sparkled into snow, thick drifts of it against the ancient hedge patterns, but I was warm in the aura of Spica the star.
“My sisters are waiting. He needs to wake,” she said. Her voice was musical but cold: the sort of voice you might expect from a star.
“ ‘He’ is the—the person I saw? The comet?”
“Ah, you saw him?” She seemed anxious. “So his shadow is here already? Then there is great danger.”
I wanted to ask, What sort of danger? but pride stopped me. “His shadow?”
“Yes. We will see him soon.” She lifted the hem of her gown to step over a tuft of reeds. The ground here was marshy, patterned with thin ice. “Do not worry. We are almost at the causeway.”
I did not know what she meant by this; there was nothing akin to a causeway in my version of the world. But then, we weren’t in my world now … And as we traversed the field, I saw a glimmer of stone through a gap in the hedge: a long road, heading into the distance, rimmed with silver fire and leading to a tower. It resembled a Norman keep: round and squat as an owl in the landscape.
“Is this where your sisters—live?”
“It is what we create when we need to.” She set foot on the causeway, pulled me along. Our footsteps rang out like hammer beats. The causeway wasn’t stone, as I’d thought, but metal, like solid moonlight. As we drew closer, I saw that the tower was made of the same substance.
“You work with light?” I asked.
“We are stars.” She smelled of sage and snow.
The portcullis was up; the tower shivered faintly. We went through into a central courtyard and here, indeed, were the sisters of Spica: the spirits of the Behenian stars. They stood in a half circle, the Pleiades clustered together in a whispering huddle, silver-dressed; Aldebaran holding a thistle, her hair blood-dropped with rubies; Capella laughing, sapphire bedecked against azure silk. Like their spokessister Spica, all were attenuated, passing for human, something else beneath the masks of women. For the first time in years I was too shy to speak. Schoolboyish, I stood before the weight of their gaze.
One of the Behenian stars stepped forward. This one was gold and blue, holding a sprig of juniper. Frantically remembering Agrippa’s correspondences, I placed her as Sirius. Her star hung overhead, following on the Hunter’s heels. The stars of her sisters wheeled about her, but there was a newcomer in the sky, hanging over the bleak edge of the distant hills, which were higher than they should have been.
The comet was coming. Akiyama-Maki blazed over Arcturus and the star herself was coming forward, her red-and-green gown flecked with jasper beads. The comet was a bright silvery-gold, like a bead in the sky. It would be visible in the Earthly heavens now.
We have to bring him in.
“By ‘he,’ you mean the comet?”
We have to see him safely through.
“If we don’t—what will happen?”
“He is close,” Spica said. “But he has not yet woken.”
It was at this point that my colleague Dr. Roberts’s voice suddenly flashed into my mind, saying, Really very close. “His path should take him past the Earth, though,” I said. He has not yet woken: that was literally true. As the comet, that dirty snowball hurtling through space, came closer to the sun, the warmth of the sun would begin to release its gases, causing the tail to appear.
“He’s been traveling for a long time,” Spica said. “He sleeps and he dreams.”
“What dreams does a comet have?”
“Protection. The cold of deep space, of death. His cold self dreams but does not wake.”
“And when he dreams, he’s dangerous? Because he’s—what?” I didn’t see comets as innately malevolent. “Trying to protect himself in sleep?”
“Yes. And if he does not wake quickly enough, he might leave his path, come too close to the world. He needs a pilot,” the star said. “You will be his pilot.”
“I’ve never—” I stopped. Because I’d been there already, onto the snowball surface of Akiyama-Maki. I’d set foot, in some manner, comet-side.
“Will I—die? If I go there?” I hadn’t before. Best to check, though.
“You should not die. And you will have help,” Algol said. She held out her arm, in its sleeve of cloth-of-gold, and the salamander slid out onto her palm, curling its tail like a cat.
I will come with you, the salamander, messenger of the sun, said.
“Why can’t you come?” I said to Algol.
She looked rueful. “There is no love lost between stars and comets. They come to us like moths to flames, and we wink them out.”
I paused, then I said, “Very well. I’ll go.” The salamander dropped to the floor and rustled over to me; I bent and picked it up. It sat in my palm, curiously heavy.
The Behenian stars all stepped back. Algol raised her hand, and there was white fire between us, a wall like the one I’d seen in the study.
It will not burn you, the salamander said. But it took a moment to nerve myself to step through it, all the same.
The comet’s aura was all around us, a blue-green burn like the Northern Lights. I tried to take a breath. I failed, but I did not choke; it seemed I did not need to breathe. I wasn’t sure whether I’d stepped out of my body, leaving it behind in the castle, for surely I could not be really here; this was some astral level.
Holding the salamander, I walked across the surface of the comet. It was like the frost of the orchard. I heard my footsteps crunch, but this too was illusion; there is no sound in space. Its surface was pockmarked with holes, too small to be termed craters. I had a momentary, and probably foolish, worry about twisting my ankle.
“We have to find him,” I said to the salamander. It radiated heat, without burning. In this bright, cold-colored landscape it was a single spot of fire. “Do you know where he might be?”
I do not.
Akiyama-Maki actually looks a lot like a potato, and it is known to rotate, but the astral surface on which we stood was quite still. As my eyes adjusted to the flickering, streaming light, I realized that the comet’s male form was standing some distance away, with his back to me. A cloak of light streamed out behind him, mimicking a comet’s tail. I walked across the surface toward him. He did not turn his head. When I was closer, I started wondering how to proceed. An “Excuse me?” Perhaps a delicate cough? What I actually said was, “Are you awake?”
No reply. Maybe if I tapped him on the shoulder?
Breathe, the salamander said. Breathe.
I faced the comet. His eyes were open, but blank and dark. I forced myself to stay put. Seen so close, he looked even less human than the Behenian stars.
“Wake,”
