And All the Stars

Chapter Eighteen

The clunk-clack of the latch broke through the refrigerator’s steady hum.

Emily, quickest to react, flung quilts back in time to throw a force punch at the door as it opened. There was a gasp, and Madeleine caught a glimpse of Fisher as he was knocked backward by the impact against his shield.

"Someone not a morning person?" Min said, poking his head cautiously around the side of the doorway.

"What are you–?" Noi began, then stopped. "It’s over."

"The time limit seems to have been dawn," Fisher said, from his new horizontal position on the floor. "They were all gone by the time the sun touched the horizon, but I gave it another half hour."

"I’m sorry!" Emily struggled to her feet. "Did I hurt you?"

"My fault," Fisher said, sitting up. "It would have been sensible to knock first." He moved arms and legs gingerly, then smiled. "Not to mention polite."

"Let’s see if polite works on Nash and Pan," Min said, and rapped on the freezer door. "We should have thought up some kind of secret knock."

"That’d only be useful if none of us were taken," Noi said, and crossed to pull the freezer door open. Worried, Madeleine realised, as they probably should all be.

Nash and Pan did not force punch at the door, or shift on their mattress pile, though they did stir in response to Noi’s urgent shaking. Flushed and lethargic, they were slow to sit up, blinking with confusion.

"Let’s get them to the foyer," Fisher said. "Without an oxygen mask, all we can do is give them space."

Out in the soaring, glass-and-excessive water features foyer, Madeleine found herself analysing the changes to Nash and Pan’s skin tones, struggled with herself for a moment, then accepted. This was part of who she was, and she could only be relieved that the shift she was watching was a return to healthy shades of brown and pink.

"Were any Blues captured?" she asked Fisher, noting that he, too, was returning to a normal colour, though for different reasons. Would he have nightmares about Nash and Pan, a plan almost gone wrong?

"Yes." He met her eyes directly, not cushioning the statement. "From the leader board changes, just over thirty."

"Thirty!" Noi spilled some of the water she was offering Nash. "There were thirty Blues still free in Sydney?"

"In and around it. It was a good decision to let Madeleine warn her parents. At least five dragons were sighted in the Armidale area."

With a news channel unhelpfully broadcasting their location, speculating on whether she was hiding with them, Madeleine had insisted on emailing her Mum and Dad. Thankfully they must have taken her grandmother and gone in time. But thirty other people had paid the price for this hunt.

"So, what now?" Min asked.

"Errol Flynn marathon."

They all stared at Pan, propping himself against the legs of a low chair.

"One of the symptoms of CO2 poisoning is delusions, right?" Min picked up a brochure and used it to fan in Pan’s direction. "More oxygen required."

"If you’d read that brochure you’d know there’s suites with mini-theatres." Pan was working on a wall-to-wall grin. "Not to mention a gym, three swimming pools, spa baths in the suites, huge vats of ice cream, and a chocolatier. We just outsmarted our alien invaders, people! We’ve learned more about what they can’t do, we’ve kept our hides our own, we’ve lived to fight another day. Time to celebrate with some quality swashbuckling and strangely sped-up repartee."

Min wrinkled his nose. "Couldn’t we at least watch something released this century?"

"Without a password to the hotel computer system, chances are we won’t be watching anything at all," Noi said, her eyes giving away the smile she was trying to suppress.

"Some drip always writes their passwords down." Pan waved a hand airily at the glassy grandeur of the foyer. "There’s sure to be an administrative office with some actual paper files, or a post-it note stuck to the bottom of a drawer, or a computer left on when they all ran away in the dust."

"That would be on level two," Nash murmured. He was not recovering as quickly as Pan, but his finely-moulded features had lit with quiet amusement. "A two-day celebration, I think. Today for living, tomorrow a not-fully-surprising birthday, and then we will be serious again."

"Hey, you told them!" Pan only succeeded in looking gratified. "Do I get cake? Can we dress up?"

His enthusiasm bubbled over them, and though they decided partying would need to be postponed until they’d established escape routes, checked for ways to detect and avoid any alarms, and seen to preserving their food supply, it was hard not to enjoy the idea of a 6 star hotel as a hideout.

As they discussed what needed to be done, Madeleine spent her time watching Fisher, who was watching her in return. A silent shared awareness of a first step already taken, of something which had moved on to a question of when.

Later.

Two men fought, the music flaring into dramatic highlights as they danced across the deck of a ship under sail. Madeleine watched with vague interest, studying poses, but most of her attention captured by the warm fingers tangled with her own.

A strange dissonance cut through the music and Fisher’s hand tightened, then let her go. "Spire song."

"Stupid Moths." Pan fumbled for the controls and paused his movie mid swordfight so they could better hear the eerie sound, distant yet penetrating. "What are they up to now?"

"Sending the Greens back to whatever they were doing before the Challenge, I guess." Noi stood and stretched. "Let’s see if we can spot any movement, and finish the movie after dinner. Maybe it will have shut up by then."

After some debate about the wisdom of taking rooms close enough to the ground to be able to shield-jump out the windows, they’d given in to the view and settled into the most palatial suites, high on the Harbour side of the hotel. These not only offered tiny cinemas where a world of movies could be dialled on demand, they could be opened up into a single, enormous apartment by the unlocking of cleverly concealed sliding walls. One floor down from Open Sky, the top floor restaurant, they had plentiful food, carefully planned escape routes, and a number of rules about turning lights on and off at night. An added sense of security had been provided by the discovery of the keys to the fire escapes and elevators, giving them in effect a drawbridge to raise when they went to bed.

It was late afternoon, and sunset crept up while they pitched in to prepare their meal, so they chose a table to best take advantage of the spectacular vista. But despite a view which stretched from Darling Harbour across the sweep of the North Shore, and past the Bridge to glimpses of the Opera House, Madeleine found she didn’t like eating in the restaurant, where the array of empty tables only served to remind her of a city quietly rotting.

"Crimson skies and thunderclouds on the horizon." Noi stared out to toward the headlands, but there was no sign of the navy ships. "I could wish it had rained on them yesterday, but even then I have to think of their hosts, and whether they feel everything the Moths do."

"Yeah." Pan’s smile had faded. "It takes the fun out of planning to smash their faces in."

The pervasive song of the Spire filled every gap in the conversation, eerie and oppressive, but they pressed on, forcing bright chatter, watching the approaching storm as the colour faded from the sky.

As they were constructing elaborate ice cream sundaes, Fisher disappeared downstairs and returned holding the binoculars. "Come look at this."

"Movement?" Noi crossed quickly to stand with him at the windows.

"Not quite. Look at the hull of that overturned yacht just off Headland Park."

Frowning, Noi obeyed, seemed only puzzled as she peered into the growing twilight, then suddenly snorted. She waved the binoculars. "Millie, check this out."

The younger girl’s reaction to this mystery view was to gasp and say: "Oh, it can’t be! I don’t believe it."

"Will you lot quit with the commentary and just tell us what you’re looking at?" Min asked, exasperated.

"Glowing eyes," Noi said. "There’s eyes painted on the hull. Must be some kind of phosphorescent paint."

"We ran away from a boat?" Pan grabbed the binoculars and, after a pause, burst out laughing. "Shit, I feel like such a dick."

This discovery provided a counterbalance to the song of the Spire, and they were able to revive the light good humour they’d been so deliberately maintaining, to talk party plans over their dessert, to clean up in good humour and take pleasure in their return to their enormous suite.

"Guess we can check the news while we wait for the Spire to shut up," Pan said, and they clustered toward one of the lounge areas. Madeleine, struggling with the weight of the continued song, excused herself and headed to her room on the far left of the interconnected set of suites to run a bath.

During their explorations they’d discovered storage rooms full of items intended for the suites, from robes and kettles to some very up-market varieties of miniature soap, bath salts, and hair product. Madeleine programmed the room’s stereo system with a selection of her favourite jazz singers and Ella Fitzgerald began to croon, the music loud enough that the Spire song was drowned. Stars blurred by steaming, scented water, Madeleine could finally allow herself to think of thirty people who had paid the price of her freedom. Guilt over the actions of the Moths was stupid, but that wouldn’t stop her.

The Spire song faded before her fingers had turned to prunes and, clean and warmly wrapped in one of the robes, she drifted out to the lamp-lit lounge room and stood finger-combing her damp hair, listening to the stereo and watching rain beat against the windows.

"Feeling better?"

"Now that it’s stopped." She turned as Fisher rose from one of the chairs and crossed to her. He’d obviously bathed as well, and his dark mop was damp and almost tamed, while his expression was the closest to anxious she’d ever seen from him. "My cousin – the last time I spoke to him, just before we went to Bondi – was talking about wordplay, bad puns on song titles. I was just thinking that I’m feeling Blue right now. Not sad, just…particularly when I’ve had a bath or shower I end up extremely aware of the velvety sensation. It makes me feel like I don’t belong in my own skin."

"If it’s any help, I think the velvet is a kind of field." His gaze dropped to the point where the robe crossed beneath the start of the stain on her chest and the tips of his ears gave away the line of his thoughts, but he forged on in his most neutral tone. "Your skin isn’t velvet at all. But it’s storing or generating power. Imagine touching a million microscopic lightning bolts. Or how it feels holding the like polarities of two magnets together. It’s a sensation not inherent in the object, but produced by what is generated from it."

Giving up on talking, he lifted a hand, fingers hovering just before the patch around her eye, then brushed his thumb delicately over the unstained skin below. When was becoming now, and Madeleine caught at his hand as he lowered it, clasped it firmly, then moved toward her room

Eyes wide but sure, Fisher followed, then hesitated at the door. "Protection," he murmured, looking in the direction of his own room.

"Bedside drawer." Later she would have to thank Noi for insisting on practicality.

He pushed the door closed behind them, the room lit only by the light spilling from the bathroom, and there was an awkward moment, so she filled it by reaching up to kiss him. Tentative at first, with soft touches of hands to his back. He was wearing loose sports pants and a T-shirt and as their kisses deepened she found herself bold with impatience and drew back to lift the shirt over his head.

Coat-hanger shoulders, and a chest still filling out, striped like a barber’s pole with bright diagonal streaks of stars.

"You’ve got comets."

He made a face, said: "Please, I’m feeling awkward enough," and self-consciously shucked his pants and underwear, becoming a naked boy gleaming with light, lifting his eyes to meet hers.

He was already partially erect, and later perhaps she would be amused that his penis was striped as well, and that he visibly swelled as she pulled loose the cord of her robe, letting it gape open. Stepping forward, he raised hands to her shoulders and smoothed them back so the robe fell around her feet, and then, breathing deeply, he took his time looking at her, bringing back to her years of feeling inadequate, of needing a bra to give herself breasts rather than hold them up, and never would she have thought someone would gaze down at her barely A-cups so reverently, or shake as he slid his hands forward and down to cover them.

Madeleine inhaled sharply, the sensation surpassing anything she’d anticipated, and she found she was standing up straighter, pushing into his touch. She had no idea how much the velvet of the stain was contributing to what she felt, though there was definitely an added tingle created by the shift between the stained and unstained skin of his palms as he slid his hands down further, exploring with his fingers.

The kiss which followed was clumsy, Fisher losing a great deal of his poise to eagerness, and they pressed together, exploring with hands and mouths, hard erection prodding her. He became urgent, steering her to the bed, fumbling for the box of condoms and tearing it open only to sprinkle packets in every direction. Madeleine opened one and, remembering the thoughtful instruction of many a glossy magazine, tentatively moved to try and put it on him.

He took it off her with a gusty cough of laughter. "You’re seriously overestimating my self-control."

"Sorry."

He smiled, and kissed her, but she had lost some of her certainty, felt tense and nervous as he moved over her. She tried to relax by touching his face and hair, and took small, uncertain breaths as they fumbled themselves into alignment. Fisher was shaking with effort, trying to hold himself to the slowest of paces, checking her reaction as he moved forward. The motion brought a little stinging at the very start, but a surprising lack of pain.

"Velvet," Fisher gasped, and lost his careful restraint entirely, plunging against her, a rushed, spasmodic motion which bounced them on the well-sprung mattress. Overwhelmed, Madeleine clutched at his shoulders, but already he was collapsing, his weight heavy on her, breath hot against her throat.

"Hell." He moved, shifted to lay beside her. "I didn’t – sorry, I didn’t think I’d be quite that pathetic." He propped himself up and looked at her worriedly, his hair ruffled, face flushed. "Did I hurt you?"

"No." Feeling less overcome, Madeleine touched his shoulder. "It’s okay. Though I’d like it if you spent some more time doing things to my breasts. They’ve never felt quite so real before."

He spluttered into laughter, and they held each other and shook, helpless hilarity. That turned to enthusiastic kissing, pressed together, legs tangling, then relaxing back to take a breath.

"I had pictured this very romantic," Fisher said. "Slow, and measured and…well, lasting longer. Magical, not farcical." Chagrin competed with amusement. "I would be very glad to continue to prove the existence of your breasts. And I am, if nothing else, an extremely good study."

Madeleine slid out of the bed and paused to move a couple of condom wrappers from the floor to the bin, adding to the detritus of a night’s diligent practice. Glancing out floor-to-ceiling windows at early morning sun and the grand curve of the Bridge, she picked Tyler’s koi robe off the back of a chair and slipped it on. Her Blue metabolism worked against long, lazy sleep-ins, and she followed the call of her stomach to the plentiful supply of snacks she’d stocked yesterday morning. Once the edge of her hunger had been dulled, and she’d cleaned herself up and managed to unknot her hair a little, she returned to look at the boy sleeping in her bed.

Comets. Stars which streaked across ribs, a bellybutton which glimmered above a trail of dark hair leading down to a thicker swatch. Long arms and legs, their impression of length increased by his overall skinniness. Head resting at an angle, tangled half-curls swept back from the brow, wide mouth relaxed. The position of his hands was somehow graceful, one bony wrist exposed, and she entirely forgot her intention to fetch them a hot breakfast and instead positioned a chair to take advantage of the light, fetched her biggest sketchpad and backing board, and lost herself in capturing him.

She’d moved on from the main figure to work on the fall of the sheeting to the floor when a peaceful voice said: "Is it okay for me to get up?"

"Mm. Try not to mess the line of the sheets."

After he’d carefully rolled off the bed and crossed to look at the sketch, it filtered through to her that this was probably not the most lover-like way to act on their first morning together. Blushing, she looked up, but he kissed her on the forehead and said, "I love the way you are when you draw. And you really should sketch how you look right now because it’s definitely something worth waking up to."

"A little impracticable," she said, but Fisher simply smiled and moved a standing mirror from the far side of the bed, then headed into the bathroom while she studied her reflection.

He was right. Sitting with one foot tucked up, sketchbook balanced on her lap, the gold and black of the koi robe spilling around blue and stars, the slight curve of one breast, a length of glimmering thigh, crinkling brown hair waving loose. She turned to a new page and began outlining, and when Fisher emerged, damp and wrapped in a towel, said: "Can you get the case of coloured pencils from that table?"

He did more, moving the café-style table within her reach, and lifting out the trays of pencils before rescuing his clothes from the pile by the door, hanging up her bathrobe, and heading out to the main room of the suite. She had made a great deal of progress before his return, enough that when a sweet, spicy scent forced itself on her notice she was willing to look at the bowls and cups he was fitting into the gaps of the table. Steaming porridge sprinkled with nuts, dried fruit and brown sugar.

"Did you make this?" Hunger abruptly triumphed over art, and she reached for a bowl.

"With considerable guidance from Noi. I’ve never really had much occasion to cook."

"Was she very entertained?"

"If today wasn’t Pan’s birthday, it probably wouldn’t be safe for us to venture out." He slipped her sketchbook from her lap and studied the picture while she began to eat. "What do you do with your sketches? And the paintings."

"Keep them in my room. I used to scan them and post them on an art site, but I took them all down last year. Being hypercritical. Not wanting to be known for work I no longer considered my best." She sighed, then glanced at his face, absorbed as he continued to study the picture. "You can have that one," she added softly. "When I’ve finished it."

His open pleasure made her feel light-headed, and as soon as she’d finished her meal she took him back to bed. Still plenty to learn. But curled with him afterwards, thirty people crept into her thoughts. This was an interlude which could not last.

"Do you think we should try to get out of the city like Noi wants?"

"Getting out of the city is likely to be considerably harder than Noi wants to believe. More to the point, that dragon’s range and speed means out of the city isn’t any guarantee of safety. But I don’t think we’ll last two years here, either." He hesitated. "I know it seems like we’ve made no progress, but it’s only when we have a full understanding of what we can do that we can hope to mount any kind of attack. I do think I’ve found a third ability, though a practical use for it isn’t immediately obvious."

"A third ability? What?"

He didn’t reply immediately, shifting to lie staring at the ceiling. "Think over what it feels like to feed Nash," he said at last, almost too low for her to hear.

Everyone tended to shy away from discussing the heady warmth Nash could conjure. It wasn’t quite a sexual thing, but it was very pleasurable, like an intangible massage. It usually left Madeleine a little tired, yet feeling good.

"Now think about what it feels like to punch, and to shield. The sensation is not the same. Although Nash is clearly drawing on that punch power reservoir, it is–"

"There’s something else involved." The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was Fisher had a point. "When I feed Nash, I really feel like I’m, well…almost like I’m sitting next to myself. I don’t get that sensation at all when I shield or punch.

"I’ve been focusing on that," Fisher said, still speaking very low. "Isolating the sensation, trying to work with it. This is…" He stopped, frowning fiercely at the ceiling. "Close your eyes."

She studied his profile, then settled herself more comfortably and obeyed.

"I’m going to reach for you," he continued. "I’m not certain how…" He paused again. "Tell me to stop right away if I hurt you, and try not to shield-stun me."

Madeleine realised that part of the reason for the hint of reserve in his voice was an unspoken: "Or mash me into paste".

"Okay," she said, deciding to postpone some serious thought on a life of being uncomfortably dangerous.

Warmth. A delicate thread which was somehow a thing to capture all her attention and make her want to shy away, to push back, but also light her up, a spark to a bonfire. It wasn’t simple heat, was a presence, a piercing tenderness, underlaid by anger and fear.

"It’s like I’m breathing you."

The warmth faded, and Fisher moved so he could tangle fingers with hers. "Did it hurt?"

"N-no." Pain was the wrong word, but she didn’t have any proper equivalent. "Like drowning, but not," she tried. The sense of his presence as a thing additional to the physical was fading, leaving her as alertly roused as a jolt of caffeine.

"Try it on me. As lightly as you can."

This was far from simple. The power she used to shield and punch was something tangible to her, and her awareness of containing it was strong. Trying to locate and manipulate something presumably intrinsic to herself – perhaps literally her own self – was a bit like attempting to look at the colour of her own eyes. But in a way Fisher had held up a mirror.

He drew in his breath, hand tightening on hers, and she faltered, then reigned back the outpouring of self to a thread as delicate as gossamer, a thistledown spiritual embrace. Fisher reached back with a thread of his own, and that was something new again, fragile and overwhelming.

They couldn’t sustain it, and drew back, panting like runners. Not tired, like feeding Nash would leave them, but instead feeling powerfully alive.

"There’s no way I’m practicing that with a group," she said when she could speak, and he laughed, but the sound had a bereft note to it, so she kissed him and that was an easier, more familiar path to follow, but made different again by their intense, lingering awareness of each other.

Madeleine wondered if this was something non-Blues would be able to do, something related to the spirit or the soul, or if it was merely another newly discovered difference to make her less human. And whether she could possibly cope with the way she was feeling about this boy she’d known a bare few weeks.

"What are you thinking?"

She didn’t answer, shifting against him.

"Tell me. You’re bothered by something."

"I was wondering," she said, very slowly, "if we would have gotten together if all this hadn’t happened."

"No."

The answer was immediate, unhesitating, and she shrank a little. His arms tightened around her.

"We would never have met," he explained, voice dropping to a husky note. "I would have gone about my life and not thought I was missing anything. You would have – you would have painted obsessively, all those transformative images, and I would be someone unimagined and unknown, and I cannot decide whether it would be trite to call that a tragedy or if I should resent you for making this – all this death – somehow bearable, tolerable for the tenuous joy I have gained. You steal my anger and leave me dazed."

He stopped, took a shaking breath, then laughed.

"I sound like Pan’s understudy, failing to channel Shakespeare. There’s no way to do more than guess what would have happened if Fisher Charteris and Madeleine Cost met one day in a world which had never feared dust, any more than we can be certain of surviving two years, or two days. I can’t speak to what-ifs, but I know I will always be glad to have been here in this moment with you."