The following is the first chapter of a fantasy novel.

The boy sat on his mother’s lap, dangling his feet over the pit. It extended into the depths below, but his limbs didn’t shake. One arm gripped his mother while he tipped his head back, drinking in the treasured sight of the night sky.

“What do we know about the stars, my shadow?” his mother asked, stroking his hair gently.

The boy shook his head. He couldn’t remember their lesson. His mind buzzed with the breath of the night air, the soft rustle of the tall grasses, the generator’s hum over the next hill. The town’s faraway lights gleamed yellow off whitewashed walls—entrancing.

He wondered what it would be like to walk through those streets. The town would be quiet, but people might still linger in the shops. He could see the walls up close, look in at the windows, see what the families did together. He could find whatever paths went up those distant, humpbacked mountains. With so little pollution in the countryside, the stars blazed through wisps of cloud.

His mother’s hand kept moving evenly. "The stars are selfish. They want to keep their power and their life to themselves, instead of sharing it with the humans. Do you remember why that’s wrong?”

When he didn’t answer, she turned him around on her lap so his back was to the pit. He tilted, unbalanced. His pajamas caught on the crumbling dirt at the rim of the hole and his small fists clutched at his mother’s sleeves. She grabbed his chin, tilting his head up. Her eyes were too close, too sharp.

The boy swallowed. “It’s wrong to keep our strengths to ourselves,” he recited, “instead of finding a way to share the power with the humans. They live short, empty lives without us.”

His mother nodded. At the time, she still wore her dark hair in a long braid, a braid that caught the shadows. Her eyes folded at the corners like her son’s, and they glinted in the starlight with the heat of her story. She shifted the boy to seat him next to her and leaned back, glaring at the sky. Darkness coiled around her fingertips where they rested on the earth.

“The stars’ selfishness is the reason your father died, you know,” she said. Her voice was crystalline.

The boy’s eyes widened. “Really?” He knew only that his father had died seven years ago, just before the boy was born.

His mother’s long braid slithered over her shoulder and swayed over the rustling grass. She closed her eyes. “He was human.”

The boy gaped. Human? His father?

“He should have lived for centuries, not decades.” She didn’t look at her son, but he knew she was aware of him. He tried to still his legs as they kicked against the side of the pit. “He was a healer for other humans—he worked too hard to keep them from death.” Her eyes closed. Her voice dropped to the earth with the weight of stone. “But he couldn’t keep himself from death. And the Council refused to help.”

The boy’s fingers trembled as he tore up clumps of grass and weeds, weaving them together in haphazard strips, tying the strips together in odd knots. He squinted at his creations, twisting the grass together just enough to make it stronger, but not enough to snap the brittle stalks.

His mother placed a hand on his shoulder, and he stilled.

“You are my memory of him,” she said, smile flashing in the dark, “and we carry on to rescue humans from death, like your father.”

The boy looked down. His hands had formed a crude stick-figure family, with heads of thick grains and limbs of braided grass. He twisted one in his hands, and the head came off. He tossed it into the pit.

The boy gazed out over the hillside around them, eyes glazed. His pit was only one of more than a dozen holes drilled into the ground—nearly perfectly round cores of various sizes stretching down into darkness. They pockmarked the long grasses, scattered at a few paces from each other to a few minutes’ walk apart, but the boy had only ever been down his pit. He didn’t like to look at it, but his eyes wandered back to it all the same.

A slim figure, dark even in the near-blackness, rose up like a ghost from the depths of the pit. Tendrils whipped around it, against the breeze. It hovered above nothing, hanging as if from invisible strings in the air.

The boy yelped and scrambled back, grabbing at his mother. He knew the figure was coming for him. He was outside, on the surface, and this thing would drag him back.

She gripped him around the shoulder, her iron arm closing around him.

“Sylas,” she snapped. “Your form is scaring the boy.”

The shadowy figure grimaced, its teeth like a mouth of needles. The boy blinked, and a pale young man whose face shone in the faint light floated on air, stern-faced. The boy relaxed into his mother’s arms. This figure looked not quite an adult—not yet filled out from a teenage growth spurt—but the boy knew the gap between them spanned decades.

“The Charan High Council is meeting, ma’am.” the young man announced.

His mother nodded, once. “We’d best get you to bed,” she said, rising and lifting her son so that his arms settled around her neck. He was going to be too big for this, soon. He almost was already. He didn’t help her lift, either, limbs heavy with the thought of going back inside.

She frowned, the few wrinkles on her face sharp at such close proximity. “You got your pajamas dirty.”

The boy shrank away from her, averting his eyes. He brushed nervously at the dirt, but it was ground into the fabric from his frightened scramble away from the pale young man who still hovered over empty air. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t have been scared.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she affirmed. “The only things you have to fear are the stars.” The lights in the distant town had begun to go out, and her features blurred in the darkness. “And, of course, the Void.”

The boy suppressed a shiver of fear. He still had a chance at more time on the surface, but his mother wouldn’t let him stay if she knew he was scared.

“Can I stay out longer, Mother?” Not too whiny. She didn’t like whining. “The sun won’t come out for hours.” He lowered his head.

His mother smiled. The boy beamed.

“I suppose so, my shadow.” She swiftly set him down again and turned to the man still floating over the pit. “Watch my son, Sylas. Bring him down in no more than an hour.”

“Ma’am!” he protested, while the boy scowled. This wasn’t the plan.

His mother stepped into the pit and dropped away, ignoring them both.

The man and boy stared resentfully at each other in the dark. After a moment, the boy set off into the long grass, startling bugs that went leaping in glints of starlight. Another pit rose up in front of him. The boy rushed around it and up a slope. Sticks poked at his feet, but he only ran, pumping tiny legs.

“Wait! Kid!” Sylas shouted. Grass rustled behind the boy as his guardian followed. “Don’t go too far! The illusion doesn’t go forever!”

As the boy crested a hill, a pale hand shot out and caught his arm, wrenching it back. His determination popped. The boy scowled at Sylas, who scowled back.

A ripple of black mist twisted over the man’s shoulder, following the curved outline of an invisible dome.

Something expanded painfully in the boy’s small chest. “Take your hand off me!” he shouted, shoving it away. “You can’t behave like this with me.” His voice shrieked in his own ears.

“Can’t I?” The man looked down at his charge. The stars shining behind him made his face impossible to read. “Look, I don’t want to be responsible for a little brat, but I can’t let you march right into danger! What has your mother told you about the boundary around this place?”

The boy recited automatically. “The illusions of the Lord of Shadows encircle the Shafts and protect us from the prying eyes of humans and nymm.”

He gazed out past the next hill, all the way to the dark lumps of distant mountains that he never saw in the light of day. Maybe they were dark blue in the sunlight, or green, or even purple. He sighed. Another vein of mist shot by, following the same invisible outline as the other. The boy’s eyes narrowed, measuring. He was close. He knew it.

“I’ll tell my mother about the way you spoke to me.” The boy crossed his arms, mimicking Sylas. The man gulped. His grip loosened.

“You wou—” As Sylas spoke, the boy yanked his arm loose and spun backward. He took one step, two, and passed through the misty barrier. His vision flashed black. The boy smiled. Where Sylas should be was an empty hillside and waving grass.

“Ha!” he shouted, triumphant. He’d made it! He spun away from the invisible dome and fixed his eyes on those dark mountains. He made it down the slope and up the next hill before Sylas emerged from the illusion after him.

A star streaked past his shoulder and landed on the ridge.

The boy jumped back and turned toward the newcomer. Sylas pushed the boy behind him, his pale skin growing dark as his silhouette deepened and twisted among the grass in writhing wisps of shadow. He drew a silvery blade that gleamed in the dark with swirling light. The boy stared. It wasn’t metal, wasn’t stone, and was too solid to be pure light.

The boy peeked out from behind his protector at the star, the nymm on the opposite ridge. She was a figure in the shape of a human, made of violet flame that charred the grass around her in a broad circle. The boy shrank back. Her brightness seared his eyes, so accustomed to the dark. Smoke from the burning hillside washed over him and forced tears. He crouched low behind Sylas, rubbing at his eyes.

“Where did you come from?” the nymm girl asked. Despite her blazing form, her voice was young and startled, astonished and wary.

Sylas growled, giving no answer. The village had receded from view. The distant mountains were shadows in the dark against the blinding light of the nymm.

“Didn’t expect to see one of you here.” She crouched into a fighting stance. White sparks flew up from the burning circle around her. “I can’t just let you go, you know.”

Sylas bolted straight at her, blade out, leaving a black comet trail. The nymm threw a missile of fire white with heat. Sylas dodged, but the missile grazed his shoulder. He was hurt.

The boy turned and ran. Grass and wildflowers strobed with light from the clash behind him. Chirping insects fled from his steps. He stumbled down the slope, tripped, rolled, popped up covered in dirt—looked back.

The boy froze at the base of the hill. The protection of the Void’s barrier was just up the next bank, but he couldn’t move. He could only stare up at the fiery star and the dark figure of his protector.

Flashes of light flew at Sylas from the attacking nymm, but he batted them away. She fought with ferocity. The whole hilltop blazed in violet fire. Sylas was a cutout against it.

A flame-encrusted knife caught the shadow in the shoulder and went out. Sylas hissed like a rattling snake, clutched the hilt, but left it in. His head turned toward the boy, needle teeth bared in pain. The nymm followed his gaze.

She noticed the boy. She pulled up short, pausing, crackling in the sudden silence. “A child?” she asked, in a voice too shocked and too kind to come from a flame golem. The fire that was her body went out in a moment, revealing her human form.

But the fire in the grass still spread and scorched the boy. He took a step back, eyes on the nymm girl. Curly blonde hair made a halo in the light. Her young face was soft, but her eyes were hard on Sylas.

“Why is there a child here?” she demanded. Sylas, still made of darkness and holding his wound, moved toward her at an angle. Her flames returned in a rush. “Don’t take another step,” she warned, sharp and not even winded.

“You’re a star,” the boy said before he could stop himself.

The nymm’s burning eyes stayed on Sylas. “Yes. And you’re a boy.”

The boy shrugged. “Sort of.” This couldn’t be real, she couldn’t really be standing there, burning the flickering grass and feeding the wind that lifted sparks high to join the stars. The other stars, not the one that stood there with knives in both flaming hands, in light that hurt his eyes.

He blinked against the pain as the rush of danger swept over him. The only things you have to fear are the stars. The boy shuddered, bent the light around him, and vanished.

The nymm stilled in astonishment. She turned toward where the boy had been, searching, keeping one blade fixed in Sylas’s direction. As the boy backed up the far hill, Sylas’s dark form crept around her, closer.

The boy stepped back and bugs erupted from the grass around him. Flaming eyes looked straight through him.

The shadow that was Sylas leaped through the fire and buried his blade in the nymm’s back.

A wave of flames sputtered and shrank to vapor. The rush of oxygen pulled the boy off his feet, but his twist of light kept him invisible.

The nymm gasped on the hilltop. Sylas pulled his knife out with a grasping, sucking noise as she fell forward, onto her knees. The remaining fires flickered out and drained into his blade until its surface shone with violet light.

The girl fell, legs twisted under her. Dark liquid soaked into the burned grass. It glistened in the glow of Sylas’s knife.

The star reached out a hand, struggled, but her fire was gone. “How?” she rattled. Sylas watched.

The nymm stilled. Her glassy eyes reflected the violet of the blade and the distant sky. The boy ran.

He passed the invisible barrier of the dome and made it down the next hill before Sylas caught up with him.

“Wait! Kid, just wait. Where are you?” The shimmering knife flashed in Sylas’s hand. The young man paused and wiped the blade on his shirt. It shone with the color of the nymm’s fire. He tucked it away.

The boy’s legs melted under him. Hot tears choked him. As the twist of light he’d made evaporated, Sylas saw him and fell to his knees. The man’s shadowy silhouette dissipated, replaced with pale skin and hands spattered with dark stains. The nymm’s small knife was still buried in his shoulder.

“What happened?” the man asked. “Are you hurt?”

The boy couldn’t speak.

Sylas cleared his throat, wincing in pain. “I have to bury her. She can’t tell the other nymm where we are now, but she can still draw attention from the town.” He tugged the weapon out with a jerk, scanning the sky with squinted eyes. Wrapping the wound with a ripped shirt sleeve, he spoke through clenched teeth. “She must have been passing overhead when she saw us, maybe scouting us out.”

The boy didn’t care. She was a star, and now she wasn’t. She wouldn’t cause them trouble because she was dead. He trembled and pressed his knees to his forehead.

Sylas patted his back hesitantly. “I’ll be back, kid. Don’t vanish again.”

By the time the man returned, the boy’s trembling had melted into the earth. Sylas offered his good hand to the boy, who pulled himself to his feet. Rocks and pebbles and rough earth poked through the feet on his pajamas. He held his arms up, and the man lifted him with a hand that still smelled like copper and mud to take him back to the pit.

They fell in near darkness for a minute, watching circles of flickering light pass by, until their descent slowed. The boy’s eyelids drooped, and his limbs weighed him down with sleep. The man stilled in midair and stepped out of the shaft into a tunnel hollowed from red earth. Bare light bulbs shone at intervals as he navigated through tunnel after tunnel, climbing irregular half-staircases and ducking under arches. Thin streams of people in their human forms and dark suits or skirts parted silently for them as they came, eyes following the boy and his wounded protector.

After some time, the crowds thinned. They reached a wooden door, set crookedly in an arched opening. Sylas carefully set him down on the packed earth, where he blinked and yawned. The man told him to stay put, but he was too tired to move if he tried.

His mother returned to him minutes later. Fury was written on her face. He didn’t have the energy to dodge her slap.

“What were you thinking?” she demanded, lifting him by his shoulders and shaking him. “Didn’t I tell you to fear the stars? Didn’t I tell you about the illusions around us? How could you do this to me?”

The boy only slumped around her grip and mumbled, “I’m sorry, mother.” She released him and he crumpled to the ground.

“Get up, you’re filthy.” He stood as she turned to the door, muttering about her son’s carelessness with his life.

A solid key went into the door, turned, opened it to reveal a room steeped in darkness. The faint light from the tunnel revealed little but a small wooden bed against the far wall.

The boy barely felt his mother helping him into fresh pajamas and tugging the blankets over him, barely heard her whisper, “Don’t forget your task for tonight, my shadow. Be careful.” He barely heard the click of the key in the lock as she left.

He fell into sleep, and the gray mists of his dreams rose to engulf him.

Exhaustion slipped away, along with the memory of the dead star. The boy yawned, stretched. He sat cross-legged on a solid platform, smooth like opaque glass, as the familiar mists of the dream realm moved around him. The dripping smell of wet earth had vanished. The boy’s body was tucked into bed in the Pit, but at least his mind didn’t need to stay there all night.

The boy rubbed at his eyes and pushed to his feet, shuffling off into the shifting grayness.

Snatches of voices rose from just beyond his sight, but he ignored them. He shuffled on, head cocked, listening for something. In a minute, he stopped, staring into a cloud bank.

“She was furious,” said the voice of the young man who had given his mother the message. The mist pulled away to reveal Sylas still dressed in his black uniform, stray bloodstains and a mottled bruise peppering his pale face, off-white bandages wrapping his injured shoulder. Bedsprings creaked as he sat, though the boy couldn’t see the bed. “I can’t believe she foisted him off on me. Shouldn’t he know the danger of going so far from the Shafts?”

A girl sighed, stirring the mist. “You would think. But he’s just a kid.”

“I know, I know. But…” Sylas squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself.

“What?” The girl asked. “Are you still on that invisibility thing?”

“I saw what I saw, Becca!” The man protested. “I swear I’m not messing with you.”

Becca stayed silent for a beat. “Do you remember when you convinced me I could eat grass?” She kept the same irritated monotone.

The man grinned involuntarily, flashing sharp, bright teeth. “I don’t regret that. But I’m serious this time—he vanished right in front of me. Never seen anything like it.”

Becca sighed again, but didn’t pursue the matter. The sound of a whetstone on metal ground in the boy’s ears.

Sylas leaned against a wall that wasn’t there and crossed his arms over his chest. “She can’t be doing him a favor by keeping him locked up.”

“What do you mean?” The whetstone stopped.

“Well, he hasn’t interacted with anyone besides his mother for years. That can’t be good for a kid, even a strange one like him. You should have seen the way he spoke to me, and the way he fell apart.”

Footsteps sounded on rock, and the young man’s eyes shifted to track the invisible girl. “Sylas,” she said, “That nymm could have killed you, but you’re focused on the kid. What is this about?”

He sighed. “Nothing. I just think he could use a friend.”

Mist began to roll back in over them as the girl spoke. “Maybe. But he could be dangerous.”

Sylas smiled grimly. “I know he is.”

The boy stood, shaken, staring at nothing. He scrubbed at his eyes and slowly resumed his shuffling pace. His mind was too tired to go all night. He didn’t even know how to find his task for the night—his mother had forgotten to show him a picture.

In a few steps, the mists lightened and raced off. The boy pulled up short, startled, and almost fell backward. This never happened. What was happening?

His familiar surroundings fell away, replaced by a dark room and the harsh blue glow of a small screen. A young woman lay wrapped in blankets on a large bed shoved into the corner of a small room. Her curved back faced him, and she stared at a small rectangle of light in one hand. [[ havea, 10/15/2022 11:20 PM

Clarify that this is the future, eg different sky]]

“Excuse me,” the boy asked, not expecting an answer.

The woman didn’t respond. He stepped closer, around the foot of the bed.

The woman’s flame-orange hair spread out over her pillow. Her jaw clenched and her eyes squeezed shut as a tear ran a track across her nose and into the bedspread. The hand that held the rectangle of light loosened, and it fell onto the bed. The woman clutched at the bedspread and curled more sharply into a ball.

Gray light peaked through the room’s single window and across the foot of the bed. From beneath the covers came muffled cries.

“No, no, no, it can’t be, she just – no, no no.”

As the refrain repeated, a door behind the boy cracked open. Even though he knew he couldn’t be seen, he flattened himself against a blue wall.

“Melody?” came a voice from the door. A young man was silhouetted in the yellow light of electricity. His curly, shoulder-length hair was still damp from the shower. “I’m all done. Your turn.”

The figure in the bed didn’t move.

“Melody?” the young man asked again. He pushed the door open further and crossed to stand at the foot of the bed. He wore soft shorts and a t-shirt that read, “100% Genuine Scientist.” A sniffle came from the bed. “It wasn’t–” said the man in a tone of growing horror.

The head on the pillow nodded slowly. “Genuine Scientist” sat heavily on the foot of the bed, silent. He put his back against the wall, pulled his long legs up to his chest, and keened softly as he rocked back and forth. The small room filled with a haze of grief.

The woman’s quiet tears were swept up in the keening. Her head emerged from the blankets. Her eyes closed. She swallowed, struggling to get it down.

A halo of dark blue and purple light spread from the woman’s tightly-curled form. It formed a ring around her body, following the curves of her limbs.

The light crested into waves and pushed away from the woman on the bed. It shot out through the walls and across the street outside the window.

The boy pushed off from the wall and went to the window, where the gray dawn was slowly growing. A damp swing set across the street began swinging gently, but neither figure in the room with him paid it any mind. The boy blinked pink afterimages out of his sight as he stared at the woman. She didn’t move.

The boy turned again to look out the window. Something was growing behind the houses and the trees across the street. The wave of light rose above the rooflines. It wasn’t growing. It was coming closer.

The boy backed away as the room filled with a shining sea of purple and blue. It swirled and flashed—too bright. The boy covered his eyes.

The light softened and dimmed to a gentle glow. He peaked between his fingers. The wave centered on the woman on the bed. It poured into her, filling the space behind her skin.

The glow faded.

The sky outside lightened rapidly, filling the room with cold brightness. The walls vanished. The bed and two figures, and the ringing of their grief, vanished. It resolved slowly into another night, dark clouds hanging overhead and reflecting harsh fluorescents.

Streetlights glinting off a rain-slick street, damp grass, and a short set of stone steps on which a figure sat in front of a house. The same woman from before.

The boy approached softly, as the damp pavement slowly soaked through his pajamas. He stared at the woman on the steps. How had she drawn him to this place? What was happening?

The woman’s hands and a mess of thick orange hair hid her face. She rested her chin in one hand. One finger reached up to adjust her glasses.

The boy shuffled closer, staring up at her blank eyes. She stared right through him, right through the street behind him, right through the pale yellow house across the street. “Hello?” the boy ventured, already knowing it would be no use. “Who are you? Did you see the lights that you made?”

Again, she didn’t respond. He hadn’t expected her to.

The door at her back creaked open and a slim, gangly young man with a mop of curly brown hair emerged. The “Genuine Scientist.” He folded his lanky body onto the step and leaned backward, looking at the sky.

The skin around the woman’s eyes was red and worn. The young man looked similarly bedraggled. The pair stared through the boy with matching blank expressions.

“Who are you?” the boy whispered, unsettled. This wasn’t normal. He shouldn’t be here. Guilt rose up and stared over his shoulder.

The woman’s hair began to fade, along with the freckles on her skin, then the damp glint of the streetlights and the grass under the boy’s feet. The overhanging clouds closed in and filled the space around him with silver mist.

He stood carefully. The ground under his feet was cool glass once again. The vision was gone.

Odd. The whole episode was odd, but not related to his mission. The boy paused, considering. Should he tell his mother about the incident?

Well, it was most likely irrelevant. She wouldn’t like to hear that he’d spent so much time not tracking his assignment.

He’d better get to it, then.