But the moment she stepped from outside the boundaries of the bedchamber, which had been tightly woven with protective wards, her presence was exposed to the rest of the palace. Every fairy, guard, magistrate, and deity knew at once that a mortal had dared come into their forbidden place. And there was no recourse from their anger: even though she ran from the star-hounds they set upon her, she was doomed to capture from the beginning.
The mortal woman and her fairy lover were both brought to the Heavenly Emperor for judgment. And no matter how much the fairy girl begged for mercy, it was not given. The Heavenly Emperor knew that leniency was often mistaken for weakness, and he would not have that. The fairy was banished from the palace, and the mortal woman was sentenced to a lifetime imprisoned in a cage deep beneath the Heavenly Emperor’s throne, in a place she would see neither sunlight nor starlight ever again.
Separated from the one she loved, the fairy would have fallen into complete despair. But her aunt, who served the Queen Mother of Heaven, came to her rescue. She told the fairy of a witch who lived on a mountain in the barren plain of exiles, once a great general and a favorite of the Heavenly Emperor’s, until they had fallen from grace and been banished. Knowing the weaknesses of the Heavenly Palace, and filled with resentment toward the Emperor, they would be the perfect ally to help her. The fairy’s aunt gave her a map and food adequate for the journey, and set her on her way. Where one story ended, another began. A story driven by desperation, but born of hope.
* * *
The girl with no name stopped speaking, her words petering out into an unsatisfying end. The witch laughed. “I see, I see. So this is what you are asking of me?”
She nodded. In the process of telling the story she had remembered some things, fragments of fragments, little slivers of time that did not form a complete story, yet told enough of it. The first glimpse of a lover in the cold brilliance of space, the long nights in a warm room, the fragile swell of a mortal heartbeat pressed against her own chest. “Please,” she said, “will you help?”
The witch stroked their chin. “Here’s the interesting thing with stories. It always depends on who’s telling it, doesn’t it? From your end, what you’ve said sounds like a sweeping love story. A great romance, a tale for the ages. Told from another perspective, however, it sounds like the tale of kidnapping and imprisonment, with the victim having to pay the highest price. How do I know what the truth is?”
The girl sat silent for a long time; she could not find the words she wanted to say. Finally she wet her lips and whispered, “I’ve told you what I believe is the truth.”
“Yet one’s belief and the truth are rarely the same thing, not even for immortals like you. Especially not for immortals like you.”
The girl’s heart turned to stone in her chest. “Are you not going to help me, then?”
The witch rubbed their bony fingers together. “Who am I really helping here, child?”
Something caught fire in the mind of the girl who had no name. She sat up straight, her spine a pillar of freshly ignited conviction. “I’m here because of her. I want you to help her. I don’t care what happens to me, but she deserves her freedom.”
“Even if she chooses to return to her people with the freedom that she gains?”
“Even so. Please. I have come so far, and I have lost everything, even my own name. Set free the one that I love. That is all I ask.”
“Alas, when I was banished here I was bound to this forsaken land, and I cannot leave until the one who cursed me is dead. But you have told me a fine tale, child, one which has entertained me in my endless torment. For that, I am grateful, and in return I shall tell you one of my own.”
“A thousand years ago the universe was at war. The immortals, the two-legged creatures whose ancestors were made of soft flesh and lived on planets breathing air, were engaged in war with the great corvids that soared in the spaces between the stars. The corvids—a mighty race—were as old as time itself, but their numbers were few, and the immortals had learned to harness the magic of the stars, which gave them an otherworldly power. The war had gone on for longer than both sides remembered, and they both ached for peace.”
“The emperor of the immortals offered a truce to the corvids, and invited them to his palace to discuss a peace treaty. The corvids accepted his invitation in good faith, but they were soon betrayed, for the emperor knew nothing in his heart but the desire for victory. One of his generals, a close childhood friend, tried to warn the corvids, but it was too late. The emperor killed their leader and cursed the rest of the corvids, taking their memories and banishing them to a barren land in a forsaken corner of the universe. He exiled the general he had once called a friend too, for he was nothing if not a petty man, and not prone to reason or forgiveness. So the one he used to call his dearest friend has lingered a thousand years alone in the desert, while his foes remain wandering and lost, locked into their fate, any hope of justice the mere forgotten shadow of a dream.
“See,” the witch said, leaning forward, “sometimes it’s not enough to right the single injustice, if that injustice is the least thing that is wrong with the situation. Sometimes, to undo all the wrongs you have to undo the entire system.”
The girl tightened her fists. “Tell me what I have to do.”
The witch grinned. “You have already given them the tools they need to escape their bondage. Go down the hill and speak to them, if you want to. Their leader’s name is Liercal.”
“And what about you?” she asked.
They laughed. “I’ve told you: I’m bound here until the one who cursed me is dead.”
“I see,” said the girl.
She turned and went down the hill, treading the crooked path with its treacherous walls. It was easier going down than coming up. At the bottom she found an army of the bird-creatures amassed, gazes fixed upon her, the great white one at their head. The rice cake she had given them, imbued with the magic of the Heavenly Palace’s kitchens, had awakened their memories, and now a different hunger filled them.
“Your name is Liercal,” she told the white bird.
“And yours is Callen. You’ve freed us from our long years of bondage.”
“You remember who you are now,” she said.
“Yes, and we remember what we are owed.”
“Then let’s go and take it back,” she said.
And so, you know what happened next, sweet chirplings. Callen and her new army crossed the stars with the map she had been given, and along the way we corvids woke the sleeping broods that have been in incubation for a thousand years, with no one to tend to them. We took ourselves, all of us, across the galaxy to our final destination, and we rest now, gathering our strength before the final battle. The Heavenly Emperor in his palace has no idea what’s coming for him. But soon he will, my feathered darlings. Soon he will.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
* * *
The story of the Cowherd and the Weaver-Girl (which some may know in its Japanese form as Tanabata) has always appealed to the romantic side of me. Not because of the love story, mind you, but because I was utterly charmed by the idea of people explaining the Milky Way as a bridge of crows spanning the heavens. Living in a tropical city soaked in light pollution and plagued by cloudy skies, I had no idea what the Milky Way looks like from Earth, so I was free to imagine this living celestial architecture any way I wanted. As for my retelling, I wanted to do a version in space, but I also thought telling it in a linear fashion would be dreadfully boring, so I decided to nest stories within stories. It was fun having the actual myth be a pit in the middle of my story that you have to cut through layers of flesh to see.