Swift struck a match, brightening the face of his best friend.
Feeling Ash by his side—imagining Ash was actually on his side—it was even more thrilling than the idea of reclaiming the book Caius, Swift’s older brother, had unjustly taken from them.
Swift hushed the match’s flame inside an old oil lantern, keeping the wick barely simmering. He glanced at Ash.
Ash’s expression formed into the cunning look of adventure Swift always had loved.
It seemed, at this moment, that Ash could be trusted. That finally they were salvaging what they’d lost. What they’d broken.
“Where could Caius have hidden your book?” Ash whispered.
The Pembrokeshire beach house wasn’t large, but it kept plenty of great places to conceal the book of sea histories and legends Caius had confiscated—The Shepherd of the Stars. Swift’s only hope lay in the possibility that Caius hadn’t tried very hard to hide it.
Perhaps, though, he hadn’t.
When Caius had stumbled through the front door in the wee hours, his face bright and cheered by his wine, his hand clasping Brooke’s, they’d spent just a minute downstairs before stumbling up to the master bedroom.
Swift and Ash, both awake on their cots in the den, had kept stone still. But neither of them had seen precisely where, in the dark room, Caius had walked.
“I bet he stuffed it someplace by the front door.” Swift picked up the lantern and led Ash toward the entryway.
At the base of the stairs, he paused.
Caius and Brooke, up there, behind the closed door, were speaking softly. Laughing quietly.
“What if they took it up with them?” asked Ash.
Caius and Brooke’s laughter changed. Into something…else.
Swift snatched Ash’s arm and pulled him away from the stairs.
As gently as he could, Swift opened the coat closet in the entryway, while Ash rifled through a cabinet, drawer by drawer. Both came up empty-handed.
A storage trunk, its old blue wood silvered by light shafting in from the cold autumn moon, caught Swift’s eye.
Swift whispered, “He wouldn’t have.”
It was just a plain trunk for blankets, but to Swift it was magical. When he was small, Caius had commandeered it as a makeshift treasure chest in their play.
Swift opened the trunk.
The blue moon streaming in through the beach house’s windows tumbled across the silver print on the cover of his aged book, The Shepherd of the Stars.
“Nice work!” Ash lifted the book from among the woolen folds.
Caius had taken The Shepherd of the Stars from Swift in a fury, accusing accused him flat out of lying, which had been unfair.
It was true, Swift had kept the book from Caius, Brooke, and Ash, and even from the museum curator to whom he’d formally agreed to show all his finds. But he was planning on telling everyone about it—just not yet.
Swift and Ash together startled at the floorboards above them creaking. Rhythmically.
“We have to get out of here.” Swift hurried to the front door.
Ash, staring up the flight of steps, stalled. “Don’t you sort of wonder what they’re doing?”
“God, no.”
From growing up with three older brothers—Caius the closest at twenty-four—these noises weren’t new. And Swift had heard plenty of talk to let him understand exactly what Caius and Brooke were doing. Swift quietly lifted the lantern.
Ash crept back to the trunk.
“What are you doing?” Swift whispered. “We don’t have much time.”
“Getting blankets,” said Ash. “If your fever strikes again, we won’t be able to get to the museum tomorrow.”
Ash was right. They had to be cautious. Swift was at the tail end of a recurring fever disease—born from a blood infection he’d landed after the boating accident with Caius.
And tomorrow was the day he’d find out whether he could keep the relics he’d discovered—his Sunstone, the Star of Atlantis; the book that’d led him to it; and its ancient map.
“Warmth and quiet,” whispered Ash, handing Swift a blanket. “That’s what Brooke said you need to stay well.”
But more than warmth and quiet, Swift needed to understand what secrets this book of legends told. He had to know what insights it might keep about the Star of Atlantis. And his place in its mystery.
Swift softly opened the front door and slipped out, Ash following.
They together broke into a run, racing each other beneath Pembrokeshire’s blazing constellations, Draco the starry black dragon and Cygnus the blue swan bright in flight straight above.
Swift ran so fast, so hard, he felt he was charging along the Milky Way. The sense of sea wind bathing his face, the ecstasy of straining over packed sand, bright white and sparkling like stars in the ocean of black overhead, was ecstasy.
Just a week ago, he wouldn’t have been able to run like this. The fever disease had dropped him into a coma for nine days, and coming out of that, he couldn’t do much of anything without dropping into fits of exhaustion. He couldn’t even read like he used to—sailing through one of Caius’ medical texts in a week.
They tore to the campsite on the beach, its kindling cold now, where they’d been reading The Shepherd of the Stars before Caius confiscated it. Before Brooke slipped it into her satchel, keeping it. Damn Brooke.
Ash won their race, reaching the charred firewood an instant before Swift. He hollered.
“Hey, quiet.” Swift, needing to catch his breath, knelt in the cold sand.
“We don’t have to be quiet anymore,” said Ash. “I mean, Brooke and Caius couldn’t hear us from all the way out here.”
“Caius seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to what I’m up to.” Swift swelled the flame inside the lantern. “I’d rather not tempt fate.”
Ash checked the dark house behind them. “Any chance they’ll see our light?”
“Their bedroom doesn’t look out this way. They won’t see us unless they come downstairs.”
A wave of exhaustion washed from the sprint. Swift dropped back to sitting in the sand.
Ash knelt before him. “Well, open the book to where we left off.”
Swift studied the worn cover of The Shepherd of the Stars. Looking at it, a pang of regret struck. Maybe he shouldn’t have kept this a secret. But he’d done so for very good reasons.
And despite how much fun this was, sneaking out to the beach with Ash to read it, deep down, he wished Ash hadn’t found out about it. Now, Swift would have to report to the museum curator—Octavian Krakau.
Octavian wasn’t just untrustworthy, as Ash could be. Octavian felt dangerous.
He’d been cordial with Ash, like they were old friends. But the way he’d watched Swift—the finder of the Star of Atlantis, it seemed he’d been harboring a fury kept barely under control.
And he’d been so possessive of it, along with Swift’s other relics—the Star of Atlantis book and its map.
Ash inched closer. “Let’s find out if it talks about those old Welsh clans—whether they’re still around. What secrets they might’ve kept.”
A noise sounded—far off, from the north. From the great ancient forest—the Wentletrap Forest.
It was like a dog’s howl, but more savage.
Like something hungry or in pain.
That’d been the very same sound he’d heard earlier tonight when he’d slipped into the Wentletrap Forest.
Swift stared at the forest’s deep shadow looming up the coast, delivering to the wind a smell of wildness, of leaf litter, of pine.
He’d heard something very like it, too, on the night of the boating accident, while searching the wilds for help and stumbling across the fisherman. It was the sound the fisherman had said was “a summons.”
The noise struck louder—its shrillness, its ferocity sending a chill through him.
“Have you ever heard a noise like that?” asked Swift.
“Probably.” Ash shrugged. “It’s just a night noise. Only someone’s dog.”
The howl—the creaturely scream—rang again.
That was no dog. And there were no people around here to have dogs.
But Ash seemed unafraid. He seemed hardly to have noticed.
“Go on,” said Ash. “Try to read more from your book. Like you said, we don’t have much time.”
Swift flipped through the stiff pages of The Shepherd of the Stars to where he and Ash had left off—to a section titled, The People of the Stones.
This told about the mysterious, mage-like Welsh clan thought to have originated from Nordic countries.
They were treasure finders. Mystics who kept secrets and wisdom and claimed to have visions. People of the sea who hid and guarded treasures. People who still might stand guard over treasures.
Swift turned the page.
There lay a woodblock illustration of an ancient oak tree, sharp points of starlight descending in the background. A man was drawn at the base of the tree, holding a streaming lantern.
Looking at this picture brought Swift a strong sense of what he’d seen not two hours ago, when, in the Wentletrap, he’d spied a ghostly person moving by low lamplight.
But he couldn’t really say it was the same. The fevers made him second guess his perception, and even now he was struggling through a fit of chills that signaled the onset of an intense one.
Swift’s doctor—Dr. Keats—thought the impairment of the fevers, his challenges with reading, might be temporary.
But who knew? The eerie person in the forest with his lantern could’ve been a hallucination. And the glowing eyes Swift had sighted—that’d sighted him—what if they’d been nothing more than a waking dream?
Swift laid the book in the sand. Closed it.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ash, a tint of frustration in his voice. “We have to keep reading.”
But Ash looked more than frustrated. Was he angry?
It was upsetting anytime Ash’s demeanor changed like this. Mostly, he displayed kindness. But when he shifted into agitation, Swift worried that he’d been foolish to bring Ash here with him.
Even at the best of times, depending on Ash felt like riding a bike blindfolded, reflexively fearing that something destructive was coming.
But Ash, too, was trying to heal. And it seemed their reborn, discordant friendship was making that happen.
Swift watched Ash, waiting to see which side might get the better of him.
Ash asked more softly, “Don’t you want to keep reading?”
He was trying to recover his patience. And of course Swift should give him the space to check himself.
Ash was here, right before him, reflecting the loyalty and support Swift badly needed.
Swift often told himself that all his setbacks were temporary. That he just needed some time, some practice, before diving into the difficult medical books, readying for the trials that could win him a seat in a medical internship program.
Every sea legend book Swift had tried to read with Ash, he found he could blaze through. Reading these books—especially The Shepherd of the Stars—seemed the best way, if not the only way, to gain back his bearings for reading medicine.
“I know you can do this,” said Ash, more gently still.
By persevering through their five years of separation—a mixture of silent persistence, unrequited reaching, and strife, Swift finally now had Ash’s confidence. He might really be earning back his best friend.
“What if Caius is right, though?” asked Swift.
Caius, who seemed to be losing confidence in Swift. Caius, who believed Swift’s legend books were detracting from his capacity to read biochemistry and anatomy.
“What if I’m only creating distractions by exploring this? Caius wants me to set aside all these fantasies.”
Ash crouched closer. “Think about what you saw in the Wentletrap.”
If Swift had hallucinated that man in the forest, those glowing eyes—that could mean Caius was right.
“What if what I saw wasn’t real?” Swift asked.
“Look.” Ash shifted to sitting by him. “You have to keep your brother out of your head. He means well, I’m sure, but he’s bloody controlling.” He pulled the book back onto Swift’s lap. “And besides, he doesn’t understand these books like we do.” He caught Swift’s glance. “They aren’t fantasies. They’re histories.”
Ash had a handsome, muscular face, and the expression he was casting was puckish. By it Swift felt he was slipping straight back to his childhood, to the company of the old Ash; to when he and Ash were each other’s first and best friends; to when they could get lost in each other’s adventures and spend whole days in the magical worlds they made up.
Swift glanced back at the beach house, where Caius and Brooke were certainly knotted up together in the sheets.
Brooke was the first girl Caius had ever brought home. Since he had, he’d grown distant and seemed less himself. The Caius Swift knew never would have chosen a girl over him.
It suddenly seemed not to matter whether The Shepherd of the Stars was history or fantasy, whether it was a distraction or a support. There seemed to be enough truth in the fact of himself and his best friend venturing through it together, entranced.
Swift shifted to kneeling in the cold sand. By the light of his lantern, he opened The Shepherd of the Stars.
Ash settled in front of him, beside the cold embers. “Read it to me like you were doing before they caught us. It’s okay if you have to go slowly.”
Swift smoothed the page. “This bit mentions Cynfael Maddox.”
“That’s incredible,” said Ash. “What’s it say?”
Swift read—
“Cynfael Maddox came to be known as ‘The Shepherd of the Stars’ by his peculiar fondness for wandering along starry beaches, through ancient oak forests by night, speaking wisdom to the ocean, to the trees. Some say he cast spells on the people he happened upon.”
“Whoa,” said Ash. “That’s precisely what you described seeing tonight. Do you think that man you saw cast a spell on you?”
“I don’t know—he didn’t come near me,” said Swift. “Or—I don’t think he did.” He wiped at his eyes, tearing from the wind and from a heat welling in his chest.
The lighthearted expression faded from Ash. “That fisherman you saw the night you and Caius wrecked—if he’s some sort of descendant from Maddox’s clan, maybe he didn’t just land that knife cut on your chest, but actually did cast a spell on you. The Shepherd of the Stars clan—if they do have mystical powers and foresight, maybe your struggle to read, to focus, is because of a spell. What if your whole fever disease is some sort of curse?”
Swift laid aside the book.
“We have to keep going.” Ash glanced toward the beach house.
“I want to.” Swift shivered. “It’s just—I’m getting so cold.”
Ash threw one of the blankets around Swift’s shoulders. “Should we light the campfire?”
“No way. We can re-hide the book well enough, but when Caius wakes up, the first thing he’ll do is come out here and make sure the embers are dowsed.” Swift pulled the blanket tightly around him. “He’d definitely notice if more wood were burned.”
“Can’t you read any more?” Ash tucked the second blanket around Swift. “Try. Or let me.”
Swift handed him the book.
Ash rifled through. “I’ll see if I can find anything more about Maddox’s spells.”
Swift pulled the blankets up around his neck and ears.
They were woolen blankets and very thick—where they enclosed him, heat blazed. But the cold wind drifting from the ocean, trickling through the gaps, felt like a drenching of seawater.
Ash bent low to the lantern and studied a page. “You said this handwriting is like the penmanship in The Star of Atlantis?”
“I think it’s the very same. But I’ll need to get that book back from Octavian to be sure.”
“What if that book is cursed too?” asked Ash. “What if the bloody Sunstone is cursed? What if all this is the reason you and Caius almost drowned when you led him into that deathtrap of Sterncastle Cove?”
At hearing Ash speak the truth of the accident, Swift’s chest seared. It might’ve just been the cut, still raw and flaring a bit at the heat of what had to be a rising fever.
But this agony felt deeper. He’d led Caius into a deathtrap.
“Oh! Here’s something.” Ash laid the book on the sand before them.
“Those encountering Cynfael Maddox often reported leaving his presence dazed.”
Ash pulled closer the lantern. “You had to be dazed as you sailed off from that fisherman into those deadly night waters.” He glanced up at Swift. “Weren’t you dazed?”
“I guess, but that was the fever disease starting,” said Swift. “Not a curse.”
“And I’d say you’re looking a bit dazed now,” said Ash. “You might be lucky the man you saw tonight didn’t cut you.”
“If Cynfael Maddox and his clan cut everyone stumbling onto their path, wouldn’t the book talk of them as villains more than heroes? And wouldn’t it speak plainly of his violence if people left his presence cut and blood-poisoned rather than ‘dazed?’”
“Cut and blood-poisoned.” Ash held up the lantern. “Are you all right? I mean, even in this poor light, I can tell the color’s gone out of your face. That’s one of the signs Brooke told me to look out for—it might mean a fever’s starting.”
Swift was unable to control the shivering now.
This was definitely the fever relapsing, but it wasn’t just starting. The truth was, he’d felt its slow simmering since a few hours ago, when he refused to take the medicine Brooke offered. Now it seemed to have its claws in him.
“We should go in,” said Swift.
“One more second.” Ash flipped through more pages. “Whoa—listen to this—
“The so-called ‘spells’ Cynfael Maddox used—some believe these to
be bits of great thoughts and of wisdom. Insights about the Celtic
seven-pointed star, about seafaring, astronomy, and
mathematics.”
Ash thumbed back a few pages. “That would explain why there are so many maths formulas and chemistry looking things and such rubbish scrawled all over the place in this book. These might somehow be Cynfael’s pieces of wisdom. Or somehow his curses.”
“Ash,” Swift whispered.
The fever was definitely spiking. Swift’s skin and muscles were quaking with the sensation of ice touching him, but inside his chest and belly, it seemed lava was boiling.
“Listen,” said Ash—
“People encountering the spirit of Cynfael Maddox over
centuries often reported that they felt a sense of destiny, a great
wisdom imparted. Many think of him as a true renaissance man—
a magnificent teacher with endless ideas and knowledge. And
some in his company were known to be gifted with foresight.”
Swift tried to catch Ash’s glance. “I need…”
Ash read on—
“And their lives, after meeting Maddox, often were changed.”
Ash finally looked at Swift. “Your life certainly did change. But do you think the fisherman imparted any wisdom?”
Swift lost all strength and fell to his side.
“Swift?” Ash knelt over him.
Swift couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe.
The trembling from the fever seemed more than just chills.
His body was spasming.
Seizing.
Dr. Keats had said seizures were possible. And Swift was losing all control of his body.
“Get Caius,” Swift said, or tried to.
In what seemed like seconds later, Caius was kneeling over him, pushing back the blankets, clearing away the kindling pile Swift’s wild hands were hitting.
“You’re okay.” Caius held onto Swift’s shoulder. “I have you.”
Brooke knelt at Swift’s head and gently guarded his face from the sand he was kicking up.
“From the porch, I saw him tip,” Caius said to Ash. “Was he seizing before then, or did this just begin?”
Ash’s face was tear-streaked. “I don’t know.”
Brooke filled a syringe. Caius held down Swift’s arm as she injected it.
The shot incited a pleasurable buzz that took Swift’s mind off the fact that he hardly could move. After a moment, his body calmed, and he dropped into a state of complete exhaustion.
“Is he not breathing?” asked Ash. “What’s happening?”
“This is a febrile seizure,” said Brooke, calmly. “It looks scary, I know. But he’ll be all right.”
Caius, seeming to catch Brooke’s half-lie, glanced at her.
Swift knew exactly what Caius was thinking. It was a bad sign that a fever had stricken so hard as to spur this.
Caius carefully dusted sand from Swift’s face. “If we hadn’t happened to come down just then…”
Ash bent closely over Swift. “Is he through it?”
Caius moved Ash back. “What were you two even doing out here?”
“My fault,” Swift whispered.
Ash, clever as always in a tight place, slid their contraband book beneath a discarded blanket.
“No, the fault was mine,” said Ash. “Swift said he was hot. I thought coming outside would help.”
Caius pinned Ash with a glare. “Next time, check with us.”
“We were going to”— Ash glanced from Caius to Brooke—“but…”
Caius’ look sharpened. “Understand, lad. If you can’t help us care for Swift—if you interfere with the rest he needs—then you’re gone.”
Ash, gone. Ash—the only help Swift really had, with Caius well-claimed by Brooke. Ash—Swift’s only link to feeling that he was in any sort of control.
“I’m sorry,” said Ash. “I can’t tell you how sorry. Of course I want to care for Swift. Please, let me stay. I’ve tried to help him. I’ll keep trying.”
“You can save your begging,” said Caius. “I really don’t buy it. You’re proving more distracting to him than any legend book.”
The words seemed to sink Swift.
Brooke offered Caius a gentling look. “This may have happened to Swift whether they came out here or not. You know that, right?”
“This shouldn’t have happened.” Caius glanced at Ash. “Trusting him seems to have been a mistake.”
Darkness encased Swift. Whether he was losing some consciousness, or whether another fit of seizing was coming on, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he couldn’t feel whether he was breathing.
“I truly am sorry,” said Ash.
“One more false move out of you,” said Caius, “and I’m sending you straight back to Devon. Got it?”
“Can’t”—Swift snatched Brooke’s hand—“can’t breathe.”
#
