Star Harbor Nights

The State of Attica, the 4th Century B.C.E.

 "Ho, Lysandra!" the wanderer called as she approached the house, the well-appointed country estate of a wealthy merchant.

She found it a little odd that the yard had grown so wild, and that the olive trees appeared poorly tended... but then, the household surely had other things to occupy its attention at the moment. The arrival of a new baby often upended domestic order.

"Who calls me?" Lysandra's voice, so warm and familiar to Melaina's ears, answered. "Who's there?"

"It is Melaina, your faithful planet," she replied stepping into view of the large front window, "who has completed another circuit of the dome of the heavens and comes now to rest in your house and share in your good omens. They say that Hera has blessed you, and you were delivered most timely and well."

To her growing surprise and unease, the house was dark and as poorly tended as the grounds. The windows, except in the front, were draped in heavy cloth. The room was tidy and uncluttered, but dust and the work of spiders marked the passage of time since it had been much used or much cleaned.

"You should not see me like this, my sister, my love," Lysandra said. "It would have been better for you to come back next spring, or not at all."

"Would you be then even more radiant?" Melaina said, smiling like the crescent moon as she swaggered through the door. "I am not so greedy. I shall take you as you are. I've brought fine wine," she said, lifting up the clay jug for Lysandra to see. "Is there water in the jar, or shall I fetch it?"

"Leave it. Tonight, we'll drink it unmixed," Lysandra said. "You shall get used to the power of such, once a nurse of Dionysus you become."

"I, a maenad?" Melaina said, laughing. She poured a small measure of the dark red wine into two clay vessels. "I have been taken as such before... though only by men who had enjoyed too much of Bacchus's blood themselves. It is a wonderful jest, but I fear your long months of seclusion have affected you badly, but there's no need for you to remain a prisoner in your own house. Where are the servants who should be tending the child? Where is that big silent oaf your husband has set to watch when you venture timidly out on the streets?"

"I let him go. I have let them all go," Lysandra said. "I have set them free. There is no need for them anymore."

Melaina stared at her, aback.

"I do not know what to say to that," she admitted. "As one who was a slave to you, and now is called sister and dearest love, I know the Twelve must laud you for your generosity, even as they question your foresight."

"Please, speak to me of anything but foresight," Lysandra said.

"Then let us speak of the child," Melaina said. "New children are always a happy topic."

"As you say," Lysandra sighed. She pointed to a crèche in a dark corner of the room. "There. There she lies, so quietly... as if she might sleep forever."

"Sister?"

"What?"

"You fill me with foreboding," Melaina admitted. "Is the child... is she well?"

"As well as any who have been born of mortal parentage," Lysandra said. "Go and see for yourself."

Still filled with much trepidation, Melaina went to the crèche and found the infant inside was... perfect. She was beautiful, with skin like burnished bronze, cheeks full of color, and tiny ringlets of hair like gold chain. Melaina swept her up in her arms, full of joy to see her lover's child in such a glow of health.

"Her hair! Such beautiful curls, see how they shine in the rays of the sun?" Melaina said, holding the infant up into the slanting light. "You should not hide her away so, Lysandra. We must take her out at once, and let honest Phoebus admire her."

"Honest Phoebus be damned," Lysandra said. "Let not His sight fall upon my child, for I have dreamed the jealous sun shall steal her away, though He shall not so long enjoy her company before a black dog carries her off in its jaws on a night when His sister's watchful eyes are turned away."

"Such strange fancies you have," Melaina said uneasily. "It comes of drinking strong wine. But enough of this talk of 'my child.' You haven't even told me your daughter's name. Is it after your mother, as you wished it?"

"It matters little enough," Lysandra said, though she nodded slightly. "I might have named her Threnoidia, for though she outlives me twice-twenty lifetimes, I shall sing the funeral songs for her ere long."

"Oh, love!" Melaina cried. "Dearest friend, do not say these things. They say sometimes when a mother is delivered of her burden, her soul aches for the part of her that it feels is missing, and later we must both address ourselves to the heavens that the kindly gods will understand this and pardon your rough language. But, your child has not been taken away... merely brought out into the light where all may see and enjoy her."

"You think I am crazed?" Lysandra said. "You do not know what the last turn of the year has done to me. Nine months! Nine months of that insidious voice in my ear, of the most terrible promises made by the mouths of gods and daemons until I thought that I was mad, or soon would be. She will be a mantis! She will see visions, and the end of seeresses... and I shall mourn her still living, and cast myself in the sea. You will go mad with grief, and drown yourself in the joy of the Eleutherians... and Hector, my simple Hector... he will return from his voyage to find his lands in ruin, his daughter gone, and his wife dead. He will be driven to fruitless vengeance and be slain, or be driven mad by the whips of the kind ladies until he slays himself. This is what was told to me!"

"Love, who told you?" Melaina asked, her blood running cold in her veins. Tears ran down her face at the thought that someone had dared to torment an expectant mother, much less her own beloved Lysandra, in this fashion. "Who is it, that has whispered such horrid things to you?"

"Don't you understand what I have been telling you? It's the child, Melaina... the child!"

The City of Star Harbor. Now.

Luna, somehow overwhelmed by the admittedly striking sight of the eldritch flaming letters which wreathed the interior of the church, convulsed as if she were having a seizure. Panicked, Dani grabbed her bare shoulders and shook.

"I... I remember..." Luna sputtered as she came out of it.

"What?" Dani asked her. "What do you remember."

"Too much," she said. "Far, far more than I should have to... everything, back to the very beginning of me."

She fell forward, her body pressing against Dani... who became very aware that Luna was, indeed, naked beneath the concealing darkness... sinking down to her knees on the well-worn carpet.

"Fucking gods... I remember everything," she said. "I see everything... all of me, at once... I wasn't supposed to... that was never the deal. It's too much..."

"But, what did you mean that it's the end of the world?" Dani asked.

"Only that it is," Luna said, rocketing to her feet. She paced up and down the nave, twitching frenetically as she spat out words. "The end of everything and the beginning... the beginning of nothing. The churches are the key. They're sacred spaces, places of ritual... power. The fire in the words will eat that away, devour it... unmake it without a trace."

"That's... what fire does," Dani said, uncertainly.

Luna shook her head.

"No, uh uh, it doesn't," she said. "Fire burns. It changes, it transforms. It rearranges the elements present. Fire... ordinary heat and light... creates as much it destroys, which is really nothing at all. What this fire burns is unmade completely... a space consecrated to absence, to nothingness, to darkness... and he who smiles within it."

"And that's an end-of-the-world scenario?"

"It's the end of everything," Luna said. "This is the second site. There will be others, and when the time is right, the darkness will roll up out of them like pus from a wound, and swallow up the very stars from the heavens. The moon will weep, and the sun will cry tears of fire and blood..."

"The second... you're talking about the church that burned down last week?" Dani realized. "The one that they can't figure out how it happened? They keep saying on the news 'Investigators found no trace'... of bombs, gas... anything. They can't find any trace of how it started..."

"...because there's nothing to find," Luna said. "When those words on the wall become fulfilled, they'll blossom like deadly flowers and leave nothing of themselves, and the gap they create will be the opening he uses... magic is the key. It's the crack in the door. The chink in the armor of reality. Magic lets us do what we can't, what we shouldn't."

"So those words on the walls are a spell..." Dani said, trying to process the salient points without letting Luna's dramatic proclamations get to her.

"It is. A very old spell... maybe the oldest one... or maybe one of two," Luna said. "'Let the thing I say be destroyed'... 'I will unmake as I speak.'"

Dani shivered at the distant, hollow intonation.

"So what do we do?" she asked, shaking it off. "We can stop it, right? It hasn't gone off yet."

Luna shook her head.

"We can't stop it... here," she said. "It's too close, too strong. There will other times, and other places... and you... you'll remember I asked you to go home tonight?"

"I know," Dani said. "But I..."

"You'll remember that I offered you that chance," Luna said. "You don't understand now, but you will. The gods have shown me many cruel things over the years, but the worst that they can show anybody is what might have been. But... you stayed, and so now you will be left to stand against the darkness when the time comes."

"You'll be standing there, too, right?" Dani asked. "That's what you do. The hound who hunts in darkness, or whatever."

Luna didn't answer immediately.

"Remember when I said I know everything, sometimes?" she said after a bit. When Dani nodded, she said, "I can tell you a few things about your ring... but you'd better let me do it now, while I know I can."

"Okay."

"Call it the hero's ring," Luna said. "Whoever finds it... whoever it finds... is a hero. It's been worn by many men, and a few women, on many different worlds. Each time, it remakes itself as well as its bearer, transforming them into the image of what a hero is to their culture."

"Or sub-culture, apparently," Dani muttered, looking down at her ring and reflecting on how much all the tools it gave her resembled something from a video game. "So if some stupid jock had bought it instead of me, it would have turned him into a football hero?"

"Nobody would have bought it but you," Luna said. "There are many accidents in this life, but not for us. You found the ring because the gods... or maybe the universe... have found a use for you. It's a terrible thing, to be young and given a destiny... so you ran and hid from it. I don't blame you. I would have, if I could... but... even the endless ones do not always have the luxury of patience. So, tonight, you were nudged... set on the course that has now brought you here."

"That poor man in the bar..."

"You didn't kill him, Dani," Luna said, shaking her head fiercely. "He was just a lever... used to pry you out of your apathy and ennui. There were probably other ways that could have been accomplished, but the tools of the gods are not always subtle. They aren't always heroes. You are... the ring proves it. You're not a hero because you have the ring. You have the ring because you are a hero, deep down inside. Not like me."

"You're a hero, too," Dani protested. "You saved me earlier."

"No, I'm a killer, Dani... I was there to kill Bone Lords. Helping you was a side effect... but I'm tired of killing," she said. "I am so tired... I have been flung all around the world, manipulated by gods, made into a hunting animal, torn into two people... and I am so fucking tired of it all. You asked me if I'm going to stand beside you against the darkness, Dani... and that is what they want. It's what I'm supposed to do... but it isn't what I want."

"Well, you don't have to..."

"You don't know what it means to be a tool of the gods," Luna said. "You'll learn. But... finally... I have a way out. What this fire touches, it will destroy utterly," she said, gesturing at the glowing words all around them. "Body, and soul. No underworld, no heavenly choir... no reward, no rest... nothing but sweet oblivion. Beyond the reach of gods and men, forever and never, amen."

"But that's...!"

"It's what I want," she said. "Release. Relief. To lay my burden down... you know, in your own way, the pain of being ripped in two, of not being able to be one whole person. Imagine that, forever. I can end it tonight."

"You can't mean that!" Dani cried. "I just met you... there's so much more I don't know. Luna, if this is the end of the world, I can't face it alone!"

"You won't," Luna said, smiling a little sadly. "There will be others. I won't be needed... but I also won't be released. Still, I won't abandon you completely. There is something that I can do to even the odds that you'll face. The wraiths of the Bone Lords responded when I taunted them in a forgotten tongue. I can use that, with enough power... I can call them out, draw them to me. Earthly fire destroyed them easily enough. The fires of uncreation should more than suffice to wipe them out."

"Luna, have you considered that you're still just being somebody's pawn?" Dani asked frantically. "I mean, you said there's no accidents for us... do you think it's a coincidence that you suddenly remembered whatever it is you saw when you came in here? Somebody's using a 'lever' on you to get you to do whatever they want."

"I realize that, but when it's done, I won't care," Luna said. "That's the virtue of nonexistence... but I need your help with something."

"I'm not going to help you kill yourself!"

"I won't need any help with that. I need you to help me make my death count for something. I'm not strong enough to draw those things here," she said. "Or to do what I have to when they get here... and you're not strong enough to face the coming storm. Not on your own. I can fix both of those things... but not alone. I need your help. Are you prepared to do what I ask of you?"

"What am I supposed to do?" Dani asked. "Just... give you my power somehow?"

"Somehow," Luna said, smiling. "My power is divine, Dani... it comes from belief."

"What, you want me to pray to you?" Dani asked, chuckling softly at the idea.

"What's so funny about that?" she demanded, turning to face Dani, her face turned down but her eyes looking up, imploringly. There was a bit of a pout on her lips. Dani's pulse quickened at the sight of it.

"I'm not much of..." Dani began, gulping hard. 'Well, I've never really prayed much before."

"Do you mean to tell me that you do not know how to pray?" Luna asked with a soft, gentle laugh. She sat down on the floor, leaning backwards... sprawling.

The dark shadows which clung to her contours began to lift.

"You pray with your heart, Dani," she said, laughing harder. "You pray with your lips and with your tongue... you pray with your hands... come, little warrior, and I will teach your lips and tongue and hands how to pray to me."