“No! No! I cannot believe you! Didn’t he curse me foully when I appeared before him in your
convoy? Didn’t he repudiate me completely? Didn’t he —”
“What else did you expect him to do, StarLaughter? He was hardly going to throw Zenith aside
when all his plans were coming to fruition. I expect he thought you would have understood that.”
StarLaughter tried very, very hard to deny what Axis was saying, but in her twisted mind it all made
sense. WolfStar would certainly have wanted to control DragonStar … and, if he’d known that
DragonStar had slept with his beloved wife, would have wanted to hurt him as much as possible. No
wonder he’d picked Zenith to toy with! And now StarLaughter could understand why WolfStar
had said what he had … and why he’d behaved as he had when confronted with StarLaughter with a
rope wrapped about Zenith’s neck.
StarLaughter, had she been in WolfStar’s place, would have acted exactly the same way.
Somewhere deep within StarLaughter a small voice said that if WolfStar had truly loved her, and had
desired Zenith only for her usefulness, then he would have told StarLaughter then and there that he loved
only her truly, and that Zenith was a mere pawn for his ambitions.
But he couldn’t, could he, because StarDrifter had been there also, and WolfStar could not have
admitted his true motives in front of him.
Yes!
No! her mind screamed back. I have killed him! I have killed him!
Axis smiled in grim, determined satisfaction. “You have made an awful mistake, haven’t you?”
StarLaughter dropped her hand from Axis’ thigh and clasped both hands against her breast, her
fingers opening and closing amid the folds of her gown. Her mouth went slack in horror.
“I have lost him!” she eventually whispered. “Lost him forever!”
“Not necessarily,” Axis said, and StarLaughter missed entirely the hatred and revenge filling his
voice.
“No?” Again StarLaughter grabbed at Axis — in sudden, bright hope now, rather than anxiety.
“No?”
“No. Your and WolfStar’s love is a destined thing —”
“Yes! Yes!”
“— and destiny can never be denied.”
“Oh! How right you are!” StarLaughter’s face was now suffused with joyous hope.
“I am sure,” Axis said, very quietly, and emphasising every word, “that Wolf Star waits for you just
the other side of the Gate of Death.”
“He does?”
“Oh, aye. Waits for you to join him so that you can enjoy a wonderful eternity in the Field of
Flowers together.”
“The Field of Flowers?”
“A new eternity for all to enjoy,” Axis said. “Peace forever more with your loved ones. Imagine, lying
in WolfStar’s arms amid the lilies, the stars whirling overhead, nothing but you and he, he and you, for all
eternity …”
“Oh,” StarLaughter breathed rapturously.
“And all you must do,” Axis whispered, “is to join WolfStar beyond the Gate of Death.”
StarLaughter stared at him, her eyes wide.
“A small, trivial thing,” Axis continued, still very quietly, very persuasively.
His eyes blazed into StarLaughter’s, with hope, she thought.
“A small, trivial thing,” she said. “He waits just beyond …”
“Just beyond the Gate of Death. Waiting, just for you. Loving you, but weeping that you made such
an awful mistake that threatened your eternal happiness together.”
StarLaughter thrust her hands against her face. “How could I have been so stupid!”
“Everyone makes mistakes. Fortunately, yours is easily rectified.”
StarLaughter nodded, her eyes filled with determination, and Axis slowly lifted his sword and
presented it to her in ceremonial fashion, blade in his left hand, hilt extended over his right
forearm crossed under the sword.
StarLaughter dropped her eyes from Axis’ face and stared at the sword.
“Such a small thing,” Axis said, “to be able to join him.”
She said nothing.
“Think of your love, and the joy that will be yours forever more, ever more. It is destined.”
“Destined,” StarLaughter murmured, and tentatively grasped the hilt.
“Destined,” Axis said.
Still StarLaughter hesitated. “But … but our son. I have to get my son! WolfStar and I can’t exist
without —”
“Oh, rest easy, StarLaughter. I am sure that your son will join you shortly. Don’t worry about it. But
there is one other thing …”
Axis reworked his expression into one of deep sorrow. “Of course, if you don’t join him soon,
WolfStar shall have to make do with whoever he can find. Zenith, I should imagine. After all, you sent her
with him. Another awful mistake.”
StarLaughter hissed in fury, and she seized the sword and drew it from Axis’ care. “She shall not
have him!”
“Not if you hurry,” Axis agreed.
Utterly determined, and driven by her love and jealousy, StarLaughter changed her grip on the
sword, pointing its blade towards her. Hurry, she had to hurry!
Without further thought she drove the blade deep into her bely.
She froze, then looked at Axis, her face a mask of bewilderment, her hands still
wrapped about the hilt of the sword. “It hurts.”
He shrugged a little. “Death always does, it is part of the rite of passage, I think. Pull the blade free
then plunge it in again, twisting this time. Remember WolfStar waits for you.”
“Yes … yes.” StarLaughter tightened her grip, and pulled the blade free.
She screamed, and began to shake violently. “There’s … there’s so much blood.”
She took a gasping, sobbing breath. “The pain …”
Axis made no comment, but his eyes were bright with hate as they stared at StarLaughter.
“Why is there so much blood, and so much pain?”
“It shows that it’s working. Death is opening its Gate for you. Surely you will soon see WolfStar,
waiting for you. Go on, plunge the blade in again. Deeper, until you can feel it scraping against your
spine.”
StarLaughter frowned, then, biting her lip in determination, she took as firm a grip around the hilt as
she could, and plunged the blade in again, deep, deeper yet, her face contorted with agony
and determination and insane, misplaced love, and gave the blade a massive twist.
Her mouth dropped open with a low, wailing cry, and her eyes stared violently.
She stilled, shuddered, then dropped to the ground.
Axis stared down.
StarLaughter was still alive, but only just. “Can you see him yet?” Axis asked.
“He’s just beyond the Gate,” StarLaughter murmured happily, and died.
WolfStar was not pleased to see her at all. He fought, furious, but StarLaughter had her claws in
him now, and he could not wrest himself free.
Fate had bound them for eternity.
“The Field,” she whispered, and her fingers tightened around his arm.
And so they approached the Field, the husband and wife, their voices raised in acrimonious
marital dispute.
They approached the Field, but they did not enter.
They could not.
A thin, pockmarked man, incongruously dressed as a butler, stood before a latched garden
gate.
He crossed his arms over his chest, and in a stern voice he said: “Go away. The Field rejects
you.”
“But —” the husband began.
“Go away.”
“We demand entrance!” the wife cried in shrill tones.
“Begone!” the Butler roared, and the husband and wife flinched, and left, each blaming the
other for their rejection.
They were left with only one place to drift — the frigid spaces between the stars.
But even there they were not left in peace, for the stars spat at them, and the comets flung
blazing embers from their tails at them, and finally that husband and wife drifted to the very edge
of the universe where, in loneliness and hate and recrimination, they prepared to spend their
eternity.
Axis stared down at StarLaughter’s corpse for a very long time, then raised his head towards the
Hawkchilds.
They had finished feeding now, and one of them, StarGrace, hobbled towards him.
“If you think you can persuade us to kill ourselves,” she said, her beak rippling into pouting,
red-lipped form then back to horned abomination, “then you are very, very wrong. We have no
need to chase WolfStar into the mists of death.”
“Then I must perforce use a bit of persuasion,” Axis said, and, raising his head so that he looked
beyond the Hawkchilds, smiled.
StarGrace considered him carefully, then she slowly turned and looked herself.
And gave a scream of rage.
Advancing down the back slopes of the gully were hundreds of ghostly trees, their branches
weaving and waving into the dawn sky.
“Fool!” StarGrace said, as she whipped back to Axis. “They cannot catch us!”
And she spread her wings and rose into the air, her companions behind her.
Axis lifted his head to watch them … and smiled yet again, cold and hard.
Every Hawkchild had been trapped in the net of branches that had extended into
impossible heights into the sky. As he watched, the trees pulled their branches back down to earth,
dashing each Hawkchild into bloody fragments on rocks and into their own clutching roots.
Again and again the trees raised the corpses of the Hawkchilds into the air, and again and again