Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(11)

And so I passed through my not-door and decided to explore the palace that was not a palace.

The Sun was away; the not-walls changed with His presence.

When the Sun was here, they were brighter, more translucent, and they dimmed when He left. I did not understand how the god could come and go when He, as far as I understood, perpetually hung in the sky, but He was a god, so it was done, somehow.

I learned quickly that the Palace of the Sun did not sit as an Earthly palace would, with stationary halls and rooms, stairs, floors.

No, it unfurled like heavy swaths of brocade, forming itself where you stepped and where you looked. I wondered if turning too quickly would allow me to spy the not-walls ordering themselves, but I was never successful in that venture. The palace was too clever for that.

Everywhere I went, the sparkling night sky remained overhead.

Every window I peered through was the same, and never once did I spy my home planet. I had no idea where I was, if it was even a where to be known.

But the place was not without décor. I eventually found a hallway that had what I can best describe as plants growing along its sides, with leaves like lily petals. Every part of them glimmered a pearly gold, bright and beautiful. Had I possessed thread that color, or even a pale echo of it . . . I would have been able to create the most beautiful tapestry known to man.



I found another place that looked like a pool, yet it was empty, and no one was there for me to question about its purpose. So I continued along, my path nonsensical, and happened upon other godlings who seemed, in one way or another, to be servants in the never-ending palace of crystal and pink. Some of the creatures were no higher than my knee, and others towered over me. For the most part, the godlings were not unlike Elta and Fosii, somewhat humanoid in appearance but distinctly other, and many of them noticed me immediately, like I was a blot of ink in the center of white linen. The first few I spoke with regarded me just as Fosii had, and many as Elta first did—with looks of pity. Perhaps because they knew I would perish, but it seemed more than that. By the time I wound my way back to my room, I was hugging my center, my child, if only to remind myself that I had a purpose there, and I was not alone.

Fortunately, I wore Fosii down.

I gave her space, always greeted her when she arrived and thanked her when she left. She became used to me. And perhaps Elta spoke kindly of me as well. I’d like to think so, anyway.

What surprised me was how much she let her guard down. By my second month of pregnancy, she treated me as if we were old friends. She talked like an old woman and sassed me like one, too.

“Child, you don’t need to bathe,” she told me when I requested it of her. My belly was still flat, but it was warm, and sometimes, under the darkness of my blankets, I could see a faint shimmer pulsing through the skin around my navel. “Not here. There is. No.

Dirt.”

I smiled at her. “I would like one, nevertheless.”

She rolled her eyes, which were bright blue and very human in appearance. “You think the universe wants to conjure you a tub?”

Elta came in then, her arms full of what I immediately identified as string. I leapt from a not-chair and rushed her as she said, “It can’t hurt, Fosii.”

“You found string.” I danced before her until she unloaded her burden into my arms. String every color of the rainbow and then some toppled against my chest, some of the bundles dropping to the floor. I had so much time and nothing with which to fill it and had asked on multiple occasions if I could start stitching something. I didn’t think Elta had taken me seriously.

Fosii buzzed her lips. “From the mortals? What is wrong with you?”

Elta shrugged. “She is a star mother.”

Folding her arms, Fosii looked away. As though she didn’t want to be reminded. But she caught me watching her, and snapped, “Don’t think I like you now, Ceris Wenden.”

Thoughtful, I carried several spools of string to my not-chair and sat, thumbing through their colors. My fingers landed on a yellow so brilliant it was nearly white, the fine threads shimmering in the not-light. A familiar feeling pulsed in my gut, one of fear and wanting, a paradox warring with itself.

“When . . . When will I see Him again?” I had not so much as glimpsed the Sun since our night together. I should have been thankful for it, but it was hard to cast away the attachment of a first love, even if it hadn’t been love.

Still, my skeleton shuddered at half-remembered pain. The song of those past sensations was etched into my very being.

Again, the godlings looked at me like I was something else, something beyond mortal. Like I was pitifully ugly or horribly injured.

Elta said, “You’ll see Him at your halfway mark.”

Halfway? “Only then?”

She nodded.

A righteous anger bubbled up within me. “So He lies with a woman, only to ignore her for five months?”

Fosii warned me with “Child.”

Elta shook her head, then tilted it back to look at the heavens. I followed her gaze, my eyes instantly drawn to the space where the star had died. I could always find it. “There are many stars,” she

whispered. “Many star mothers. One for each. It is . . . It is too much to bear, even for a god.”

Her words pricked my heart. I hadn’t even considered. Mortals . . . we were nothing compared to the gods. But did it hurt the Sun to know the mothers of His children had to die? Had He grown to care for any of them? Was that why He’d seemed so morose?