Chapter 14. The Festival of the Stars

It wasn’t what Edwards promised.

Not a grand coliseum of joy. Not a bustling circus of delights.
No fireworks. No river of wine.

Just—

Six, maybe eight tents. Crooked in their setup, slightly off-center from one another.
Some canvas, some patchwork, a few made from the thick, heavy fabric of caravan wagons repurposed.
A hodgepodge of colors faded by sun and time.

But it was real.

Ydoc’s breath caught in his chest.
He could smell pies—the kind of smell that sinks into your coat, clings to your eyelashes, makes you remember people long since gone.
There was the spice of baked apples, blackberry crumble, and a hint of cherry liquor that made his lips part unconsciously.
Someone nearby was selling ginger cookies wrapped in wax paper, three for a copper.

One tent sold jewelry—handmade by one of the Gypsy folk, no doubt. Not the kind you’d find in rich places, but real. Honest.
Silver that caught the sunlight and bent it. Beads carved from painted bone. Little bells that made a soft jingle as wind passed.

Another stall had a mismatched collection of what could only be described as Wagon Home Furniture:

Rocking chairs.

Low wooden benches with sun-faded cushions.

Old crates with flowers painted on the side.

A lamp, the glass shade cracked but whole, the light inside flickering.

At the center of it all stood the stage.

Built not of marble or polished wood, but of planks, uneven and dusty.
The only splendor came from the red curtains—tall, thick, and strangely majestic despite their weathered folds.
They sealed the inside from view. As if behind them, something sacred was being prepared.
Something for later. A secret worth waiting for.

Around the stage, hay bales formed makeshift seating in a haphazard circle.
A few folks had dragged actual chairs out—one clearly belonged to a dining room set, another was a folding beach chair, and one was a carved wood throne meant for a toddler.

There was laughter, though none too loud.

A child ran barefoot between the rows of hay. A woman called after him, shaking a cloth to dry.

Fireflies floated above the bales—in daylight.
Soft, golden specks of light that pulsed in time with—

Music.

Not from the stage—not yet—but from everywhere.

To the right of the pie tent, an old man played a violin.
And played it well.
His bow carved out a song that bent the air into a wistful, drowsy lullaby.
One of his strings was broken, but you wouldn’t know it.

Closer to the chairs, someone tried singing in harmony—though it came out as squawking.
Like birds fighting. Or goblins rehearsing an opera.

Still, they laughed through it.
Tried again.
Missed the pitch, again.

And still, no one told them to stop.

Ydoc stood in place.

He turned in a slow circle, as if trying to memorize every thread of it.

This wasn't a festival made to impress.

It was a festival made to remember.

To remember someone.
Something.
Maybe even him.

He felt it all settle in his bones—

Like sugar on the tongue.
Like a note played just right.
Like a story that hasn't finished yet.
----

Okay.

So maybe Ydoc lied.

Maybe there was laughter.

A lot of it.
In fact, now that he was paying attention, this whole place sounded like a barrel of music-playing frogs getting tickled.

Everywhere, someone was laughing.
Everywhere, someone was dancing.
And not gracefully either—
No, this was the kind of dancing that involves spilling drinks and not caring, tripping over hay bales, and shimmying like your pants are too tight but you're committed to the bit.

Ydoc blinked at the color of it all.
The madness. The joy. The absolute mortality of it.

And that’s when he spotted…

The Goat.

A man-shaped lump of pure white fluff hunched on a hay bale like a boulder of stress.
He had the thousand-yard stare of someone who had seen too much academic paperwork and none of it was about goats.
His horns curved backward in elegant arcs, like twin question marks silently asking: “Why am I here?”

He wore a massive throw-over sweater—one that made him look like a sad moth in a cocoon.
Baggy pants. Mismatched shoes.
A bookbag beside him, overstuffed with loose papers, half-eaten trail mix, and several pens that no longer loved him.

He was scribbling into a notebook with intensity, like each word was keeping him alive.

Ydoc watched in curiosity.

Goatfolk were rare.
Where did this one even come from?
What was he writing? A field report? A breakup letter? A series of deeply emotional poems about cheese?

He might’ve been alone—

If not for the woman behind him.

Ah yes.

Cathy.

The Mean-Streak Catfolk Farmer of Deep Lilac Town™.
Muscles like steel cords wrapped in sunburn.
Only 3% body fat, the rest was pure stubbornness and calluses. (and only 90 Pounds!)
She moved like someone who had once punched a tractor and won.

Her voice was that of a chain-smoker gargling with gravel, yet still managed to be weirdly attractive.
Hair white as chalk, tied in a fierce working knot.
Overalls worn like armor.
She could skin a potato and a man with the same knife and attitude.

And for some impossible reason—

She liked the goat.

She hovered behind him like a judgmental storm cloud.
Half the time nagging him—
"Posture, goat boy. Stop crooking like a comma."
"Don’t eat the pen, I just got you lunch."
"You're scribblin’ like a gremlin again—slow down."

The other half of the time?

Preening.
Ruffling his fluff.
Brushing his ears.
Untangling his wool as if she were both annoyed and weirdly maternal.

The goat, for his part, said nothing.
He just scribbled faster.
The way a man does when he’s in love but also clinically afraid.

Ydoc couldn’t help but giggle.

This wasn’t just fun.

This was life.
Raw, colorful, dumb, heart-warmed life.
The kind you didn’t write songs about because it already was one.
-------

Just beyond the cider table—between a half-toppled pumpkin stack and a lazily waving scarecrow dressed in someone’s forgotten wedding suit—stood a towering figure dressed entirely in black.

He did not move much.
Nor did he need to.

Because
  Stray
 made presence into a weapon.
And the weapon was fashionably cursed.

He was tall—unusually tall for a shoony.
Six foot two, a head above the crowd.
His body was long and knife-thin, like something a shadow cast when the moon was shy.
And his robes? A work of horror couture.
Jet black and stitched with silver thread, the hems trailed just above the dirt—floating, really—too clean for someone who clearly wandered graveyards and backwoods.

The robe’s collar was high, stiff, and pierced with old bone.
And his sleeves—billowing like a cathedral’s drapes—trailed the scent of burnt sage, salt, and sweet poppy oil wherever he passed.

Atop his head sat a comically large witch’s hat, its brim wide enough to provide shade to a full picnic table, if not for the fact that it seemed to wilt dramatically to one side, like a flower sighing in boredom. The hat was dusted with charcoal powder, faded sigils, and the faint glimmer of crushed lilac petals.

But none of this—not even the fashion sense of a haunted tarot deck—was as arresting as his hair.

Hair like ink, black and slightly bluish under the sunlight, fell in silken rivers from his head down to the backs of his knees. It was gorgeous. Perfectly brushed. Slightly parted in the middle, but still hung in thick veils over his face like a curtain drawn over a cursed mirror.

Only his mouth—his long, curving snout—could be seen, perpetually twisted into a slow, knowing grin.
Not friendly.
Not cruel.
More like… entertained.
Or perhaps like someone who had read the end of a book and didn’t like the way you were walking toward it.

Stray didn’t need to see the world. He could smell it. Feel it.
He was a witch, after all.

The occultist of the gypsy town, as he proudly called himself.
He healed the sick with strange brews, and cursed the rude with stranger brews still.
He cured… unusual conditions.
Not diseases—delusions.
“Spiritual diseases, darling.”
Stray had once cured a man’s haunting by whispering poetry to a bottle of milk and having the man drink it during a thunderstorm. It worked. Somehow.

He was flamboyant. Mysterious.
Every teenager in the camp had crushed on him at least once, even if they feared he’d read their dreams and giggle at the embarrassing parts.

And—this much was well known—he loathed Ydoc.

Oh, not with violence.
Not with public spite.
But with a look. A subtle shift in breath. A glance of dread.

Whenever Ydoc passed, Stray would clutch his bell-laced satchel a little tighter, mumble a prayer in a forgotten tongue, and sometimes discreetly drop a pinch of salt or dried rosemary onto the ground behind him.

To others, it may seem unjustified.
Ydoc had never done anything to Stray.

But to Stray—
Ydoc was a bad omen in boots.

A walking blank page. A pause in the song of the world.
A man without a future or past—just a shape carrying sorrow too big for its body.

And witches?

Witches are terrified of stories they can’t read.
-----------

Before Ydoc had arrived—before his shadow spilled onto the festival grass like a stain of old memory—Stray had been laughing.

Not his usual dry cackle or bemused smirk. No, he had been laughing, loud and musical, the way only the flamboyant and fearless can laugh when the world is briefly theirs.

He’d thrown his arms in wide arcs, swirling his massive robe like a theatre curtain, twirling in little hops around someone so small they barely reached his ribcage.

The person was not laughing.
Not smiling.
Not even blinking.

But Stray loved him dearly.

This was Herb.

A small, white-furred Shoony boy, no taller than four feet—though something about the way he stood, firm and unflinching, made him seem much taller when he wanted to be.

Herb was fluff incarnate, covered in plush fur that made him resemble a stuffed toy more than a child. His face was gentle, shaped like a spaniel’s with soft drooping ears and a tiny black nose… and his eyes?

His eyes were not soft.

They were a searing crystal blue, too vivid for the world around them.
Unblinking.
Unforgiving.
Always wide open, like they had seen something too vast too young… and forgot how to close.

Herb didn’t smile often, nor cry, nor joke.
But he did listen.

And for whatever reason, he tolerated Stray’s dramatic antics with unshakable patience.

To the untrained eye, he might look like a child—but Herb was anything but helpless.

He was the Shepherd of Grolarchs.

Yes. Grolarchs.
The most infamous and unruly beast known this side of the Divide. A massive hybrid of bull and griffon, lacking wings but making up for it with cruel horns and an attitude most compared to a rage-drunk owlbear. Each one could overturn a truck, gore a tree into splinters, or reduce a grown man to bone mulch in moments.

And yet—Herb had dozens under his control.

They obeyed him with quiet reverence, not fear. As if they knew he had nothing left to give, no screams to waste, no joy to spare. Only patience. Only order.

He wore simple workman’s overalls, faded at the knees, stitched at the seams, and smeared with faint traces of hay and soot. Around his neck hung a whistle, rarely used. A piece of string tied around one wrist held charms made from bones, bells, and what might have once been teeth.

Stray, tall and decadent, would twirl like a storm around him—ribbons and perfume and squeals of drama—and Herb would never flinch. He was used to it. This was his friend. His only real one, perhaps.

They had a strange balance.

Where Stray was a blazing meteor of queer magic and manic joy, Herb was gravity—a soft, silent force that kept him grounded.

That is… until Ydoc arrived.

The moment the gray stranger’s boots touched the field and his eyes scanned the crowd—Stray gasped.

He froze mid-spin, his hat tilting wildly as his robes flared.
His long sleeves coiled back toward his chest like frightened snakes.
And with a whine like a frightened cat, he leapt behind Herb—hiding all six feet of himself behind his four-foot friend.

“Herb—! Herb he’s here he’s here he’s here—!” Stray hissed.

Herb didn’t move. He merely blinked. Once.

“He’s not doing anything.”

“But he might! He will! That man is the end of the story, Herb!”

“I thought you said he was the main character.”

“I was wrong! He’s the blank page! Worse—he’s the last page!”

Herb tilted his head slightly, his ears flopping with the motion. He said nothing else, only watched as Ydoc passed nearby, eyes wide with confusion and wonder.

Unlike Stray—Herb didn’t flinch.

He didn’t fear Ydoc.
He didn’t love him either.
But he saw no reason to lie about it.

“...Hi,” Herb said, his voice soft and airy, like dust slipping through light.

Ydoc paused.

Then, slowly, he gave the tiniest nod.
It was the first kind face he’d seen in this strange mortal corner of the world.

Stray peeked from behind Herb’s shoulder.
And immediately hissed.

“Don’t encourage him! He’ll think he’s welcome!”

“Maybe he is,” Herb replied, deadpan.

Stray grumbled and crouched lower behind the boy, peeking out like a giant bat cowering behind a kitten. His whole frame trembling—not from fear, but from theatrical anticipation of doom.

Somewhere in the distance, a Grolarch growled—perhaps impatient, perhaps protective.

Herb reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny peppermint. He didn’t offer it. He just held it gently.

Ydoc blinked.

Somehow…
Everything felt a little safer.