"I was thinking," started Maddie over breakfast, "we could start observations of that island that came into view last week, the blue one."
Danny shook his head. "You'll have to use the Speeder, then," he said. "I've got an errand to run."
There was a pause as both of Danny's parents looked at him, confused. He didn't blame them. Danny rarely went out as a human anymore, and certainly not for anything like errands. Looking like he was still fourteen after all this time made doing anything even remotely official difficult.
But this wasn't a human errand. "Yeah," said Danny. "In the Ghost Zone. I've got to go to Three Twilights."
"Where?" asked Jack.
"It's, um, a city," said Danny. "Well, three cities, I suppose, depending on how you want to group them. One Realm. On the shores of the Celestial Sea. I'm sure I've put it in your files." Probably a direct copy from his files from before he came clean to them, but still. He stirred his cereal counterclockwise, letting his ice powers chill the milk.
"Yes," said Maddie, "but there are a lot of places in there. I'm not sure we've had a chance to properly look at them all, much less memorize them."
"Okay, yeah," said Danny. "I guess that makes sense."
"What kind of errand are you running, Danno?"
"I'm picking something up for a friend. A book," he clarified. "They lent it to someone there, but they need it back."
"A book," said Maddie. "For the Library of Tongues?"
"No, they've got a contract service for overdue loans."
"Contract service?" asked Jack.
"Yeah. Moonlighting bounty hunters mostly."
"For a library?"
"I don't know what to tell you," said Danny, shrugging. "They're really serious about their work."
"If it isn't for them, who is it for?" asked Maddie. "The princess? Wulf?" Wulf had actually been over a few times, and his parents had… Well, saying they got along would be an overstatement, they didn't really have anything in common beyond ripping portals in the fabric of the universe, but everyone had been civil. "The boy at the school?"
"No," said Danny. "Wulf would just get it himself."
"Who, then?" pressed Maddie.
Danny put a spoonful of cereal in his mouth, delaying. Maddie hadn't eaten anything since Danny had mentioned the errand. The errand was, in fact, for Clockwork. Danny was always more than happy to do anything for Clockwork. The older ghost had saved him too many times for him to be otherwise. But Jack and Maddie were wary of Clockwork. Danny didn't get it, but talking about it hadn't been productive so far.
He didn't want to lie to his parents. Not ever again.
"It's for Clockwork," he said.
Ah, yes, there were those suspicious looks. The ones Danny could have interpreted even without being able to almost literally taste emotions.
"I see," said Maddie.
"Anyway," said Danny, quickly, "if I haven't shown you Three Twilights yet, it's really cool. I don't want to take the full rig, but maybe the little ectocam would be okay? The one that I can clip on."
"Why not the normal camera with an ectofilter?" asked Jack. "That has more features, and it's easier for us to get data from."
"Three Twilights. It's dark there," said Danny. "It might work in Civila, but not so much in Naŭtika and Astronomia, and I sort of want to go down to the beach and see if I can find any star pearls, and that's really dark, so if you want to see anything properly, it'll have to be the sonar setup, which I'm not doing, the noises that thing makes are offensive, or the ectocam."
"And the Fenton Phones?" asked Maddie.
"Sure," said Danny. "But I always bring those."
"Yes," said Maddie, after a moment. "You do."
"Great. It's settled, then."
.
Most of the journey to Three Twilights could be made by air. Or, rather, what passed for air in the Infinite Realms. But when the rocky edge of an island came into view, Danny touched down. Further in was a blue wood, and Danny walked under its inviting branches.
The atmosphere started sunny, summery. The leaves and needles of the trees were the color of a clear blue sky. But as he got deeper, the leaves were touched with sunset colors: golds, reds, oranges, purples, and pinks. They fell to the ground, crunching beneath Danny's feet. The sunset grew longer, deeper. The leaves on the trees grew sparser, revealing patches of sky.
By the time only bare branches framed the sky, it was a dusky, dim, purple. A few lonely stars twinkled in the sky.
He passed out of the forest. The city of Civila rose above him. Windows glowed in the near dark like eyes.
Danny had changed, too. His aura had dimmed. The whites of his suit were now dark gray, and patterns swirled on its surface like camouflage, like wind-twisted clouds, like nebulae.
Shadows bled around the corners of the city buildings like ink in water. Will-o-the-wisps bobbed, casting pools of illumination in lieu of streetlamps. Ghosts walked up and down the streets, or floated only a few meters up.
The buildings glittered. Everything was dark, vibrant, colors. A sharp, sweet scent filled the air, something dark and rich beneath it.
The canals in the center of the street were filled with flashing fish. Or perhaps serpents. Or perhaps worms. Between how fast they moved and the dimness of the light, it was difficult to tell.
Danny could feel his irises contracting, shrinking down to needle-thin rings. His teeth were sharp. He matched the other ghosts around him. This was how the Civila liked it, how things were in this part of Three Twilights.
Everything in order. Everything peaceful. Everything civil.
Danny walked through the market square, and bought some charcoal-colored cherry pastries from a vendor who looked like someone's nightmare demon with a chip of ghost ice.
Much to his parents' protests. They didn't care for him eating ghost food.
There were seven bridges to Naŭtika, which was built half underwater and half on boats that floated both on the water and in the air. As the dark waters of the inlet lapped at his feet, Danny felt the changes ripple across his skin. To a human, he would look pure black, except for the faintest glimmer of rim lighting and the stars of his eyes. He and the other ghosts moved silently, cutting through the waters like shadows.
To Danny's ghostly senses, the place was alive with emotion and force, energy loud and crackling against his senses.
"We're solely on the ectocam, now," said Maddie. "You were right about that."
"Mhm," said Danny, half distracted by a whispered sea-shanty backed by a choir of not-voices and not-sound that wove together with the mastery of a hundred years of practice.
He glided up a rope net, and began to navigate the ropes to the taller ships. The very tallest, the ones that scraped the ever-darkening sky and blotted out uneven sections of stars, moored the glass-like ships that floated above. He'd need to reach them, to get to Astronomia.
"What's that?" asked Maddie, breaking his concentration on his path.
"What's what?" asked Danny, whisper soft, drawing some looks. He turned, slowly, on the spot, planks barely creaking under his steps. A gentle wind ruffled his hair.
"There," said Maddie. "By the ghost that's registering red."
It had taken Danny a long time to learn what color on the ectocam's artificial sensor signified what, but he had, if only to reduce the guessing when they played this game.
"Star pearls," said Danny, eyeing the ropes of stone that glimmered brighter than his eyes currently did. They were one of the only reliable forms of light, out on the Celestial Sea, although they were valued for other things, too.
"They're putting out a massive amount of energy," said Maddie.
"You mentioned them before," said Jack. "You wanted to look for some?"
"On the shore," said Danny. "Out past Astronomia." He wanted to find his own, rather than buy them.
Partially because they were expensive. He didn't really want to think about how much unmelting ice he'd have to conjure up to equal one of them. They were usually bartered in exchange for… more significant things.
The ghost by the pearls beckoned him closer, clearly hoping to make a sale. Danny shook his head, broadcasting regret and admiration for his wares. Speech might be faster but, under these circumstances, it would not be polite.
When Danny left, the social rules of Three Twilights would only leave the faintest impression on his mind. But, for now, they were a heavy, but not uncomfortable weight. One he could shrug off if necessary, but which was currently useful.
"What are they?" asked Maddie, as Danny turned away.
"They happen when big enough things fall into stars," said Danny. "They're all the memories of what they used to be… and the imagination of what they could become, when the star dies. Well, that's what they're supposed to be. I don't think anyone really knows for sure."
"And you can just… find these? Lying around?"
"Not… not really," said Danny, slowly drifting towards a crow's nest. "It's like that one national park. That one where you can collect diamonds? You never really find anything good, but you can look."
"I see," said Maddie. "So, you don't expect to find one?"
"Yes and no," said Danny. "If I don't expect to find one, I probably won't. Unless the sea is feeling ironic, which it usually is, apparently. I mean, it's an ocean and the stars. And prophecy is, like, ninety percent irony, but mostly for an outside observer. Which honestly makes sense, I think. An observer, not an Observant. Those are different things."
The kind of silence on the other side of the line was the one that emerged when Danny used too much ghost logic.
"Anyway," he continued as he scaled the crow's nest and started traversing the glass ropes and chains to the all-but-invisible glass ships, "no, I don't really expect to."
The path to Astronomia was a staircase carved from moonstone harvested in October, when the moon was full and orange-red. It burned Danny's eyes to look at and feet to walk upon. Like many ghosts who fixated on things like astronomy, he adapted quickly and thoroughly to the spiritual dark.
This darkest twilight was built of delicate bubbles, whorls, and arches of glass, any of which could cradle a ghost, all of which could be phased through with impunity. There were no true roads here, but certain places were easier to travel through. Addresses were carved in the glass in glimmering, holographic sigils made from glass-caught starlight that humans would never be able to read, but Danny could understand with a glance. It was not silent in Astronomia, the high wind sung through the glass like the immense instrument it was, playing ethereal and eternal music that mirrored heaven.
As always, Danny was enraptured. Perhaps the stars here were not true stars, only their memory and imagination (or simulacra made from stripped ghost cores, he remembered with a shudder), but he felt so close here.
"Danny? Are you still with us?"
Danny started to reply, but realized he had forgotten, once again, that he had no mouth here.
A phantabulist played a story for a group of not-quite-children, characters made of carefully constructed light chasing each other about with vigour. Danny stopped for a while to watch the story, a parable about spiders and fish. They were common here, storytellers who plied their craft this way. The stories could be pressed into glass prisms and orbs that served as books and viewed even in other environs of the Ghost Zone.
He moved on, passing through a glass bubble full of ghosts that snatched at and stroked him as he passed by, leaving stars and dark clouds to swirl across his skin. His suit had long since smoothed over and sunk in. His skin was a thin surface, a membrane holding in liquid night. He was like smoke, like vapour, thin and easily overlooked.
The places he passed were homes, places of business, warehouses, and hotels, organized without any apparent reason. A phantabularium glowed like a struck match, snatches of story visible inside its walls. He walked by.
Eventually, he reached the palace at the city center.
The ghost who lived there was old. Older, perhaps, than Pandora. She filled the vessels of her palace in placid pools connected by crystalized threads and looping tubes. Seven round-bottom flasks, radiating outward, like the spheres of heaven. The music here was almost deafening.
This was Urania, Muse of Astronomy. Astronomia was her city, and subordinate to her will before all else.
Danny resisted the urge to kneel. He was not here as a supplicant, and they both knew it.
The lowest pool bubbled, and slowly a glass prism, a dodecahedron, floated to the top. Danny took it with careful hands and left Urania's direct presence as quickly as possible.
Being near her was always difficult. She was the Muse of Astronomy, and she felt he did not indulge his second Obsession as much as was proper.
Indeed, she thought it should be his first.
(The starlight inside him pulsed. He was never sure how much influence Urania could exert on him when he visited Three Twilights, never sure how much the relationship between his passions shifted when he was here. He loved it here too much to stay away forever.)
Astronomia did not end all at once. Instead, as one walked farther from the palace, the delicate, clear glass was replaced by black sand. When Danny had feet again, and could feel the grains beneath them, he knew he was no longer in Astronomia, but on the Shores of Night. The Isles of the Moon were faintly visible in the distance, sea-spray framing them in silvery halos.
He felt human here. His breath moved in his lungs, and his skin rose in goosebumps, the sleeves of his t-shirt fluttering in the wind. The sea and the sky were the same, and twice as beautiful for it.
"Sorry for going silent on you there," said Danny. "I keep forgetting I don't have a mouth there."
"How do you forget that?" asked Jack.
"I don't know." Danny shrugged, even though he knew Jack couldn't see him. "Do you think the ectocam might be able to spot buried star pearls?"