Page 20 of The City of Stardust

Finally, down a track hidden by overgrown bushes, they reach a dilapidated house with weeds shooting up through the gravel pathway. Penelope treads carefully over the entrance. She guides François to the kitchen, where she reveals a trapdoor beneath a rucked-up carpet. Underneath it, something keens, the sound sending the glassware juddering in the cupboards.

François opens the trapdoor then hesitates.

“I would say he doesn’t bite, but…” Penelope’s smile widens as François flinches.

Gathering up her dress in one hand, she slides off her shoes and descends the ladder in bare feet. A faint smell of rot and something sweeter emanates from the hole, growing stronger as she descends. At the bottom, it’s almost pitch-black, and there’s only a dim outline of a figure hunched against the back wall.

“Tamriel.”

The creature moans softly. But a voice reverberates through her head, sounding like broken wind chimes.

Star-daughter, you return to us.

“Once a year, as always. I have not forgotten the terms of our contract.”

A pact from another lifetime, another world. Penelope and Tamriel survey each other in the darkness, weighing up the changes another year has marked on them. Time has not been kind to Penelope in many senses, but it has been abjectly cruel to the creature before her.

As is only fitting.

Penelope taps on the ladder twice, the sound ringing up to the top. A minute later, François descends, cradling her package. He shakes so badly, he almost drops it as he waits to hand it over.

“Your offering,” Penelope says. “As promised.”

The creature lifts its head, sniffing.

We smell blood, the taste of life at its most sweet. We must eat O WE MUST EAT.

“Then you shall feast,” Penelope says.

With a sudden push, she thrusts François forward, into the creature’s path. There is movement, razor-quick. A sharp tearing sound. Screams.

The room is suddenly filled with the copper tang of blood. For a while, there’s nothing but the sound of snapping bones and slurping, tearing and gobbling. Penelope leans against the wall, waiting.

The creature sighs in a gust of blood and death. The smell of rot is overpowering.

They tasted of sunlight and heart-life, sky and morning dew and fear, O yes. We are still ravenous, but the hunger does not pierce us so deeply. Our gratitude is bestowed upon you.

“I didn’t come here for gratitude,” she says.

The creature sounds disappointed, even petulant.Very well. We await your question, star-daughter.

“Tell me what Marianne Everly is looking for. Tell me where she is.”

There is a rumble of laughter.A star-cursed woman plagued by a mortal problem. O how history repeats itself.

“I will not be goaded by you, Tamriel.”

It is the truth. She seeks the city of stardust. The beginning of the end.

“Elandriel,” she breathes. “Still?”

The name is older than the dirt beneath their feet, like a snatch of melody with missing lyrics. It’s been a long time since it’s fallen from her lips, but she relishes the taste.

We tire of this game, star-daughter. The stars do not change their mind, no matter how many times we ask on your behalf. If the answer did not satisfy you then, it will not do so now.

Penelope raises an eyebrow. “Did the stars not change their mind when they cast you out? You, whose jewel was supposed to hang eternal in the night sky? Who swore to never tarnish the glory with which you were charged?” She smiles wryly. “The stars can be fickle, too.”

And yet we will be here until time runs backwards, until we no longer recall our brethren, our crime, our selfsame personhood. We are astral, and our fates are not so mutable as the mortals with which you toy.

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