The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell

She went to the hearth and crouched to light the taper from the embers.
    Shielding her eyes from the light, she left the room. She wanted to see the stars.
    She wondered if her old astrolabe and any of her other possessions were still in the castle. She was afraid to find them, though; they must be broken like everything else.
    Perrotte reached the castle’s courtyard, and stumbled out into the mud, bare feet squelching coldly. She looked up, finding “the shining Bears at the height of the sky,” as one long-dead Latin philosopher put it, the stars that never rose and never set. The constellation of the larger bear, or as everyone who was not a dead Latin philosopher called it, the Plough, contained seven stars, by most counts. But Perrotte always looked for, and always found, the two-part star in the Plough’s handle, a double star that most people never noticed: a star and her sister.
    She thought of her own sister then, who had been newborn when Perrotte returned from the convent. She felt warmth toward this unknown sister, and guilt. Perrotte had seen Rivanon exactly once, and what she felt now made no sense to her, and not because Perrotte lacked imagination, but because it did not seem that anything that could have grown inside of Jannet could cause such feeling in Perrotte’s heart. She was a rotten older sibling, a poor protector. Perrotte had been trapped, first by death, now by thorns, and she had left Rivanon alone to be raised by Jannet.
    It struck her then afresh, like biting down on a tooth she’d forgotten she’d broken: the overwhelming grief and the horrible wonder of having been dead. The feeling of loss and fear were strong, even though her memories of the darkness and the stone beneath the chapel were fading. Each time she remembered, it was as though another layer had been scraped from a parchment, turning inked words and images into so much dust.
    Her memories of the time before that also grew fainter. Somewhere, somehow, she had eaten something. Someone had spoken to her, in the darkness of death; a soft hand had brushed her forehead; she had felt a mother’s love in that moment, when she had been fed something sweet yet tart, fresh yet moldering. Perrotte remembered: a woman’s face—her brown eyes—a red seed—
    It had all happened in a place so dark that it was hard to remember anything, a place so deep that it was starless.
    Except there were stars.
    Her feet itched to climb the tower stairs up to her old observatory room, but her legs wouldn’t take her. So she stayed in the courtyard, tilting her head back, back, back, and turned wide eyes to the stars.
    She tried to be as still as possible, but her heartbeat rocked her back and forth, back and forth. She swayed on the balls of her feet just a little. At first she fought the rhythm, trying to be stiller than still. But stars were not still; they had their movements just like the rest of the living universe.
    So Perrotte let her body rock with the beating of her heart, while her mind whirled with the circling of the stars, until dawn faded them away.

12
    Tower
    S AND OPENED HIS EYES . H E FACED A DIFFERENT WALL than usual. He frowned, confused.
    Then he remembered Perrotte.
    He sat up, twisting to look at the mattress cornered with his. Perrotte wasn’t there.
    He jumped from bed and went to find her, willing his heart to stop its frantic beating. He hadn’t dreamed her. He hadn’t imagined her. And she wasn’t dead again, just because he’d taken his eyes off her for the night. He would find her.
    He didn’t have to go far; Perrotte was in the kitchen, which was warm with the scent of the fire and cooked venison. Perrotte was crouched over the pot, occasionally stirring the stew. She smiled at him when he came in, and his heart settled.
    â€œGood morning,” she said.
    He nodded, not really sure what to say. He wanted to ask why she’d moved his mattress to the