Celestine's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Celestine wanted one thing: to be left alone. She was a star nymph, cousin to the sleeping girl in the thorn tower, and she had spent a hundred years drifting far from that family's troubles. Tonight she floated in her cottage at the edge of the sky. She sipped berry milk and nibbled a rosewater biscuit. Below her, the stars slid past like slow fish. This was peace, and she guarded it. A warmth pressed against the window. Then heat filled the room, sudden as an open oven. Celestine set down her cup. She knew that heat. Only one visitor carried the sun on her back. Sol stepped through the wall of light. She was small, crowned in gold leaves, and she gripped a jeweled staff. She did not knock. She never did. Sol dragged the sun across the sky each day, and if it stopped, she died with it. She had no time for doors. "Your cousin's tree is dying," Sol said. Celestine laughed. "My cousin sleeps. She has slept a hundred years. Her tree is fine." "The roots are cold." Sol held out her free hand. The fingertips had gone gray, like meat left in snow. "I felt it this morning. Same as when the sun stopped. Something is pulling the life out of your family's ground." Celestine's biscuit crumbled in her fingers. She looked at Sol's gray hand and did not laugh again. "That has nothing to do with me," she said. "I left that place. I made my own quiet up here." "Quiet ends when the roots die." Sol flexed her gray fingers. They did not close all the way. "The tower feeds on the tree. The tree feeds on the ground. The ground is going dead. When it dies, your cousin dies. Then the family scatters. Then they look for the last star of the line." She fixed her yellow eyes on Celestine. "That is you." Celestine floated to the window. She looked down at the drifting stars, her hundred years of hard-won calm. She thought about staying. She thought about pouring more berry milk and pretending the heat had never come. But Sol's hand was gray, and Sol was never wrong about wrongness. "If I go down there and fix nothing," Celestine said slowly, "they will still come for me." "Yes," Sol said. "You cannot hide from a cold that reaches the roots." Celestine closed her eyes. Her peace was already gone. It had left the moment Sol's heat touched the glass. The only way back to quiet ran straight down, through the thorns, to a dying tree she had spent a century avoiding. She opened her eyes and set her cup on the sill. "Take me to the tree." Sol turned toward her wall of light. "It is a long fall. Hold your breath." Celestine stepped into the heat, and the stars fell away above her.