The Broken Crown

Chapter 31

Anaïs

The sun had long since vanished and the night seemed to have swallowed the world she knew into a pit of darkness. The nights in the rain forests were not starlit the way they were in the north; they were black, so black that there were barely any shadows at all. It took great practice to be able to walk without falling through the veils of shadows, without stumbling into trunks or having your face whipped by loose branches that hung in your way. In front of her, she could hear Talia hum quietly to herself as she walked with practiced feet.

Anaïs could barely see her hand before her, and her feet seemed to be flying on nothing. Talia had said that it did not matter if they brought torches, because they would have to extinguish them anyway. Otherwise, their light would drown out that of the stars and their spirits.

When they reached the edges of the forest, it got better. The tree cover above them thinned out and silvery starlight showed through the holes. When you looked up, you could see the sky’s light shining through the green leaves, making them glow like little lanterns. It was beautiful.

Then they stepped out of the forests, and the night sky stretched above her. Anaïs’ head fell back and her mouth hung open. Above her, a billion stars gleamed and it seemed that the colours that the night had stolen from the world, it had put on the sky; pink and deep blue and emerald green, like fogs above a big black blanket.

Wordlessly, Talia smiled a nearly toothless smile and led her further out into the desert. The sand was no longer golden and dry, but rather silvery and cold. She shivered in the cold that suddenly hit her but the view above her kept her distracted.

After a short while of walking, Talia stopped and they sat in the sand. “Do you see that star there?” Talia whispered, as though afraid to shake Anaïs out of her reverie. “The big one, in the blue mist?”

“Yes.”

“It connects with the four stars around it. It is the symbol of war. But when it is surrounded by that blue colour, it means that war will bring only sorrow and loss,” she said. “Whatever travels inside that mist is something that should not be pursued.

“That’s the mark of return,” she continued. Anaïs followed the wiry finger to the night sky. “That one, the one that is shaped as a rectangle from those four big stars.” Anaïs nodded. “When they are aligned thus, it means that someone or something loved will return soon.”

Anaïs looked at the four stars. Marking the exact middle of the rectangle, another star gleamed. It was small, almost unnoticeable, but it gleamed with a strong red colour. “What about the one in the middle?”

Talia frowned, her dark eyes analysing the sky. Once more, the black orbs had a gleam of gold in them. “Which star?”

“The red one, the one right in the middle,” Anaïs clarified and pointed the way Talia had.

It took Talia another moment or two to find it, and even when Anaïs could tell she had seen it from how her now completely golden orbs had stopped moving, she did not speak right away.

“Hasar,” she then whispered beneath her breath and Anaïs wondered if she had heard correctly.

“What?”

Talia’s head turned away from the heaven above, gaze fixing to her face. “Hasar. How did you see that?”

Frowning, she looked to the sky, then back to the older woman. “I don’t know.”

The wrinkles on Talia’s forehead deepened. “You… don’t know?”

“No,” Anaïs said uncertainly.