Page 9 of Starside

I scowled at her. “That’s not magic.” I would have much rather had a dragon or magical sword from the stories she told before bedtime. The same ones her mother had told her.

“It’s the only magic that matters,” she said.

I didn’t believe her then. I do now, when it’s far too late.

With a grunt, I get to my feet, boots sliding in the rubble. I walk farther into the ruins, then crawl between two crumbled walls, reaching my hand deep, until my fingers brush against fabric.

I carefully withdraw my dust-covered pack.

It took years to save enough extra money from scavenging to get this simple bag and everything in it—a canteen for water, a bar of soap, some wrappings as bandages, a needle and thread, scraps of fabric, and a single gold coin that I traded everything of value for. It’s all I could manage, and my best guess of what I might need during the journey.

Guesses are all I have. Preparation for anyone but Great House heirs is almost futile. When the gates went up, all our books about the other side were magically stripped of their ink. All the poems went blank. All the paintings were drained of color, leaving only blank canvases.

Only stories, orally told, remained, and I don’t doubt the truth was twisted over time. All that’s left is myths and legends. Even our knowledge of the gods is limited.

But the heirs whose ancestors have gone on the Questral … they have the most recent information.

If I can somehow convince Stellan to tell me what he knows, then I’ll have it too.

I stare out at Nightfell, counting caravans, studying the crowds. Even if Stellan doesn’t tell me what he faced, soon enough … I’ll know.

I will survive the Culling.

I will cross those gates.

I have to.

And then, I will see for myself all that was meant to be hidden. I will see Starside, the world that birthed a thousand legends.

“I did it,” I repeat, this time aloud, eyes on the direction of where my home once stood. I feel that relentless pull toward it, the pain and loss a gaping wound in my soul, as if part of me is still there, kneeling in those ashes. “I did it for you.”

I take one last look at the mural, at the world that once was, and start the long trek down.

The streets are full now, packed with travelers already drunk on cheap ale. I take the long way around, through the ancient graveyard, along a row of abandoned houses, roofs caved in, paneling discolored, windows long broken. Each neighbor packed up and left in the middle of the drought, in search of more food and water.

I still remember finding their caravans on the road, years later, their carts looted. Their skeletons. The children …

I slip through the back, hoping Stellan is in the forge and won’t hear me—only to find him waiting right at the back door, like he knew I would be too much of a coward to go through the front.

Stellan’s eyes find my pack immediately. Then they find mine. I see the hurt there as he realizes this is something I’ve been planning for a while.

I lift my chin. “Save your breath. I’m not changing my mind.” I try to walk past him, but he steps to the side, blocking me.

Then I proceed to stand there and listen to every possible reason not to go with the Watchman tomorrow morning. Every way I could die. He maps it all out for me, as if my death is inevitable, careful not to tell me anything that could actually be useful. He has a list of dozens of ways I’m woefully unprepared, and shoots down every counter I make.

But hours of arguing are nothing when compared with ten years of hatred. It’s like lesser metal clashing against Starside steel and shattering into a thousand pointed pieces.

Finally, I throw up my hands. “Look. I’m going. You can’t stop me. There’s no use spending our last moments together fighting about it.”

Last moments. I meant last hours, before the Watchman is at our door, loading me onto a cart that will take me east to the king’s castle, but I watch Stellan’s eyes flare with concern again and regret my choice of words.

We’ve never been good with them. We’ve gone days without saying anything to each other at all. Our language has always been that of smelting and shaping metal. He’d barely said anything during those first few weeks when he brought me here and all I could do was cry. I thought he didn’t care. I thought he was a giant oaf, all beard, thick eyebrows, and grunts. I thought he would forget me in the closet of a room he had piled blankets in. I thought he might throw me back onto the streets.

One day he knocked on my door and came in to find me still crying. This is the end of warm blankets and soup left at my door, I thought. Tears were hot on my cheeks. This is good. If he leaves me to die, maybe I will. Maybe that would be better than all this pain.

But he didn’t kick me out of his house. All he did was slowly kneel before me, so our eyes were close to level. All he did was hand me a figurine of a little girl holding a blade, in a fighting stance. It was painstakingly made of metal, so detailed, so expertly crafted that it could only be one person.

Through sniffling, I said, “But—but I don’t have a sword.”