The Distance Between Stars and Salt

Prelude

It wasn’t fair for the day of her wife’s funeral to be cloaked in sunlight. After a week of torrential downpour, to see the clouds broken today of all days was an insult of the highest degree. There should have been endless grey skies that matched the width of Edera’s grief. The sea should have been in upheaval, spitting foam and salt as far as it could reach. The wind should have ripped the small island of il-Zedina into a frenzy.Instead, it was sunny. The sea was calm, washing against the shore in the distance with an unusually subdued air. The wind was but a whisper in Edera’s ear.She stared into the modest sea of faces before her and swallowed the urge to vomit. Friends and strangers alike had come to her, today of all days, to hear her kronaki for the woman she had loved. Still loved. Would love until the day she too was put to rest, and then long after she was nestled in the dirt.It should be me on that island. Not her.Edera gripped the podium with pale knuckles and focused her gaze on her mother. At the front of the crowd, the older woman clutched a black pouch and ran her fingers along the shards of bone inside. One such bone, was fresher than all the rest, gleaming with the light of a thousand stars. A bone shard of Seren, now a [SAINT] like the rest of them. Edera hadn’t been able to stomach carrying the [SAINT MAGIC] shards around after her return and so had bequeathed them back to her. Better off that way, she thought.Edera’s mother locked eyes with her and gave her an encouraging nod. Edera opened her mouth to speak.

Chapter One

There was and there was not, in the oldness of time, a star that fell from the heavens in the shape of a girl. The spectacle shook our quiet village, busy as it already was with its yearly re-enactment of an archaic wedding tradition. My mother had originally been one of the actors selected to re-enact the scene but, for obvious reasons, was now preoccupied. As such, all tales surrounding the star-shaped girl were later delivered to her via second-hand accounts, and then to me from her own drip-fed re-imaginings.The first thing I remember the Keepers telling me is just how beautiful you were. How three perfect eyes blinked opalescent as they took in the world around you. How your three-fingered hands reached and thought only of curiosity. How your infant coos resembled the tinkling of bells. I must admit I didn’t care for these tales at first; to everyone but my own mother, the circumstances of my birth became sea foam in comparison to yours. Everyone on our island grew to know of the star-born girl, and this fascination only continued when you and I at last crossed paths. As much as I had fostered bitter feelings at how you had outshined my existence, I loved you from the moment I laid eyes upon you. I couldn’t help it. How strange it was, to know of an existence without you.How much stranger to now have to re-learn such an existence.But I am getting ahead of myself, I suppose, for our story begins not on the day of our mutual birth but long, long thereafter. It starts here on il-Zedina, the island we both called home. A home that remains safe now only because of your sacrifice.A queer dream awoke me on the day of your return from conscription, one of shadows and storm-cloaked seas. Most nights, I had spent my sleeping hours following your fading silhouette or tossing in a fitless impersonation of rest, so to have been caught in the throes of a nightmare instead was more than disarming. I woke alone and cold, tangled in the comforter that we had once shared. Despite my efforts, your scent had long-since drifted from your side of the bed.Now, at long last, you were coming home. I pressed my nose into your pillow and inhaled.The year of your conscription was one spent in a deep fugue. I must admit that I still do not understand the ways of the Celestine, nor all the ways such beings would continue to take you from me with only the callousness that being from the stars could afford. Indeed, from the moment you had informed me you would need to leave, all I could do was mourn.“It is just a year and a day, Edera,” you said on the eve of your departure. “It will be over before you’ve realized.”Easy for you to say, given your celestial heritage. Years passed for your kind in the blink of an eye. Regardless, there would be no argument about it. You had been conscripted and so you would go, and I was not allowed to follow. The secrets of the Celestine were not mine to know. And so, for a year and a day, I had languished without your presence. Perhaps you would think me dramatic for saying so, but it was the truth.Then came the day of your return.I roused from my half-asleep stupor, fighting and failing to convince myself your scent still lingered in our bedsheets, and dressed myself for work. It was a routine I had fallen into with precision; I didn’t need to watch my fingers in the mirror as I buttoned up my blouse—though, in truth, I wasn’t watching much of anything. Then came my vest, which had grown in your absence and now hung on my frame like a curtain. As I hiked up my skirt and assessed myself in the mirror, I gave myself the brightest smile I could manage in my dazed state. It came out a drunken grimace.I should have been excited. You were coming home, after all! And yet, as I smoothed out the wrinkles in my clothes and splashed my face with water, I found myself unable to summon the joy such a notion should have allowed. Too many particulars swirled in my mind, a byproduct of our time apart. There had been no letters exchanged, no messages in bottles. You had been here one day, gone the next. What if something had happened to you on your journey away? What if you were harmed on your voyage back?She’s coming home today. I tucked a black sachet under my shirt and let the sharp fragments of bone rest against my heart. I must believe that. A funny notion, belief, when the [SAINTS] whose bones were against my breast I struggled to have belief in. Their weight was a strange comfort in those moments all the same.The streets of il-Zedina were abuzz when I stepped outside our home. Neighbors beat out their laundry in the balconies overhead, allowing dust and water to spiral to the stones below. Children weaved around passersby and kicked cloth balls back and forth to each other. When the sun at last fell upon me, dozens of eyes flicked in my direction. The buzz of the street died to a slow hum.“Edera!” called Lieni, one of Vira’s kids, as she passed the cloth ball to Doru with her foot. “Seren comes home today!”Still not quite awake, I followed the ball’s path as Doru kicked it forward. With a whoop, they were off, taking the ball and Lieni with them.From the balcony, Vira chuckled at her daughter’s antics. “Excited for Seren’s return?” she called in way of greeting as she brutalized a carpet for everything it was worth.“Of course I am,” I replied, stepping out of the way of the spray of dust.“Perhaps she will finally tell us what she spent so long doing, hmm?”“Perhaps.” It was a lie—not even I, your own wife, was privy to the secrets of the Celestine—but I said it all the same.Vira rained more blows upon the carpet before at last setting it aside and reaching for the next. We did not meet gazes again as I continued on.Such was the nature of our mutual existence. Many knew of the star-shaped woman who had fallen to earth on il-Zedina. Few cared to ask about her wife. And yet, how could you have helped what you were? You hadn’t chosen to fall—at least, as far as I understood. It was a gift just to be in your presence. Still, at times it gnawed at me that all people wished to discuss with me was you.Do not mistake me; I could have spoken about you at length if asked. Here I am now, doing such a thing. But still, the sentiment remains.A couple of streets away, I bumped into Lieni and Doru again when they sprinted back in my direction, ball abandoned somewhere along the way. Both wore matching expressions of panic, hair on end as they skittered to a stop. Their fear rolled from them in pungent waves.“Whoa.” I stepped into their path. A quick glance down the street didn’t reveal a lurking shadow on the prowl or a beast in need of slaying. “What’s riled you?”“M–Mħalla!” Lieni shrieked.“A well-beast?” Though I had stopped believing in them over the years, I found myself reaching for the pouch within my shirt all the same. I stared down the alley, now a yawning portal into the unknown, and scoured every stone for a tell-tale shadow.“It was this big!” Doru said, spreading their arms as wide as they would go. “With razor-sharp teeth!”I gave the alley another sweeping look, heart forming a fist in my chest. There were plenty of stories of the mħalla that had taken root across the islands around us: large, terrifying beasts of serpentine shape with a hunger for clueless drinkers from the well. Had I ever seen one for myself? Of course not, but a lifetime of my mother and zija and nanna had primed me to be afraid of them all the same. Now here I was, stepping between two frightened children and a monster capable of devouring me in a single bite. If it was real, of course.Again I gripped the pouch tucked into my shirt. The bone-shards of the [SAINTS] were warm against my palm. It wouldn’t take much to pull one such shard free and call upon the relic’s power. It was all I had against rumors of a monster, for I did not possess your celestial powers on my own.“Stay here,” I told the frightened children. And yet, as I broke into a sprint, a hand closed around my wrist. Despite their size, the shock of their touch yanked me to a halt.“What are you doing?” Doru dug their heels into the stones. “You can’t fight a mħalla!”Their words sank monstrous teeth into my gut. They hadn’t meant to be insulting, I knew, but there was an unspoken suggestion to their protest. A thought swam to the front of my mind; I saw enough of the shine on its scales to know its presence, but then Lieni was helping Doru to yank me backwards and the thought was gone again.“I can certainly try,” I said before slipping free of their grasp. Do not ask me from where the stubbornness in me emerged, for I still am not certain. There it was, though, burning as brightly in my breast as your light ever did. I was no Celestine—that much was for certain—but it wouldn’t have done me well to see two children I was mildly fond of being devoured by a beast.The bag of bone shards burned to the touch. Without their power, regardless of my faith in them, I was useless, so I held firm to the sachet. Down the alley I went, steps firm and careful. I followed it until the narrow walls widened, spitting me out into a small courtyard with a covered well at its center. A ragged whistle circled the courtyard, bouncing off every limestone brick.“Edera,” Lieni said in a drawn-out whine, “be careful!”“I am.” And yet, as I said it, fear sat thick on my tongue, acidic and sticky. I swallowed down a lump and approached the well.Water sloshed against the bricks in lazy waves, echoing up the tube of stone and beyond me. Sticking my head under the cover to get a better view, the dampness made me feel as though I had pressed a wet cloth to my skin. I scanned the dizzying depths for signs of a monster.“It’s going to eat you!” came Doru’s muffled cry.After a beat came a splash, then another. Something small and shrill scrabbled against the stones below, its cry like the squawk of a bird. It reminded me of the hunting dog the [KNIGHTS OF SAINT JOHN] had brought on their last voyage to our island, when it had twisted its leg in a trap. The cut-off howl had stayed with me for months then.This was an animal in distress.Pressing my hips against the rim of the well, I floundered in the dark for the bucket-and-rope all of us used to acquire water. Below, whatever sorry creature had been trapped continued to splash, its frantic noises growing all the more erratic. Its frightened yips seized my heart in clawed paws. In turn, my flailing became less focused.“Hang in there,” I called, though I knew it wouldn’t be able to understand me. Something cold wrapped my head in a vice-grip. An unfathomable panic washed over me, so disorienting that the hand stabilizing me slipped.I felt myself tip forward.“Edera!”Doru and Lieni (I assumed) gripped my ankles and tried to pull me back. For a gut-twisting moment, I was half-in the well, my breakfast rising to the back of my throat as the world lost all weight. A pair of glowing eyes caught mine in the dark.And then I was dragged back, my head narrowly missing the edge of the well cover as Doru and Lieni slammed me against the ground. The air evacuated my lungs in a rattling wheeze.Both of them were on me in an instant. The cold wave of emotion that had grasped my mind receded.“What were you thinking?” they said in unison. “The mħalla could have eaten you!”I managed a weak chuckle. “I’m too big for that one.”As if on cue, the creature’s terrified yips cut us all short. Doru and Lieni shared a wide-eyed look before staring back down at me.Slowly, I hauled myself to my feet. “It’s not a mħalla,” I said.Lieni’s brow furrowed. “But it tried to eat you.”“I slipped.”“But you almost—”“But I didn’t.” Then, glancing back to the well, I said, “But something is down there, drowning.”In the time it took the two of them to come to a whispered agreement, I was back under the well cover, stance wider as I reached a hand out again for the bucket. This time, I found purchase on the rope.“Doru! Lieni! Mind the crank, please.”
With this, I guided the bucket hand over fist. The bucket made a slow, twirling descent down the length of stone, settling at last on the surface of the water. I strained an ear for the creature who, in the time I’d spent almost joining it, had fallen silent. One second, then another. My heart swelled to a crescendo in my ears.Then, at last, weight slumped into the bucket.“There you are.”The process of dragging the creature up was much simpler than I’d hoped. With Doru and Lieni manning the crank, the bucket flew up to meet us. A winged creature plastered itself to one side, its fur slicked to its skin. I couldn’t quite tell its species in its bedraggled state, but the long body reminded me of some kind of weasel. What was it doing here?Lieni gasped at the sight of it. “You poor thing,” she tutted, at once scooping up the creature and wrapping it in the hem of her skirt. With firm strokes, she rubbed its back and wings until it made choked squeaks of protest. By the time she was through, its fur was fluffed up in a way that was almost comical, shivering despite the growing heat of the morning sun.“What… is it?” Doru asked.Lieni picked up the creature under the armpits and examined it. It was definitely weasel-like in shape, with a long tail and a black smudge of fur around its eyes. A small series of spines grew from its forehead, framing its ears. It shook out its wings, locked eyes with Lieni, and hissed.“Maybe you should put it down,” I said.Again came the hand of cold around my skull, so strong and sudden it caused me to stumble. Chilled tendrils burrowed into my thoughts as I locked eyes with the strange creature. A new emotion crested over me in that moment, the feeling of a first drink of water after an exhausting day. The feeling of reaching out and being reached in kind. The feeling of…Gratitude.In my stunned silence, the creature shook itself from nose to tail-tip and scampered away.“Let’s… get you back home,” I said, turning back the way we’d come. Without a word, the children followed.

Despite the oddity of the situation, explaining my tardiness to Annetta, the owner of the apiary I worked at, went over smoothly enough… in that she took one look at my rattled frame, arched a brow, and pointed me to the line of earthenware jars nestled into the niches on the wall.Beekeeping, I had come to learn in your year away, was a task I took to in strange meditation. Annetta and I had spent most of the year observing the colonies in their jars, moving stones wood as needed to direct their flow of movement. Now, as the thyme bloomed on the hillsides once more, we harvested the product of last year’s pollen with knives and sticky hands.After a couple of quiet hours, Annetta broke the silence. “You’re awfully excited today, Edera,” she said, working a knife into the inches of honeycomb.She must have at last caught on to the way I couldn’t keep still, the way my every waking thought flicked to you or to the strange creature from the well when I wasn’t capable of wrangling them in. Regardless, I pried the honeycomb I was working on from its earthenware jar. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.A pointed look in my direction brought a blush prickling along my neck and chest. Annetta knew how to change a person’s attitude with the shift of her eyebrows. My delight must have been more obvious than I thought.A coy smile curled my lips as I relented. “Seren’s coming home today.”“Ah.” She dragged the sound out, low and slow. This time, her brows expressed her surprise, rising into her hairline. “No wonder you’re fit to burst. And why you were late, no doubt.”I ignored the light barb. Of course I was excited; living alone for a year had taken its toll. My mother had done what she could, bringing meals when I was too consumed with grief to eat and arranging a job for me at the apiary in an attempt to keep me occupied, but the food was like ash upon my tongue when compared to the hollowness of your absence. Even the brief periods of meditative, methodical work had been an ill-textured balm.Annetta stripped off her gloves, careful to detach the bees clinging to her fingers. “So then, have you planned something for the two of you? When does she come home?”I considered the question as, with the final stroke of my knife, a segment of honeycomb tore free. There was plenty I wanted to do with you, most of them too indecent to give a voice. A flush crawled up my cheeks as I put the cleaved honeycomb aside. Thoughts of you had a way of making themselves known, I suppose.“I just can’t wait to see her,” I replied. I meant to set the knife down gently, but it clanged against the stones loud enough to make us both jump. “There’s so much I want to tell her. So much I want her to tell me.”At this, Annetta clapped my shoulder with a calloused hand. “And I am happy to see you free of your doldrums at last. You’ve spent the last year drifting through the island like an il-ħares… I had hoped some hobby or occupation would brighten you up, but…”I replaced the jar in its alcove on the wall. Again came the flash of scales of a thought I struggled to name, there and gone in the blink of an eye. The soft hum of the bees waking from their smoke-induced haze closed me off from whatever revelation I’d been about to hook.
Overhead, the sky shifted from deep purple to watery yellow. Perhaps you would be home soon.“I guess I have been rather sullen,” I said as I reached for another jar. The gloom burrowed deep within me and made a nest in my collarbones.“But she’s back now, right?”I nodded. “Yes—or, will be soon.”Annetta’s brows settled. “Then go home to her. I can finish up here.”The heat in my face at the thought of you could have boiled the sea. “Are you sure?”Her brows quirked again, the message within clear: Are you serious? “Go.”I abandoned all pretense of propriety. Shucking off my gloves, I ran for the direction of home. My heart fluttered without ceasing, as fast and as unruly as a bird.