

  “Who do you want to be?”

  His gaze is distant and wistful. “I want to be a doctor.”

  “A… a doctor?”

  He shakes his head, “I know it’s… unlikely. And stupid. But I want to help people. I can, if they’d let me. I helped you. I could’ve helped… I could’ve helped Jacob, if Leon would’ve let me. But he’s always hated me.”

  “Because he thinks you killed Julian?”

  He shakes his head, “No. He knew that was Elliot’s doing.”

  I feel a jolt in my vision, a darkness in my understanding. “What do you mean he knew?”

  “He knew. And he ignored it. He’s obsessed with Elliot-- he’s practically his slave. It’s likely that the Nightingales were actually Elliot’s doing, and not Leon’s. Leon has been a puppet throughout the entirety of his life, bent to his brother’s whims. When he… well. Seduced you the way he did, I’m sure it was the doing of Elliot. I’m surprised you haven’t been killed by now. I tried to save you. The first attack, with the crow people, was organized by my brothers. I only went along to find you. But you were… a little more than I bargained for.”

  “He didn’t seduce me,” I whisper.

  “I wish I believed you. But since Jacob’s death, he has been possessed by some form of Elliot’s power. He was made and arranged so that you’d fall in love with him. He’s not real, Jay.”

  It’s not real. It can’t be real. But when I see Calico begin to cry, I know that he is telling the truth, and I have never known anything more in my life. Everything clicks together.

  And then everything breaks apart.

  I feel all of the synapses within me disconnect. I feel the flow of my blood stop. I feel my lungs shatter and my brain collapse. I am nothing and there is nothing within me.

  My body leaks. Tears drain madly from the broken wells in my eyes, but I cannot speak or make a sound. I can only sit and feel and let my body disintegrate.

  “I-I’m sorry, Jay. I didn’t… I thought you… I’m so sorry.”

  I am covering my eyes with my hands, trying to keep the flood away. I don’t want to be me anymore. I don’t want to be here.

  “How painful is death?” I whisper.

  “No. It’s not worth it, Jay. Don’t. Please don’t.”

  “The world is ending. Most of my family is dead, or not even my family. I was broken from the beginning. I never spoke the right way. I never acted the right way. I… I was born to die. Everything I have ever known isn’t even real, and I just… I don’t see the point any more, Calico.”

  “Tell me about your dreams,” Calico whispers.

  He is kneeling on the floor next to me, and for whatever reason, I let him take my hand, even though I’m trembling like the mouth of a volcano before it erupts.

  “Dreams?”

  “Everybody has them. Tell me. Please. I want to know.”

  I don’t know why. Why I am talking to him. I don’t know anything anymore. So I talk. I tell him about how much I love dogs and children and poetry, and how someday I want a big farm with horses and cattle and sheep and pigs and chickens. I would grow apple trees and all sorts of flowers, and nobody would tell me I couldn’t. I would write poems and scatter them through a small village so that young, sad children could find the joy of hidden poetry so that it could blossom in their hands, and their hopelessness wouldn’t feel so hopeless.

  I want to love someone-- a real someone-- and love him with everything I have. And together we would have a family of kids and dogs and farm animals and crops. I would love them-- every single one of them, even the weeds-- the way life deserves to be loved, the way life was created to draw love near.

  Life was created so that love would exist.

  “I think you’ve just given yourself a perfectly good reason to stay alive. And if you were meant to die, you’d be a crow right now. And you’re very clearly a person, correct?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I am. I tried… I tried to forget everything on the way here. But I can’t forget.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask-- what’s that necklace you wear, with the feathers?”

  My eyes shoot open. “Calico.”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you save the world with me?”

  Calico smiles. “I knew you’d remember who you are.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I cannot sleep, so I try to think of all of the things that I am. I am strong. Smart. Honest. Awkward. Strange. Naive. Emotional. Selfless. Generous. Passionate. Determined. Beautiful. Worthy.

  I am worthy.

  I am worthy.

  I am worthy.

  I fantasize about my herd of cattle, their strong flanks shifting back and forth as they scour for more grass, their hooves treading through a green, green pasture, littered with clover and wildflowers and dandelions.

  I would ride my horses through the pasture to move the heifers and their calves back home to keep them warm and safe in the early spring, and I wouldn’t let any of them die unless it was their fate to do so.

  My horses would be buckskins with white striped faces, like Lucky.

  And my dogs would be big St. Bernards, like Bear.

  My husband would be someone like who Evan was, and who Leo was supposed to be.

  I hear a knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Calico comes in, a pink sleeping girl covered in sweat and pain held gently in his arms. Her long blonde hair fell from Calico’s hands, and her stomach protruded into a balloon of life. “I found this girl outside. She said she’s been looking for you.”

  The word falls from my mouth like the only word in the world that matters.

  “Grace.”

  I get up and take her from Calico, tucking her into the bed where I was supposed to be sound asleep. I can’t help but feel her forehead. I knew it’d be warm before I even let her skin singe my fingertips.

  I feel her stomach. I know before I even touch her that there is another life inside of her, waiting for be released into the world when its time is right.

  “Does she have… The… T-the…” The word refuses to come to me. The word that means she will die. The word that means there is no hope left for her or her child.

  “That’s what I thought at first, too. But based on the condition of her body, it seems like she’s been sick for a very long time-- possibly three months or more. But if that were the case and this was the plague, she’d be dead. And if it was the plague it’d be contagious, meaning she would’ve miscarried, though she’s obviously carrying a child with her.”

  “So I can touch her?” I whisper, “And I won’t get sick?”

  Calico pauses for a moment. “Maybe it’s going against my better judgment, but… I feel like it’d be okay. I don’t think she’s contagious.”

  I pause and look at him, and we kind of just stare at each other, our eyes searching each other’s souls. I t
ake my eyes away and slowly crawl into the bed next to Grace, careful not to move too much in case I startle her awake. I want more than anything just to hug her and pull her close to be certain that she is alive, but I don’t want her to feel even more heat, despite her state of unconsciousness. Instead, I take her right hand between both of mine, and I sing softly to her and her child-- the song about the pretty little horses.

  And I know, in this moment, that I would do anything necessary to keep this beautiful person and her beautiful unborn little person safe, because life was created so that love would exist, and all I feel in this moment is love.

  I hear Bear shuffle around on the floor and lie somewhere beneath me, and I hear Calico’s soft, gentle breaths.

  “Do you… Do you need anything?” He asks.

  “Chocolate chip pancakes and orange juice, chicken for Bear, and medicine for Grace.”

  “Of course.”

  He is gone, and I am with an unconscious pregnant girl and a sleeping dog with half of his hair burnt off, but for the time being, I have forgotten the meaning of loneliness, a feeling that has been replaced with serenity.

  Calico brings in a bowl of warm chicken for bear, and an armful of medicines for Grace, who has yet to stir, let alone wake up.

  “No pancakes?” I ask quietly, smiling.

  Calico opens a bottle of some sort of poultice and begins to smear it on Grace’s face and arms. “I wanted to treat Grace first. And then afterwards… Maybe we could eat together. If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I’d like that,” I say.

  He smiles, saying nothing else as he works on Grace.

  After a few minutes of calm, I decide to speak. “How far along is she, do you think?”