Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(20)

His blunt answer was, “4105.”

I reeled back from the statue as though it had stung me. My breath rasped. Not enough air. For a moment, I was back beneath the torch of Sun, burning in its light, crawling across stones like embers.

Then I blinked, and everything was cold and gray. The stone, the air, the rising light filtering through the windows. My feet, still bare, were ice. “4105?”

Father Aedan nodded.

I gripped the hem of the statue’s skirt, lowering myself to the floor. “Seven hundred years? I’ve been gone seven hundred years?”

He reached toward me. “Star Mother—”

I shied away, uncaring that my skirt rose halfway up my calf. “I was just there. Ten months, the same as it would be with any mortal child. I wasn’t supposed to live, but I did. I lived.” My volume raised with each word. “I lived, and He sent me back. How could seven hundred years have passed?”

The poor father looked ready to weep. “I-I don’t know the ways of the gods, Star Mother. Not beyond what They’ve revealed to me. Please . . . let me get you some water and bread. Something to settle your stomach.”

But I was on my feet again, shaking my head as though I could dispel the truths he spoke. I ran through the cathedral, past the eye, down the nave, to the heavy double doors of its entrance. I rammed my shoulder into the one on the right, forcing it open.

Spring air engulfed me, and for a heartbeat, Endwever was exactly how I remembered it. But small wrongs ticked in my vision one by one. That house, and the one behind it, hadn’t been there when I left. The Farntons hadn’t had a fence, and their vegetable garden was missing.

I walked, cutting across the village, stepping around a stray sheep. People were rising to start their chores and their day. A man hooked his plow to an ox. A woman carried a laden bucket in each hand. A girl tied her apron tight around her small waist. All of them, strangers.

Panic rose in my breast, and I moved faster, as though the exercise could burn away all the unfamiliarity of this familiar place. The path wound toward my own home, but as I neared it, I noticed an addition had been put onto it, and a plump woman nursing a babe sat in the window, glancing up at me with unfamiliar eyes. I changed direction, running toward the tree line. Passing a man who called after me, another who stared at me the way Father Aedan had. All of them wore strange fashions, the women with lower necklines and fuller sleeves, bright aprons over their skirts. The men had heavy folded cuffs and sharp collars. My dress alone made me stand out among them, a blue jay in a flock of cardinals.

I ran until I came to the cottage Caen had been building for us. It was entirely finished, with a fenced-in vegetable garden beside it. There was no thatching on the roof, but dark tiles. Bird droppings highlighted the walls. A new walking path cut a rivet in the Earth, heading toward the village square. And the village . . . it was much too large. Far larger than it had been . . .

I stopped, staring, trying to catch my breath. With each exhale, my thoughts screamed, Seven hundred years. Seven hundred years. Seven hundred years.

This was not the Endwever I had left behind.

These were not my friends, my neighbors, my family. No, they were all long dead, and I was the only one left. The only one left.

Alone.



I sat by the fireplace, sipping yarrow tea, clasping the cup to warm my fingers. I was inside Father Aedan’s house. He had found me in my despair and, with the help of his wife, coaxed me inside. The house was centuries old, but it had not stood in Endwever during my time.

My time. I took another sip of tea, feeling the warmth drag down my throat, and peered out the window at the afternoon sky. At the Sun. Did He know what He had sent me back to?

The ring on my finger was lined amber. Would He try to find me?

A face appeared in the window and startled me. An adolescent boy, peering in, going wide-eyed at the sight of me.

Shila, my hostess, noticed as well. Clucking her tongue, she strode to the window and shut its thin curtain. “She’s not a show hen.”

“What she is is a miracle,” Father Aedan replied. He smiled at me from his seat across the room, at a short wooden table. “A miracle. They are bound to be curious.”

Frowning, Shila moved to another window and peeked outside. “There’s already a dozen of them out there.”

“I haven’t exactly been clandestine,” I managed.

Shila turned, perhaps to speak to me, but she studied me instead, her eyes glistening. She recognized me from the temple statue, too. They all did.

“There’s a scripture about you,” Father Aedan said, as though hearing my acclaim could soothe my confusion, my shock. “About how the Sun God favored you and kept you.”

I swallowed a hot mouthful of tea. “Because my body was never returned.”

He nodded.

But that answered nothing, and I neither confirmed nor denied the assumption.

Shila worried her hands and stepped into the kitchen. “I’ll make us a fine meal, and you a bed. Take the day to relax, my dear. We’ll sort it all out tomorrow, when you’re feeling yourself again.”

But a day couldn’t make me feel like myself.

Only seven hundred years would.



There was a crowd waiting for me when I departed for the cathedral in the morning.

The popularity was strange. Once upon a time, I would have enjoyed it, but my thoughts were too rattled and thin to take the attention. Villagers of all shapes, sizes, and ages had been outside the Aedans’ home since dawn. Some, I suspected, had camped out all night to get a glimpse of me. I was more than a show hen—I was a prize bull.