Heirs of The Starlight Kingdom

Book Two: The Keeper's Shadow Chapter 15: The Fifth Fruit

The fifth fruit on the Mother Tree grew fast.

Too fast.

By morning after the villagers arrived, the tiny silver bud that had appeared when Lyra welcomed the moon-eyed baby had become the size of a fist. By noon, it was the size of a melon. By sunset, it was bigger than any fruit the Mother Tree had ever grown before, and it was not gold, not violet.

It was both, swirling together, gold and violet mixing into a soft, stormy silver, like twilight.

And it was humming.

Not chiming like the leaves. Humming. Like a child trying to remember a song.

Solen and Lyra sat under the tree with Ink the void kitten and the new baby, whose name was Milo. Milo's sister, Mara, the twelve-year-old who had walked the Road of Light first, had not left his side. Neither had Lyen.

Lyen had not slept all night. He just sat and stared at the new fruit, his mismatched eyes wide.

"I have never seen this," he whispered to Lyra. "In a thousand years, the Mother Tree only ever grew two fruits at a time. One for the Protector, one for the Keeper. Even when I was born, with Auren, it was just two."

"Maybe it is for Milo?" Solen suggested, bouncing Milo gently. Milo giggled and his little key birthmark glowed, and Solen's shadow briefly turned into a bunny before turning back. "Whoa! Did you see that? He made my shadow do a bunny!"

Mara, who was braver now that she had eaten and slept in a real bed for the first time in her life, laughed.

"He does that when he is happy. He made my shadow into a horse yesterday."

Lyra frowned, looking at the huge silver fruit above them. It was pulsing in time with Milo's happy giggles, but also in time with something else. Something deeper.

"No," she said quietly, holding her moon scepter. Since the grounding had broken yesterday when she jumped off the balcony, her powers had come back stronger. Her violet wings flickered in and out when she was thinking. "It is not for Milo. Milo already has his gift. His key. This... this feels older."

Auren and Caelum and Elara walked into the garden then, with Aldric and Lirael. Aldric was leaning heavily on his staff. Ever since the castle landed, he had been getting weaker. He said it was because the floating magic that had kept him alive for a hundred years was gone. He said he was finally allowed to be old.

"What does your old heart tell you, Seer?" Caelum asked Aldric, looking up at the huge silver fruit.

Aldric stared at it for a long time with his blind white eyes, which were now almost completely grey.

"It is not a cradle gift," he whispered. "The gold and violet fruits are cradle gifts. They hold a Protector's sun and a Keeper's moon. This... this is a heart gift. The Mother Tree only grows a heart gift when the kingdom itself is pregnant. When it is about to give birth to something new."

Everyone looked at each other.

"What does that mean?" Elara asked, holding Solen's and Lyra's hands without thinking, the mother habit.

"It means," Lirael said softly, stepping forward. Her voice was still a little echoey, but warm now. Since Lyen had come back, she had been getting more human every day. "It means the kingdom is choosing. For a thousand years, it had to choose: float or fall, sun or moon, seal or open. My brothers chose seal. Your twins chose open. Now the kingdom has to choose what it wants to be next."

As if to answer her, the silver fruit cracked.

Not opened like a flower, like the first fruits had. Cracked, like an egg.

Everyone jumped back, Solen shielding Milo and Mara without even thinking, his sun mark blazing.

From inside the cracked fruit, light poured out. Not gold. Not violet. Silver. Pure, soft, twilight silver.

And inside the light, floating, was not a toy. Not a rattle. Not a sun.

It was a seed. A small, silver seed, shaped like a heart, pulsing.

The Mother Tree's leaves stopped chiming. The entire garden went silent. Even Ink stopped purring.

The seed floated down, slowly, past the branches, past the humming fruit, and hovered right in front of Lyra and Solen, right between them.

It did not choose Lyra. It did not choose Solen.

It waited.

Lyen gasped.

"It wants both," he whispered. "At the same time. It wants a Protector and a Keeper to take it together."

Solen looked at Lyra.

Lyra looked at Solen.

It was the same look they had shared in the Veil before they jumped, before they hugged the Eater of Stars, before they landed the castle.

"Together?" Solen asked.

"Together," Lyra said.

They both reached out at the same time, their hands touching, and took the silver heart seed.

The moment their fingers brushed it, the world exploded.

Not in fire. Not in darkness. In memory.

Solen saw a memory that was not his: The first Queen, Lyra the First, planting the Mother Tree, crying, pregnant, alone, whispering, "Please, let my children not have to choose. Let them have both."

Lyra saw the same memory, but from the other side: The Queen's husband, holding her, saying, "Then let us give them a choice we never had. Let them be both."

And then they both saw something else. Something new. A vision of the future.

A kingdom where the Roads of Light did not just go from the castle to the villages. They went up. Into the sky. Into the stars. Roads made of twilight silver, for anyone, sun-eyed or moon-eyed or both, to walk.

A kingdom that did not float to hide, and did not land to hide either.

A kingdom that could fly.

Solen and Lyra gasped and came back to the garden, still holding the silver seed, which was now warm and beating like a real heart in their joined hands.

"What did you see?" Elara asked, kneeling, worried.

Solen looked at his father, his eyes full of golden light.

"Father... can a kingdom fly? Not float. Fly? Like a bird? Like we choose where to go?"

Caelum frowned. "What do you mean, son?"

Lyra held up the seed, which was now glowing brighter and brighter, so bright they had to shield their eyes.

"I think," she said, her voice layered with her own and the first Queen's, "I think the Mother Tree is asking if we want to plant a new one."

From the seed, a tiny root of pure silver light shot down and touched the ground between Solen and Lyra's feet.

The ground rumbled.

Far below them, deep in the earth where the old floating spell had lived for a thousand years, something ancient and tired and ready to wake up opened one eye.

It had been waiting for someone to ask if it wanted to be a road, instead of an anchor.

And the Roads of Light outside the castle walls suddenly lifted an inch off the ground, hovering, waiting for an answer.

Lirael grabbed Auren's and Lyen's hands.

"Oh," she whispered, smiling for the first time with all her teeth, looking truly alive. "My mother would have loved you two."

Milo, the baby with the key birthmark, giggled and clapped, and the new silver seed in Solen and Lyra's hands beat faster, like a heart that finally knew what it wanted to be.

A heart that wanted to fly.