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I found myself awake, seemingly several hours later, looking up from the floor of the garden, and surrounded by fresh grass, soft but unbreakable, and delicate, vibrantly-colored flowers.
“So you’re awake.”
My eyes darted over to see Elysian up on his haunches, standing over me. The rest of my body was unwilling to move.
“I’m surprised,” Elysian continued.
“Because you’re awake before me?” I joked.
“No,” Elysian retorted. “I’m surprised because it hasn’t been that long. I thought you’d be out longer. Not everyone will come up so soon after a baptism of light like that one.”
“Baptism?” I struggled to get up, knowing full well Elysian wouldn’t be leaving me alone anytime soon. “I don’t know if I’d call it that. It was more like, I don’t know, a supernova, I guess. I felt crushed and then fluffed out like a sheet in a washing machine.”
“You seem to have benefited from it,” Elysian said with a shrug. “You even look different.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your wings.” Elysian nodded in their direction. He plucked a feather and handed it to me. “See? It’s changed color, from black to red.”
“Awesome,” I muttered, still groggy. I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the feather between Elysian’s claws. He was right, I saw; the ebony of my wings had been seemingly burned, leaving a fiery red quality to my feathers. “I wonder if this means I’ll be able to fly now?”
“We’ll add it to the list of questions for Lady Time and Aleia.”
“Where are they?” I asked.
“They’re around. I saw them walking out by the Meallán with St. Brendan a while ago. Alora will be looking for you soon, since you’re up now.”
“Oh, okay.” I rubbed my temples. “Elysian, can you tell me why I fell?”
“It is a punishment,” Elysian said, “for stars who rebel against their duty or orders. Or misuse their power.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I did. Way back at the beginning, when I was explaining how the Stars began to fall. Remember? You laughed at me and said it was not ‘real,’ just some part of a fairy tale.” He narrowed his gaze. “I suppose you might not have been listening at the time.”
I had a feeling he was right. “Why would I fall though?” I asked. “Why would I go to Earth? Adonaias told me I’d been forgiven.”
Elysian bristled. “Maybe your punishment was delayed. It’s happened before. The Prince of Stars delays confronting the fallen. Or it’s possible you chose to fall yourself, wishing yourself on Earth. Some stars have done that after falling in love with a human.”
“But I wasn’t in love with a human at all,” I objected. “I was in love with Starry Knight.”
“Well, then I—what?” The rough quality of his voice raised an octave higher. Had it been any other time, any other topic, I might have laughed. But there was nothing funny about this.
“Er, yeah. It was a bit of a surprise to me, too.”
There was a beat of silence before he responded. “Was it really that much of a surprise?”
“Yes. No. I mean ... I don’t know.” I shook my head. I didn’t want to tell him.
“Are you still in love with her?”
Another moment of silence. “I don’t know,” I finally said. I turned my gaze away and looked out into the distance.
“Either way, you should let it go,” Elysian told me sharply. “Love never makes things simpler. It only complicates them.”
“What’s your problem?” I asked. “You’ve been acting weird since we got on the boat. You’re the one who wanted to come.”
Elysian’s jaw visibly clenched. “You aren’t the only one who has been affected by falling,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Then seeing his face, I realized what he meant. “You mean you? Because I thought you came to find me.”
“That was part of it. But it was a forced exile.”
I stood up and looked down to see uncharacteristic defiance written all over my so-called mentor’s face; it was hard to see him as my treat-loving lizard who would bury himself into my bedcovers at night. “I don’t understand.”
“You are a fallen Star. I am among the fallen, too,” Elysian muttered. “I thought coming here, I would be reinstated. But I’m not going to be.”
“Someone told you?”
“No. Don’t be an idiot.” Elysian sighed. “Can’t you feel it? Can’t you see it? We are surrounded by a pure world, caught between Time and Eternity. It is protected, heavily, from corruption. It is a miracle we were even allowed to come aboard the Meallán.”
“I didn’t notice.” At least, I thought, not at first. My awareness had gradually sunk in, so gradual I barely noticed that I had noticed it at all. “I must be getting used to the miraculous.”
“This world is too good for us, even me,” Elysian muttered. “And especially you.”
Suddenly, I realized he was angry with me—very angry with me. I was more shocked than scared, but also confused. “If all bad is bad, what makes you think your bad is better than mine?”
“It’s not fair. It’s hard enough to get you to admit there are such things as right things and good things, or bad things and wrong things.” Elysian began to pace back and forth, stomping around on the perfect grass. “You’re a lazy warrior, and a liar. You can’t deny it, either,” he snapped, before I could interject. “And yet, the Prince had ‘forgiven you.’ You, and not me.”
“Besides the fact you’ve overlooked all your flaws, have you asked for his forgiveness?” I asked, curious.
Elysian’s head briefly transformed into its bigger, more deadly form, his anger doing damage to his self-control. “Do you think you needed to!?” His great voice bellowed out of his snout, blowing a strong but harmless wind all around me. “No, there’s no doubt about it in my mind that you deserved to fall. But I was tricked.” He returned to his smaller size, before adding, “I know I was tricked.”
“Did I trick you?” At his glare, I placed my hands down in calm frustration. “I don’t remember. I still don’t even remember my Star name. And I’m confused about a lot of things. St. Brendan told me I was the Star of Fire, and Alora told me I was the Star of Mercy, and I can’t remember Starry Knight’s name, either, even though I was supposed to be in love with her.” I slumped down in front of Elysian. “I’m just asking for the truth, honestly. So tell me. Was I the one who tricked you?”
Elysian was silent for a moment. I could see his eyes fall, his anger cooling. “No,” he finally murmured. “My brother did.”
“Your brother?” That was a surprise. “But you said he was up here. If he tricked you, wouldn’t he have fallen along with you?”
Elysian nodded to the scaly, white flotsam surrounding Time’s palace. “He’s fallen all right. But not all of him left.”
I looked past him, and saw the shed skin of the River Guardian. The closer I looked, the more I realized that it shared a lot of Elysian’s traits; it had the same scaly pattern, the distinctive curve of the nostrils, and the similar shape of its horns. “That’s ... him?”
“His dragon skin,” Elysian said. “When Draco fell, he was defiant to the last. He was cursed, and he shed his skin to stay behind, trapped up here, while he escaped with his memories and power. He went to the Earth like you, to live as a mortal. But because his skin is up here, he will never die as a mortal will.” Elysian snarled up at the ghostly moat. “Draco always was a cunning beast. He managed to do quite a bit of damage before falling, and even afterward. Adonaias himself cursed him so severely that even the snake—one of his favorite transformations—remains part of the curse. All the days of his life, the snake will slither along the ground of the earth, and Draco himself will never be able to rise in true power.”
“What happened to him? Is he still on Earth?”
“I suppose. He’s hard to keep track of.” Elysian narrowed his gaze. “But it was said he would meet his end. His death has already begun. Justice will come to him, and it will be his undoing.”
“How did he trick you?” I asked.
“Before he left, he managed to convince me to help steal some water from the River of Life.”
“What’s the River of Life?”
“It’s pretty self-explanatory from the name.” Elysian rolled his eyes. “The River Veil protects this world from the fallen; the River of Life is the source of all life. It’s said to be made of the blood of the Prince himself.”
“That’s creepy.” I tried to add some levity into the conversation.
“It’s because of the River’s power that he was able to shed his dragon skin and transform into a human-like form,” Elysian said. “I was tricked into getting it.”
“How did you manage to steal it?”
“Aleia is one of the Stars who watch over it. Lady Time remains here, in the ongoing present, but Memory has to flow somewhere. You’ll find all sorts of memories in the River of Life.” Elysian hung his head. “I was her friend before we fell. But I betrayed her.”
“So that’s why you have trust issues,” I joked. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I don’t know why, exactly, but it was hard to brush off. I was getting scared.
Elysian bristled. “You’d feel different about it if it had been you.”
“Probably.” I thought about what Alora had said about compassion earlier. But I didn’t need to read Elysian’s emotions; they were written plainly on his face.
“That’s why,” Elysian continued, “you need to forget about Starry Knight, whether you love her or not. You’ll only end up hurting her, or getting hurt yourself. And that’s not going to help us capture the Sinisters again.”
I didn’t know if I agreed with him or not. He had a point, and it had been a hard lesson he’d learned. I didn’t want to diminish that. “I am sorry about what happened to you, Elysian.”
He sat down on the ground and crossed his arms. “I thought if I could get you to seal away the Sinisters again, it might help us get back into the Celestial Kingdom.” He glared at me. “I guess you don’t need that, though, since you’ve been ‘forgiven,’ according to Adonaias.”
“I might not need to earn forgiveness,” I agreed. “But I’m still on Earth. And that should tell you forgiveness is important, but it’s not the same as not needing it. It’s not the same as perfection.”
“It’s not on us to earn forgiveness.” Elysian and I looked to see St. Brendan standing behind us. He was still in his captain’s outfit, but he looked strangely at home in the gardens of Time. He took his hat off in greeting and looked over at me. “You can earn trust, and respect, and even affection. But mercy earned is not mercy.”
Elysian snorted. “I don’t remember inviting you into the conversation.”
“Elysian,” I muttered. “It’s all right. It’s not like we were talking in private.”
“I was.”
St. Brendan smiled. “In terms of invitations, I’ve come to extend one of my own. Lady Alora has asked that you, now that you’ve rested, come and see her in the atrium once more.”
“Sure.” I nodded. “Can you just give us a few moments?”
“Aye, no problem. She’ll be waiting for you.”
“Thanks.” I watched as he exited as quietly as he’d entered, before turning back to Elysian. “Let’s talk about this later, okay? I need a break.”
“It’s always later for you. It’s an insult,” Elysian insisted, “that you are forgiven, when you have obviously done more wrong than I have.”
I could feel my patience snap. “What do you mean, ‘obviously?’” I asked, my own temper kindling. “Besides, I don’t know why I fell, and you don’t seem to know either, and I really don’t see how I caused you any grief before we met on Earth. You might wish you were better than me, Elysian, and goodness knows you act like it all the time. But you’re not, and you’re not going to be. Especially with that kind of thinking.” I pointed up at the remainder of his brother above us. “Maybe you’ll end up like him if you’re not careful.”
I stood up and turned around. “I’m going to see Alora. You coming?”
“Pft. No,” Elysian snarled.
“Fine.” I walked off, wondering if that was really the most honest conversation I’d ever had with Elysian.
☼15☼