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CHAPTER 2

August 21st. The big day.

Mae was actually up before Bea, unbelievably. She was halfway through getting dressed—and yes, she'd actually brought a change of clothes on this trip—when she realized that she didn't remember her dreams. Maybe she hadn't even had any dreams! That wasn't unusual these days, but she'd almost been expecting some terrible dream to spoil things, having just told Bea she didn't have them anymore. Karma could've struck, but it hadn't! Mae wanted to kiss karma; it was working with her now!

She knocked on the guys' door and entered when Angus sleepily let her in. She stepped carefully past Gregg, who was snoozing on the floor for some reason, wrapped up in one of Angus's sweaters and a tangled sheet. They quietly ate yogurt cups for breakfast, smiling at Gregg and at the morning beaming at them through the window. But not for long, thought Mae. Enjoy it while you've got it, sun.

"So I was going to ask if you wanted to check out the hotel buffet," said Bea's voice from the door, "but I guess you've already eaten."

Angus shrugged. "Just yogurt."

"I'm not hungry!" said Mae. "I could eat food if that's what everyone's doing, but I'd rather go and check out the river! See if it's really got rapids and turtles or if that's just a name."

Gregg stirred at the noise, moaning in some mixture of annoyance and contentment.

"Hey Gregg, we're all up," said Bea. "Might want to put something on."

He looked at her, then looked around and took in the situation. Wordlessly, he wrapped the sweater's sleeves around himself and crawled into the bathroom.

"The river sounds fine," said Angus, putting on his hat.

They walked for longer than it seemed like they should have to, according to their one-page maps from the hotel, until suddenly the river was right there at the bottom of the hill. The grass gave out fast, leaving just a slope of wet dirt and a few rocks between them and a pretty modest river. Really more of a creek. The buildings were mostly behind them; it looked like there might have been houses a long way past the other bank, but it was mainly scrambled woodland. A girl in bulging cargo shorts was fishing in the middle of the river, looking like she couldn't possibly belong anywhere else.

"That looks pretty alright," assessed Gregg.

"Man. It's been way too long since I went fishing," realized Mae.

"I go sometimes, now that we're close to the harbor," Angus said. "It's nice."

"I wish I could go again. My dad used to take me. He got kinda scary out there sometimes, but it was a good sort of scary."

"Was he drinking then?" asked Gregg.

Mae threw out her arms. "I don't think you can go fishing without drinking! That was when I had my first beer. Well I mean, gulp of beer. Several gulps of beer. I didn't finish the can."

"I fish without drinking," Angus said.

"I tried keeping him company a couple times," added Gregg, sitting on the bank where the grass met the dirt. "But I wasn't up to it. Fishing is a patient man's sport. I'm more about keeping busy."

Angus went over and sat down next to him. "Fishing can be about keeping busy. The trick is to keep your mind busy more than your body."

"I've never gone," said Bea.

They all looked at her. "Seriously?" Mae was actually kind of stunned. "You've never gone fishing?"

Bea puffed her cigarette with a hint of impatience. "Nope. We never lived near water."

"That's indecent, Bea. You have to go!"

"You don't actually have to fish," offered Gregg. "You can just go someplace like this and skip stones or have stick races."

"Are you kidding?" Mae countered. "Yeah she has to fish! That's the whole point of fishing!"

Gregg looked to Angus for arbitration. "Angus, what's the whole point of fishing?"

He twitched. "Depends what your mindset is."

"But it involves catching fish, right?" said Mae.

"Theoretically."

"Well there you go. You have to go theoretically catch fish with these guys."

Bea exhaled. "Not sure where I'd find the time."

"You found time for this, didn't you?" said Gregg.

"It's the first total solar eclipse anywhere near us in my lifetime," she replied. "I made time."

Mae was watching the river run. "Anyone see any turtles?"

They watched in silence a while. "Nope," said Angus.

"To be honest," said Bea, "Turtle Rapids is kind of an oxymoron."

"It's not going all that fast," put in Gregg. "Maybe we should go upriver and see if it gets more rapid."

"Let's do that," said Mae as she started to walk. She yelled down to the girl in the river: "Hey! Total eclipse of the sun later! You gonna watch it?"

The girl turned to her and yelled back: "I'm gonna watch it from here!"

"Wow." Mae turned to her companions. "See, she's a smart cookie. Maybe we should watch from the river!"

"We already checked out the field," Bea pointed out.

"The field's probably gonna be more exciting," agreed Gregg. He pointed to the fishing girl. "Ask her if she's drinking."

Mae yelled to her: "Are you drinking?"

The girl patted her hip pocket. "I've got a canteen! But no booze!"

Now Mae was distraught, a fragment of her worldview shattered. "I guess I was wrong? You don't need to drink to fish?"

"There you go," said Gregg. "The field's the place to be! Come on, I want to see if it gets faster."

They hurried upstream, encumbered by the pace Angus could manage. The river stayed narrow but did get faster further from the city center, and Mae and Gregg waded across just to see if they could. Mae slipped and got her clothes wet, but Gregg helped her out. They lay in the sun a while, just breathing and drying off, while Angus and Bea watched them from the other side. The two pairs yelled across the river to each other as they walked onward. Eventually they found a bridge and reunited, but they never saw any turtles.

The foursome had lunch on a stone wall next to a sloping stone plaza surrounding the town hall. Gyros and falafels purchased from a street vendor. "This is definitely a lot nicer town than ours," Bea observed.

"Aw, come on," protested Mae. "You can't turn traitor to Possum Springs. You've got to be loyal!"

"Does Possum Springs have street vendors?"

"Maybe that's what it needs! Maybe I could be a street vendor." Mae took a big bite of her gyro and watched Bea looking at her, seriously considering the idea despite her better judgment.

There was a bit of a hubbub from the people around them, of whom there were plenty. Mae looked—a lot of them were looking up.

"First contact," said Angus.

Mae put on her viewing glasses. "Oh yeah. Sun's got a little bit of a bite out of it."

"That's how it starts," said Bea as if she were admonishing the sun. "Come on, let's get to the field."

By the time they arrived, it was half past noon. The field was almost full of people, their blankets and telescopes and picnic baskets sprawled from one end to the other, as if someone had organized this as the place for eclipse viewers to meet. And maybe they had. Mae just knew the people at the hotel had recommended this as a good place to watch it from, and that had been plenty good enough for them.

"Wow," said Bea.

"It's kind of crowded," said Angus.

"We'll have to stake out some turf," said Gregg. "Shiv some backs and patrol some borders."

"No crimes," Angus reminded him lightly. As if Gregg would have really shivved someone.

"No crimes," agreed Gregg. "But we've gotta stake out a place somehow."

Mae didn't see why. She was happy to wander from group to group, saying hi and asking where people were from. It was weird. Sometimes, like at parties, she could freeze up and have no idea what to say or even forget why people talked to each other in the first place. But at other times, she was the freest of all social butterflies. This was one of those times. Maybe it was because this wasn't an occasion that someone had decided was about people getting together and socializing. This was just people getting together to all do the same thing. Somehow, though she didn't understand it, that seemed to make all the difference.

Most folks were just sitting or standing in groups and talking or setting up equipment or sunbathing. But some were doing entertainment stuff. There was a group of preteens playing frisbee, despite how crowded the field was. There was a guy with stilts walking around the edge of the field, looking for attention. There were a few of the usual guitar and drum douchebags, but she had to admit they added something to the atmosphere. Some people had cardboard boxes on their heads—Mae assumed they were some kind of poor man's substitute for viewing glasses. A big laughing group had a huge chain of picnic blankets out end to end and were sitting around it like a huge outdoor dinner table, with tons of food she wished she could have some of. There was a tarot reader doing her thing. All the while, the day was getting darker, but it almost felt like it was getting brighter.

She'd already lost track of her friends. Why was it so crowded? Were this many people really into astronomy? Well, that would explain the nasty traffic on the way down, and why the hotel had been so busy. She'd made fun of Bea and Angus for getting the rooms six months in advance, but now it made sense. Except it didn't. Who were all these people? Did they all have their own Mr. Chazokovs making them come?

She was drawn to the weird stuff, sure, but she was also drawn to the telescopes and the photographers, with their massive black or light gray machines with a million dials and tabs and things that they kept fiddling with like eccentric inventor uncles. Then she saw him—the dark, lanky guy from the sandwich shop. Wearing a denim jacket. Almost kneeling with his giant camera on a tripod, fiddling like anyone else, but somehow cooler, smoother, more controlled. The lens was so big at first she'd thought it was a telescope. She stared for a few moments before remembering who she was and what she was doing, then hesitated for a few moments after that before going up to say hi.

He was applying a piece of tape to the outside of the lens when she greeted him. He pulled his head back and looked at her. There was… maybe the opposite of a spark between them. There was a sinkhole. It was like they both totally lost all sense of saying anything, thinking anything. His fingertips were still on the camera, so supple and sure it seemed like they'd been built into it. He had a really striking face, now that she started to look at it.

"From the sandwich place," he finally said.

"…Yep. That's me. Mae Borowski. Um… I thought you made fun of us for coming all this way. But here you are, totally into this thing."

"I came almost as far as you did. Doesn't mean I don't feel silly about it."

Silly would have been the last adjective she'd use to describe him. He looked savvy. No, that wasn't it. Confident? Not quite. Assured. That was it. He held that camera like there was no doubt in his mind about it. He was perfectly assured. Maybe even cocksure.

"You… you said it felt like a big deal over nothing."

He shrugged silently—of course it was silent, shrugs never made any noise, but somehow his shrug was especially silent. "Still feels that way."

She watched him return to the lens and tape it in place, so it wouldn't collapse when it was all the way out. She watched him adjust the settings.

"Don't forget the sun filter!" Mae advised him. That much, at least, she'd learned the hard way.

He tapped the end of the lens. "Already in place."

"Well good. 'Cause I wouldn't want you to burn your eyes out or anything."

"Wouldn't want to either." He focused on the eyepiece as if she wasn't talking to him, which she found somehow captivating. Wasn't that supposed to be rude? His eyes, when she saw them, were bright and deep and brown, with well defined pupils, and she wanted to know what they were thinking. Or, wait. Eyes didn't think. But even so.

He settled the camera carefully in its tripod and looked at her again. She didn't mind. She didn't think what she was feeling was titillation, but wasn't sure.

"You didn't look at me like this yesterday," he said.

"But you kind of did," she remembered.

"Yeah."

The question burbled up, then didn't quite get asked until she made a special effort to ask it. "How come?"

"I dunno."

He folded his legs and sat comfortably on the grass. Mae sat down beside him.

"You know anyone here?"

He looked over the crowd. "In this town? Nah. Nice place, though."

This bothered Mae. "So why'd you come here, then?"

He took a slow breath and let it out. "Basically just chose a random town on the map."

"That is literally what I did," said Mae. "I mean, we checked to make sure it wasn't gonna be one of the super crowded places, and that there weren't gonna be clouds. But otherwise my friends just let me move my finger around in the path of totality and pick wherever I wanted."

He sat more slackly than before and just looked at her.

She looked back at him.

Adina was on her way to the City of Spires to meet with her fellow astronomers. Every year, the city's potentate invited all the great nations' astronomers for a gathering to share their knowledge, and Adina was looking forward to it a great deal. She had promised not to betray the secret of the lost constellation, and she meant to keep her word, but there were a great many adventures she'd had that were worth sharing… and she hoped to learn more about why some of the stars in the dawn sky were starting to move in ways they had never moved before.

She met a woodsman in the forest who was taking a break from felling trees. He shared his meal with her and she showed him her sextant and her astrolabe, for he was a curious man, even if he knew nothing but a rugged life in the woods. And she went on her way. But darkness fell, and the path forked and dwindled, and Adina was unsure which way to go. She trudged well into the night, afraid to sleep in the woods, but used the stars and moon to navigate. She knew the direction she needed to go, but could not find the path through.

Eventually, with the owls hooting and the frogs croaking around her, she suddenly remembered something about the woodsman. Something about his eyes.

Mae's ear twitched. "I hope you don't think I'm hitting on you," she said.

He looked down and back, a little surprised. "I was thinking the same thing. Hoping that wasn't what you thought."

Mae's lips felt tight. "So you're not hitting on me?"

"I don't either of us has done anything like that," he observed.

"No. We're just staring at each other like we're flirting," countered Mae.

"Are we flirting?"

"I don't think so. I mean, maybe. I think there's a point at which just talking about flirting becomes flirting automatically."

"I don't feel like I'm flirting."

Mae reflected. "Me neither."

"You got a boyfriend?"

"I've… there's a girl I know in Red River, I like to think of her as my girlfriend… but we've only met a couple times."

"You're into girls?"

"I'm…" Mae swallowed. "I'm into everyone. You have a girlfriend?"

He shook his head.

Above her, the sun was a crescent, half its light gone, but she couldn't take her eyes off him.

Adina turned back to the west and retraced her steps. The way back was easier to find than the way forward, since the canopy was thinner and the moon shone through the trees. She found the woodsman's cabin and knocked on the door. She could hear him getting out of bed; it took a minute for him to answer.

"It's you again."

"It's me again. Sorry to bother you, but…"

"It's no bother," he said, which was strange in itself, given that she'd woken him up.

"When we talked earlier, I saw something in your eyes. You've seen the lost constellation, haven't you?"

He swallowed and moved aside. "I knew there was something about you. You'd better come in."

"You've seen him, haven't you?" asked the lanky stranger.

Mae was taken aback. "What?"

"Sorry if it's a really weird question… but… you've talked to… him. Haven't you? And he's talked to you?"

Oh god. Why did this have to be happening? "…Him?"

The man nodded. "You know who I'm talking about, don't you?"

Mae gulped and clawed at her shirt. "I think so."

"That must be why I found you in the sandwich shop. And why you found me here."

"And why we can't stop staring at each other?" asked Mae.

"Yeah."

"You… you had a run-in with… with Black Goat?" It felt weird to use the thing's name. It felt even weirder to call it a 'run-in', but what else could she call it?

He nodded deeply.

Mae wanted to shiver. She felt like she should be shivering. "I thought it was done. I thought it was all done."

"I thought so too," he said softly.

She looked at his camera, with its huge protruding lens. "You came here because of it, didn't you? It made you pick this town on the map. It made me pick it."

"I guess that's possible."

"It has to be. That thing wanted us to come together."

He looked to his side, then behind himself, then past Mae. "You suppose any of these other folks…?"

She looked, too. "I don't think so. I think we would have met them by now."

"Makes sense."

"Um." She swallowed again, trying to get past her fear. "What's your name?"

He settled his supple hands together gracefully. "Broderick."

"Broder—Broderick? Glad to meet you, I guess. No, that's a lie. I'm scared."

"You said your name is Mae?" He extended a hand. "I am glad to meet you."

"Yeah, Mae." She shook hands nervously. "I came with my friends. You came alone?"

He nodded.

"So, um… I guess I should be asking what you did with… like, what your story is. But I'm not sure I want to."

"I could ask you first," he suggested.

She gathered her thoughts. "Um. Right. Well… I started having these weird dreams, after I dropped out of college? And… I thought I saw a ghost kidnap a kid, but it was really…" How much was she willing to say? "…not a ghost, but I thought it was… and I started thinking I had to find this ghost, somehow… and everyone started telling me I looked awful, and I had to sleep more… but I was sleeping plenty, it's just…"

"He was singing to you," said Broderick.

"I don't know, I guess so! That's what they said, but it never felt like singing to me! It was like… just, a faint light I had to follow somewhere, and I didn't know if I was going to get zapped like a bug when I did, but I had to follow anyway."

"He sang to me. It wasn't anything like any music I've ever heard… but it was music. I went where it led me, and I wasn't afraid."

"I don't know if it's even a 'he.' It's a cosmic horror. Isn't it?"

He took a breath. "I suppose so, yes."

"But… you weren't afraid of it?"

He sat a little straighter. "It showed me where my father died."

This redoubled Mae's attention. "What?"

"In the woods. He went out hunting one day, never came back. I was eleven."

"And… what? Black Goat showed you what happened to him?"

He paused, but nodded.

Mae spread her arms. "Well? Don't leave me in suspense!"

"He met three other men who were out hunting too. They took the opportunity to shoot him. They were ready to pretend it had been a hunting accident, but he fell in a ditch covered by brambles and no one ever found the body."

Wow. "Why did they…"

Broderick spread his hands, his long fingertips prominent in the gesture. "Politics."

"They… they shot your father because of politics?"

"They hated him. He called them 'low men' and hypocrites. One of the men pointed at my father and said, 'Now wouldn't it be nice if he were never to come back?'" That was how they hatched their plan. They built up their courage for a while, pretending they were joking about it, and then they did it."

Mae hated that so hard. "Black Goat showed you all that?"

Nod. "It was swimmy and dark, but I saw and heard what mattered."

"And… you found… your father's bones?"

Nod. "His remains. Bones, some metal buttons from his coat, a piece of his boot, a belt buckle."

"God. Were you relieved, or…"

"Now sure just how I felt. Knowing what happened to him… was good, I guess. But the way I learned… well, it overshadowed the learning. As you can maybe understand."

"And those guys! Did you do anything about it? Tell the police or anything?"

"My mother told them about what we found. But I didn't mention what I'd seen. It was for me alone, if you know what I mean."

She did. "So they just got away with it?"

Nod. "One of them moved away, a long time back. The others are still around. I don't live in that town anymore."

"Don't blame you," said Mae. "Not in the slightest. Sometimes I want to just up and leave."

"Was it bad?" he asked. He meant her experience with Black Goat.

"It was pretty bad," she told him. "It worked out okay… but it was pretty touch and go for a while. I was… I thought I was near the end."

"You want to tell me about it?"

She shook her head.

"So here we are," Broderick said.

"Here we are," Mae agreed.

The woodsman had seen the constellation with a traveling harpist he had once loved. She had been graceful and fine and wore her silks and linens in the most beautiful way, and he had traveled with her for a time, to keep her safe. They had walked from one city to another to another, and in between they had lain in grassy valleys and sat atop bluffs and watched the sun set, and sometimes rise again. During one of the nights between, she had shown him the 'secret constellation' she had found while strumming her harp one night on the rocky flats and weaving songs out of the sky. It had appeared so suddenly and brightly and clearly to her that she laughed, and created a song out of nothing on the instant, though she barely remembered it the next day.

She'd sung the song to the woodsman, though she'd admitted it wasn't as perfect as it had been, and she'd held his hand to point out the lines of the constellation, which, as Adina well knew, once you saw you could never forget. He found three lines she hadn't seen, just as Adina had found parts the old hermit hadn't seen, and these three lines added grandeur to the whole. Adina and the woodsman went outside and found the constellation. They each knew parts that the other didn't, and shared them with each other, and now all those parts were known to both.

They went inside and spoke in hushed tones of what it all meant, drinking hot cider and sitting on a little wooden settee the woodsman had made. Adina and the woodsman never thought of love—not with each other, at least. Not the love between a man and a woman. Though they sat and drank and whispered together, their hearts were elsewhere. But they were both full of love.

The next morning, Adina set forth on the path to the east again, and this time it was perfectly clear, and she reached the road to the City of Spires without reaching any forks in the path whatsoever.

"Mae! There you are!" cried Gregg. "You had us worried. Who's your friend?"

In a daze, Mae twisted around to see her friends coming up. "Um… hi!"

"Hey. You know, you could have warned us before dashing off wildly," said Bea. "Or, you know, not done that."

"Sorry. It's just… it's just so great here." Mae's voice didn't exactly bespeak her earlier enthusiasm, but… "This is Broderick. You remember him—from the sandwich place?"

"Pleasure," said Broderick, nodding to the others, who nodded back. Just as well they weren't shaking hands.

"Hey duder, I thought you guys were arguing yesterday. I thought you were public enemies," said Gregg.

"I know!" Mae exclaimed. "He pretended the eclipse was boring to him, but now look at him!" She gestured to his camera and toolbox of equipment.

"Figured if I was coming all this way, I might as well do it right," said Broderick.

"Which begs the question: why did you come all this way?" said Bea.

He spread his hands as if he couldn't say. It didn't seem to satisfy her.

"Is that a telephoto lens?" asked Angus. "What kind of focal length does it have?"

"Up to 400 millimeters, " Broderick replied. "It's a Craneview X380."

"Impressive," said Angus. "What's the f/stop?"

Well, there was no stopping these two now. They started to babble about cameras and things, even though Mae had a sense that maybe she had more to discuss with Broderick. They'd been brought together, hadn't they? But she wasn't sure she could tell the others that.

"We found a good spot to lay claim to," said Gregg, "but it's probably gone now. Do you wanna just run around and meet up when it's go time?"

Mae looked at the watch she'd borrowed from her mom for the trip. The eclipse was in forty-five minutes. "I dunno. I guess I've done enough running around."

"Well, we should probably find someplace else to sit down, then," said Bea. "Maybe here, if your friend doesn't mind sharing his spot?"

Broderick didn't mind. He moved his stuff closer together and they all sat down. He didn't seem to want to talk much, though, aside from fielding questions about his gear. So they all sat and watched the crowd and the shrinking sliver of sun, and while it was nice to have a home base, Mae got drawn away again.

"Where you off to now?" asked Gregg, swiveling around.

"They're telling Adina stories over there! I can hear them!"

"Cool beans. We'll be waiting! You go and get your heroine fix."

Mae had tried to get Gregg into Adina stories at one point, but he hadn't shown any interest. They were like fairy tales, and for all he acted like a kid sometimes, he was still eager to grow up. So no fairy tales for him. Still, she had to admit that 'heroine fix' line was funny.

It was a big yellow bedspread with like thirteen people sitting on it or on smaller adjoining blankets. Looked like a couple families, maybe. Plenty of kids, but adults too. One uncle-looking guy with a beard was starting in on the story of what happened after Adina reached the City of Spires. Mae had heard this before, but never quite the way this guy told it, with dialogue he seemed to be half remembering, half making up on the spot. He told how the mystic Kyora pulled Adina aside at the meeting of astronomers to talk to her about the mysterious "star slippage" everyone had been debating, and that no one could explain.

"Well. If this fruitless debate is any indication, I think we can agree that there is no celestial logic to which stars are moving out of turn," Kyora said. Her soft hands lay on Adina's shoulders, the sleeves of her robe dangling. "It must be something to do with us. What are we doing to the stars?"

Adina was baffled. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Studying them! Naming them."

Kyora's eyes narrowed. "Are our studies out of the ordinary? Is our naming?"

"Not that I know of," Adina replied.

The mystic dropped her arms and looked into Adina's face. "I have heard tell of people pretending to name the stars. For profit. For vanity. Selling the right to the hoi polloi."

Adina stared. "Vanity star registries?"

"You know of them?"

"They're—yes. I know of them. They're harmless. Well, not harmless—they defraud people of their money, because the registries don't mean anything. But no scientist is bound by their lists."

Kyora's dark lips pursed. "I worry that they may be doing damage unawares. A star's name matters, Adina. You know this. And scientists do not hold a monopoly on truth."

Adina struggled to process this. "You think that… these groups may be inadvertently changing stars' names… and that's why they're acting like they shouldn't?"

The mystic nodded grimly. "It is my best conjecture. I have many other spheres to watch over, though, Adina. I don't have time to verify this as it should be verified. Will you see if the stars in question are the ones these charlatans have had the audacity to rename?"

She nodded in turn. This was sobering, but if it was the answer to the mystery, it would be a huge relief for everyone. Adina wished there were more people she could tell.

Grandpa had told her this one, but without the mystic or the convention of astronomers. He'd jumped right into when she was making her way through Redmud Palace in disguise…

Adina Astra strode up the hall of Redmud Palace, built on the Jeranovan cliff of the same name. She was dressed as a local businesswoman, wearing a matching magenta sarong and headscarf and small crystalline spectacles in place of her customary large lenses. The satchel at her side was filled with kaleidoscopes. She was prepared to offer a pitch for why these kaleidoscopes should be sold by the consortium, and had gained entry to the building's lowest floor with this pretext. Level by level, she had found stairs and passages and even once had climbed out a window and in again, and now she was nearly at the highest floor. If told an independent businesswoman did not belong there, she would pretend to have gotten lost. But when footsteps came near, she thought it more prudent to hide instead.

Two men, speaking in a hush. They wore short, thick skirts that looked ceremonial, with gray woolen vests to match; the older wore a flat gray hat. The younger clutched a list on a scroll. Adina couldn't make out their words, but they both spoke with concern as they hurried up the tilted hallway.

She decided to follow.

They entered a room with a stone door, and Adina neither dared to open it nor was able to listen through it. So she explored until she found a maid's closet with a hole leading to the space between the walls. Crawling into this space, she felt and listened her way about until she found the room where the men, along with many others, were having a conversation. And from this conversation, Adina discovered that this organization was not changing the names of stars inadvertently. They were quite deliberately inviting people to strip the stars of their true names, under cover of a service providing romantic gifts. The secret group took advantage of the stars' weakness to gain control over them, and the unsuspecting lovers who named stars after their sweethearts bore the karmic consequences of the crime.

Adina boiled within her own skin with outrage. This could not stand. She would have to find a way to bring this unscrupulous cabal down…

"Five minutes!" shouted someone. The call was repeated. There was a flurry of activity.

"Well, we'll have to finish later," the storyteller said.

"Aw, no, come on!" pled one of the kids.

"Can't! The eclipse waits for no man."

"We still have five minutes!"

"Five minutes to get yourself mentally prepared," he admonished.

"I want to hear the end of the story before it happens!" shouted another girl.

Mae jumped in. "There's still a lot of story left, so you don't really have time, but basically she finds out what ritual they use to control the stars and puts herself into it in disguise and then at the height of the ritual, she jumps out and sabotages it so it won't work ever again, but…" The bearded man was glaring at her. "But if you want to know how she does it, you'll have to wait for him to tell you! Enjoy the eclipse, bye!"

The kids smiled and laughed as she dashed back to headquarters.

She'd put her viewing glasses on during the story, and now she had to admit she was impressed by what was in the sky. It wasn't like a crescent moon—the sun was fighting back. There were flares of sunfire all over the left side, as if it was too dignified, too special to be snuffed out by something so lowly as a hunk of rock, even for a couple minutes. Voices rose in reverence and excitement and fear everywhere across the fear. The stilt-walking guy was sitting on a wall beside his stilts. Angus was looking through Broderick's camera and Gregg was peering through Angus's binoculars. Mae felt tipsy as she sat down next to them. She hadn't had any alcohol to drink today, had she? She didn't think so, but it felt strange that she didn't remember.

"Two minutes," said Broderick.

Bea patted the grass next to her, and Mae scooted in. "For a moment, I thought you weren't going to make it back."

Mae just breathed with excitement and put her hand on Bea's shoulder. Bea reached up and patted her back, then let her hand drop.

"I know this is silly, but what if this is the end?" said Mae. "What if the world ends as the sun goes out, and nobody knows it yet, but here we all are together?"

Bea looked at her. "Are you looking for an actual answer?"

"I don't know. Maybe!"

The store manager snorted. "Then we all die, I guess. And we all go up to God and demand a refund."

This was incredibly funny coming from Bea. Mae started to laugh. She couldn't stop laughing once she started. "Yeah, I bet we will! And it'll turn out God is some giant cat who doesn't give a damn, and asks us to leave it alone, but we won't… and that's how things end."

"You are… so weird sometimes, Mae."

"Yeah. And I'm your friend anyway, 'cause that's how fun I am. But if this is the end, Bea, I've gotta say… I'm really glad I'm here to spend it with you."

"Could I have a turn with the binoculars, please?" asked Bea. Gregg handed them over and went to snuggle Angus. Broderick was crouched at his camera, snapping shots.

"Hey Bea? I know I asked this before, but do you really not believe in Heaven or Hell? Do you really think when we die, we're just done?"

"I never said I don't believe in Heaven or Hell. I just don't think they're anything like what the churches teach."

"Oh yeah? What do you think they're like, then? And if we all die right now, where do you think we'll go? You think there'd be some kind of special dispensation for if—"

"Hey, Mae?"

"Yeah, Bea?"

"Could you please shut up?"

Mae grinned so hard. She didn't say anything else. The sun was dying, but she was alive.

"Ten seconds!" shouted someone.'

"Here it goes!" shouted someone else.

The sun's corona was coming visible. It was suddenly chilly for a summer day. There was a ring of light around the horizon, like the sun was setting and rising everywhere at once.

One bright pit of sunlight gleamed through a crater on the moon. Mae whipped off her viewing glasses. The sun went away.

Mae found herself instantly floating in blackness, surrounded by bubbles and faced with an overbearing, inescapable presence.

A/N: Girl fishing in the river: Kingfisher.
Avuncular storyteller: Gray-furred dog.
And as mentioned previously, you can think of Broderick as a crow.

The lost constellation mentioned in this chapter isn't what Adina discovers at the end of the game by that name, but it may be the constellation that the ghost star is a part of. I imagine that it wasn't Adina's colleague/lover who told her about the constellation as a whole-it was a hermit she met in the desert, and Adina shared it with her colleague/lover in turn.