Every Star in the Sky Read online

  “Love means nothing to me,” I whisper, stoic.

  Evan’s brown eyes are glazed over. Tears, maybe. Pain. Regret. I don’t care. Or, I… I try not to care.

  I shudder at the realization that we are in the village. I look at the forlorn steeple of the poorly constructed wooden cathedral, singed black, broken. The jagged remains of stained glass create a dark rainbow against the canvas of snow. The village smells like rotten vegetables and defeat. There’s no light here. The streetlights have been desecrated into rubble, just like all of the vendor stalls and houses my eyes could reach. There are hundreds of charred brown boards strewn haphazardly in the purity of the snow-- the stalls that went bankrupt and were burned. If hope could bleed, the boards would be its blood. I sit on the edge of a mostly present stone fountain, the water frozen over and littered with snow piles.

  I look up to Evan and nod, entreating him to speak.

  He looks startled for a moment but nods back in understanding. “A great plague has been spreading through the inner kingdom. That’s why I came back. They told the untrained soldiers to go home, as there is no real threat to the nation at this point in time… And our lives would be wasted on a sickness. But we don’t know what causes it. And the symptoms are… Well.”

  He pulls a piece of paper out of his vest pocket. A sketch of some sort.

  “I documented the people that I could. The children and elderly die immediately upon contraction, supposedly. They display no symptoms. The virus simply enters their body and they die. But I saw a twenty-two-year-old man. Perfect health one night. The next night, he had no hair or teeth. They put him in quarantine. The night after, most of his skin. It… i-it fell off. But he was… Was… still… alive…”

  I can feel my arms trembling. Feel my stomach shift into a tsunami of anxiety. “Evan.”

  He can’t look at me. He’s looking at the ground, eyes wide, strong arms clinging to the edge of the fountain. I see beads of sweat drip from his brow.

  “His carcass turned into a crow. A live crow. And I don’t know why, how, I don’t, but I saw it with my own eyes, Jay. I saw it. It was real.”

  “Evan.” Fear. I felt it. Thick, like a stark black bandage wrapped around my throat.

  He’s not lying; he’s never lied before. I don’t have to like him to know that he’s honest. I know that for certain. Everything he says is true.

  “The process of death is different for every person. And not all of them turn into crows. Some of them are just dead. Some are different birds. But they flock up in the sky above the palace, Jay. I can hear them all the time. Or I could, back there. But now, I hear them in my dreams. And I don’t know what’s happening… But I do know that if you’re going to be exiled you need to stay safe, and I wanted you to know what you might be getting into.”

  “I can’t be exiled. I need to protect Mom.”

  He shakes his head, “Jay, did you hear anything I just said?”

  “All of it.”

  “They’re not going to exile your mom, Jay, they’re going to exile you-- aren’t you worried? Mass chaos has ensued in the kingdom. I’ve heard stories of creatures that are part human, part raven. They’ve been reanimated by some sorcerer and supposedly kill humans out of nowhere in cold blood.”

  His voice grows even more grim.

  “Girls are being taken from their homes around the kingdom for reasons no one will explain. Nobody knows where they’re being taken, or what’s happening to them. All I know is that they have yet to be seen again.”

  I look up at him. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Why do I even bother with you!” He says. His voice circles like a vulture in the sky overhead, and then dissipates like a crumpled flower. “Stop talking like that, Jay-- focus, please! You’re in danger!”

  “Sure. But what am I supposed to do about it?” I look down at my lap. I know I’m not supposed to talk like this. I just do. I’m supposed to elaborate, and make small talk, and express my emotions. Use adjectives. Vary my sentences. That’s what my teachers told me. They said I talked wrong. That I looked wrong and learned wrong. I was supposed to be like the others. But try as I may to take other colors as my own, my chameleon skin will not change. I have been broken from the beginning. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t save Dad. Fail. I failed. I fail again, and again. I lost his bow. All I had left.

  Gone.

  “I talk like I talk. And that’s okay. Because if you look up at the stars,” I point up, “They’re not all the same. And if they were, the sky wouldn’t be as beautiful.” I repeat the thought over and over again. My mom used to remind me this all the time as a child. But why did my difference still hurt? My existence was a gaping flesh wound on a prized horse’s golden hide.

  Evan shakes his head, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I just get frustrated. You’re like a child sometimes and I don’t know how to shake any sense into you.”

  “I’m not like a child.” I can’t help but laugh as soon as the words exit my mouth. The laughter quickly turns into tears and I curl into myself.

  “Jay? What’s wrong?”

  I hold out my trembling bandaged arm and crumpled hand, pulling up my pant leg with my free arm. “I l-look l-like a m-m-monster, Evan,” I say through the tears. I don’t know why I tell him this. I guess, after never telling anyone anything for five years, feeling an emotion and having someone else acknowledge it is somewhat cathartic.

  He slowly reaches out a hand. “Could I touch your cheek?”

  I nod, forgetting his betrayal. I try to remember the good parts of Evan. He has so many. I’ve just tried so hard to erase them from my mind.

  I shiver at first under the warmth of his fingertips, until he sits down and pulls me close enough so that I can lie on his shoulder and cry.

  It feels good to have agony sail out of the river of my eyes. It feels good to feel him next to me and sense his affection for me. Sense that he cares. I can’t imagine why he cares. I’ve never done anything for him but be his friend. I mostly used to just listen while he talked. About the trees, the animals, the sky, and the people. His family, the villagers, my family. He always used to talk about how fascinating nature was. This great responsibility we had to conserve harmony in ourselves and the world around us. Of course, that’s what I had talked about first. I read all the books my dad wrote. Boxes of journals and letters about life and nature and peace. Evan had always asked me to read the work out loud to him, so I did. He took it as seriously as he would a religious text. My father’s words were his religion. Maybe they gave him a sense of peace and purpose, the way they did me.

  He runs a soft, strong hand through my rich black hair, and he gently lifts my chin up so I can look into his eyes through the tears. “I’ve always thought you were the most beautiful girl in the world, and my opinion hasn’t changed.”

  I shudder and push him back.

  “I can’t hate you,” I confess, “But I can’t love you, either. I don’t think… I don’t think I know how. I don’t think it’s possible. And I’m sorry.”

  He smiles. “You don’t have to love me back,” he says. “Just promise not to hate me anymore. The soldiers aren’t all bad. Most of them, yes. But there is also some kindness left, and I… I think that’s worth fighting for.”

  I nod. “I promise.”

  He closes his eyes and leans back. He nods a few times, soft and slow, “Thank you… But Jay, you’re going to need help out there.”

  “How are you so sure I’m going to be exiled, anyway? What if I’m kidnapped by these people first?”

  “Dad heard from the council… You’re not going to be kidnapped.”

  “Fine. If I die, I die. As long as Mom is okay, nothing else matters.”

  “Please,” he begs, “Please don’t say that.”

  I don’t respond, staring off into the night at nothing in particular. I don’t know where else to look.

  “Say something,” he pleads.

  I look back at
him. “I’m not going anywhere. I have to protect my mother. But if I am exiled, will you protect her for me?”

  “Of course.”

  I look at him and squint a little bit. I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do. Where does everything go? I awkwardly put one hand on his shoulder and wrap the other around him. A friendly hug, I think.

  “This is all I can give you back.”

  He smiles, “It is more than enough. I will treasure this moment forever.”

  “Why? Why do you love me? I don’t understand.”

  He laughs, “The way you look at the world is so beautiful. Everything you see and feel is more important than it is for anybody else. Back when we were happy, you always could make me laugh, and you have the most beautiful smile in the world. You light up a room, Jay Hart. And I guess even though you hated me, my feelings for you never went away. Your kindness, patience, love for the earth. You make me feel like… like everything matters. And there is no such thing as a bad day. All of your stories and dreams are nearly as beautiful as you are.”

  My cheeks feel hot and uncomfortable. “And you don’t hate me, for not loving you back?”

  “I could never.” He smiles, squeezing my hand reassuringly.

  I find myself smiling too. “I’m very tired, Evan.”

  He scratches the back of his head, “I have to help my dad with his patients tomorrow anyway. But Jay… this is yours.” He pulls a sheathed blade out of his burlap sack and hands it to me.

  My fingers stroke the tan leather as I unsheathe the blade. I gasp. It is a dagger, maybe 8 inches in length. The blade is darker than anything I’ve ever seen. Blacker than unconsciousness itself. It is very thin, but has a wide base that tapers into a fatal sharpness. The hilt, a sort of stone, is engraved HART. The blade is exquisite. It shimmers in the darkness, as though gleaming with potential.

  “Where did you…”

  “It’s your dad’s.”

  My eyes widen, “How do you have this? WHY do you have this?”

  “Your dad gave it to me so I could study the handiwork for my smith training a while back. He told me to give it back when I thought you’d need it the most. I guess now is as good a time as any.”

  “But…”

  “I don’t know why either. But I promise, he wanted it to wait until now. It’s yours.”

  “Evan.”

  He stops.

  “Thank you for keeping it safe.”

  He smiles. “Of course. Let’s get you back home.”

  The three of us go back in the snow. A boy, now a man, whose love would never be reciprocated. A girl with a lethal dagger in her pocket, ready to use on any reanimated mutant crows if she was exiled from her village in the morning. And a very sleepy soot-black dog. There was peace, however cruel and fractured.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Jayrose, you’re not supposed to be walking! What about your healing-- what if… What if you hurt yourself more! You can’t keep doing this! I know it’s hard, but you need to stay in bed! Please, for my sanity!”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I say, though I’m not sure if it’s the truth. I had to see the village, one last time. And I had to hear what Evan needed to tell me. I keep the sheathed blade in the waistband of my pants so my mom can’t see it. I don’t know why I hide it from her. Maybe I feel like it is my own, personal secret. Something that is wholly real and mine. Something Dad and I will share, and Dad and I alone.

  The darkness of evening clouds our little wooden cottage with strands of shadow. The candlelight makes the shadows of book piles stain the walls. I discreetly take one and clutch it against my chest so I can breathe in the sweet smell of yellowed pages, leather, and sharp, black Times New Roman font. It doesn’t really matter which one it was. I’ve read all of them. I had even written my own poetry for a time, until I realized that when I wrote poetry, I felt my most vulnerable. I couldn’t handle the distress of knowing that I had emotions that made me weak. I couldn’t be weak. I had to protect my Mom from the soldiers. If I didn’t, she would be stolen for her beauty. They would make her a whore. The soldiers didn’t care and the government feigned blindness in the presence of abuse. They took my dad because he was strong. They would take my mom because she was weak. And if the village really is going to throw me out of my home-- if carcasses really are turning into crows-- I must fight.

  I will never write poetry again.

  My mom doesn’t say anything. Instead she sits on a worn, cushioned chair and stares into the sizzling white flame of the hearth.

  “Hey Mom?”

  She looks at me.

  “Do you think… Do you think that dead people could turn into crows?”

  She blinks. “You shouldn’t have gone out tonight. You must have hit your head in the avalanche… My baby girl...”

  I shake my head, “So they can’t turn into crows.” I feel my cheeks grow red. Stupid girl.

  “I’m not saying that.”

  I feel a pulse of electricity rush through my blood. “What?”

  She walks over towards her bed and pulls a small blue feather from underneath her pillow. “For a while, after they took your father, when you were out hunting and doing God knows whatever else in the woods for that month… A bluebird came to visit me every morning on the porch while I had my morning tea. And we would talk a while. He would sing and I would tell him whatever I was feeling. He only left when I was done with my tea and not a moment earlier. But one morning, instead of the bird, I found this feather. And that’s when I knew your father was dead. That bird was a part of your father. I swear it. And this feather is what we have left of him.”

  “Can… can I…”

  She nods and holds the feather out to me. I cup the soft blue plume in my hands, stroking a finger along the middle.

  “Do you remember the legends we used to tell you? About the earth spirits?”

  I close my eyes tight. “Some of them.”

  “Do you remember the spirit of life?”

  I nod, “Reya. The moon. And her husband Deno, the sun… He was the spirit of death.”

  My mom smiles briefly, “I believe,” She says, “That when we sleep at night, it is Reya who watches over us. But then when we die, we sleep forever, and Reya must protect us one last time from her bitter husband. So when Deno takes the bodies, Reya sends birds down in place of them, to keep their spirit alive. To keep us company for a short while instead of the person we’ve lost. But the birds are also her messengers. And while a bluebird is your father-- beautiful, bright, and strong-- a crow is a sinner. A crow is a harbinger of death. If dead bodies are becoming crows, it must mean that Reya is trying to tell us something.”

  I blink awkwardly. “Evan said that people in the capital were turning into…”

  Mom cups my ugly red hand in her soft, small, white ones. “Something big is coming, my dear. Something neither you nor I can yet understand.”

  I try to relax and clear my mind but find it nearly impossible. My mom may be superstitious and a little off-kilter, but one thing she’s never been is wrong. “He said everybody was getting sick. Dead right away sometimes. And he thinks I’m going to be exiled, so he came back to warn me. But mom, just… I told him to take care of you if they take me. I can’t stand the idea of losing you. You’ve always been there for me, and what those men would do to you…”

  I see tears form in the caverns of her eyes. “I knew this day would come.”

  I shiver. “Mama…? What’s wrong?”

  She turns to me, her eyes a wistfully pale violet. “You have to leave, my dear. You can’t stay cooped up here forever, in this tiny little town where nothing ever happens.”

  I start to protest but she silences me with her own words. “I’ve always known you were different. It was never just the way you looked, how you shunned our features completely, but you’ve always been so adventurous, so brave… Nothing like this village wants a woman to be. I need you to go whether they make you or not. And if you go now… You
’ll still have your dignity.”

  “Mom, what are you saying?”

  Her eyes turn grave. “You can’t stay here any longer. But I want you to leave on your own terms. Show them, Jay. Show them who Jay Hart really is.”

  I choke back tears, “How? I can’t, Mom. I can’t leave you here to die.”

  “Daughter.” She puts her hands on my shoulders, “You are far greater than this little village. You are part of something much bigger than yourself. And the journey that you must face will be difficult. You will need this.”

  She takes a piece of string and knots it around the base of the bluebird feather and fashions it into a sort of necklace. She drapes it around my neck.

  “Remember who you are. Remember where you came from. Listen to the birds.”

  She had never talked this cryptically before. I didn’t know what to think, what to say. My mind was a river rushing relentlessly toward a wall of stone. I find myself tucking the feather inside my shirt so that I can feel the soft blue intermingling with the cool chill of my barely beating heart.

  “What does any of this mean? Talk to me, dammit,” I beg as a tear slides down the slope of my cheek. “Will I ever see you again?”

  “I don’t know what it means, but I do know that right now, you are needed somewhere else. We will surely see each other again. I promise that we will. I can feel it in my heart.”

  “How do I know you’ll be safe?”

  “I’m an old woman, but if Evan wishes to protect me, I see no threat.”

  I pause and then yank my dagger out of my waistband and unsheathe it to show her. “He gave this to me… He said it was Dad’s. He said Dad made him promise to keep it until the ‘time was right’ or something like that, and I--”

  Her face grows stern, cold… unforgiving. “Show no one.”

  I look at the ground for a moment and then back into her cloudy irises. “Why?”