He stopped singing mid verse and spun toward me, wide-eyed as a new fawn. As though this time I was the ghost.
We stayed like that, staring, incredulous, remembering the sight of one another. It was tense and reverent, shattered only when Ristriel mouthed, “Ceris.”
Starlight beaming, I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck. He held me tightly, lifting me off the ground, burying his face in my hair. He still smelled of winter nights and midnight, but his skin had lost its coolness. I clung to him, disbelieving, sobbing.
“I heard you.” His tears traced my neck. “I heard you sing.”
“I promised.” I took his beautiful face in my hands and kissed him, remembered him. “I promised I would always come back for you.”
Our tears swept together and fell to the Earth, and beneath them echoed a faraway groan, as though the Earth Mother Herself stirred at our reunion and shifted to cradle us together, Her forgotten son and a mother of stars.
EPILOGUE
The tapestry ended shortly after that, but the story of Twilight and the star mother was passed down to their children, and their children, and their children, and all could see the tapestry in the great shrine built to them and remember the story as Ceris had sewn it.
The silhouettes in the forest, connected by spinning stars, represented the sharing of starlight. That Ceris had given it, and Ristriel, no longer weakened by it in his mortal form, took half of it into himself. It is said Ceris told him, Let us live long lives at each other’s sides, and die together when it is time, but no one really knows for sure.
The persons stitched next, seventeen in all, mortals with bright, shining faces, were their children. Their names have been passed down over centuries, though some argue that Renellis was older than Quelline, and others argue that Quelline was actually the firstborn. The pattern their likenesses are stitched into leave the answer up for debate.
But all agree on the ending of the tale, not because it’s stitched into the seven-hundred-foot tapestry, but because it’s sewn into the sky itself. The six stars of Ceris and Saiyon, with Surril at the top and the north star at the bottom, burning brighter than all the rest. Those who know the story understand the north star isn’t simply a single light, for Ceris and Ristriel, after living long enough to meet their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and their great-great-grandchildren, and theirs as well, made a hereafter of their very own, combining their remaining starlight and using it to propel themselves into the sky to be among Ceris’s stars, and with the strength of their love and the power of the Sun God, they stayed there together, two beings burning brilliantly together as one.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s ironic that this book revolves so much around light, because it helped pull me out of a dark place. I had gotten into the habit of running before walking, of stretching too thin, and it broke me for a bit in 2019. This novel was my recovery. So while it might be weird to thank a book, I want to thank Star Mother first and foremost.
I want to thank my wonderful husband, Jordan, who makes my writing possible, who forgives my silence in the car because he knows I’m in “book land,” and who nurtures our family so that creativity and accomplishment can bloom. I would wait 350 years, and more, for him.
Thank you to Joanna Ruth Meyer, whose stellar talent planted the seed for this story and whom I roped in as a beta reader for it. Now she’ll never be rid of me!
Many, many thanks to Tricia Levenseller, who has proved to be one of my best critique partners and who always delivers no matter how many pages I slam her with.
My utmost appreciation goes to Rachel, Rebecca, Kim, Leah, and Whit, who helped polish this sucker in its early stages. I keep putting those last two on tighter and tighter deadlines, and they always manage to make it work!
I owe so much to my agent, Marlene Stringer, aka the broker of my word babies, and to my editor, Adrienne, who sees the potential in everything I plop on her desk. Thank you to Angela, who has been with me through fourteen books now and who tastefully points out my errors, and triumphs my strengths. And of course, my utmost gratitude to the 47North team, to those that proof and kern and layout and all that other super fun stuff that makes a book nice.
If you are someone who bothers with reading acknowledgments, then you’ll know I’m going to finish off with my thanks to God, who guides my paths and directs my inspiration . . . and may very well have been the One who carved the way out of darkness and pointed me toward Star Mother in the first place. ;）
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charlie N. Holmberg is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling Paper Magician series and the Amazon Charts bestselling Spellbreaker series. She is also the author of the Star Mother series and the Numina series, as well as five stand-alone novels, including Followed by Frost, a 2016 RITA Award finalist for Young Adult Romance, and The Fifth Doll, winner of the 2017 Whitney Award for Speculative Fiction. Born in Salt Lake City, Charlie was raised a Trekkie alongside three sisters who also have boy names. She is a proud BYU alumna, plays the ukulele, and owns too many pairs of glasses. She currently lives with her family in Utah. Visit her at www.charlienholmberg.com.