hanginggardenstories:CUT HER OUT IN LITTLE STARS, by Rosamund HodgeThree sisters fell in love with a
hanginggardenstories:CUT HER OUT IN LITTLE STARS, by Rosamund HodgeThree sisters fell in love with a star. (This is not quite true. But wait and listen to my story.)They lived very near the edge of the world, where the rivers run faster and faster until they fall roaring off the rim, into the infinite void. Where birds with feathers of smoke and fire build nests, and hiss at passers-by as they brood over their eggs in smoldering trees. Where stars, sometimes, come down to visit the earth.There is a little village called Edge-of-the-End, and the people of the village are as used to visiting stars as anyone can be. Many strange folk come through the village; the people are polite, and careful, and keep their iron-wrought charms about them. Sometimes they listen to the stars’ low, musical voices, to their tales of dances and battles in deep heaven, but they do not pay much heed to them. It takes a fearful quantity of common sense, to live at the edge of the world.In that village lived an alchemist, who had come to Edge-of-the-End from very far away, deep in the center of the world. He liked to say he was a humble student of wisdom, by which he meant that he only wanted to unlock the secrets of the universe, and gain eternal life. For years he had labored over his notes and his vials; he had deciphered books written in wicked, ancient languages, and he had caught the burning birds and carved their bodies apart, and he had tracked and counted all the stars (in the sky, and in their visits to the village)—And yet, he was still no more than a man, plump about the middle and starting to lose his hair. He lived in a brick house with his three daughters, whom he had absent-mindedly begotten on a woman he married in the brief hope that fleshly love could teach him some sort of mystery. The wife died, leaving him no more powerful or enlightened than before; but the daughters lived, and cooked and cleaned for him, so he regarded the experiment as not entirely a waste.And then a star came to village.He had the shape of a young man, but his hair was white. Little sparks of light clung to his eyelashes and flickered between his fingers. There was no mistaking him for a human, and yet he did not possess the same terrifying, white-hot power that coiled beneath the tongues and fingernails of the other stars.The alchemist talked to the star, as he talked to all the stars who came to the village inn. He asked him why he was so faded.The star sighed and said, “I am near the end of my power. I will never walk the sky again.”The alchemist smiled and said, “Let me help you.”And that was how he came to keep a star in a cage, hidden away in the basement of his house. He told his daughters that the star was a friend whom he was trying to cure, and that the cage was purely for the star’s own safety. The girls knew better: they all had bruises from his absent-minded rages, and they knew how much his promises of safety were worth. But because they knew their father so well, they obeyed. They lied when humans and stars alike came asking after the vanished star; they kept on cooking and cleaning; they did not heed the sounds when their father went down alone to experiment.They were obedient except in one thing. They all of them talked to the star.Read More -- source link
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