The Stargazers (33 page)

Quercus cleared his throat and gestured toward the lake, where the old funeral pyre sat being illuminated by the moonlight. They carried Iris over to the stone slab. Holly was singing an ancient lullaby as she washed her aunt’s face with lake water. She then picked some wild bleeding hearts to put in Iris’s hair.

Aster went back to the house to retrieve a sh
roud. Once inside, she gazed in wonder at the tiny
hovel that five women and one man had called home for so many years.
She smelled Nanny Lily’s sage and rosemary hanging from strings in the front window. “We all lived here. How did we not kill each other?”

Walking through, she marveled over how lifeless it all seemed after just a few days away. T
he lin
e of cauldrons and mortars
and pestles in Oleander’s potion room
already had a layer of dust on them
. Da
hlia’s pile of knitting next to her rocker hadn’t changed since Aster left
.
She imagined her mother pacing fretfully around, her chores forgotten as she occupied herself with worry over her daughter.
Holly’s handmade mop dolls with the big crystal eyes
gazed at her fr
om the shelf above
the
kitchen door
.
Aster had always thought them creepy, but now she saw them as the crude but well-intentioned crafts of a young witch trying so hard to find her gift, before those gifts were taken from her.

Upstairs, her bedroom was
a suffocating box
. She thought she’d burned everything that had ever mattered
before she left, but one thing remained. Dahlia or Lily must have saved it
. It was her sketchbook
.
Inside were
the drawing
s
of a
land she had always loved, but had never loved her back.
The girl who d
rew them had different hands now
. She placed the sketchbook on her bed and closed the door.

She took one of
Oleander’s small cauldrons
and put the toad into it
.
On her way back to the door, she caught
her reflection in the mirror. Although she still recognized a ghostly imprint of her old face on the new one, her eyes went
to the crows feet and the craggy
lines around her mouth. Liver spots speckled her face and neck, but her eyes still burned a fierce violet from their deeper sockets. Her hair had gone almost completely white, save for a solid pink stripe that framed her face. It was th
e face of a crone, but
she didn’t mind it. As Ruby said, it was a wise face.

In the parlor, she found Larkspur curled up in fr
ont of the wood stove. “Hey there. L
ying down on the job, I see.”

The cat gave her a “what do you care” look, and stood up to stretch his enormous gray body before joining her. She
stepped out into the night and
closed the front door
for the last time
.
Taking a deep breath, she summoned the fiery dragon again.
“Do your work,” she whispered and sent it in through the open window where Nanny Lily used
to cool so many fruit pies. Aster
didn’t look back, even when she started to smell smoke and feel the heat on her back. When she reached the lake again, she handed the white sheet to Holly who draped it over Iris’s body.

Holly shook her
head. “She looks beautiful
. I hate to cover her up.” 

Aster looked at Quercus and nodded. He stepped forward and lit the pyre’s kindling with the torch he’d assembled. They stood in solemn silence and watched Mama Iris disappear behind a wall of flames.

After Aster finished with her prayers, she turned to the others. “I
have o
ne last thing to do.
I can do it alone if you want to head back through
the door
.”

Holly placed her han
d on Aster’s shoulder
. “You don’t have to do anything alone ever again.”

Aster led them through the small copse of trees at the very back of their property to the ring of stones surrounding an ivory-colored slab with dozens of runes and symbols carved into its top and base.
She’d been born on that slab, had received her destiny on it, as had all the other Stargazers before her.
Nanny Lily and Dahlia had shown her the Giving
Altar when she was a young girl,
and she had avoided it since,
afraid of its power.
The ancient quartz
was about to see its last drop of blood
. 
             

She stepped up to the altar with the cauldron in her hand.

Quercus cleared his throat behin
d her and drew a long knife from the inside of his jacket.

Even now, the man couldn’t find the ability to speak. But he didn’t need to. H
is bushy gray eyebrows hung l
ow over his eyes
.
This was, after all, one of his daughters who was about to die. “No, Papa Quercus.” She placed her hand on his wrist
.
“I won’t need the knife.”

Taking a few steps toward the Altar, she was seized by a bit of that old lingering doubt. She turned back to the others. “Is
this right? This is what we’re supposed to do, right? To return the Old Magic to Ellemire?”

Quercus
stepped to her and patted
Aster’s head
with one of his big calloused hands
. Holly echoed his sentiments with a solemn nod of her head
.
Even though she had been the biggest recipient of Oleander’s a
buse, she was crying
.
Perhaps they were tears of relief, of letting go.

Removing the cauldron lid, Aster
plucked the toad from in
side and set it down on the quartz.  A
circle of bluish-white light enveloped it, freezing it in place.

The toad didn’t look distressed,
but it glared up at her with
yellow eyes, and Aster thought she could feel its thoughts.

Do it now, or I’ll find a way out of this to make you pay. I’ll never die if you don’t kill me. Or are you too much of a coward to kill a wee little froggy?

Again she felt that deep certainty of what she must do. She hovered her hand above Oleander, and the blue light from the alter shot upward to form
the sh
ape of a long blade
.
It had no weight, but the life of it thrummed all the way up her arm, its contours fitting perfectly into her hand. “Let it be done.”

She
brought the b
lade of light down through the Oleander’s amphibian
body.

There was no
blood, no sickening squelch, no scream. Instead, the toad
disint
egrated into billions light particles
that
held its shape for a split second before exploding upward in a radiant column. High in the sky, veins of light burst outward from the column like spider web
,
traveling as far as she could see.
The stars grew brighter and drew together into a swirling pattern that reminded Aster of the galaxies she’d viewed through
Bryon’s telescope on that wondrous night when she fell in love.
The world was awash in hues of white, blue, red, and yellow. The moon’s face had become a rainbow.

The stars moved together tighter and tighter, until they
gathered into a solid point
so dense and full of energy that Aster wondered if it might destroy them all. Then it exploded into a brilliant white nova, lighting the world like a million sons. Aster shielded her eyes with her arms as a
great gust of wind blew t
he hair back from her face. A great cacophony of birdsong erupted around her, threatening to burst her eardrums
.
Wolves howled, babies cried. The world came awake in the night, and Aster felt their fear and wonder surging through her, even more powerful than the light itself.

It can’t take it! It’s too much!
Grah save me!

A runnel of hot blood flowed from her nose, as well as out of her ears as the swell of Old Magic, exponentially greater than what she had channeled earlier in the forest, ran all around and through her, bringing her to her knees before the altar like a penitent. She wept
with the beauty and pain of it, certain she was to die right here.

And if this is to be my last breath, what better way to take it
…

Then, as quickly as
it appeared, the force of the Old Magic began to wane
, leav
ing its imprint on Aster’s eyes, heart, and spirit.
The din of animal song gradually went silent, leaving behind a few errant peeps and barks as the night became night again
.

Aster looked up from the altar to see the Magic falling from the stars like diamond dust, covering the land in a delicate blanket of healing light. She gripped the edge of the altar and pulled herself up. Her legs, though shaky, held her as well as they ever had. She turned
to see the shocked faces of Holly and Quercus
, whose faces were still branded with awe. Quercus’s face was wet with tears.

“My heavens,” said Holly in
breathless
whisper
. “Your face, Aster. Your beautifu
l face.” Aster touched her cheek with uncertain fingers.
Smooth skin.
Her hands were no longer the knotted and twisted copi
es of her mother’s, but the long and slender ones
she
’d always
had
. The few remaining
brown spots were fading
before her eyes
.

“What is this gift
?” Aster a
sked. She felt a faint disappointment
. For a short while, she was able to forget her youth and everything that had spoiled it. How easy it would have been to hide inside a crone’s body, never risking love or hurt again.

Holly appeared to sense this and stepped forward. “It’ll all come back in good time. Only this time, when you’ve lived your whole life.”

Her aunt’s face had grown younger as well, but something about it looked lighter and more vital. Unburdened by difficul
t years of loneliness and salvia
.
The two women embraced, and for the first time, Aster felt a part of her family
. “Let’
s go home,
”
she said.

-30-

It was approaching dawn w
hen Aster, Holly, Quercus, and Larkspur
returned to the Oasis house. Quercus, having come
from this world, still had the hang of driving, and Aster didn’t have to do much by way of navigating either.
She’d traveled this road more than once, and hoped never to again.

Instead, she soothed Holly, whose anxiety mirrored Aster’s own
the first time she rode in a motor carriage
.
A car
, she reminded herself. If she was going to live here, she’d better start sounding like it.

Sheriff Kennedy’s car wasn’t anywhere in sight, but she had a feeling he would be around soon.
She would have to face the horror of what had happened last night, and she was ready for whatever might come of it.
Aster opene
d the door to a house abuzz
with voices, laughte
r, and the smell of good cooking
.

Ruby
jumped up from the couch and ran to them, her face alight with joy and relief. She fell into Aster and hugged her right
. “You’re beautiful again.”

“Don’t remind me,” said Aster with a grin.

“You shoul
dn’t be sad about it. In about
twenty years,
you’ll be old and wrinkly
and wishing you still had that skin.”

“Only twenty? My goodness, child. You’re breaking this old woman’s heart!” Nanny Lily was standing in the dining room with a platter of pancakes in her hands. They were the same old and spotted h
ands Aster remembered, but her fingers were no longer bunched and twisted. Her spine was also
straighter. She looked like a woman who had seen all her years with natural grace. 

Aster
was still trying to take it all in when Dahlia entered from the kitchen, and at the sight of her mother, she nearly fainted.
Her
mother’s
formerly gray cu
rls were a shiny auburn. And she was tall! She’d never known
how tall
her mother actually was. A few wrinkles creased the skin around her eyes and mouth, but she was the woman from Sheriff Kennedy’s picture all over again.

Aster
ran
into her mother’s arms, suddenly thankful she could run again. “Mom
, I can’t believe it
.
I just…
”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, and instead ran her fingers through her mother’s curls. It was remarkable.