The story sits with me, niggling and prodding loose thoughts and fragments of memories.
I remember my mother sitting in our kitchen baking and telling me about the Night of Falling Stars. She’d made it sound so epic and romantic. She’d told me to remember the story, to never forget it.
If they are dead, what does that mean for us? How can we undo this, and why is Cadel alive?
I look up at the sky. “If the gods died, then the stars are still there, right?”
Cadel lifts his head, looking at me. “Yes, your stars are still there.”
“Why can't we see them then?”
Cadel looks up at the grey sky. “I don’t know.”
Chapter 56
The Night of Falling Stars
Jarek
The Night of Falling Stars
The first explosion hit just at twilight, when the light was just starting to leave the world, and the dark was spreading like a blanket across the sky. The boom woke Kaida from where she was lying on the couch, tearing a startled scream from her. Mordecai came rushing out of his office with his headphones hanging around his ears, his eyes wild.
“Did you feel that?” he shouts. “Was it a bomb?”
I set down my coffee, spilling scalding hot liquid over my hand, and dart out onto our balcony, leaning over, looking up and around.
Screams of horns and people spill into the twilight. There are lots of people out, my neighbours, strangers. Everyone searching the skies, peering anxiously, trying to see where the danger is coming from. The feeling that something is off and very wrong throbs in the back of my head.
Exhaust fumes are normally heavy in the air, but I can smell cloves. Burning cloves.
“I can’t see anything!”
I glance backwards into our apartment, looking at the TV. Breaking news is written on a red strip beneath the reporter, who is talking anxiously into a microphone. My fingers curl around the cold metal railing.
“Hey! Did you see what it was?” A guy above calls.
Across the street, with a road full of congested traffic below, a man on a balcony opposite mine cups his hands to his mouth.
“They think it’s terrorists!”
My blood goes cold. Terrorists? Here?
“What are they saying? Is it weapons? Nuclear?” I ask Kaida urgently.
She brushes her long white hair behind her ears and wraps her arms around herself. Kaida stares at the TV with a pale face and shakes her head before running her fingers through her hair and messing it up again. “No, they have no idea.”
There’s a vibration in the air, a whoosh of air displacing, a burn of heat that licks my skin.
I look up, and my entire world drops, falling, changing in front me. I know it will never be the same.
I open and close my mouth. All I can think is that they are wrong; this isn’t people. This is something else.
“Oh, my gods!” I whisper.
All around me, people scream. The traffic below becomes even more frozen as people abandon their cars and run on foot, desperate to find safety.
Mordecai and Kaida rush towards me, drawn by the sounds of screams. Kaida crashes into me, her nails biting into my back and her gasps loud in my ears. We’re locked together, frozen witnesses on my tiny balcony, watching the end of the world.
