The Stargazers

by Allison M. Dickson

  It shouldn’t be too hard for you to find a boy to spread your legs for.

  The same stools were arranged out in front of the shop, and Onyx was perched on one of them reading a newspaper. When he spied Aster walking toward him, he folded it and tucked it under his arm. “Say there. You venturing out into the metropolis on your own already, huh? Brave girl.”

  If only he knew how very non-brave she felt right then. “Hi, um. Is Bryon here?”

  “Not yet. He comes in at nine. Wanna come in and have some coffee while you wait?”

  “Sure, I guess.” She followed him inside to a little sitting area where a glass pot sat full of the strong-smelling black brew that everyone seemed to drink in this world. There were various teas and chicories in Ellemire, so she was familiar with the custom of drinking liquid energy, but she’d never partaken. Had never needed to, really. Today, she decided to change that.

  Onyx poured some into a small white cup. “Do you take cream or sugar?”

  Aster didn’t know how to answer. “What do you recommend?”

  “Since you’re a girl…” He reached for a bottle that read French Vanilla Creamer, three words her tired brain struggled to identify. After dumping in a heap of the white powder within, Onyx gave it a stir. “Try that, and tell me you won’t be a caffeine junkie from here on out.”

  Aster took a cautious sip, minding the steam. It was sweet and creamy, without any of the bitterness she had expected. “It’s good.” They sat in silence for a bit, sipping at their drinks.

  “Is Ruby all right?” he asked.

  She debated over how much to tell him, but came to the same conclusion she did earlier when she considered sending a message home. It was too soon. “She slept in today. Had a nightmare last night. I think it’s the earthquake.”

  Onyx nodded, his thick shoulders slumping over as he sat down across from her. “Ruby’s always had bad dreams. Me too. They seem to run in our family. Our mom used to say we were cursed.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “She took it real hard when our mom went to prison. And I couldn’t afford to raise her right. She was getting suspended from school every other week for fighting and pissing off the teachers, and I had no idea how to be a parent to her. Hell, I’m still a big kid myself. Staying up until four in the morning playing Halo and smoking weed with your friends is no way to raise a kid.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Miss Ivy knew our family was in a bad way long before mom shot that cop. I was a bit of a hellraiser myself. The family’s always had a reputation. Our dad spent a lot of time in prison too, on drug and robbery charges mostly. Hell, all us kids were conceived during conjugal visits. Then he killed himself a year after he got out. Ruby doesn’t remember him that much, but I do. He was a real asshole, so no loss there. But I think Ruby got a hard time just because of all our dumb shit.”

  Aster nodded. “I can relate to having a poor family reputation. Mine isn’t very well-loved where I come from either. And I think everyone is messed up from dealing with it. My mom is nice, but she’s also submissive and afraid. My aunt has given her mind over to the weed. And my other aunt, she… She’s just really bad.”

  “I’m not perfect at this whole wise adult thing, but I can offer you some advice if you want to take it.”

  Her heart leapt up at anything that would lift her out of her terrible mood and give her something to hold onto. “Okay.”

  “You can’t worry about them. Take whatever help and breaks you can that will help you break the chain of their bullshit. Your family may be your family, but they’re not you. If they’re a bunch of head cases, you have to be better and stronger than them. When Miss Ivy offered to take Ruby in, I jumped at it. The kid hated me at first, but I think she gets it now. We were both better off apart. I got my mechanic’s license and opened this place, and she’s with her own kind. With the right friends, she might even get out of this cow town someday and make something of herself.”

  The idea that Aster might be ruining Ruby’s future by being involved in her life made Aster even more depressed. Onyx didn’t know that things had suddenly turned darker at the Oasis house, and if she did something about it, he wouldn’t have to know. Aster had to see this through all the way, for Ruby’s sake. “I’m very grateful to have her as a friend, and I will treasure her and watch out for her. She’s the only friend I have. Well, other than Bryon. And you.”

  Onyx laughed. “It’s all right if you want to get to know me better before calling me a friend. I’m not a bad guy, though. And I know Bryon likes you. I’m not gonna break the bro code and ask about the two of you, but I can at least say he’s working slower than ever since he met you, so that has to be a good sign.”

  The thought of Bryon’s kisses made her a little heady. She preferred to think that she wasn’t using him as a means to an end if she enjoyed his company so much. Just then, someone walked past the front window and in through the door. It was Bryon in his dark blue cap and coveralls. Her heart leapt up like it had been goosed.

  When Bryon saw her sitting there, his face immediately lit up. “Hey!”

  Onyx stood. “You’ve got five minutes before your shift. But take your time anyway. Unless we get a walk-in, we don’t have anything to do till noon.” He walked out through the door behind the service desk that led into the garage, leaving the two of them alone.

  Aster thought it was so odd how things like this worked. They had kissed, had shared some of their hopes and dreams. She was also now his “girlfriend.” So why did she still feel like she could hardly look at him? Part of it was Ruby, she supposed, but it was something more. She was going to wind up breaking this nice boy’s heart, whether she wanted to or not.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I came down here. I was going for a walk and found myself sort of heading this way automatically.”

  “If your walks take you here every day, that’s fine with me.” Right then, there was something about the way he looked at her that made her feel safe and loved. Maybe it was the unassuming smile or the honesty in his eyes that told her he was nothing more or less than what he appeared to be. When he furrowed his brow and asked if she was okay, she felt a dam in herself open up, and all her worries spilled out of her in a flood of tears.

  He stepped forward and pulled her into an embrace, and she breathed in the oily but somehow comforting smells in his coverall as she soaked the front of it.

  “Everything’s just so messed up right now. I feel so alone here. I mean, I thought it was going to be okay for a little bit, but now it seems like someone’s working to take all that away from me.” It was as close as she could come to expressing everything that was worrying her, but it was good enough for now. She sobbed against his chest, not even caring if Onyx or customers came in to witness her meltdown.

  He stroked her head. “It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.” Stepping away, he lifted her chin. “Nobody hates you. At least nobody that matters. And if they did, well that’s just something wrong with them. You’re awesome.”

  She felt the opposite of awesome, but she appreciated the kind words. Looking into his eyes, she wondered if she would be capable of doing what she was sent here to do, to take what she was sent to take. Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Taking his seed and then killing the flower it bloomed.

  If he knew who she really was, he would hate her.

  “Did you want to come over for dinner tonight? My dad would really like to meet you, and we’re grilling steaks. I could pick you up when I leave here.”

  “Okay, but I’ll just meet you here.”

  He smiled. “That’s fine. We can take the telescope to Carpenter’s field later too if you want.”

  “That sounds great. So I’ll see you later then?”

  He cupped her face in his hands and brought her in for a kiss. The giddy feelings from the previous day filled her head like a sweet vapor, and some of her worry abated. “Yeah, around four-thirty,” he said afte
r they broke.

  She walked out of the shop feeling much lighter on her feet than she had when she came in. Turning east, she decided to walk until her feet couldn’t bear it anymore.

  -16-

  The street went on for another mile or so before it became something more resembling the wide black ribbon of road she’d first rode on with Ivy. A highway. She was happy to be retaining at least some of this world’s terminology. There were no such roads in Ellemire.

  The rural countryside reminded Aster so much of home that she might have been convinced she’d walked between worlds again if not for the vehicles zooming by fast enough to ripple her clothing.

  Corn and bean plants covered most of the rolling hill landscape, dotted by old farmhouses, silos, and windmills. The houses were spaced much farther apart to her liking, and each large porch had a rocking chair or swing, where people probably spent their evenings taking in the sunsets. Occasionally, she spied fields of sunflowers, blue bonnets swarming with bees and butterflies. Bizzure bugs, or whatever they were called here, buzzed contentedly away in the trees, singing their praises to the heat. The black road absorbed most of the sun and made her skin boil. She wished she had thought to bring along some water before she left the house.

  Ivy probably had the other girls killing themselves out in this weather, and Aster wondered what Ruby must be thinking about her new friend’s sudden absence. But being out here also gave her time to ponder the possibilities of what had happened to Ivy in the woods.

  Everything Ivy said, and the way she said it, reminded Aster of her unpleasant aunt. But it was the chocolate in Larkspur’s whisker that kept coming back to her. It could have been any old piece of candy from this world, but she had delivered Oleander enough of the stuff over the years that she would always associate the substance with her aunt. The smell of it was imprinted on her brain. But the part that made her the most certain that something was awry, was the change in Ivy’s touch. Something had spoiled it.

  Had Oleander somehow possessed Ivy?

  Ellemiren laws strictly forbade the use of dark magic, and it was punishable by death, but there had been some instances of it that were now draped in legend. Occasionally, a story would float out to the countryside about a scorned wife turning her cheating husband into a rat or someone spontaneously combusting while playing with a noxious potion, but she had never heard of someone either taking over the body of another person or replicating someone else.

  That didn’t mean someone had never done it, though. And if anyone could, it was Oleander.

  “Why would Oleander even want to hurt me, though? It couldn’t just be revenge for what happened my last night home, could it?” She spoke aloud as she trudged along under the blistering sun, needing to hear the sound of a voice, any voice in all this quiet.

  Aster shuddered at the thought of returning to the house. But she had Ruby and the other girls to think about. She would not have their misery on her conscience. None of them had asked to be a part of this.

  But she couldn’t confront the woman just yet. She had no idea how she could even begin to fight. Oleander was a formidable witch. Probably the most powerful one in Ellemire. Of course, her mother and Nanny Lily would insist that Aster was the most powerful now, but she found that impossible to believe, as woefully uneducated as she was.

  She would give anything for their guidance right now. And some water.

  Aster stopped walking and gazed around at the arid farmland. In the distance, a giant rooster tail of dust rose up from the ground as someone operated a motorized plow, but that was the only sign of life. A little bit further along, she spied a small red fleck that after another ten minutes started to look like the canopy of a roadside stand. Perhaps selling strawberries or some other kind of fruit. Hopefully the owner would give her a kindness in the form of water.

  When she finally arrived, she gave an enormous sigh of relief and exhaustion. The weak breeze flapped the canopy’s red overhang, and beneath it sat an old woman in a floppy hat with silk daisies on the brim. She wore a huge t-shirt with the words Give Peace a Chance emblazoned on the front with a strange circular rune behind it Aster had never seen before. An old book lay in her lap with a giant magnifying glass on top.

  She looked up at Aster and smiled, most of the teeth remaining in her gums leaning like old gravestones. Cataracts clouded her eyes, and Aster understood the need for the magnifying glass. Some kind of skin ailment had chewed away at the side of her nose, leaving her with only one nostril. It was a face almost any stranger might have found horrifying, but Aster had grown up around women who looked much like this, and as such she felt more connected to home than ever.

  The woman was selling strawberries, as Aster had suspected, and their sweet aroma was intoxicating. The little red jewels gleamed in their green baskets. “Do you mind if I catch a bit of shade here?” Aster asked. “The heat sort of caught me by surprise.”

  “Surely you may. It’s catchin’ a lotta folks, darlin’ girl. I always say we gotta be prepared for what’s comin’, but just in case, I always keep a little extra.” She opened a small cooler next to her chair and brought out a bottle of water made wet by the ice it had been sitting in.

  Aster’s parched mouth sung with delight as the woman twisted it open and handed it to her. She was still vulnerable from her crying session with Bryon earlier, so this simple act of charity was almost enough to send her into another weeping fit. “I can’t thank you enough.” The frigid water was paradise on her tongue.

  “It comes at a price,” said the woman, gazing out at the desolate acres before her.

  Aster’s heart dropped. “Oh. I don’t have any money. I’m sorry.”

  The woman cackled. “I don’t mean you, dear girl. That water’s been paid for already and I ain’t lookin’ to make a profit off a thirsty child. What I mean is, the water in those plastic bottles, it comes at a price. This world’s dryin’ up fast. Thanks to the dark magic of capitalism and the free market economy. Creates the kinda greed that would make a man put Mother Earth’s water in a bottle and sell it for two dollars.”

  Aster had no idea what the woman was talking about. She chalked it up to yet another woe in a world that seemed to be full of them. Four cars sped by without slowing down. “Do you get many customers out here?”

  “Oh, yup. Usually come sundown and on the weekends ‘specially. They love Mama Iris’s strawberries.” She turned her cloudy eyes on Aster and tipped her a wink. “They say there’s somethin’ magical about ‘em.”

  Aster almost dropped her half-empty bottle. Some of it splashed out and wet her wrist. “Do… I know you?”

  Mama Iris shook her head. “Nope, ya don’t. Leastways not till now. I can’t see more’n three feet past my own nose, but I been seein’ the pink dot that turned out to be your head comin’ down this way for a very long while. Y’know what they say about the color pink in our world?”

  And by “our,” she clearly meant Ellemire. Aster might have answered her, but she was too befuddled to find her tongue. She shook her head.

  “Two colors give us pink. Red and white. With red comes determination or potential. It’s a color of deep power, y’see. White brings fullness and purity. When ya put ‘em together, they balance one another out. It brings contentment, acceptance, and most importantly, love. And that, my darlin’, is what’s gonna save this world someday.”

  Aster had seen little evidence of that in her life, especially with the murder of her future child waiting ahead like some creeping ghoul. “I don’t see what love has to do with it.”

  Mama Iris’s hearty cackle scared away a group of blackbirds that had settled nearby. “You and Tina Turner both, I guess. But trust me when I say you was born with a good omen sproutin’ outta that head of yours. It’s a sign of love and mercy comin’ our way. Everyone that’s seen you over there knows that.” She turned those haunted eyes on Aster again. “And I’m sure it scared a few of ‘em too. One in particular.”

  Aster fe
lt weak in the knees and finally gave into the urge to sit down hard on the ground. “Oleander.”

  “Mmm-hmm. When that ground started rumblin’ yesterday, I just knew someone was tryin’ to come through uninvited.”

  “Who are you, really?”

  “Call me Mama Iris. That’s what everybody else calls me.”

  “Are you… a Stargazer?”

  The old woman’s clouded eyes gazed far and long. “That’s a name I ain’t used in a long time. I been here too long, and I ain’t got much of a memory for things that happened b’fore that. That’s what happens when ya live over here. This world ain’t easy on most folks and time passes so much faster over here than it does there. But I do know somethin’ from my life of rebellion, and my sister Lily would probably tell you the same if she wasn’t so damn scared.” She leaned forward and Aster could see the little gray hairs sprouting from her chin. “There ain’t a damn job in this world that don’t got more than one way of doin’. You think you’re stuck, but a time’s gonna come when you realize, no matter how many people you got pullin’ at ya to do what they want, ya gotta go your own way.”

  Iris sat back in her chair and took in the new cool breeze that was rolling in. It lifted the brim of her hat back from her liver-spotted forehead.

  Aster gaped at the woman who was her great-aunt. “Nanny Lily had a sister? I never knew. Why didn’t she ever tell us about you?”

  Mama Iris didn’t look back, but her voice took on a sadder note. “I’m not much surprised she never mentioned me to you. We was close growing up. Even came over here together, but I was the only Stargazer that never came back. Never planned to go back. Anyway, she probably didn’t want to put any ideas in her girls’ heads about tryin’ to do the same thing. But Lily did used to come back for quick visits time to time, catch me up on the goins on in the family. Between that and Miss Ivy, I get the Ellemire gossip I need. The man who fathered her babies was the most heartbroken dog I ever laid eyes on. He was just a kid and didn’t have a dime to his name, but he was a good man.”