The symmetry of stars, p.1
The Symmetry of Stars, page 1
THE SYMMETRY OF STARS
Alex Myers
Copyright
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021
Copyright © Alex Myers 2021
Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2021
Cover illustration © Mike Topping (figures), Shutterstock.com (background texture)
Alex Myers asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008352738
Ebook Edition © September 2021 ISBN: 9780008352752
Version: 2021-09-16
Dedication
To Ilona, Again and Always.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The stars were …
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Acknowledgements
Also by Alex Myers
About the Publisher
The stars were creaking in the farthest sphere, shifting and arcing and drawing a dazzle of sparks across the rich dark of Celestial Space, tracing out the shape of a New Age. It would dawn soon.
And in that darkness, two Immortal beings slumbered. Humans are always reaching for words to explain powers they cannot comprehend: angels, archons, demigods, demons, muses. None of those words fit the beings that slumbered as the stars groaned. These two, bound together like magnetic poles, like sides of the same coin. Two beings invested with opposing forces: Nature and Nurture, forever linked to one another. Forever at war. What they are is powerful, complex, eternal. The one stands for Nature – the belief that everything is innate, settled, stamped in human flesh from the start. The other, Nurture – the belief that all is potential, coiled within a fascinating yet frail body, that the true human self is coaxed out through love, training, and care.
There is no tidy name for these beings, but names are important. Let them be called Godlings.
PROLOGUE
It must have been the creaking that woke us up. Woke me up. I’m not sure that the … Other one …, Nature, ever even sleeps. And I know they wouldn’t have woken me up if I had somehow managed to sleep through all this grinding and groaning anyway. No, they would have let the New Age dawn and set themself as its ruler, allowing me to slumber through those crucial, crepuscular hours when all matters were determined – only to wake in the impossible glare of a morning … a morning that was entirely theirs.
But luckily I stirred before the stars had fully settled into their course, before the New Age had been fully delivered. I woke and in doing so spoiled that Other one’s … my … my (though it pains me to put it so plainly) twin’s plans. Here, in the space beyond, neither of us need be burdened by anything so mundane as a body. We exist in our truer forms, a shapeless shift of colour, like the sheen of oil on water. My Other, Nature, stood gazing out at the stars, and just as sparks raced through the depths, so, too, did orange and red and yellow glare and flare across their form. I took this to mean they were excited.
‘Greetings, Other,’ I said. It was nice to see them give a little jump. But their form had smoothed over, the reds and oranges muting to blue and grey, by the time they turned and offered a reply.
‘Greetings, Nurture. Welcome to this New Age.’
Nurture is not my name. Nurture is simply what I am, what shapes me and how, in turn, I shape the world around me. The sound of myself – Nurture – emerged in my Other’s voice with a rasping, rotten taste. We really do not get along well.
I stood and stretched and went to my Other’s side, the two of us peering over the Deeps, which writhed and roiled, out into the expanse of the farthest sphere. ‘It has not yet arrived.’ The stars were still settling – bolts of fire now and then flaming out, sparks fizzling, and the creaking grated on as well. Even for us, it was an awesome sight.
‘What sort of age will it be?’ Nature murmured, a question that had no proper answer, that spoke of potential and danger.
It was difficult to stand so close to them. We are meant to be together and yet meant to be opposed. It’s not such a paradox. The world is full of such pairings. Whatever divinity or demonity created this universe must have loved polarity, dichotomy, duality. They loved, I’d say, twins. Some would say my Other was my missing half, that we completed each other. Others would say that we negated each other, cancelled one another out. I felt them strongly, repulsingly – every atom within me twisting away from them. But I also heard them, an echo of myself. Myself turned inside out, front to back. I fought to keep my form steady, a roil of calm green and blue.
‘A New Age,’ I equivocated. ‘Ripe to be ruled.’ (I did not need to say ‘by me’. My intentions were loud enough to be heard, or felt.)
‘It is my turn,’ they said. ‘In the last age we were both awake for, the rule was yours.’ They stared over the Deeps, their form drawn in and concentrated, thick enough to look like smoke.
‘Ah, yes,’ I said, sarcasm dripping from my every word. ‘It was ordained to be my age. But you horned in and interfered …’
‘Just once.’
‘A dozen times! You couldn’t keep your wretched …’
‘You were mangling things. I sought only to help …’ They pivoted, turning their attention from the Deeps to me. A shiver ran through me, a vein of dark purple. ‘Let us share this age, Nurture,’ they said. ‘We are … siblings … after all.’
‘Share?’
‘Yes. I will take the, er, left half of the world and you take the right half, and away we shall go.’
I hunched together, gathering my substance, anticipating a long argument (arguments with Nature are always long. One might even say, eternal). ‘Firstly, my beloved Other, the world does not have halves. It cannot be split like a melon. Second, even if we could divide it cleanly in half, you would still intrude. We know this about ourselves. We cannot share.’
‘We can do anything we want,’ they muttered. ‘At least I can.’
‘We are in a state of bonded opposition, you idiot. We exist only because we are opposed to each other.’
‘I know,’ they sulked.
I ignored their pouting, grey shape. ‘We are two sides of the same coin. You can’t crawl over onto my side, not without wrecking the coin.’ I paused. This metaphor (like most metaphors) was not exactly right. ‘Forget the coin. We are like …’
‘You can forgo the comparison. I know what we are. We are twins.’ Their voice curled unpleasantly around the word. ‘And like any siblings, we fight to differentiate ourselves. I am only myself because I am not like you.’
‘Exactly. So you cannot do anything you want. What you do will always be, in some way, linked to and shaped by your need to oppose me.’ That is how creation works – the power to create something from nothing … yes, it comes from playing opposites against each other.
They were still sulking, glooming over the edge, staring into the endless field of stars. ‘What would you even do with this age, if you were to rule?’ they said at last.
I relaxed a touch, let my substance spread out, washed through with green-gold. ‘Let Nurture reign,’ I replied.
‘Well, obviously,’ they snarked.
My threads of green-gold snapped back, flared orange. ‘If I were to rule … without your interference …’
‘I am Nature. I do not interfere. I simply am,’ they insisted. ‘It is you who nudges in and messes things up. Nurture. Coddling and cooing and shaping and meddling.’
‘Nature,’ I scoffed, and I couldn’t damp down the flickers of red that coursed through me. ‘You ought to rename yourself Neglect. I don’t meddle, and I resent that implication. I simply open humans’ minds to their full potential, allow them to see within themselves and others that they have the capacity to change and grow and develop. That’s Nurture. You idiot.’
‘Oh, good grief. Be quiet.’
‘Who are you to tell me …’
We both fell silent as the stars gave a particularly loud groan. Who were we to be making such a scene before them?
My Other hunched closer, their words little more than a hiss. ‘You’re ridiculous. Humans don’t care about capacity and potential. They care about hunger and thirst and power and …’
I cut
They gave a shrug, if a formless thing can be said to give a shrug. (I said it, so there. They gave a shrug.) ‘People are born. Some are strong and healthy and wise and they succeed. Others perish or suffer.’
‘That’s no kind of world.’
‘On the contrary, Sibling. I’d say it’s Nature. Human nature, at least.’
They had a point. Humans could be rather brutal. And simple-minded. In fact, if I had to be honest (which I don’t) I would admit that if you left a group of human children entirely alone to raise themselves, the results would be much what my Other had outlined. Which is why Nurture is so important. ‘We will never settle this. We can’t rule together – we would just … cancel each other out. And we’ve proven that you can’t be trusted to take turns and leave my age well enough alone.’
They bristled at this, a glisten of orange flares. ‘I don’t trust that you’d give me a turn, after having taken yours. Very well. We can’t share and we can’t take turns. So let’s fight for it. Winner takes all.’
If I had eyes, I would have rolled them (in general, I prefer being unincorporated, but this is one (significant) drawback). ‘We cannot fight each other. Or rather, neither one of us can win in any decisive way. That’s what it means to be in bonded opposition. Remember what I was saying about the coin, the sides thereof?’
‘I know,’ they whispered and I could feel – like a deep, cold shiver – their resentment and hate. If they could get rid of me, they would. Even if it meant getting rid of themself. They shook their form, like a dog in from the rain.
‘Let us … pick humans to be our proxies,’ I suggested.
They sparkled a bit, gazed back out over the edge. ‘Yes. Find two humans, one for each of us, and let them bash each other bloody.’
If I had eyes, I would have rolled them. ‘You are so predictably banal. We are superior to mortals, so shall we make it a bit more subtle? A little more substantial?’
‘Oh?’ Scepticism coated their voice. If my Other were to rule over this planet, they’d be sitting up on some throne, probably made out of charred human bones, munching greasy snacks while the world descended into utter depravity. And they’d declare that a complete success. ‘What do you have in mind, Nurture? That we gather two humans, have them hold hands and murmur supportive phrases to one another until one dies of boredom?’
I almost laughed. ‘Let me think,’ I said.
I shuffled towards the edge of the Firmament, to look down on earth. Clouds scudded below, grey and murky, and I was reminded of such things as wind, moisture, air. I turned and again stared at the stars; they groaned only intermittently now. The gears no longer shrieked. The age was slowly settling in. It was too early to perceive the scope of the stars’ realigned orbits. They would take their time to establish the new routes, the patterns that would stamp this age. They would rustle and shift through the dawning and then settle down. I turned my gaze back to earth, sat on the edge. From here, I could see the ripples of the ocean, the humped green and grey of mountains. If I squinted, I could bring into focus a ship cutting across the waves or the slate tiles of a towering roof. Humans. They are endearing. In their way. Mostly because they are, just a little, like us. A shadow to our True Forms, a reflection in a warped glass. We see humans and know both what we are and what we are not.
‘Let us each choose a set of twins,’ I proposed, slowly, the seed of an idea taking root within me. ‘They will be a sort of mirror to us.’
‘Charming,’ my Other smirked. ‘And will we use them as puppets? To test our skills against each other?’
‘Let us each raise our twins according to our … essences, our directives.’
They snorted. ‘Our Natures, you mean?’
‘As you will,’ I said, decorously (though my thoughts were not decorous). ‘Let us preordain a time when the two sets of twins will meet and then …’
‘Then they will bash each other?’ my Other said hopefully.
‘What would be the point of them bashing each other at some future interval rather than having two idiots bash each other right now?’
‘Well, I suppose that we’d have the pleasure of anticipating …’
‘That was a rhetorical question. No … we need to have a contest that truly pits our essences against each other. Your twins will be ruled and raised all Nature. My twins will be fully nurtured.’
My Other leaned back, stretching their form out along the Firmament, staring up at the stars, at the velvety Deeps. ‘I see,’ they said. ‘The twins should mature at about the time the age settles in. And when they are mature, what then? They meet and …’ I prepared to interject before they could say bash each other, but to my surprise they continued in another vein. ‘The twins will compete in the three areas of human ability – strong body, strong mind, strong spirit,’ they said.
I nodded. ‘That is good. But there are many possible contests that might test such abilities.’
My Other waved a tendril at me, a flare of amused yellow. ‘You fuss over the details.’
‘That’s a nurturer’s way,’ I glowed.
‘Very well. I can see that you won’t be appeased. Shall we cast lots?’ They gathered their substance and began to search around, groping at the surface of the Firmament and finally coming up with a hefty chunk of rock. This gave me pause, and I prepared to dodge; it would not be out of the question for my Other to grow tired of this conversation and try to resolve matters by bashing my head in (metaphorically; I have no head). But, no, they simply turned the rock one way, then the other, and then gently tapped it. The rock obligingly split into dozens of thin leaves; they spread the stone leaves towards me. ‘For each area – body, mind, spirit – let us each inscribe three of these lots. Then we will cast, one area at a time, to set the … nature … of each contest’. For each of the three areas, and then cast to determine.’
‘Agreed.’
‘A test to determine strength of body,’ they said.
I formed a tendril and pressed it against the rock, paused. What would be timeless, fair, worthy contests that measured strength and fortitude … weight-lifting, I inscribed on one leaf. Sprinting, I wrote on another. A bit of doubt crept in. What if my twins weren’t able in body? What if, despite my nurture, they couldn’t run fast? Well, this was only one avenue of competition. They might fail here and win in the others … I inscribed wrestling on the third. It seemed like a classic. Then I dropped my three stones into my Other’s outstretched tendril. They shook their form vigorously, the stones rattling, and tossed all six into the air. I reached out and plucked one, letting the others clatter to the Firmament. We leaned close to read the inscription: trial by combat; using whatever the arms of the era are. I groaned. That would be what my Other wanted. Bashing, by another name. I stooped down to collect the other chips. Goodbye, foot race. Goodbye, weight-lifting. Goodbye, pure and noble contests. I turned over the other two stones that Nature had inscribed. Both read, trial by combat; using whatever the arms of the era are. ‘You put in three of the same,’ I spluttered.
‘That’s not against the rules,’ they retorted.
‘I can see we will need to settle the full rules. Carefully.’
‘Let us finish deciding the contests.’
‘A contest of the mind,’ I said, seizing my leaves of stone. My Other inscribed theirs with confidence, if not haste, but I hesitated, mulling. If my twins were feeble in body, beyond my capacity to nurture them to success, then their minds must be their crowning glory. (Truly, little is beyond my ability to nurture to success, but when dealing with my Other, it is best to be cautious … they never are.) Mathematics, I inscribed, my letters growing cramped as I added, computing without aid algebraic equations of fifteen digits. Ah, that was a good one. Navigation, I wrote, using tools only of their own construction and the earth’s features. Pleasing. I pondered, staring into the Deeps. Strong mind. Deep mind. I didn’t want some mechanistic memorization, rote-learned … no, something with texture, richness. Extemporaneous poetic composition with metric and rhyming structures, according to aesthetics of the era.
This time, my Other dropped their leaves into my outstretched tendril. I shook and tossed and they plucked one from the air, turning it over so that I could see that it read: Story-telling. Of original invention.
