When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy) (8 page)

Tightening my overcoat, I break from the monotonous path and head to the corner of the cloister where a cluster of pine trees provides shelter for those who desire to be alone. They weren’t grown for that reason, but I’m using their solitary space as an excuse to get away from people in general. I squeeze through the tight space. If I were any heavier, I wouldn’t fit. I suppose I’ve had one honeyed bun too many. Gluttony is a sin I need to be mindful of.

I turn and step on something soft. A small yelp arises beneath my foot. I pull away, and gasp. “Nathaniel! What are you doing here? Were you taking a nap in this wretched cold? You could freeze to death.” I start fretting over him, pulling him to a sitting position, wrapping my coat around him, and he wipes tired eyes with a small hand. Snow dusts his wool coat that I swipe off as though I’m beating a rug. Despite our meeting being awkward, I am overjoyed to see him. Two weeks is an eternity for a brother and sister who have such a close bond. The sister in me scolds him. “You shouldn’t be out here, Nat. You should be in class. Isn’t Sister Allyn looking for you?”

Nathaniel yawns and blinks sleep from bright blue eyes that remind me of the ocean. He shakes snow from hair mixed with the colors of autumn. My brother was just born beautiful. It’s almost a shame he’s going into the priesthood because he is going to be desirable when he’s older. “I-I wasn’t trying to sleep. I was hiding.”

I pull him to me and rest my head on top of his. His hair smells like snow and mint leaves. “Hiding from what?”

Nathaniel goes rigid in my arms. A single shiver passes through him. “You’ll think I’m being silly or just playing games.”

“Well, according to Mother Aurelia, the Professed Order thinks the exact same thing of me, Nat. One can’t get any sillier than me, so whatever you have to say will probably seem perfectly reasonable.”

He shakes his head and looks up at me with eyes full of uncertainty. “I know what Mother Aurelia wants to do with us. Sister Allyn told me. She wants to send us home, doesn’t she? But you said it would have been bad if we stayed at home. Why would she want to send us back there?”

I know Nathaniel is just avoiding my question, and I suppose I shouldn’t badger him about it now. Perhaps this is what Mother Aurelia meant when she claimed Nathaniel is being as out of sorts as I am. I suppose a penchant for lunacy runs in the Gareth line indeed. I’ll have to figure him out later.

“I’m trying to get her to change her mind, Nat. I don’t want to go home any more than you do.”

Nathaniel pulls away from me and looks me full in the face. “Why did you take us away from Mother and Father three years ago?”

The question sends an uncomfortable jolt through me. I don’t want to have to remind him of what he is, of what I may be too. The thought is already ghastly enough, but to have to speak it out loud in a cloister where only peace is supposed to preside is damning, something I’m certain is a Seven Deadly Sin somewhere. I pull him back to me and keep him tight in my arms. Even if everything else is going wrong in my life right now, at least I have him to cling on to, the last shred of hope that gives my life meaning.

“Mother and Father…they would have eventually hurt us, Nat, do you understand that? I didn’t want them to hurt us. You know I came here for you.”

Nathaniel dips his head low. “But I hate it here.”

A pang of guilt twists my heart. Mother Aurelia said he wasn’t fitting in, but I had no idea he hated being here. “Why?”

“Because the nuns can be mean. If I talk out of turn, or if I even fidget in my desk, they beat my hand with a ruler, sometimes a leather strap. And none of my classmates are friendly. They think I don’t belong. A girl named Ann cornered me and asked me what I wanted to do here. I said I wanted to join the priesthood, and she just laughed. Her friends laughed with her.”

No wonder why he doesn’t want friends. It’s hard to trust people if one’s first true interaction is unpleasant. Back home, Nathaniel and I didn’t interact with outsiders much. The only outsiders we interacted with were our tutor and maids, but they grew to be like family to us.

Nathaniel starts picking at his nails. I notice they are ragged, the cuticles caked with bits of blood. My eyes widen, and I have to cup his hands with my own to keep Nathaniel from maiming himself more. “People tease me so much that I’ve wondered if I’m even capable of joining the priesthood. Amelia, why do you want me to join the priesthood? What if I don’t want that for myself?”

Anymore pangs of guilt and I think my heart will implode. I’ve never told Nathaniel in concrete detail why I do the things I do for him. I just assumed at the time when he was five that his mind wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Now that he’s eight, I still feel that way. I still want to give him vague, childish answers full of the innocence I see dying in his eyes. Girls and boys sent to the convent at a young age are already ruthless because their parents bred them that way. Nathaniel was never prepared, and I should have known this. But I was just as naïve then as I am now.

“Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do, Nat. These things ultimately work out for us in the long run, even if we hate it every step of the way. This world doesn’t give us much when we’re born. It doesn’t assign us a higher calling. I wanted to give that to you, Nat, and I know you hate it now, but I hope one day you’ll thank me for it. I know it’s hard. It’s hard for me too, but it’s something we have to pull through.”

Nathaniel sighs and hugs his knees to his chest, retreating more inside himself. “I want to go home. You’re just being mean to me now and keeping things from me. I’m not a baby.”

His comment stings me. I release my hold on his hands, growing small against him. “They would have hurt us eventually.”

Nathaniel stands, fists balled at his sides. A flare of anger erupts in his eyes, anger I have never seen in him. “How would they have hurt us? You keep telling me that because of who I am they would have hurt me eventually. I bet they’ve spent all this time looking for us!”

I never knew such wrath could come from such a small boy. “Nat, please…”

He shakes his head and stomps his foot in a childish tantrum. “I’m going to my room now. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

I reach out a hand as Nathaniel whips away from me. “Nat, please…just listen to me.”

He doesn’t even look at me. He slips with ease through the space of the pine trees and dashes away across the cloister yard. I sit there, wetness from melted snow creeping through my overcoat, too stunned to move. Nathaniel has never once been angry with me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell the truth, and even now that I think about it, the truth sounds ridiculous. Mother and Father never once displayed any sign that they were going to come undone, and I was with them ten years longer than Nathaniel.

Maybe it’s I who is coming undone.

Just as I’m about to make my way through the trees, the crunching of multiple pairs of boots freezes me in place. Through the space of trees, I make out black cloaks: the shadows. They block my path, and if I were to try and escape, I’d touch one of them, and that Sash boy’s curiosity of me would be satiated and I’d wind up dead. I scramble to the back of the trees, hide myself in the shadows, and wait.

“We need more,” one of them says, one that is neither Sash nor Asch.

Another one speaks up, this time female. “We’ve already gotten one. Isn’t there another one here, Asch?” More snow crunches, and what sounds like an affectionate kiss meets my ears. “Isn’t there?”

Asch answers with, “There is, Gisbelle.”

“Then where is she?” I hear several shadows bristle at her tone. Several mumble to each other. “We need more!”

Asch sighs. “Patience. I’m not certain, but we’ll find her. We were able to find one. This is our place of mission, after all. Purgatory wouldn’t want us to give up without finding every one in this area. Sash is currently taking care of one thing right now.”

“Sasha is a reckless child.”

“But Sash is a strategic boy.”

They stop speaking and start walking toward the trail. No doubt they are talking about me, but who is the other one? As I stand and wipe snow off me, a horrible revelation occurs that the other one must be Colette because she was with me when they were around. Then again, if they are looking for witches, Colette can’t be who they’re talking about. She is not a witch. She can’t be one.

In any case, I harmed Colette beyond repair, so they would have no use for her. She also can’t see them.

I’m not going to get anywhere with this confusion, so I leave through the trees and head for the infirmary, determined to get answers out of Colette, even if I have to force them from her.

Chapter Eight

Without hesitation, I reach out and touch Colette’s face. I run the pads of my fingers over the roughhewn flesh, and make circles over the scant patches of raw skin. I want to curl inside myself and cry and scream over the fresh truth peeling out in burnt flakes just beneath my fingertips. I did burn Colette. I am a witch. The truth puts my mind in a box that presses in on my scattered thoughts from all sides, until they are crushed to one tiny point and pitched into the chasm of suppressed memories. All that can break through my muddled thoughts is the heartrending present before me.

I pull my hand away, digging my nails in my palm as painful tears try to push themselves out of my eyes. “I-I’m so sorry, Colette.” I wipe my eyes. “Please forgive me. I never meant to hurt you, I hope you know.”

I swallow more burgeoning tears. For whatever reasons I can see the burns no longer matter. My best friend is suffering because of me. She may never be the same, if she ever wakes up. Maybe going home is in my best interest. After all, a witch doesn’t belong at Cathedral Reims. Then I hear Colette’s voice in my head: ‘If you don’t feel like quitting, then you haven’t failed. We will get through this, and we will be the best professed nuns the convent has ever seen.’ And I don’t feel like quitting. Colette wouldn’t want that for me. We cannot be the best professed nuns Cathedral Reims has ever seen, but I still can. Like Nathaniel with his dark secret, I will have to bury mine so deep in my heart, one could cut my heart open and still wouldn’t find it.

I look at the burns, trying to unravel that point in my mind to sort out my thoughts, and one sickening memory climbs out of the chasm. The shadows want me, I’m certain, because Sash was trying to touch me. My being able to see the burns on Colette may have something to do with this. That is the only connection I can draw between them and this. Perhaps it’s a baseless connection, but it is the only way I can make sense of the situation.

I step away from Colette, straighten myself, and with a firm voice, ask, “Colette, can you see the shadows?”

Her eyes move rapidly beneath her lids. She remains silent. I wish there were some way for me to get inside her head and pry the answers from her. I wish--

“Amelia!”

I whirl around, finding Oliver breathless by the doorframe, his bangs drooping even more than usual over panicked, gray eyes.

I hasten over to Oliver and grab his wrist. “Olly, you have to feel Colette’s face. You have to!”

He yanks his wrist away from me. “Amelia, I haven’t any time for this! Your brother--” He looks toward the window and swallows hard. “Your brother is in trouble.”

“What do you mean he’s in trouble? I was just talking to him not long ago, or rather getting in a little spat, but he’ll forgive--”

Oliver sighs. “Dear Deus, come on!” He grabs my wrist, dragging me into the hall of the north transept. “We don’t have any time to stand around. I don’t know what’s going on, but I was just coming back from the greenhouse with some tomatoes for tonight’s dinner when I saw Nathaniel on the roof of the east transept.”

I pry his fingers off my wrist as we cross the nave and make a sharp turn into the east transept. “Are you telling me Nat is up there, and you didn’t bother doing anything while you could?” The reasons for why he could be on the roof turn broken waltzes in my mind, and my stomach knots. It’s bad enough he hates being at Cathedral Reims. What if he had a mental breakdown? The nuns found Marie on the roof of the horse barn when she was coming undone. She threw herself off and broke her leg, smiling as she looked up with crazed defiance in her eyes. “Oh, Olly, you don’t think he’s going to jump, do you?”

Oliver entwines his cool fingers in mine. His hand is so soft. “It’ll be all right, Amelia. It’ll be all right.” We stop at the entrance to the stairwell that leads all the way to the roof. The door is ajar, indicating Nathaniel did come this way, likely after our fight in the cloister. Oliver squeezes my hand and pulls me up into the darkness, our only guidance being his hand that feels our way to the top. “Everything will be all right, Amelia. We’ll talk to him. We’ll find out what’s going on. Don’t blame yourself, all right?”

I give a tight nod, biting my bottom lip and praying Nathaniel hasn’t done anything stupid. Oliver yanks the door open, subdued light from snow clouds pouring into the dark stairwell. Across from us, Nathaniel sits behind the speared finial gate bordering the top of the south transept that overlooks an endless field of white. To the left are the barns, dormitories, green house, bloodletting room, and other buildings all coated in snow. Above us loom two towers that soar hundreds of feet above the nave whose pointed roof I can make out between the space of the towers. I should be grateful Nathaniel didn’t decide to climb on one of those, but he could still break his neck, even though this transept is half the height of the nave.