A brand against the darkness …
My mind conjures the memory of seeing him trying to beat back the mist-bent creatures with a burning bit of wreckage, the flames bright against the night.
Like a brand.
Maybe …maybe… could the Star be a human boy? Some descendant of the gods themselves, unaware now of his divinity?
How he came to fall from the sky, I don’t know. How he could be the one to help me find my destiny, I can’t imagine.
Of one thing, however, I am suddenly, utterly, viscerally certain: this boy is what I was meant to find here.
“I know of no magic that can raise a man into the sky,” I say weakly, scanning the boy’s face, trying to find some sign—any sign—that I am looking at something connected to divine destiny. “Come with me to the temple. Our archives hold many secrets and many ancient scrolls. Perhaps they hold the knowledge you seek. Legend even says that the temple was once the home of the Sentinels, who guarded the passage to the sky.”
“Thank you.” His face is solemn, but there’s relief in his eyes, and now he even smiles at me a little. The expression suits his features. “I’m glad you found me.”
He is unscarred, no sign of callouses on his hands or of wear from the elements on his face. His skin beneath his strange outer garment is clean. He is as fresh and new as if he were just formed.
My eyes fall upon the suit he wears, its sleeves tied around his waist. On the arm of one of them, I can just make out the shape of letters, distorted by the folding of the fabric—but unmistakable.
The writing of the ancients. Just like the lettering inside the fallen glider.
“Do you have names, in the sky?” I ask, not sure what I’m expecting him to tell me.
The boy smiles a little more widely. “My name’s North. What’s yours?”
I stare at him, bereft of words. He looks about as divinely significant as the bindle cat. But then, not even a god is born knowing their place in fate’s design. I had to learn about my purpose when I was called to divinity, as any child learns about the world.
If this boyisthe Last Star, brand against the darkness, whose light will lead me to the Destroyer and to the end of days …
He doesn’tknow it.
I suddenly need to breathe free, and I reach up to tug my kerchief down from my lips so that I can gulp a breath of fresh air.
“You may call me Nimh.”
SIX
NORTH
Nimh leads the way across an open plain, the stars above reflected in the water around us—a thin sheet covering the ground, less than ankle-deep. It’s like walking through the sky, except that it’s already soaking through my boots.
It hurts to leave theSkysingerbehind, but I can’t stay with her. She can’t get me home, destroyed as she is. My only hope right now is that Nimh was telling the truth, that there might be someone in this temple of hers who can help me.
Every time I look at Nimh’s agile silhouette ahead of me, try to wrap my mind around the fact that she’s human and she’s right here, my mind staggers back. Nobody’s meant to live Below, but here she is. And she talks sense, sort of. She knows medicine, or at least chemistry—and she says there are otherpeople.
We’re told the surface is uninhabited. We learn this from the time we first speak. I have no idea what to make of this girl, of her showing up at my crash site, except that I’m not dead yet, and I would be if she wanted me to be. For the first time since my glider stopped responding and I dipped below the city, I have hope.
And if I’m honest, there is a tingle of excitement somewhere deep in my chest. I dreamed of the surface. I dreamed of exploration.
I never dreamed of anything like this.
She’s setting a decent pace, and my aches start to assert themselves, my breath forced shallow by a pain in my ribs.
“Nimh,” I say, and she turns her head without breaking stride. “Could we slow down a little? I’m sorry, I’m hurt.”
She shakes her head. “My … friend said she would come for me after half an hour,” she replies. There’s just enough of a pause beforefriendthat I wonder what she was going to say. Is the girl she’s talking about her pair? Her superior?
“Then she’ll find us,” I say. “And I assume she’s going to notice me sooner or later. Will it be a problem?”
