The Symmetry of Stars by Alex Myers

Author:Alex Myers [Myers, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-09-16T17:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

The sky that night, as dark as my shadow form. Oh, the spaces between the stars. I drifted, waiting, in the nothingness between earth and sky. Where do I belong? Sometimes … sometimes I feel that I have no home. Not the Deeps. Not the Firmament. Not earth (though, I admit, I am finding it pleasant to sojourn there). It is as if I am doomed to be a wanderer, or doomed, at least, to feel unsettled. An exile? But that implies that once, somewhere, I had a home.

Enough! I shook such thoughts off me, like a spaniel rids itself of water after swimming, and stared up at the sky. There … Gemini: twin stars burning bright. Lesser suns prickled around them, but I saw only the twins. Focused on them – were they brighter than before? Was I imagining things? And there … just now appearing in the night sky (any astronomer looking up would be beside themselves with confusion; any astrologer, with delight), the green-hued Venus. The planet ought to swing higher than the twins, but this night, its arc was lower, bringing it into a straight line with that pair of stars. Closer, closer, and then, a pop of red so sudden I thought I could hear it, as Mars was pulled into this sequence, too, the workings of the magic my brother and I had wrought. Yes, right there. The confluence wasn’t complete. I squinted and worked the calculation in my head, of angles and orbits and … oh. Less than a year. Three seasons. That was nothing. I had to focus. No time to dilly-dally and spy (though I longed to check up on my brother). Focus. Now I knew what I was up against, and I had only a short time to figure out how to improve my twins sufficiently.

I floated back and dissipated among the shadows, still staring up. These stars, though minor compared to what waited above, were pretty, I admit. I really did want to win this contest. The thought of being exiled – the thought of the utter, bleak emptiness of the Farthest Deeps – made me shudder. I couldn’t bear it. I had to win.

Three seasons, and the first was autumn.

No time to lose. The woods near Duke Aymon’s manor had begun to shed their leaves as I squeezed out of the shadows. A moment to stretch, and then I shrugged myself into some flesh. It felt momentarily good to incorporate, I admit. It gets tiresome to be unbounded. It is sometimes nice to have limits, to know where one begins and where one ends. I took in the scent of leaf mould, of woodsmoke, of fishy river mud. Odd, it smelled like home.

In a moment, I had settled the flesh of Melissa, the heaven-sent angel, pale and blond and cool, about me and set out through the forest towards the manor. I paused only once, to study the angle of Mars and Venus from down here and make certain I wasn’t mistaken.

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