Somewhere else. Somewhen else.
I gasped awake to the sound of a scratching pen and murmured voices.
"—pulse steady now, breathing normal. Time of death recorded at 3:17 AM, miraculous recovery at 3:20 AM." An elderly man in pristine white robes leaned over me, his fingers pressed to my wrist. Behind him, a younger man scribbled frantically on parchment.
The physician pulled a small crystalline device from his robes and held it near my forehead. What is…? It pulsed with soft blue light and then he took it away. "Temperature normal." He frowned at the device as if it had personally offended him.
"Doctor Stellan," the scribe said without looking up from his writing. "Should I record any theories about the cause of recovery?"
"Record that it defies medical explanation." The physician released my wrist and stepped back. "The princess appears to be in…perfect health." They said more, but they sounded far away, and my focus was drifting in and out in waves. Princess…?
When my vision cleared, I tried to sit up, and the world spun. Above me, a crystal dome revealed an alien sky scattered with unfamiliar constellations. Memory crashed over me in waves; two sets of memories trying to occupy the same space behind my eyes. I was Estrella Serra, who had died in Cordoba. I was also someone else, someone whose memories felt soft and dreamlike compared to the sharp reality of my true identity.
"Princess Callisto," Doctor Stellan said gently, "you've been very ill. Try not to move too quickly."
The room around me was like something from the tales Papa used to tell about Arabian palaces, even mixed with the fantastical elements in the storybooks I devoured as a child. Crystal orbs drifted near the dome-shaped ceiling, casting steady light that never flickered. The walls glowed with faint inner radiance, and beside the bed, floating shelves held bottles that sparkled like the inside of a geode.
Empty bottles. I could see the residue of whatever had been inside them; thick, luminescent substances that looked nothing like anything I'd ever seen.
"I feel fine," I said, because I couldn't think of anything else, and my voice came out hoarse and unfamiliar. I wasn't fine, though.
"Hmm." He moved to a cabinet that looked to be carved from a single piece of amber, pulling out bottles that didn't clink, but chimed like distant bells when he touched them together. "Nevertheless, you'll take two drops of stellar essence with your morning meal, and again before sleep. The recovery may be miraculous, but we'll take no chances with your health."
"Really, I'm—"
"The medicines, Princess." His tone brooked no argument. "Your father's orders."
He gathered his things while the scribe finished his notes. At the door, Doctor Stellan paused. "Rest well, Princess. And perhaps... avoid any strenuous activities for the next few days. You've been through quite an ordeal."
The door closed behind them with a whisper of displaced air, leaving me alone with the impossible room and my fractured memories.
I slipped out of bed, legs unsteady beneath me. The floor was warm marble inlaid with veins of subtle illumination I couldn't quite describe. The muted quality of lantern light reflected by the surface of my favorite pond came to mind clearly. A sharp contrast to the hazy foreign memories of this room that floated around in my head as I continued to look around. There was a massive frame where a window should be and I leaned out of it to see the world beyond. Or, rather, I tried to.
My head smacked into an invisible barrier with enough force to rattle it, "Ow, ow, ow!" I whined as I reached up first to hold my forehead and then out with the other hand to touch the barrier. Not invisible, not really. Now I could see the subtle reflection in it and Callisto's memories welled up in my moment of confusion to help me. It was glass!
I was astonished. It was so clear that it made the world beyond seem more real than the room I stood in. In Cordoba, only churches and royalty had glass and it was usually colorful. Even when it was clear there were beautiful waves and bubbles like seeds in it that caused a dreamlike distortion of the world when you looked out through it.
But here! Here, I could see a city of impossible beauty spread across floating islands, connected by bridges of crystallized light that sparkled in the aurora-like dusk just before nightfall, riding on platforms glowing with soft magical radiance. And I could see everything as if I were standing outside. A feeling alien and familiar to me at once.
This was Vela. The memories were hazy, like trying to remember a half-forgotten dream, but I knew that much. I lived here, in this floating manor, in this kingdom where magic flowed as naturally as water and blended with technology beyond my imaginations.
And above it all, constellations I had never seen wheeled across the night sky. I searched frantically for Canopus; the brightest star in the sky, my guiding light. Before I could find it, a vital memory crashed into me, in the moments before I...died?
I don't understand, I had whispered. You will, it responded.
My thoughts became clear.
The Starless Night, it had called it, I recalled desperately, gripping the crystal railing. But when? How much time do I have? All of my careful calculations were done with my stars, not these alien lights that challenged my lifetime of knowledge.
A chime from inside the room made me turn. Someone was approaching; I knew it by the way the air shifted. I hurried back inside just as the door opened to reveal a woman in what part of me recognized as servant's clothing.
"Princess Callisto," she said, relief evident in her voice. "You're really awake. We were so worried. The doctors said you might never..."
She trailed off, but her meaning was clear. I had been dying, and now I wasn't. Simple as that.
I stumbled toward the mirror floating near a towering wardrobe I guessed held the Princess's clothes. My clothes, now. The face that stared back at me was a shock; not because it had changed, but because it was so utterly foreign to everything I remembered about myself.
Amethyst eyes the color of twilight sky. Pink hair that fell in waves past my shoulders, skin the color of milk.
This wasn't Estrella's face. I had been dark-haired and brown-eyed, perfectly ordinary. This face belonged to fairy tales.
But it was Callisto's face. Had always been Callisto's face, according to the snatches of memories that felt like someone else's dreams.
I touched my reflection, and the ethereal stranger in the mirror did the same. Whatever had happened to me, whatever that thing in the observatory had done, it had given me more than just someone else's memories. It had trapped me in someone else's body, in a story that had been written for someone else but now expected me to know all the words.
Into something that wasn't quite human anymore.
I'm wearing someone else's face, living in someone else's world, and no one even knows the real Callisto is gone. I thought with a chill that had nothing to do with the cool morning air.
"Princess," the servant said gently, not sure what to make of what I realized must have been strange behavior, "your family will want to see how you're recovered. Shall I tell them you'll join them for dinner?"
If I hid in this room, would that draw more attention? I nodded, not trusting my voice. I just needed to act normal, how hard could that be?
As the servant left, I sank onto the edge of the bed and tried to make sense of what had happened to me. I was supposed to be going to something called Astral Academy; that much I could remember with absolute clarity along with a sense of excitement that wasn't mine. Callisto, the real Callisto, had been ecstatic when she received her invitation by royal decree. Her emotion was infectious and I could feel the corners of my mouth quirk into a smile that also wasn't mine.
The Astral Academy was a place where people learned to use stellar magic, my newfound memories told me. It was a place where dreams came true.
It was a place of magic that would be useless when the Starless Night came and the stars disappeared, my real memories reminded me and the smile fell. I couldn't quite put a finger on why, but somehow I knew it was also where destiny was pulling me.
Perhaps from there, I would find a way to warn them all. In this world of magic, maybe there was even someone strong enough to stop it. But first, I had to figure out how to pretend to be someone I wasn't, how to fool a family into believing their daughter had simply recovered from a mysterious illness.
How to live with the knowledge that I was a monster wearing a dead girl's face.
A dead girl, my thoughts echoed and for a fleeting moment I wondered what happened to the body that belonged to me. Was it left behind? Would Papa know what happened to me? I moved quickly to wipe away an errant tear that rolled down my cheek.
No.Whatever brought me here must be strong enough to put me back. I just need to do whatever it wants me to do.
But it could have been a little less cryptic.
Outside the too-clear window, the alien constellations continued their ancient dance, beautiful and doomed and utterly unaware of what was coming.