The Trouble with Twelfth Grave

But then came her downfall. She fell in love with one of her prey, the Dark Star, the most beautiful star in all the heavens. The most beautiful and the deadliest.

He’d been born with a very specific purpose: to use his darkness to create realms with no windows so that those cast inside could never again see the light the heavens had to offer. They would live in eternal darkness and damnation.

But over the millennia, he had grown too dark. His immeasurable power uncontrollable. He became a threat to those benevolent stars who would rule their kingdoms with kindness and tolerance.

And so, the Dark Star’s Brother, Jehovahn, summoned the Star Eater.

The Dark Star, upon hearing this, grew enraged at the betrayal and ravaged Jehovahn’s kingdom and its people.

Yet inside he grew anxious. Impatient, even. He’d heard stories for centuries about the First Star. He longed to meet her. Hungered to battle her. Despite his immense power, she was stronger. Her strength surpassed any star’s from any kingdom in the known universe, and he wanted nothing more than to devour her whole.

But she made a show of truce. She met him among the rings of Saturn, stood before him in all her glory, so bright she nearly blinded him, and offered the Dark Star mercy if he surrendered to her demands.

He declined her offer with a shadowy grin, and what would later become known as the Battle of a Hundred Years began.

The harder he fought, the more ground he lost. She was his equal in every way.

With each new battle, with each new blow, she begged him to surrender. Promised him quarter. But he wouldn’t hear of it.

When it became clear, however, that he could not beat her, a thought came to him. He could make use of the beauty he was famous for. He could make her fall in love with him.

And so, during the next days of battle, he purposely let her get closer than was comfortable, for she could easily devour him whenever she chose. But he worked to earn her affection. He touched her face. Pressed against her. Brushed his mouth across hers. With each lingering touch, he courted her. Enticed her. Invited her to love him. Not realizing he had unshielded his own heart in the process.

His efforts were for naught, however, for the First Star had loved him always. Had longed for him always. Which was why he was still alive.

“Are you sure these are children’s books?” Cookie asked after a while.

“I was just wondering the same thing.”

We eyed each other a moment, then went back to reading.

At night, the Dark Star worked hard to create a kingdom within a kingdom just for her. A lightless realm within another galaxy far, far away from her own. One where she would live out eternity alone and miserable. Slowly going insane.

“A lightless realm?” I said aloud. “A hell dimension? Did the author mean a hell dimension?”

“What?” Cookie asked, absorbed in her own book.

“In the book, the Dark Star creates a lightless realm to capture the First Star. Does he mean a hell dimension?”

Cookie thought a moment, then nodded. “Think about it. What is hell but a place of torment? And how tormenting would it be disconnected from all light? Men have created tortures with that very thing in mind.”

“True.”

We went back to reading again.

When the realm was finished, when the constructs were in place, he pretended to surrender. Pretended to be in love with her. Pretended to swear his fealty.

She dropped her guard for only a second, but it was long enough for the Dark Star to cast her inside, lock the gate, and destroy the key.

He had won. At last.

The victory that had been so far from his grasp was suddenly his. But for some reason, he didn’t celebrate. He grew even more disenchanted with the world and even more tortured than he had been. Darker than he had been. For he realized too late that his love had not been a pretense.

And she was gone. The kingdom he’d created was impregnable. No way in and no way out. Thus, the Dark Star raged against all creation for centuries. Until he had another idea.

Beneath his Brother Jehovahn’s kingdom lay a lightless realm with fire so hot, it would melt anything it touched. But the Dark Star knew all the secrets of the realm, for he had created it. He knew how to handle the fire. And, more importantly, he knew how to steal it.

So, in a moment of desperation, he stole into the lightless realm and took the fire it held so dear. Without thought, he used it to melt the gates of the kingdom he’d created and release the First Star.

But she had been imprisoned for so long, the First Star’s mind had been compromised. She ran and hid among the other stars in the heavens, wondering if her mind was playing tricks.

Jehovahn had grown so angry at His little brother’s actions, He came up with a ruse of His own. He commissioned the Dark Star to create his best lightless realm, one that was even more inescapable than his last.

The Dark Star wanted to go after the First to explain, but Jehovahn told him He needed the realm immediately for a malevolent ruler that, because of the Dark Star’s imprisonment of the Star Eater, the only sentinel in the heavens, had become too callous. Too brutal.

So, the Dark Star created a lightless realm even worse than the last and encased it in Star Glass. He gave it to his Brother, explained how to open and close the gate, then went in search of the Star Eater. Went in search of his true love.

The First Star, having regained her senses and realizing what the Dark Star’s Brother was up to, begged Him to let her cast the Dark Star into the lightless realm of her own kingdom, for it was not as severe. Not as cruel. In fact, it was a virtual paradise compared to the one the Dark Star had unwittingly created.

If Jehovahn would allow this, she would do the Brother a favor in return. Anything he asked of her.

“Even though My little brother sent you to a lightless realm of his own making, trapped you in there for centuries, you would forgive him?”

“I would and I have,” she said, for she loved him, and love is forever.

Jehovahn allowed her to cast the one she had grown to love into the lightless realm of her kingdom, but the Dark Star, betrayed yet again, vowed revenge.

He easily escaped the First Star’s realm, only to be followed out by two other stars, malevolent ones, who used the lightless realm he’d created for Jehovahn, the Star Glass, to capture him and take him to the ruler of the realm beneath, the realm made of fire.

For stealing his fire, the goblin ruler used the Dark Star’s immense power, his infinite energy, to create a son. A son with a map through the void of the oblivion that lay between realms. A map that had been branded on his flesh. He would use the son to help him escape his lightless realm and battle for the heavens in which the Dark Star’s Brother shone. The heavens he would one day rule.

The son, now having no memory of his former life as a star, was tested at every turn. If he failed, he was beaten. If he succeeded, he was beaten harder. On and on, over and over, until he fought back. Until he learned to kill. Until the darkness swallowed him whole.

His goblin father, pleased with his dark son’s progress, watched him rise through the ranks of his army to become a general.

The father’s dream was getting closer and closer to becoming a reality, but the son could not completely forget the brilliant star he’d once seen. Glimpses of her flashed in his mind’s eye, and he longed to see her once again.

So, the dark son used the map to navigate the oblivion between the realm beneath and a kingdom he did not recognize.

Then he saw her, shining brilliant in the distance, brightest even among a billion other stars. She spoke to another Star, a familiar Star, and he realized she was going to be sent to that Star’s kingdom as one of its own. To advocate. To lead the lost.

Just before she was sent to the kingdom to become a guide there, she turned and saw him. And she smiled. She smiled a microsecond before she disappeared into the ethereal winds that would sail her to her new life.

Being closer to the kingdom, the son decided to join her. He gave up everything, even his memory, to be born into the kingdom as one of their own.

But his goblin father, upon learning of his son’s deceit, sent emissaries to the kingdom to foil his son’s plans. And so the dark son, born to good parents, would soon see how cruel his goblin father could be. For when the First Star was born into the kingdom, her departed mother’s soul shining around her, she saw him. She saw his darkness as he waited. She saw his ruination. And she was afraid.

For her sake, the dark son retreated to his life of misery, the life his goblin father had arranged for him. He would emerge only when the First Star needed him. Only when she was in distress. He would help her, but her fear kept him at arm’s length. Never to touch her. Never to know her.

But he watched over her as she grew up and fulfilled her duty to the kingdom’s Star. The Star known as Jehovahn.

“Are you finished?” Cookie asked, tapping me on a leg with her book. Having read the first one, she sat waiting impatiently for the next.

But I sat completely stunned. “I just don’t see how this can be a children’s book,” I said, repeating our earlier sentiments. “Much less an internationally bestselling one.”

“Is it … accurate?” she asked.