LITMIR.BIZ

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      “You should not die. And you will have help,” Algol said. She held out her arm, in its sleeve of cloth-of-gold, and the salamander slid out onto her palm, curling its tail like a cat.

      I will come with you, the salamander, messenger of the sun, said.

      “Why can’t you come?” I said to Algol.

      She looked rueful. “There is no love lost between stars and comets. They come to us like moths to flames, and we wink them out.”

      I paused, then I said, “Very well. I’ll go.” The salamander dropped to the floor and rustled over to me; I bent and picked it up. It sat in my palm, curiously heavy.

      The Behenian stars all stepped back. Algol raised her hand, and there was white fire between us, a wall like the one I’d seen in the study.

      It will not burn you, the salamander said. But it took a moment to nerve myself to step through it, all the same.

      The comet’s aura was all around us, a blue-green burn like the Northern Lights. I tried to take a breath. I failed, but I did not choke; it seemed I did not need to breathe. I wasn’t sure whether I’d stepped out of my body, leaving it behind in the castle, for surely I could not be really here; this was some astral level.

      Holding the salamander, I walked across the surface of the comet. It was like the frost of the orchard. I heard my footsteps crunch, but this too was illusion; there is no sound in space. Its surface was pockmarked with holes, too small to be termed craters. I had a momentary, and probably foolish, worry about twisting my ankle.

      “We have to find him,” I said to the salamander. It radiated heat, without burning. In this bright, cold-colored landscape it was a single spot of fire. “Do you know where he might be?”

       I do not.

      Akiyama-Maki actually looks a lot like a potato, and it is known to rotate, but the astral surface on which we stood was quite still. As my eyes adjusted to the flickering, streaming light, I realized that the comet’s male form was standing some distance away, with his back to me. A cloak of light streamed out behind him, mimicking a comet’s tail. I walked across the surface toward him. He did not turn his head. When I was closer, I started wondering how to proceed. An “Excuse me?” Perhaps a delicate cough? What I actually said was, “Are you awake?”

      No reply. Maybe if I tapped him on the shoulder?

      Breathe, the salamander said. Breathe.

      I faced the comet. His eyes were open, but blank and dark. I forced myself to stay put. Seen so close, he looked even less human than the Behenian stars.

      “Wake,” I said. “You need to wake up!” I took a breath, breathed out, and so did the salamander, in a cloud of cold-morning steam.

      Wake! the salamander chimed.

      “You need to wake up.”

      The comet blinked. His eyes flashed with a brief silver light. I could feel the warmth of the sun on the back of my neck. His long-nailed hand flashed up.

      “No!” I cried. “Don’t kill!”

      He blinked again, but he lowered his hand. “Who am I?” the comet said, wonderingly.

      “You are a comet. You are close to a world—to my world. Wake up!”

      I glanced up and saw the moon. It hung in the astral heavens, a glowing silver ball, and not far away the Earth itself was turning, all green and blue and white. I could see the dim lights at their cores, the signs of their aliveness, for this was not the true solar system in the physical world, but the world beyond.

      “Listen to me,” I said. “You are a sungrazer. In the real world, not this world of your dream, you will pass this red world above us—there is a faint chance that it will draw you in, but very faint. You will pass the Earth, and if you choose, you can meet your own end there. But it will be the end of that world.”

      “I do not wish to kill a world,” the comet said, with a trace of alarm.

      “Then wake up! Your dreaming self is dangerous—it brings the cold of deep space with it, and we can’t withstand that. And you might become confused and leave your path. Listen—can’t you hear the sun calling to you?”

      He blinked again. His pale skin was flushing with gold.

      Wake up, the salamander said encouragingly.

      “Wake. And we’ll all live.”

      And the comet’s eyes were bright as fire. He raised his hand again, in a gesture, and the salamander and I found ourselves standing in space as the growing tail of the comet whisked by. Then there was the sparkle of stars, Akiyama-Maki was waking up and streaking sunward, between Earth and the moon, and we were slowly falling.

      It was with regret as an astronomer that the astral solar system faded around me and the castle of the Behenian stars took its place. The stars themselves were waiting for us, still in their semicircle. Spica seized my arm.

      “You are safe. The comet?”

      “He’s awake.”

      The salamander flicked away. As one, the Behenian stars bowed and faded, returning, I presumed, to their places in the constellations. But Spica remained. She walked back with me, over the causeway, and across the fields. As we drew closer to the house, I could see a bonfire in the orchard, surrounded by moving figures. The bare branches of the trees reached for the moon. The air smelled of woodsmoke and frost. Overhead, in the clear heavens, a silver smudge was visible over Arcturus, blazing over the apple trees. Faintly, I could hear Stella’s familiar voice.

      “Look! It’s the comet! Look, mum!”

      “And you,” I asked the star, “your sisters? Will we see you again?”

      “Oh,” she said. “We are always here.” She pointed upward, and I followed her hand to where the fixed stars span on their never-ending wheel in the shining winter sky.

       Garth Nix

      Here we investigate a supernatural mystery in company with a village wizard with a dark past and many secrets of his own to hide, although, as he’s about to discover, none of them even remotely as dangerous and deadly as the enigma he’s trying to unravel …

      Garth Nix has been a full-time writer since 2001, but has also worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve.

      Garth’s books include the YA fantasy Old Kingdom series, including Sabriel, Lirael; Abhorsen, Clariel, and Goldenhand; SF novels Shade’s Children and A Confusion of Princes; and a Regency romance with magic, Newt’s Emerald. His fantasy novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of the Seventh Tower sequence; the Keys to the Kingdom series, and others. He has co-written several books with Sean Williams, including the Troubletwisters series; Spirit Animals: Book Three: Blood Ties, and Have Sword, Will Travel.

      More than five million copies of his books have been sold around the world. They have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today, and his work has been translated into forty-two languages. His most recent book is Frogkisser!, now being developed as a film by Twentieth Century Fox/Blue Sky Studios.

      Garth lives with his family in Sydney, Australia.

       The Staff in the Stone

      The low, dry stone walls that delineated the three angled commons belonging to the villages of Gamel, Thrake, and Seyam met at an ancient obelisk known to everyone simply as “the Corner Post.” Feuds

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