#mariaandthekelpie kelpie fiction fantasy story chapter3

[collectorofstarstuff-blog]

Maria and the Kelpie [Star-Swallower]

The only indication that anything sinister had moved into the lake was a thickness in the sky. The astronomer had just noticed it. She assumed it was just a gas-concealed nebula, but her high-power telescope proved it was only dark. She could see no stars behind it, but strangely, the stars around it began to stretch. Some of the surrounding stars vanished. The others appeared to distort, orbit. She had a bit of a debate with herself on whether or not to report it. If it proved to be nothing, she’d have to deal with the Queen’s legendary temper. If it turned out to be something, she’d have to deal with the Queen’s legendary violence. She would probably insist on a hunting team to bring back the head of whatever creature caused the phenomenon.

Estelle promised herself she would only report it if the King were there. He was the only one in control of Leanna after all. But when she walked into the throne room, both King Leopold and the pregnant Queen Leanna were dead on their thrones.

Were it murder of the King alone, she’d have assumed it to be the Queen’s doing. Seemed to be a common thread of events in the Gliphen since they arrived. But they were both perfectly still, sitting there, unbloodied but bowed. There was even still a book in Leopold’s lap.

She sighed, and then screamed to fake a fear she did not feel for them. If she didn’t act horrified, she would become a suspect. Honestly, her foremost trepidation was that whatever disease they must have had come into contact with her instead. Four of the personal guard that stayed awake during the day and of course, their captain, clamored past her with swords drawn, expecting a fight. When they saw no one, the captain looked around at the astronomer, livid.

“What in heaven’s name did you scream for, miss?”

Estelle pointed, the quivering of her chin set them on alert again. Estelle had learned to make long, emotive faces in place of her late sister Etienne, who was never surprised or made emotional by anything. One of the guards, Levi, was at the King’s side already, intensely focused on his slack face. He clutched the King’s upper arm as though he might steer him to the living world. Finally, he looked away, jaw tight. “Captain?”

The captain replaced his weapon. No sword was going to banish this problem. “Is he breathing?”

“A little, sir.” Levi looked back at the King’s face, removing an iron gauntlet. He touched Leopold’s face all too softly for a royal guard. Under different circumstances, the captain would have let fly a sharp rebuke of Levi’s affections. But for now, he turned back towards Estelle.

“Fetch the healer, miss. We will stand watch over them.”

Usually Estelle was giving the captain orders, but she nodded and fled the scene, knowing very well how bad this reflected upon her. She was the previous Queen’s sister, and it was well known how much she hated her niece. If anything happened to Leanna and her husband, with their heir unborn, Estelle would be the next in line for the throne. No one would care that Estelle had no desire to take their place.

She loved Leanna just as much as Leo did, so her death was not discomforting. But she would need to figure out how to prove her innocence. When she passed a window she stopped running though.

She reached up and with her finger, traced the black arms that sucked at the twin suns of the King and Queen. Fingerless arms, groping and catching at the star of wisdom and the star of power. They were being drawn in, devoured by, from what Estelle could see, nothing. It was as if the black sky itself wanted to rid the world of their brightness. But she was of a kind who didn’t trust that the sky was a breathing entity, like the dog-people of the Nightplains. So she knew that couldn’t be right.

She sent a guard to wake the healer and raced back to her telescope, more important work than seeing to two dead royals. She affixed a special eyepiece to her most valuable instrument with hands that badly shook of excitement. She looked straight into the suns. She should have blinded herself even with this, but she knew the suns were being devoured. The blackness was gorging itself on the King and Queen--it had been no assassination. They were currently under attack in the sky.

With a hand as quick with fury as the bite of the dog-people, she scrawled down coordinates and ripped a fine map from the wall to compare them with. No one without her long memory would draw the comparison, it had been more than fifteen years since that day. But Estelle, astronomer, scholar, priestess, had a memory longer than fifteen years. And the fact that this strange… hole was hovering above the outer lake where they had found King Leopold with a pocket full of reed-whistles seemed like no coincidence at all. Besides, she didn’t believe in coincidence.

Her universe had order.

The healer and his junior healers were desperately seeking something wrong that they could fix, but they were interrupted from this futile effort by Estelle again.

“Captain.” The captain turned away from the failing King and Queen. Estelle was striding importantly towards him, bursting with new evidence. Sensing this, he came to her instantly.

“My lady?”

“Let the healers take care of them. I need you and your guard, all of them, to follow me.”

It was one or two words from the most treasonous thing that could be said, for the hypothetical next-in-line to command the head of military. “The assassin is being looked for,” he shook his head. “I cannot leave--”

Estelle refreshed her look of urgency and silenced him with it. “There is no assassin.”

She could hardly blame him for not noticing; it was the guards’ duty to search the land and her duty to search the skies. Even then, without the aid of her powerful telescope, the most expensive object in the whole of the Gliphen aside from the palace itself, nothing seemed amiss. The star of wisdom and the star of power remained there, seeming as potent as ever to the untrained eye. But she could see the hole.

Soon, the royal response team was crashing the closed gates of the lower city, waking some from their drugged sleep, many of the guards with swords drawn despite Estelle’s reassurance that they would find no murderer. She began running, her fury unchecked. The thought of being able to witness an Ancient beast propelled her small feet faster than the heavily armed guard. So many years of hatred towards the so-called King for that happy luck that brought him to an Ancient. The jealousy had festered, and spewed out now as purpose.

Despite orders, Levi had raced ahead of the captain and nearly apace with the astronomer, eyes misted with a red battlelust. His sword was drawn, anticipating a fight for something he believed in. Estelle didn’t care enough to correct him; she knew they would not be able to capture an Ancient beast, let alone kill one.

But if she could just glimpse one…

They passed what used to be the King’s house; Helen and Maro had long since been buried in the mound. They were close to the lake now. Just blast these ferns away, Estelle wished, but there wasn’t time. She half-admired Levi for chopping at offending limbs, but she was not born to swing a sword.

Animals scurried in a panic out from beneath their boots. This was foolish, disturbing the animals. The Ancient would surely be enraged. Not since King Venatici’s legendary hunts had they ventured out in such force. But they couldn’t be stopped now.

With the entire body of water in sight, but no Ancients, no beasts, Estelle was puzzled and began to slow. Levi did not. Blinded, he charged ahead until he hit the water, creating such a splash. He flailed his arms about like a whirlwind, looking for the culprit, but Estelle, more composed, lifted the binoculars around her neck and looked up into the dark spot above.

It was like a hole. Nothing was coming out of it, but the light from the King and Queen’s stars was still being devoured, being sucked in. “So much for balance,” she muttered to her binoculars. This could revolutionize all that the leading astronomers claimed to know. But even that, a famous finding, her name in lights, was secondary to finding an Ancient for Estelle.

She closely examined the lake. It was really more of a pond, measuring maybe two hundred meters across in any dimension, surface now disturbed that Levi had run into it. Estelle had been to this unnamed place twice after the blood of the dead beast was found that year, but finding nothing new, had ceased to return in frustration. But though it had been nearly fifteen years, she didn’t remember it being so small. As though drained. It appeared to have been diminishing rapidly; not the hole of course, but as though some giant from the stars had reached down with a hand and scooped from the water.

The water was remarkably clear, so she could see through to the bottom, and there was not an ancient Beast in sight. She looked up into the darkness again. Puzzled, she began her march around the lake. The captain and the rest of the guard, having finally caught up, followed her, but not until the captain had seized a very wet Levi and dragged him onto dry land again. Levi quickly took a spot behind the astronomer, giving chase. As she left the lakesite and passed it back into the ferns and bright mushrooms of the Forest of the Ancients.

But as she raced into the glowing forest, Estelle felt them leaving the black hole behind. Perhaps it really was in the lake somehow. Perplexed, she spun around and continued off to the right, creating a wide arc into the forest around the drying lake. But only when she returned to the water was she right underneath the anomaly, which meant the creature could only be in the lake.

“I don’t understand,” she gasped, having never had that much exercise in her bookish life. “It should be here.”

Levi caught up to her again and eventually so did the captain and the guard. Their collective heaving made it sound as though a great animal was breathing throughout the whole clearing. But there was no animal. And that concerned Estelle more than ever.

She did not look at the captain. “Tell the men to drain the lake.” She was peering straight up through her binoculars, not at the lake at all. The captain considered her ridiculous request, and considered protesting too, but then considered it could be a good character-building exercise. He turned to his worn platoon.

“Take helmets, shields, anything you can and empty the lake. The King and Queen’s lives may very well depend on it.”

They did not complain when they saw Levi jumped in the lake again and start heaving water out with his shield. They knew it must be important. So they followed suit.

In the end, no one had moved more water than Levi had. But despite the muscle, despite the hours of quiet work, despite the now empty pit in the clearing, the source of the black hole could not be seen. They had killed every fish, uprooted every stem of algae, but only the dirty once-lake remained. The soldiers were defeated. They were accustomed to thankless work, but not useless work. After all, if they couldn’t use healers to save the King and Queen, why shouldn’t muscle work?

The astronomer admitted (to herself) her own frustration. Nothing living in the lake had caused the black hole to appear, but there it waited, directly overhead. Even an inch to the right or left made the astronomer off center. The lake was the key, she was sure of that.

Estelle thought quickly for all of them and addressed the only guard who didn’t seem to want to give up. “Levi, go with the captain and a few others to guard the King and Queen. Get them to safety. Take them to the State House. Quickly.”

The captain and four other men retreated without complaint, but Levi remained. “I will kill the beast when you find it,” he said, voice uncharacteristically low and cheerless. “I’m not good for anything else. Point me in the right direction, and I will slay it.” He looked up into the darkening sky.

“If I could find it, I would point you,” Estelle mused. After an interim of wordless muttering from the guards behind her, she turned to renew the chase. She was about to give orders to begin digging but Levi grabbed her arm and spun her back around to the lake. She might have punished him for treating her that way, but now she inhaled through her stiff nose, eyes darting from both sides of the lake in horror.

The lake was refilling itself. From the surrounding earth, water seeped back into the many facets of the hole they made. It was patient, revitalizing itself drop by drop, never faster than a stream’s trickle, and quiet like a creature removed from its home was merely returning there. Like a peaceful snake of water. And why should it hurt them? Their stars were small and dull. The star-swallower preyed on healthy, pulsing giants. It cared nothing for the guards.

These were all Estelle’s speculations, of course. But it told the astronomer everything.

Her star’s enchantment made it small but it was only a concealment. She was the sister of a long dead Queen, and her bright and beautiful star was only hidden. If the creature had been a true Ancient like she guessed, it would have struck her down before she arrived, like it had her niece and the King. But it gave her as much notice as a lion gives a rat. Whatever water creature they had been bailing from its hole was just a creature. It was a dumb beast.

A dumb, elusive beast.

The Queen was recovering more easily than her husband but everyone, King included, was more concerned about the little girl she carried. As soon as her star had mended, Leanna surrendered to numerous physical check-ups. The warmth and color crashed onto her face and nearly made her sick again. But the baby’s heartbeat was as normal as could be.

When the priestess returned it was bright day still, the King and Queen’s suns conscious with their human partners, but she needed to examine their stars more closely. The telescope yielded no different or daunting information. Leanna’s star was almost the same size and brightness as it had been before, perhaps a little off its aggressive beat, but Estelle was sure it would proceed. And beyond her star, with her composition book, Estelle could still see the little nebula that was building a star for her child. It seemed the black hole had not affected the Queen much at all and, after inspection, did hurt the King only a little more. It had been a slow feed.

But Leanna was more impatient on her aunt’s report than her husband’s good health.

“Did you destroy it?” the Queen said as soon as her husband said “You didn’t find anything.” He was always better able to read the priestess.

“No.” She looked from face to face. She was answering both of their questions. “The lake was drained and every living thing killed.” And yet, the hole remained.

“Did you scour the forests?” (the Queen) “So it vanished!” (the King in wonderment)

The woman smiled, her spiderweb lips nearly touching her eyes. It was not a kind smile. Her stupid niece was always interrupting the King. She smiled and smiled at the Queen until she understood that unless she shut up, nothing more was going to be said.

“No.” To both again. But she turned to the Queen. “There was no need to scour the forests. The creature was in the lake.” Or perhaps was the lake.

“What in Sin’s name are you blathering-” “Please continue, Estelle,” the King gestured wildly at his wife until she was quiet again, waving his hand in front of her face as though trying to prove he had energy. He hated being ill. Such a beautiful, childish man.

Estelle spoke only to Leopold, completely dismissing her kin. He did not know what to make of the creature, except to come to the same intelligent conclusion that Estelle had.

“It does seem strange that it would attack us and leave you. If it were an Ancient, your spells would have been powerless to deceive it. It would have seen through the enchantment and taken your star as well.”

“Leopold, do you remember the kirin? Maybe you were too young...”

“I do remember. It looked like a this strange dark hole as well. But it didn’t steal the light of other stars, as I recall.”

They both lapsed into quiet, reflecting. They were wise people, sometimes forgetting how to uphold a conversation while lost in memory. The Queen was too irritated. Having understood that they had found nothing and hadn’t destroyed it, she could only take it to mean the attempt on her life had not been justified. She marched from the room, much to King and aunt’s relief, clutching her stomach fiercely. They waited until they were sure she had gone.

“I remember you telling me it wasn’t a real black hole.” Leopold stood. When there was a mystery, he couldn’t be still. He had never matured from this trait. “The telescope showed it was really a concealed bright light, a nebula.”

“A kirin is a life-giving force. But this black star brings only death. It was still black through my telescope--but I didn’t need my instruments to tell me that.” She watched his clumsy feet as he paced. “It almost destroyed both of you.”

“Yes, I feared for my poor child. My poor wife as well, I suppose.” They laughed quietly. Before his royal filter, common-born Leopold had expressed right before the wedding he wished Leanna would die. He had since apologized for saying it, but he never took it back. If Leanna heard, she didn’t care; she already knew. They’d never really guarded it as some close secret. “You don’t think it could have affected the baby, do you?”

“Leanna is fine and so is your child.” Chances were good she wasn’t lying, but she wasn’t a baby expert.

There was never a healthier child born to a King and Queen of this or any country. Doubtless centuries of inbreeding at court made for all kinds of interesting deformities. Most were mental. Insanity even plagued Leanna, even though her mother was a foreigner to the Gliphen. Blood diseases and early infant deaths were all expected, but the Queen had, for a change, married someone so removed from her bloodline they could possibly have been from different planets.

The girl was appropriately boisterous, loud and strong. Despite this, they almost pronounced her dead.

With a shudder, the princess’s young star slid into the world behind her, either bashful or dying. She was transferred to her mother’s breast and her star came along behind her, tied to the girl by the invisible string that unites everyone with their identity. This is the way a commoner comes into the world. Worse still, the star did not brighten. It faded to nearly nothing and didn’t pulse the way it should. The healers insisted the body of the girl was ordinary. Even better than ordinary. So the astronomer checked her telescope, but the star (if you could call it that) belonged to the baby, no doubt. It was not the star of an ill child, but the star of an insignificant one. This was not the star of a princess, it was the star of a farmer’s witless, unmarriageable daughter.

The priestess had promised them a hero. She had predicted it, and had never yet been wrong. After the tragedy the kingdom almost suffered, the princess born from the womb of a woman who escaped death so narrowly should be a force to be revered. But a hero forces their will on the world; it’s how they become heroes. Leanna’s labor had been slow, even painless. Not the birth of a hero. The birth of a beggar.

And to Leanna, it made perfect sense. Leanna was a royal, but Leopold was a commoner. This thing was not worthy of her time, her affection, her love, even if she had any to give.

In her mind, it wasn’t even deserving of a proper name.  Leanna picked the rather ordinary name of Maria, a shortened shape of the name they had decided on when they knew it would be a girl. The King called her Mariana and loved her still, but Leanna was plotting her demise as Maria was passed to her father to hum over, to hold.

Her mother Etienne had been fond of decrees. Like most dictators, she was cunning, but unlike most dictators, she passed as many decrees for herself and her descendants to follow as she did for her subjects. And they were still in effect, whether she was alive or not. And that meant Leanna was stuck with this hideous child because in the past, royal brothers and sisters simply couldn’t help finding horrible ways to kill each other. All to sit in an uncomfortable, wooden chair, the younger Leopold had pointed out.

But cries from Leanna and their tutor that it was a throne didn’t sway him.

A throne is still a chair, he said. If you’re clever, you can rule the world from the comfort of home and constellation.

He was certainly not the kind of person who would kill anyone over a throne. But it didn’t matter, for the decree would apply even to his descendants.

The decree was, in much verbiage, that the King and Queen of their fair, starlit country could have just one living heir. Leanna and Leopold could have as many bastard affairs as they liked, so long as the new baby girl was the only offspring of both the King and the Queen. This also meant that the King and Queen could no longer share a room, to the dismay of neither party.

But Leanna had already broken this decree.

Her first son, the son conceived one month after their wedding, had looked too much like Leopold and not enough like her, so she quickly had him sent away, far into the country, one of the villages without their gates. She bribed the midwives into saying he had died, pretended to dismiss them for letting it happen, and sent them away from the country, banished into exile all the richer; away from her and her lies.

She couldn’t just devise the same plan this time. Only the royal midwives were present for the birth traditionally, as had been the case with her son, but there had been so much worry in the palace that the black hole had affected her daughter, the King insisted on being present.

Everyone knew the baby was in good health. No one but Leanna seemed to care too much about the limpness of her star. Everyone but the Queen was perfectly content.

That night, as Leanna’s star shrank and dimmed by the astronomer’s enchantment, she looked expectantly into the sky. She searched for a huge, glittering gem and found only a prick of light, like a needle had accidentally poked through the cloth sky by a lousy seamstress. Her daughter had robbed her of a competent heir.

No. If Leanna wanted another child, this one would have to actually die.

Etienne hadn’t been crazy before the pregnancy. No, princess Leanna was well looked forward to. The pregnant Queen would rave to anyone who could hear how strong her Leanna would be, how courageous, how smart. Her husband couldn’t care less; he wanted a beautiful daughter, one that could be easily married off at the youngest possible age. He didn’t like children and he certainly didn’t want to catch another word about how wonderful Leanna would be, and so the Queen would always turn to her sister.

“Stella,” she would laugh, “Stella, my husband only wants a beautiful girl. He never did like a woman smarter than himself.” He would be moody the rest of the day and the sisters knew Etienne was right.

Estelle would have given a limb to hear her sister call her Stella after Leanna’s birth. But the sickness had already taken hold. Physically, she seemed just fine, as did the baby, but Etienne didn’t call her Stella anymore. She didn’t call the baby Anna, like she joked she would. The madness crept into her parenting, word by word, so Leanna never stood a chance. What seemed a normal, healthy child was soon made to be angry and hateful because her mother told her so. And her mother was the only one around to tell her so.

Leanna’s star was even bigger than her mother’s and she was a fierce sort of comely. But her father could not marry her away. The Queen took each suitor and turned him inside out with tests. She only cared if they could match her daughter in wits. But no one was as insanely clever as Leanna. How could they be, when Etienne had coached her in cruelty and quickness, poisons and archery, philosophy and science, day and night? Their very stars became intertwined. Mother and daughter stars began to circle one another. Estelle, having never seen the like, called them Binarius.

Leanna was nothing but a quick-witted murderer. Her mother proved the same when she defeated her husband in a battle by taking half his force, then killed him in a duel by taking half his castle. He fought her for the throne she had taken over from him. Surprising none, he lost.

But when Etienne died, and her star burst into a bright nothing, Leanna’s star dimmed. She had hated her mother so, the constant lessons, the lack of affection, the sharp criticism. So she lost her edge and became stupid. Estelle felt a pity for her niece. Leanna’s youth had been stolen. But Leanna seemed glad her mother was gone. As had been signed into contract when they found him, she married Leopold, who was compassionate and smart enough for the both of them. And even though Estelle could sense that the King had more of an interest in the palace guards than his wife, they were content enough. Calmer, anyway.

But since the black hole, Estelle felt the rise in Leanna. The stirring that had wasted her mother. So she knew when Leanna came to her asking for a spell what she intended to do. After all, it was one of the first times the Queen could be seen with her daughter in her arms. Everyone knew Leanna loathed her daughter. Why was she walking into her study now, smiling so kindly at the baby?

“Your Brilliance, how may I assist you?”

“Is she not adorable?” Leanna asked, “Is she not sweet? Look at my child, so happy.” Indeed, since she never got this affection from her mother, Maria was gurgling, smiling. For a child of two months, she was very alert. Her brown eyes were brighter than her star.

Estelle nodded, all the more suspicious. And she felt no qualm in saying so. Unlike Leanna, the Gliphen’s astronomer could not be replaced, as she had no apprentices. “You’ve made quite a switch..”

“Oh, I was wrong to shame her just because her star is so small. How can she help it? It was the blackness, of course, not my Maria.” She raised her dark finger and Maria wrapped her hand around it. “So small,” Leanna repeated lovingly, but her aunt saw the twitch of something like disgust in her cheek when the baby touched her. “My precious thing.”

“How may I assist the two of you today?” Estelle half expected Leanna would just ask for a knife so she could sacrifice the child then and there on her study floor.

“Why else would we come to you? We need one of your invocations.” She made it sound like Estelle was going to bless them, but it was more fitting to expect a curse. Estelle knew what Leanna meant.

The invocation of concealing a large star was long and complicated and Leanna was no priestess, so Estelle was the only one who could perform it. It only hurt for a day or so, but Leanna had had it performed many times before, so she was prepared for the strain.

She told her Estelle that she was going to visit her son Alcor and didn’t want to attract attention (and large, vibrant stars like the Queen’s were sure to attract attention). Estelle had been away during most of her niece’s pregnancy and the boy’s birth, but she, like the midwives, knew of his existence. She had been told by Leanna herself that Alcor had been the son of a man other than Leopold, which was her reason she pretended he had died. To spare her husband’s feelings of course.

And so, “I want him to at least know his dear sister’s face,” Leanna sighed. It wasn’t convincing.

“Perhaps you should take a few guards with you.” Estelle looked over at her from the side, not turning her face. She wanted Leanna to know that she understood the lies. But Leanna was playing with the baby. “In case of danger.”

“No, I wouldn’t want to attract any attention.” The Queen muttered the phrase over and over, mostly to Maria. And why would she want to attract attention? She was about to kill a princess.

“Of course.” There was no arguing with Leanna, especially not in this dangerous mood.

But when the Queen stole out with the child wrapped in her arms, Estelle had her followed by one loyal soldier. Levi. She didn’t care much for Leanna’s safety, but Leopold was the only one who enjoyed Estelle’s teachings and she didn’t want him moping for losing his daughter. And all the same, Estelle had lied about the duration of the spell. After an hour or two, Leanna’s star would light up the sky as usual. Let her try to lose the guard then.

Leanna was just giving back what the black hole took from her. She didn’t think that the creature had anything to do with the sad star tethered to her daughter, she knew it. But, being insane, Leanna knew a lot of things that weren’t true. She knew that the curse Estelle had cast would outlive her need for it. She knew nobody had seen her go and that no one was following. She passed through the night-woken village, looking up at the thickness in the sky to find this lake she’d heard so little about.

Well, not alone. Maria slept against her body in a sort of sling the Queen had fashioned from a sheet. The very sheet the King’s servant was looking for in Leopold’s new room separate from his wife. Perhaps in her tiny baby mind, Maria was happy that she finally found the love and attention of the woman who bore her. How could she ever imagine death? How could she imagine murder? She was dreaming, rocked by the slow steps Leanna took.

“Where is that damned lagoon?”

The path had veered into a miserable forest and that stopped her. She didn’t notice, but her star was beginning to strain on its curse. It should have made her sick, but she was preoccupied. Should she go into the forest alone? She wasn’t used to being anywhere alone. She was the Queen. She was hardly ever completely isolated. But she felt alone for once. Maria did not take up any space in her mind. Maria was no one at all. And if she had been less than no one, taking up no space on a future throne, Leanna wouldn’t even have bothered with her murder. But the Queen would have a proper daughter succeed her.

But even though Leanna was alone, no one felt sorry for her. Oh no. It was all about the baby now. The baby she wanted nothing to do with. But it was strange; the more she was around Maria, the more she was liked. Normally servants and guards feared to do anything but go about their business, cowering when near her. But if ever Leanna was forced to feed the baby she hated, they’d grow bold. “Isn’t that darling?” one maid had said, then was silenced by Leanna’s disgusted look. “How is the princess, Your Brilliance?” a guard asked her once in passing.

She pushed through the palace-tall mushrooms and rain-damp ferns, startling the baby into waking. Little Maria had never seen the Forests of the Ancients, with mosses that glowed brightly, with fungi that hummed with silent song.

Leanna curled her lip from her teeth, hating the infant’s innocent awe. Even when Leanna had been this small, no one ever treated her so kindly. No one ever looked at Leanna as a little princess and called her sweet. And that had been her mother’s fault. She transformed her into Leanna the monster and had taken her father away from her. And in that way, she masked what she was about to do as a kindness. She reasoned she could never be a good mother to Maria because she never had a good role model. Leanna already hated Maria, and that was when she had been too young to do anything yet that merited hate.

When she reached the lake clearing, she saw what the astronomer and the guards were unable to see. The flick of a wet tail, the flash of green scales, the illusion submerged and spread apart, not noticing her. It had vanished, scales dissolving, its image departing beneath the ripple of the placid water. Leanna was hardly able to believe she’d seen anything at all. But she was insane, after all. If there was something in the lake, Leanna hoped that it was hungry.

She lifted her arms and her sleeves fell, hands and child illuminated by a very weak moon. Maria cried and squirmed as best as a body two months grown could. Maybe she knew what her mother was about to do. Maybe she knew her mother didn’t love her after all, and was no shield, no protector. Levi fell out from his hiding place and yelled to stop it happening, but it had already happened. Leanna flung the baby away from her in an impressive throw. Maria was airborne fast, and her pathetic star was jerked along behind her, into the blackness of the sky.

The splash was almost nonexistent. The lake seemed merely to absorb her, as though it were half-solid. Levi untangled himself from the bewildered Queen and ran from her into the arms of the reeds, intending to swim out and rescue the helpless Maria. But he hit his head on the way into the empty hole, because the lake suddenly heaved and was empty. In its place, at the bottom of a dirty pit was a baby and a beast.

Levi and Leanna were amazed that the baby had not been harmed. They hadn’t seen it happen, but the water had carried her easily, almost gently when it receded into the beast. Before the existence of this particular animal, there had been a lake. But after devouring almost every drop of water and storing it inside its body, the beast had become the lake, hence the astronomer’s unusual discovery. Anyone or anything who entered the lake could’ve been its prey. But Maria made it hurt, like eating something raw and rotten. The beast spit her right back out and heaved. The water swirled into it, forcing it to become real again. And now, snorting and rearing, the beast went mad.

Maria’s pinprick of a star was absorbed by the black hole, and both star and blackness vanished.

Levi drew his sword faster than he ever had. The sight of a huge beast bucking and roaring near the little princess made him go into defense. But the animal seemed to have no interest in harming the screaming bundle of sheets. In fact, the louder Maria screamed, the more crazed it seemed to become. It was as if the sound of a baby crying was its one and only bane and it was being driven to insanity. Levi didn’t know what to do about it. He feared approaching it with a weapon would give it a reason to become violent and would strike out and hurt Maria. He feared not approaching it with a weapon could leave him defenseless and thereby useless to Maria. For half a moment he stood there, swaying on his indecision that held both his and a child’s life in his responsibility.

The decision was made for him. The star-dampening curse that Leanna had asked Estelle for utterly died. With such a large star, it wouldn’t break down in stages, but just fail. The black sky erupted light, causing the baby to let its head fall in the damp earth, for a moment too surprised to cry. That temporary break in the noise gave the beast its composure back. Shaking its great head, it backed away from Maria, trembling. Then with incredible speed, it leapt easily twice Levi’s height to the lake shore and whirled upon Leanna. With this action, the baby’s star seemed to reappear, along with the black hole. He had ripped away from Maria’s hold.

The Queen didn’t have time to know what happened. She was dead with a quick strike of the beast’s fearsome teeth. Levi stepped back, his mouth a tight, horrified line. He didn’t try to save the Queen. He only watched as Leanna fell, bleeding where the animal struck her in the middle, a look of dead surprise making her seem human and not monstrous for her last minute.

Leanna’s star did not fade nor explode like stars normally do when their counterpart dies. It simply vanished into the darkness above the beast. In one quick bite, the black hole had swallowed Leanna’s sun. It was dark again. The monster did not touch the body afterward. Clearly, the Queen’s star was all that it desired. But Levi could see overhead that another sun approached. The King was coming.

Stepping beside Maria, Levi’s eyes did not leave the creature, neither did his sword leave his hand. He scooped the baby up in his free arm and that sudden motion stirred her again. She cried, as a baby can only do, and the beast rebelled. It fell over in shock, creating a small tremor in the earth and its forest. It would have knocked over a less careful man. But Levi held onto his firm stance and watched, sword ready, for a fresh attack. The animal only roared and pawed at its ears, rolling in the reeds beside Leanna’s still body and Levi subconsciously rocked his arm a little. The calming effect soothed the princess and her cries lessened.

The beast stood now that she was still again, eyeing Levi curiously, almost appearing to wonder what importance he had to be a part of this night. When Maria let out the occasional whimper, it would flinch and its eyes would escape to Maria instead.

It didn’t even look when two cautious figures made their way around Levi and towards it. Others came before the King, it seemed. Levi saw them as they faced the animal on either side and approached it, making silent signals to each other. He assumed, by their tired clothing that they were hunters. Since he had Maria in one arm, he could only hold his two-handed sword with one, so he hardly felt like he’d be able to defend them if the creature struck. He just waited, sizing up the odd pair to gauge what their chances were of winning.

One he could well expect to be a hunter. His arms were thick and his body experienced. Levi could tell by his awe that he had never seen such an animal before, but it didn’t matter. He still knew what had to be done. The other was short and quick. His eyes were never still. He was drinking in the scene; the empty lake, the dead woman, the royal guard, his weapon, the baby, the beast, his companion, their surroundings, the coming sun, and the sounds of armored men drawing near. He knew he didn’t have time.

He lifted his hand to call off the ambush, retreating a little as he did so. Luckily, his stalwart companion noticed.

Levi was too strained to make anything of this. He should have arrested them; they obviously knew something about the Queen’s murderer, but he knew nothing but the monster. He couldn’t possibly know why its eyes were trained on a sleepy child. He looked up. The King’s star was coming closer. Levi didn’t want him here. The beast would swallow the sun and the King would die. But he knew there was no way to keep Leopold from his daughter.

The animal came towards them and Levi saw it true for the first time. It was almost as tall as he was and on all fours. Its paws were half the size of the shield he’d cast away trying to stop the Queen drowning Maria. It looked like a wild dog, only huge and hairless. Then, not entirely hairless. The tail that whipped curiously behind it had a tuft of shining fur at the tip and in a line across its back. It was entirely green and shining. Patches of scales interrupted the smooth skin of its front, and despite its fearsome teeth, it really looked more like a deer than a dog, thin and docile, with a long nose. And huge black holes for eyes, a prick of light in them lent to it by the sun of the King.

It did not want to kill the princess. Its mouth was open slightly in wonder as it approached, either unafraid or unaware of the sword Levi pointed its way.

As it closed in, only the hunters noticed Maria’s tiny light eclipse the huge black hole entirely, vanishing them both. Then the King and several guards burst through the trees. Levi sucked in all the air he could at their noise, sure it would awaken the hypnotized monster and it would make quick work of them all. But nothing happened.

Leopold took the scene in at a moment, intelligent like the smaller hunter, and threw his hands out to halt his guards. Two of them circled around the hunters and dragged them forward to arrest. It was all done rather silent, and they did not resist. But other than that, there was only the princess and the beast.

The beast was within touching distance of Leopold’s daughter when it stopped and swayed. It was close enough it could stretch out its neck and touch its wet nose to the baby’s forehead. A firm glaze held over his eyes, he took one more step, about to do just that. Levi heard a whispered argument, then the smaller hunter, with permission from the King, stepped towards them.

He slipped a shining band over the monster’s head and pulled it away.