by J. G. Kemp
“Mary, did you find anything here?” asked Elliot.
“No, just some more star charts, and one of those folding telescopes, and some… well… let’s just say… don’t look in the flour bin.” Mary shuddered.
“Bugs?” asked Elliot.
Mary nodded and grimaced.
“I don’t mind bugs.” Elliot shrugged.
“Ick,” said Julee, and she shivered her hands, like she was shaking off imaginary insects.
“Hey Henry,” said Ben happily, “did you fix the computers yet?”
Henry squinted his eyes. “Yes, but they can’t communicate off the island. They’re too old.”
“Well… at least they work with the camera.” Ben bobbed his head up and down. “I took some pretty sweet pictures of the beach today.”
Henry rolled his eyes and looked away.
“Hey Mary,” Ben continued, “did you tell him about the RFS—that’s what we’re calling it now, the Royal Fellowship Society—and the Andromeda constellation?”
Mary shook her head no.
“Can I?” Ben asked.
Mary nodded half-heartedly.
“Well…” Ben began to tell Henry everything—about Andromeda, and the island, and the letters, and the riddle. Mary walked back to the sink and watched the water flowing down the drain. It was clear. She put her hands under the faucet and let the thin stream of water run through her fingers. It was cold. She cupped her hands and let them fill up with water and she drank. It was wonderful. She drank more and more, handful after handful, until her stomach started to hurt.
When she had finished drinking, and Ben was done talking, she stood up tall and looked at Henry. “You were right,” she said calmly and wiped her chin dry.
Henry squinted at her. “So what do you think you’ll find by looking at a constellation?” He spoke like he still didn’t believe any of it.
“I don’t have to explain it to you,” Mary replied.
“Suit yourself.” Henry grinned and took an unopened box of crackers from the stack of food on the counter and walked to the door. On his way out he turned and chuckled. “Don’t stay up too late… princess,” he said and left the door open behind him. Mary scowled as he walked away.
“I know he wasn’t just hangry that time,” said Julee. “That boy is mean.” She turned to Ben. “You don’t have to be nice to him ya know.”
Ben shrugged and put his hands in his pockets.
“Why doesn’t he believe you, Mary?” asked Elliot, puzzled.
“He’s just like my uncle,” Mary muttered. “He doesn’t believe anything.”
“Well,” said Julee, “we’ll just have to show him then, won’t we?”
Mary smiled. She imagined Henry, cold and wet and starving, standing in a downpour, banging on the kitchen door, begging to be let in, begging for forgiveness.
“Can we go sit down,” asked Elliot wearily, “we’ve been walking all afternoon.”
They moved into the great room and settled on the couches as Elliot relayed more details of their hike, with frequent smiling and nodding by Julee, and additional mumblings of “it was awesome,” by Ben, along with some sound-effects and bird noises. At one point, Julee left for the kitchen and returned with a jar of peanut-butter and a box of crackers and she made a large pile of peanut-butter cracker sandwiches, which they ate eagerly.
As the daylight faded, Ben returned to the cave—against Julee’s wishes. He said he didn’t think anyone should be alone at night, and that he’d be back in the morning. When the girls moved into the observatory, Mary opened the dome ceiling and raised the telescope. Two points of sunlight, the light reflecting off Jupiter and Saturn, pierced the fading blue sky. The moon was no longer beside them—it had moved slightly to the east, and its surface was just over half-lit now. Mary took out the star-chart of the Andromeda constellation from her backpack and unfolded it on the floor.
“So… how will we know where to point the telescope?” asked Elliot. “It’s not like there are really pictures up there.”
“We can find it,” Mary pointed at the chart. “See, it’s in the northern sky. There’s the north star, and there’s Andromeda, it looks like a long skinny V; and right next to it is Cassiopeia, Andromeda’s mother, which looks like a W; and there’s Perseus, the hero, which kinda looks like a Y. Once we find Andromeda, we can aim the telescope, like I did last night. Let me show you.”
Mary climbed up to the platform and settled in the chair. “Stand back,” she announced before turning the dial on the control panel. The motor hummed and the platform turned.
“Wow!” exclaimed Elliot.
“Yeah… wow is right,” added Julee.
“And this lever moves it up and down, see?” Mary moved the lever up, and the telescope moved up. “I can point it at anything I want. And this little eyepiece is the viewfinder, so I can aim it perfectly before looking through the main eyepiece. Wanna see? I think there’s room for both of you up here.”
Elliot and Julee climbed up onto the platform. It was crowded.
“How about… Saturn first?” Mary said. Looking at the sky, she maneuvered the telescope until it was pointing towards Saturn and used the viewfinder to position it exactly. “Go ahead and look.” She stood up and let Julee sit in the chair.
Julee peered into the eyepiece and then jumped back. “No way!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide open. “Is that for real?”
Mary smiled and nodded.
“Let me see, let me see,” said Elliot, bouncing up and down and side to side.
Julee stood and Elliot sat down and peered into the eyepiece…
“Uh…I don’t see anything,” she said, puzzled.
“Here, let me look,” said Mary.
Elliot stood and Mary sat down and peered into the eyepiece…
“Oh, it’s moved out of view… or rather… we’ve turned away.” Mary positioned the telescope and stood up and Elliot sat down and peered into the eyepiece…
“Uh… I still don’t see anything.”
Elliot stood and Mary sat down.
“Okay, here you go.” Mary stood up and Elliot sat down and peered into the eyepiece….
“Uh… still nothing,” said Elliot.
“It keeps moving out of view. Here, try and use the controls to—”
Elliot spun the dial and the platform spun to the left like a carnival ride. “Oops.” She spun it back to the right and they spun to the right. “Oops again.” She chuckled nervously, and after a long time of jolting left and then jerking right and then left and then right, the telescope was pointed in a completely different direction than where it had started. “I’m not very good at this,” Elliot said bashfully. “You better do it.” She stood up, and Mary sat down, and in a few moments the telescope was pointed at Saturn again.
“There has to be a way to track something,” said Mary, “so we don’t have to keep moving the telescope, so that it follows the sky automatically.”
“Well,” said Julee, “what about this big button that says TRACK?” Her finger was hovering directly above a large button on the control panel labeled TRACK.
Mary and Elliot looked at it… and then at each other… and then at the button… and then laughed. When Mary had positioned the telescope, yet again, she pushed the TRACK button, and watched for a moment. Saturn stayed fixed, right in the center of view. The telescope was moving—slowly, precisely—fixed to the sky above as the Earth turned below.
Elliot finally saw the beautiful ring of Saturn, and Mary showed them both the surface of the Moon and the moons of Jupiter. The sky darkened, and the light from more and more stars shone down upon them. The girls gazed upwards in silence.
“Just look at the Milky Way,” marveled Julee after a time. “You don’t see that in Port Oceanside.”
“Hey Mary,” said Elliot, “I don’t see anything that looks like a chained princess. What should we be looking for again?”
; “It kinda looks like… two lines… like a long skinny letter V… or two legs,” Mary said.
“Hey Mary, before we look at Andromeda, can we look at the Milky Way in the telescope?” asked Julee.
“Sure.” Mary shrugged and pointed the telescope to a bright patch of the Milky Way and looked—
It was stars! The Milky Way was stars! The wispy, cloudy light that arched across the sky was made of stars—packed so tightly, so close together—thousands and thousands of them. “There are so many,” Mary whispered. She beamed at Julee. “Look.”
Mary suddenly imagined her little sister, spinning on a merry-go-round, but the spinning disc was made of stars—tiny stars, with black space in between—going around and around. She imagined running along side it, laughing, and then reaching out and grabbing ‘hold and hopping on. Around and around. She imagined the spinning disc growing bigger and bigger until she and Cassie were just tiny specks, with a vastness of stars and space between them.
“That makes me feel small,” said Julee as she pulled away from the eyepiece.
Mary smiled, and Elliot started bouncing again and pointing excitedly. “Oh, oh, oh… I think I found it. Right there, below those other stars that look like a W.”
Mary followed Elliot’s outstretched finger. “You’re right! And that’s Cassiopeia, and there’s Perseus.”
“It doesn’t look like a woman to me,” said Elliot. “Once I stopped looking for pictures, and started looking for dots connected by invisible lines, I could totally see it.”
“Way to go Elliot,” commended Julee.
Over the stick-figure constellation of Andromeda, Mary imagined a terrified princess, shaking with fear, trembling in the shackles that pinned her forever to the black sky.
“So… what are you going to look for?” Elliot asked.
“I don’t know,” said Mary, “I guess I’ll just look over the whole thing in the telescope, and see what happens.” Mary turned the controls and aimed the telescope towards Andromeda and peered in the eyepiece…
Julee and Elliot silently waited.
Mary moved the telescope again.
Julee yawned. “I’m tired, I’m gonna go sit on the floor,” she said and yawned again.
“Yeah, me too,” said Elliot, and she and Julee descended the stairs and settled against the wall while Mary continued her search.
She directed the telescope, bit by bit, scanning the constellation, searching the stars. There are so many of them, she thought, countless tiny specks of light, so many more than she could see with her naked eye. She searched… and searched… and searched, waiting for a clue, or a sign, or a memory.
The stars reminded her of nothing.
Henry is right, what could I possibly find by looking at a constellation? she thought after what seemed like an hour of staring. Her head was starting to hurt. She sighed and took-off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.
“Mary, what is it, what did you see?” asked Elliot tiredly from the floor below. Julee was sleeping, curled up beside her.
“Nothing… I don’t see anything… just stars… and some blurry spots.” She rubbed her eyes again. “My eyes are tired.”
Elliot stood slowly. “But… where’s the clue?”
“I don’t know… maybe there isn’t a clue… maybe we were wrong.”
Elliot yawned. “Well… what do we do now?”
Mary stared blankly at the observatory wall. “I don’t know… let’s just go to bed… maybe we’ll think of something tomorrow.” She came down the steps, walked to the switch, and pushed it—the motor hummed… the observatory closed… clunk.
The noise woke Julee, who mumbled something about the Milky Way galaxy, and the three girls sleepily stumbled to the couches in the great room and crawled under the blankets.
As Mary drifted off to sleep, she imagined the mythical princess Andromeda, fighting at the chains that bound her wrists, struggling, frantically, as a grotesque sea-serpent slowly emerged from the dark water, its mouth open, its fangs gleaming, its black eyes fixed upon her. She imagined the princess, cowering, huddled close to the bare rock, her face turned away as the monster slithered ever closer. She imagined the king and queen, Andromeda’s parents, watching in silence from the cliffs above as the waves crashed, and the terrible serpent slowly devoured their daughter, limb by limb.
Over and over the scene played in Mary’s mind until, at last, she fell asleep.
Chapter 15
Sand and Grass
Mary awoke.
knock—knock—knock
“Hellooooo,” Ben was shouting from the back door.
The three girls were sprawled out on the couches. Julee was snoring softly, and Elliot was face-down in a pillow.
Mary put on her glasses and slowly shuffled to the kitchen. Ben, in his green pocket-covered vest, with his big backpack strapped to his shoulders and the camera slung around his neck, smiled and waved at her through the window.
“Did you find anything?” he asked eagerly as Mary opened the door. He walked straight to the pile of food and began digging through it.
“No… nothing,” said Mary, and she grasped the curls that were dangling on her cheeks and tucked them behind her ears. “There was nothing there.”
Ben looked into her eyes. “Well…,” he said, trying to sound encouraging, “do you wanna explore the island today?” He looked back at the food. “Maybe we’ll find something. I was thinking we could go back to the beach and head south this time—since north was an impasse. Oh yummy, want some muffins?” He opened a box and took out a muffin wrapped in plastic.
“Yeah,” Mary answered, “that sounds good.”
Ben paused. “Er… about the muffin or heading south?” He smiled.
Mary smiled back. “Both,” she laughed.
The swinging doors flung open. “Wild, you wake up too early,” said Julee, yawning. She noticed the muffins, and Ben tossed her one over the counter. He tossed one to Mary also.
“You better eat fast,” he winked, “we’re gonna go south today.”
Julee pretended to glare at him while she very slowly unwrapped the plastic and very slowly brought the muffin to her mouth and very slowly took a bite and chewed… very slowly.
The swinging doors opened again, and Elliot stumbled in, rubbing her eyes. Her black hair was sticking straight out on one side. “What’s going on?” She yawned and hoisted herself onto the counter.
“We’re gonna explore again,” said Ben, “south along the beach.”
“Oh, I like the beach,” said Elliot happily. “Mary, are you coming?” Mary nodded and Elliot’s eyes brightened. “We can look for shells!”
Mary smiled. She turned to Ben. “Is Henry still in the cave?”
“Yeah, he’s trying to fix something else now. I think he really likes it in there, with all those broken parts and gadgets. I doubt he’d want to explore the island with us.”
“Well that’s good,” said Mary, “I wouldn’t want him to come anyway.”
After their fill of breakfast, the three girls went to Annie Andromeda’s dresser to look for clean clothes. Most were too big for Elliot, but nearly everything fit Julee, and only the floor-length dresses were too long for Mary. Elliot kept her jeans but traded her floral-print t-shirt for a big white shirt that had blue stripes; she tied a knot in the shirt so it wouldn’t hang down past her knees. Julee traded her colorful summer-dress for khaki shorts and a red t-shirt with yellow and orange spots that looked like splattered paint, and Mary changed into a knee-length summer dress that was light-purple covered in little yellow stars. There was even a drawer of clean socks.
Julee gathered all their dirty clothes and took them to the kitchen sink and washed them lightly with dish soap and then draped them over the shrubs outside to dry. She offered to wash Ben’s clothes too, but he said he could wait another day, he was ready to explore.
Ben and Julee both had water bottles, which they fille
d and put in their backpacks, along with the jar of peanut butter, two boxes of crackers, the rest of the powdered donuts, and four apples that Ben had brought from the orchard. The food went into Julee’s and Mary’s packs because Ben’s was already full.
“What do you keep in there anyway?” Elliot asked.
“Oh, ya know, survival stuff—a big knife, and a pocket knife, and a fire-starting kit, a compass, a poncho, a hammer with an axe on one end, a medium-sized knife, scissors, and pliers, a first-aid kit, a water-purifier, fishing hooks, some empty bags, a little shovel, rope, toilet paper, a flashlight with some extra batteries, a tarp… and… that’s it, I think.” He nodded happily.