Read One Bright Star to Guide Them for Free Online

the streets above and drew a line of people down the dripping stairs.”
    Sarah twisted uncomfortably in her chair. She shook her head, but did not speak. Thomas, staring at her without remorse, continued his narrative.
    “Tybalt made me put wax in my ears, for their songs were too piteous and beautiful for men to withstand, he said. I saw it all, I tell you! Men, women, and even children were filing up to the edge of the mire and cutting their own wrists with knives or razors or with their own teeth. The vampires lay below with upturned mouths, pushing and vying to drink the blood. It was ghastly! But worst of all, whenever a vampire tried to climb out of the muck, and join the humans on the sewer stairs, tried to become human again, the other vampires would pull him back down and bite him, to ensure he remained a vampire.”
    “Tommy, stop! Please! Tell me no more! What is it that you ask of me?”
    “Tybalt told me we needed the shard of the Mirror to defeat them before the vampires get too strong and rise up. They are agents of the Winter King; they cannot live in fertile or green land; they cannot stand to see their own reflections; they lose all their power once they see themselves for what they are.”
    “Is that all you want? The shard? Of course I still have it!” She got up and went over to a carven cabinet, from which she took a little box of cedar wood. She brought it back with her and held it for a moment in her lap. “I kept it for a keepsake. But if you must have it…”
    She unlocked and opened the cedar box. Inside was a fold of white silk; she carefully unwrapped a triangular shard of black glass. It shone and glimmered like polished black marble, a beautiful thing to behold.
    “Take it and go!” she said, extending it toward him.
    “Why are you afraid to come with me? What has filled you so full of fear?”
    She did not answer, but seemed to shrink in on herself, huddling.
    A terrible thought struck him. “Is your husband one of them?”
    “I don't know. I don't want to know.” She shivered. She tried to smile, but the effort was pathetic. “The good things in life, they are so weak, so fragile. Elfs, the tree-maidens, the little birds. What can such small things do to stop the onslaught of Winter?”
    “Have you forgotten? The flowers drive back the winter every spring.”
    “But not men,” she said, “Evil men are not hobbled by sentiment; beauty doesn't stop them. Flowers die. Even dreams die when we wake.”
    “No, dreams are the source of all strength. Men can no more live without them than they can live without air or bread. Even twisted men must harbor dreams, if only twisted ones. No, I will tell you what truly hobbled me: when I tried for so long to live without my childhood dreams. It nearly killed me. Now I walk in a dream made real, upon the path of Light. My steps are sure. Join me, Sarah. Step out from the shadow.” He stood up slowly, and extended his hand toward her. His hand was tanned and strong; the muscles and veins along the back of his hand stood out sharply.
    Sally shivered and shook her head. “All beautiful things must fade some day. You know that.” She sniffed and shook her head again. “Just look at me, Tommy. You see what I see in the mirror.”
    “Our foes have no strength at all, save what they steal from mortal men. They are shadows without substance, hollow women, vampires without blood. Without your fear to feed them, they have no strength at all.”
    Sarah said nothing.
    She did not reach for his hand, but stared at it in the helpless way a drowning woman might look at a hand stretched out from a lifeboat, too far away to reach, and receding.
    Tommy bit his lip and nodded. There was nothing to say.
    On the street outside, Tommy tucked the shard of the Mirror carefully into a fold of silk and kept it in a metal cigarette case. Tybalt rubbed up against his leg, as if trying to console him.
    Tommy sighed, looked down, and asked, “Do you suppose her