Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(21)

“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.

I thought back to how I’d likened myself to an old cow in the backyard, before becoming a star mother. The irony was not lost on me.

Father Aedan and Shila walked close to me, as though their bodies could give me some privacy. I smiled and nodded at those we passed, igniting whispers like fire in my wake.

At the cathedral, I returned to the cemetery, taking my time with the tombstones. The Aedans didn’t leave me, but they did give me some space, watching over me from a distance as though I were a bird that might flit away at any moment. But where would I go?

Although I had a growing feeling the Aedans saw me more as a scriptural phenomenon than a living and breathing person, I did not know of any other who would have me. Every last human being I had known was long dead.

A comment in an unfamiliar voice marked the arrival of a third party.

“How did she survive?” the man asked, as though I could not hear him.

I glanced over my shoulder to a man of about forty, wearing worn but well-made clothes and a hearty jacket. Father Aedan gestured for him to follow, and the two came out to meet me.

“Ceris, this is Toder, the stonemason who carves all the tombstones. We thought he could help.”

I glanced at the man, then back to the weathered grave markers before me. “Did he carve them seven hundred years ago as well?” I couldn’t help the bitterness in my voice, but I did regret it instantly.

“No,” Toder replied, crouching beside me, “but my father and his father before him worked this place. I know it well.”

Hope sparked within me. “You have records?”

He looked abashed. “N-No. Not records that old, my lady.”

“Ceris,” I corrected him. Turning back to the tombstone, I ran my hand down its length. I could make out a few letters of Wenden. Had my family still gone to the paradisiacal hereafter Sun had promised me, even though I had not been there to greet them? “And I don’t know why I survived, to answer your question.” That more or less denied what had been written in scripture about me.

Behind us, Father Aedan said, “Perhaps many have, only to come back in a different time—”

“No.” I corrected him, firm. “They all perished with their stars.”

Silence fell around us like snow.

Clearing his throat, Toder stood and moved to the next row of graves. “These ones are from the 3800s,” he explained, and I followed him, light-headed from crouching so long. He walked a little farther. “These are more recent.”

I could tell, for they were still legible. I read the one he stood beside. “I don’t think the Parros family will help me here.”

Toder shook his head. “The placement . . . most likely a Wenden woman married into the Parros family. That’s why the Wenden graves dwindle in number.”

That ember of hope reignited, and I read the names on the Parros family tombstones. “Are they still here? Their descendants?” I might have family after all, just not family I’ve met yet. One of my sisters, at the very least, had married. She’d had children, too, if there were tombstones on the Wenden plot from the 3800s.

Father Aedan worried his hands. “I-I’m afraid not.”

Toder said, “Let us ask Jon. He might know.”

They took me to Jon Ellis, who was the oldest man in Endwever at seventy-four. A crowd traveled with me when I departed for his home, but the glimmer of hope in my belly softened my disposition, and I grasped hands with many of the bystanders, nodding when they said my name or asked if my story was true. Many acted like I was some holy demigod. A few looked at me skeptically. Fortunately, I had no desire to prove anything to anyone.

To my surprise, we went to my cottage. Caen’s cottage. The cottage where I would have birthed mortal babes, had my life progressed as expected.