Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(16)

Above me, the night sky sparkled with life, a blanket ready and waiting to catch its child. Twinkles of light danced in anticipation of meeting their new sibling. The empty space where the last star had perished seemed to yawn with wanting. In my delirium, I imagined a dark hand reaching down from it and grabbing my stomach.

The godlings barely had time to lay me down before I screamed.

I had been given bountiful time to consider my upcoming delivery. I had seen other women give birth. I had witnessed tears and bravery, trepidation and joy. I had spoken to my attendants and the Sun Himself about what to expect. I had thought I was prepared.

But there was no preparing for the vibrant pain that ripped through me, as though blacksmith’s tongs had grabbed the skin of my toes and peeled it back to my forehead in one swift, cruel motion.

As though my gut had been hollowed out for a cookfire, my entrails the meal. As though I had been piked upon the Sun Himself, my flesh forever charring.

I had thought making love to the Sun the most unbearable pain of my existence, but I was wrong.

This was far worse.

There was no question why star mothers died upon the birth bed. No mortal could survive this. Not even a godling could.

My world became utter agony, bright and unyielding, tearing me apart and remaking me only to pull me asunder once more. I was disembodied, and I was fire. I lost consciousness in the sense that thoughts ceased to process, but I never pulled away from the torture within me, blazing slowly, so slowly, toward my hips. I never broke away from the pain, not once. I screamed, unseeing, barely registering hands holding me down. If Elta and Fosii tried to comfort me, I couldn’t hear them. If the Sun came to witness my death or His child’s birth, I couldn’t sense Him. I was locked in a world all my own, the bars smoking against my skin, closing in on me from all sides so I could not pull away. Not in body. Only in spirit. And I felt that pull, that need to break free from my own skin. I welcomed death with all that I was. I begged for it.

Time warped. I burned alive for years, decades, centuries, hours, minutes, seconds. I tore apart again and again and again, until finally, blessedly, the darkness swallowed me whole.





CHAPTER 6

When light again touched my eyes, it took me a very long time to process it. It was pale and unassuming, with the slightest touch of pink. My mind had to remember what light was. Blinking dry eyes, I stared at it, gaped at it, comprehended it. I lay there for a long time, trying to remember who I was, what this body was, and how we were attached. My thoughts were sluggish and ground together as two great stones, but they moved, and slowly I pieced myself together again.

Ceris. Star Mother.

The blessed hereafter.

And yet . . . the hereafter looked very much like the misshapen palace where I had spent nearly a year of my life. I gradually found the strength to move my neck, glimpsing the night and stars overhead and finding a not-pillar nearby, beyond the reach of my not-bed.

I was spread supine upon the covers, my arms stretched out to either side of me, my legs in a narrow V. I was dressed in white that shimmered with a light of its own, not unlike a star. A fabric unseen on Earth, unmade by man. Four glass roses lay across my breast, and I felt a metal crown at my brow, warm from contact with my skin.

I was dressed for a funeral, a burial. Dressed as the honored dead. And yet my spirit was still firmly in my body, which was stiff and tired but absent of pain. Or perhaps I ached terribly, but the comparison to my star’s birth made it seem inconsequential.

Confused, I lifted my eyes to the sky above me, speckled with a million stars of so many colors. And somehow, somehow, my gaze

was drawn to one in particular, a tiny white bead against the black, small and twinkling. A pinprick of life in a tiny pocket where life had previously gone out. Somehow I knew that was my star, though realistically I should not be able to tell it apart from any of the others.

And I felt it watching me, looking back with . . . delight.

I let out a long breath and smiled.

Someone gasped near me.

“OH!” She dropped a pitcher, which vanished through the not-floor and reappeared in her hands. “Oh, by the Sun’s watch, she’s alive!”

Her cry rang against the not-walls. She backed away from me as though a dragon roosted in my hair, and ran from the room. I stared after her, my confused thoughts giving her a name. Elta. I tried to sit up, but my body was not quite itself yet. I could not so much as twitch my little finger.

Elta shortly returned with three others, one whom I recognized from earlier but could not name. They all stared at me with wide, incandescent eyes. The shortest, whose face reminded me of a bear’s, came close and peered into my eyes for a long time. He then collected the glass roses and pressed his large hand between my breasts.

He drew back suddenly, like I was hot to the touch. “She lives.”

His words were airy, intangible as the wind. “She lives.”

Another said, “Alert Satto at once.”

Elta croaked, “Sh-She’ll need nourishment.”

And they all vanished, leaving me alone to gaze at my star, wishing desperately that I could reach for her.

I spent three days in my room, with my tapestry draped over the foot of my bed, recuperating from what should have killed me. I did not understand how I was still alive, and none of the godlings who waited on me understood it, either. One, the bear-faced being from before, thoroughly examined me, only to announce, “You are fully and undoubtedly mortal.”