Heartless by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

went back inside. A wood thrush, which long since should have been roosting, threw its voice to the moon.
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    That night, the room was too hot. Una’s coverlet was heavy, and even with her bed-curtains open, the air suffocated.
    Una lay in bed, staring up at her embroidered canopy. The embers in the fireplace cast a dull glow. The window curtains were drawn, but a tiny sliver of moon broke through, and by its silver light combined with the bloodred gleam of the embers, she could make out the picture above her.
    Her mother had embroidered it soon after Una’s birth. She had made it especially for Una, and if only for that reason, Una loved it. Bold threads of gold, which picked up light from the fire, depicted the contours of Lord Lumé surrounded in a glowing aura. He wore robes like those worn by the old singer who sang at all royal christenings and weddings, though those in the embroidery were much grander and fanned out like flames.
    Lord Lumé was the sun, and he sang the Melody.
    Across from him, picked out in delicate silver threads, was his wife, Lady Hymlumé, the moon, and she sang the Harmony. She wore robes such as Una had never seen anywhere else, and she wondered how her mother had dreamed them up. Una thought she would much rather wear the silver garments of Hymlumé than all the brilliant fashions into which the royal tailors stuffed her.
    Many sleepless nights throughout her childhood, Una had studied the faces of Lumé and Hymlumé as worked by her departed mother, and wondered about the songs they sang. The Sphere Songs, as they were called, had once been known in Parumvir, her tutor said. But that was long, long ago, back when people were foolish enough to believe in myths about the sun and his wife, the moon. They were pretty stories to be told and woven into tapestries, but nothing more.
    Some nights, however, if the windows were left open wide and she heard the whisper of the Wood and the occasional song of an evening bird, Una could imagine that she heard the strains of a song, the faintest memory of a tune that suns and moons might sing.
    Not tonight. Tonight Una stared at the embroidered faces, and her imagination could not dwell on songs or myths. It was too hot.
    Monster heaved a heavy sigh. He slept on the pillow by her head, and she felt him twitch in his sleep. Suddenly his head popped up and he started grooming his paws. The movement annoyed her. She shoved him off the bed, counted to ten, and felt him hop back up again. He returned to the pillow, plopped down, and flicked his tail over her nose. She pinched the end of it. He tucked it around his body, and that battle ended for the night.
    She stared again at the embroidered faces above her.
    It was too hot. Far, far too hot.
    She considered getting up to open the window, but her limbs were too tired. Too tired to move, too tired to sleep, Una was slowly roasting to death. Sweat beaded her forehead. Her mother’s ring was tight on her hand – so tight she thought perhaps the finger would fall off. Lumé’s face gazed down at her, his arms outspread so that the flames of his robe flared about him. He burned her with his unrelenting glare. She wished she could cover him somehow, wished she could escape his heat.
    The air shivered with vapors. She saw them moving in the moonlight, and even the moonlight boiled. She closed her eyes and tried to draw a full breath, but could not.
    When Una opened her eyes once more to look up at Lumé and his wife, they were gone. The night consumed her vision and pulled her into a dream.
    The Lady waits in a colorless world all her own. She sits alone on a misty throne – expecting no one, hoping nothing. Her world is silent but for a soft, subtle sound that she alone hears.
    It is the weeping of dreams that are no more.
    Long ages pass, and she listens and waits, her patient eyes downcast. Her eyes are the white of emptiness, the white of nothing, and her face is a mask of onyx. No one dares