A Star Reborn

The sky shone with a blackness that made Jeanie feel small and easily crushable. A faint breeze brought a chill, and her already aching left knee grumbled quietly. But the breeze seemed to shift a cloud, and the tiniest cluster of stars peeped down at her as she steadied herself on her cane and breathed in the clear, cold Wyoming air.

This sky had brought her out here, away from the starless New York City, to teach, explore, and master the intricacies of space by day, and gaze with an unquenchable wonder at the heavens, so far away and unknowable, by night.

But maybe it was time to join a new orbit. The city had once held everything she needed, until she opened that textbook in highschool. She had settled that need, the passion for knowledge, in college. Then she wanted to apply it, to create and explore and show mankind places lightyears beyond what it had seen before. Her ambition’s telescope didn’t see far enough to think NASA an option, but at every company she applied to, her application seemed to run out of fuel before the final, crucial step, and she found herself jobless. She put that passion away and turned to teaching, and found the world she had searched for all her life. She moved to Wyoming and loved the big, open sky with all the stars arrayed before her like (as she was fond of imagining) courtiers paying a loving tribute to their queen, and students who shared and stoked her same passion for the world beyond where human eyes could see.

Now she had trouble clicking the slides on her lecture notes, the cold irked her where it had once exhilarated her, and grading exams grew more onerous a task with every year. But she could have so easily born all that. No, she was tired. A deep-seated tiredness that told her plainly and without question that she had more to offer the world and that it was time to find out what it could be.

She shook herself from her musings. Tonight is a farewell vigil, she reminded herself. In the morning, she would be leaving for her daughter’s home to visit for break. She smiled, thinking of the reunion, of seeing Joshua, her grandson, of how he might have finally broken his self-imposed silence and find the courage to speak.

It seemed meant to be, this break coming at this moment, and a particularly bitter wind seemed to say, it is for the best that you leave.

A shiver made her lower her eyes from the stars, shake her head at her own foolishness for being out so late in such cold, and pick her way carefully back inside.

“Joshua, I’m sure your star is beautiful, but Grandma’s joints are a little stiff today. I don’t think I can make it down the hill.”

           Joshua’s only response was a downcast gaze and a slump in his shoulders.

           Jeanie sighed. If only he’d say something. She gripped her cane more firmly and began to pick her way down the hill.

           A curse escaped Jeanie’s mouth as a patch of wet ground shifted under her feet and she plunged her cane into the mud with a squelch. Joshua looked scandalized and Jeanie, having recovered her balance, rolled her eyes and corrected herself. “Fiddlesticks, I said.”

           Jeanie thought she caught the glimpse of a smile on her grandson’s face, but he remained characteristically silent as he took her free arm and expertly guided her down the ground so treacherous to her but familiar to him.

           They reached the bottom, and Jeanie bent over to massage her left knee gently, every joint groaning in anticipation of the climb back up the hill.

           “Where is the star?” Jeanie asked gently

           Joshua knelt and scooped aside a pile of dead leaves.

           Jeanie gasped and nearly fell, clutching her cane and grandson.

           On the ground, surrounded ignominiously by wet, autumn leaves, lay a star. Well…not a star, exactly. No, this must be the imprint of a star, its heart.

           “It came to me, Grandma.”

           Jeanie swallowed her immense pleasure at hearing her grandson’s voice and kissed him softly on top of his head before answering. “Are you going to return it? It must miss home.”

           “It’s already done what it came to do for me.”

           Jeanie didn’t ask what that was; such knowledge was for none but her grandson, a secret too intimate to be divulged, even to one who loved him as dearly as she did. Instead, she laughed lightly. “What could it do for me, do you think?”

           Joshua shrugged, the pensive look that strangely suited his six-year-old face still directed towards the star.

           “Joshua, I’m too old for adventures.”

           Joshua squinted up at his grandmother, confused, as if the idea had never occurred to him that one could be too old for adventures, or else that he had never thought of his grandmother as old.

           “You can do it, Grandma. You know everything about the stars. Mommy always says so.”

           Jeanie blushed with pleasure; compliments from her daughter would never fail to touch her.

           The little boy took Jeanie’s weather hand in both of his and leaned against her. The two, the old and the young, gazed at the little glowing orb that shone through the few autumn leaves still scattered about it, its gentle light illuminating the delicate veins in each one.

           Feeling slightly foolish, she read off the time the star should depart (in ten seconds), the speed with which the star should travel, and the exact location at which she stood. The heart pulsed with a stronger light, the first indication of life Jeanie had seen from it.

           It rose from her hand, hovered for a moment at eye level, and shot away into the night sky, at, Jeanie supposed, her directed velocity. It quickly disappeared, but Jeanie continued to stare up at the night sky, her eyes fixed on the thousands of dots above her, as if her vigil would help the star reach its home.

           A book, perhaps, she thought suddenly. Maybe that is where my star is taking me. A textbook? Joshua would prefer a story. I feel suited to both.

            Finally, after perhaps hours of waiting—her feet cold, her fingers numb, and her neck cramped—Jeanie felt a small knot in her stomach release. A single star in the sky blinked a little brighter than before, and Jeanie fell in love all over again with those thousands of dots so far away.