Seeker of Stars: A Novel

by Fish, Susan

  “No. This concerns you. You will stay.”

  There was no resistance in me. I played out the argument that would follow: Taz would argue on my behalf, and our father would argue on the side of the business. Salvi rolled his bleary eyes at me; he, too, knew what to expect. Taz patted my knee reassuringly as he drank his tea, wetting his argument.

  “My brother,” he began persuasively. “You need to consider—”

  “Consider?” Our father exploded. “I’ve done nothing but consider these last days and weeks. I’ve considered everything.”

  “But Melchi—”

  “I am Melchi’s father.”

  “Then do what is best for—”

  “I am sending Melchior to study with the astronomers.”

  The world spun around. My ears buzzed. I could not get enough breath. Taz’s mouth gaped. Salvi clapped his hands. Our father did not smile. This was no reward on his part, I knew; it was a reasoned decision he would rather not have made.

  “My brother, you bring me such joy,” Taz said at last, tears forming in his eyes. “Gladly will I pay for Melchi’s—”

  Our father dismissed the offer with a contemptuous wave of his hand.

  “The shop?” Taz asked next.

  “You were right years ago,” our father explained. “I am not so old yet. We will make fewer rugs than we have, but we will make enough. And in a few years, I will have a new apprentice.”

  “Who?”

  “My daughter,” he said, stunning us once again. “Little Daria will learn to help me.” None of us dared to ask, but our father answered the unspoken questions. “I have seen her, my Daria’s Daria. She is bright and beautiful like her mother. I am told she is good with her hands and smart. When she is ten, she will come to work with me, as Melchi did. Someday her sons or yours will learn to weave and dye.”

  It was unusual but not unthinkable for daughters to assist in family businesses, but never when there were sons. Salvi’s sense of duty rose within him once again, and he offered to take my place. Our father shook his head.

  “I considered that, but you have learned your routes well, Salvi. Melchi’s work suited him too, but I must find him another trade so he can support himself. There are fools who will pay to have their fortunes read in the stars, and fools who will read them. I still consider his hobby a waste of time, but others do not. It is the one profession Melchi would gladly do, and it is the one he is best prepared for.”

  I sat very still, as I did when waking from a brilliant dream, not moving a muscle, lest I break the bubble of joy.

  ~ 6 ~

  Journey

  When the caravan pulled out next, for the first time in my life, I was not among those left behind. As our father became a speck in the distance, I suddenly realized with a pang of dislocation that I was farther from home than I had ever been before and that I would go even farther. I marveled to realize that I had always looked up and not outward, had never desired to see other parts of the world. Still my eyes were open to each new sight.

  As our camels settled into their rolling gait, Salvi, who was driving, also settled back. He grinned at me. “You finally escaped, little brother.”

  I had. Six weeks of healing, packing, and sending letters to the astronomers. And money. Our father’s first letter had received a polite refusal, which choked me with disappointment and shock. I had been so certain that the barrier of my father’s will, now removed, had been my only one. Taz laughed and told our father to write again and to send the letter with money. Taz delivered the letter and came back with a letter signed by the chief astronomer himself, welcoming me to study with them.

  The city was four days’ journey across the desert. I was fascinated by the new surroundings: the unbroken horizon, the ripples of sand disturbed only briefly by our caravan before the wind covered our trail, the signs of water invisible to my unpracticed eye. I was curious about how Taz and Salvi navigated this terrain without getting lost. I lost myself each day in the eternal spectacle of the shining desert. It was only at night that I could relax: the stars far from home were still the same stars. Whether I was the same Melchi, I was less certain. I ran my fingers over the new scars on my right thumb to be sure of myself.

  The first night we camped alone, and I understood the appeal of nomadic life in wild spaces. Taz built a huge watch-fire, and we made tea and ate the bread and goat Reta had prepared. I had grown used to Reta’s cooking, I realized, and its pungent aroma stung me with a feeling for the home I had left already far behind. Yellow eyes peered at us from the darkness, but the fire repelled as well as attracted, and I did not feel afraid. When we had finished our meal and the fire had died down, Salvi and Taz motioned for me to climb to the top of the rugs piled high, where they had spread out skins and blankets. They insisted I sleep between them, lest I fall out. Accustomed as I was to sleeping on a mat on the floor, I acknowledged the wisdom of this plan. Nestled between them, under the stars, I also soon realized the comfort and glory of sleeping under my beauties, the stars.

  “Our moving bed,” Salvi joked before he rolled over and began snoring. “It starts out up high, and by the time the rugs are sold, I’m nearly home and ready to sleep on our father’s mats again.”

  As I lay high atop the rugs, without the village sounds I was so used to, the stars seemed closer, and I stayed awake, smiling long into the night.

  The next night could not have been more different. We encountered a caravan of desert people Taz knew. We were welcomed. Sweet wine and bread were passed around. I watched my brother become one of their tribe, laughing and dancing. The horns sang in my ears, and I felt the drums throb like a heartbeat within me. A man kissed a woman, and longing rose in my stomach. I thought of Leyla. I carried the petals of the flower she had given me the night before I left, the night I asked her to watch out for Daria. The night Leyla let me kiss her. When I walked home that night, for the first time I did not see the stars.

  Daria and I had had one of our frank discussions before I left.

  “Why are you going away, Melchi?”

  “To study the stars.”

  “Do they have different stars?”

  “No. The stars are always the same.”

  “So why go?”

  “If I learn all about the stars, Daria, I can serve in the king’s court and teach people about the beauties of the heavens.”

  She looked skeptical. “I’d like to meet a king, but I don’t think studying stars would be worth it.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m going to make rugs someday, you know, Melchi. When I’m bigger.”

  “I know.”

  “Because you hurt your hand. Otherwise they’d make me cook and have babies.”

  “Lucky you.” Daria would be glad to escape the usual role, and I guessed she would enjoy working in our father’s shop. More than I had.

  “And I’ll live with our father,” she continued. “And Rena will cook for us.”

  “Reta,” I corrected. She nodded and kicked a pebble with her toe.

  “Melchi, does he like me? Our father, I mean.”

  How to answer that? Daria knew that her birth had occasioned our mother’s death, but she had been raised in Aunt Babu’s household, where she had been petted and adored, with Salvi and me dropping by to play with her. How could such a child understand our father when he was a mystery to me, who had worked next to him for seven years?

  “You’re a much-loved girl, Daria.”

  She grinned. “I know. It’s just that he seems a bit …”

  “He’s serious.”

  “No. You’re serious. He’s … more, well, not … he doesn’t … does he know how to love?”

  “He …” I started and then stopped. Daria would have to do her best with our father and get to know him for herself. She had the strength of our beautiful mother, and I
was not worried about her—she would do well. It had been only a month since she had first spoken to our father. I marveled at the accepting nature of the child who questioned neither why she had never known her father nor why he had suddenly appeared in her life.

  The next two days we traveled on our own again, our camels stepping gingerly over the fallen rock on the twisting track. We stopped at three small villages, lowering our moving bed by seven rugs.

  The instant we arrived in a village, Taz would assess the situation. He would nod at Salvi, who’d spring down from the caravan and begin unloading rugs in front of the most prosperous-looking tent. Salvi would carefully lay the rugs in the sunlight, with winks at the girls who peered out from their tents, figs for the small children who ran up to touch his robes, and kicks at the dogs who sniffed the rugs. Taz was slower to dismount, and when he did, he carried a skin of wine and a broad smile. In our short journey I watched Taz share the skin with many different men, laughing and convincing them of their prosperity and their need for new rugs.

  At the first stop, I was unsure of my role and was happy to observe, but Taz would have none of this—he called me down and insisted that my presence on this journey was essential, that he had brought with him an expert rug maker. I could see that many of the men were impressed, bright raisin eyes fixed upon me. I hid my right hand in my sleeve and played my role, if awkwardly. Taz was exuberant in his enthusiasm and said sales had never been so good. Still, the selling had little appeal to me, and I realized that though I had dreaded the making of the rugs, I had enjoyed the quiet freedom of creating patterns in solitude while my mind roamed the skies.

  What I liked best was watching how well my brother was suited for his role as a merchant, a man of the world, a traveler. I was happy in Salvi’s happiness. I could see that he was now Taz’s equal and that the two of them had worked out a partnership without competition, though they were so much alike. I was glad of Salvi’s success.

  He was doing his part in fulfilling the pattern of our family. I had done mine reluctantly though well, but the accident had set me free onto the edge of a new life. Our paths were diverging, and at some level we knew it and had begun to grow apart. Already Leyla was an unspoken subject between us. I knew my brother had long admired her, but so had many others. I had not felt I was wronging Salvi, but twitches of his mouth when he saw her with me made me silent about her in his presence.

  Only in order to study the stars was I leaving. Though I was eager, the new life awaiting me was foreign and unimaginable. I realized this the night we made camp outside the city. Taz and Salvi had miscalculated the time and distance, and our afternoon nap had meant that the city gates were closed by the time we arrived.

  I was disappointed. The knot of anxiety and excitement that had filled my stomach all day dissolved into a kind of frustration. Taz simply shrugged, saying he was a better cook than any the city could offer, and set about making camp for the night.

  I wandered off toward the city. I could see lamps illuminated within. I touched the still-warm bricks of the city wall. What did these walls contain? What did they keep out? Would I feel penned like a goat? One thing I knew: the walls contained the knowledge I sought. What knowledge it was I could not say exactly, other than that I wanted to know it all. I had begun to feel similarly about Leyla. I wanted to know her thoughts, her dreams, her secrets, but when I asked her about such things, she giggled and said no more. I hoped studying with the astronomers would help me open the mysteries behind the giggle of the stars.

  My stomach rumbled, and I turned back toward our caravan. The stars were already bright in the darkening sky, and I was enjoying my beauties when suddenly I heard voices. Every muscle in my body tensed. Taz had warned of marauders. I hurried back to our camp and told Taz and Salvi. Taz nodded to Salvi and, with a warning finger against his lips, ordered me to follow him. We stole close enough to hear them. In the darkness, I could see a scene that reminded me of vultures we had seen picking flesh from a carcass on the road. A group of men dressed in dark, heavy cloaks circled together. We could hear a murmur of low voices and occasional exclamations among the cluster of capes.

  “Marauders?” I whispered. Taz shook his head, then motioned me to be quiet and to follow him back to our caravan. When we reached our fire, my curiosity could be contained no more.

  “If they weren’t thieves, were they necromancers?”

  Taz laughed. I would miss that laugh. “Necromancers? Of a sort. Melchi, those were your astronomers!”

  I was astounded. I had never considered what astronomers actually looked like, nor how they looked at stars when they lived in a city that was lit at night. What do they do in the day? I wondered for the first time. Would they laugh at my lack of knowledge, or would I impress them? Would they love the beauties as I did, or would they be sophisticated intellectuals? I wanted to see more, but Taz urged me to bed.

  “You’ll see enough tomorrow,” he reminded me.

  I gave one quick glance at the unchanging star, a touchstone so far from home, and turned in for the night.

  Part Two

  ~ 7 ~

  Star

  The torches had long been lit on the city walls by the time I walked home, the route that had become so familiar to me after a dozen years of living among the astronomers. But everything appeared new to my eyes now that we had discovered the star. I thought of my wife waiting for me, and once again I recalled the shock that had come when I married Reta. Since we found the star, there were days when I awoke with a sense of disorientation, wondering where I was and who was beside me.

  “A new star?” Reta said, frowning at the news that burst from me as soon as I entered our house. “I didn’t think that happened.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  Reta shook her head as she walked back into the kitchen to fetch my supper. When she returned, she was still frowning. “Why would a star appear?” she asked.

  “Caspar says it means something. A portent. A sign. Something big.”

  “Something good?” My wife’s hands instinctively covered her growing belly.

  “It’s not an omen. Balzar says it may signal a new order. Do you want to see it?”

  Reta’s hungry eyes betrayed her. With a sense of shame, I realized I had not invited her to look at the stars with me since we had married. I offered her a robe, but she shook her head.

  “It’s late. Let’s just go up on the roof the way we used to.”

  I put on my own robe and followed my wife up the stairs. As I climbed, my eyes instinctively sought the unmoving star to orient myself in the dance of the night. I realized I had not been to the roof of my own home in months, maybe years. Then, looking around, I realized someone else had. “Who—?” I asked.

  “Sometimes when you are out, I steal up here for a look.”

  I stole a quick glance at her just then, though I said nothing. I thought of the chief astronomer’s wife, who sat sewing and gossiping. That was what wives did, I had assumed. I had little opportunity to find out otherwise. Every clear evening, I carried the water clocks out of the city to observe and calculate the stars’ positions. When I returned, Reta was always asleep. When it was cloudy, I came home in the evenings, but I always felt I was disrupting Reta’s peace with my presence and rarely knew how to respond. Reta gazed at me from the pools of her eyes. This wife of mine surprised me with depths like the jet blackness of the space between the stars.

  I had begun to think quite a bit about that blackness since it had been pierced by a new and moving star. Before, I had only noticed my beauties and measured their positions. Now I began, for the first time, to wonder what was behind them. The new star reminded me that all was not fixed.

  My father’s death had rocked my sense of stability. Daria and Salvi’s wife running my father’s workshop had stretched my understanding. Reta’s pregnancy after we had spent years hoping for a child
was a new but strange joy. I knew it in the way Reta smoothed her robes over her belly and the way she crooned Hebrew songs as she went about her routines. I knew it in the pride I felt. But we never discussed it. We lived together, ate, slept, and loved together, but we were also silent together.

  Standing together under the naked sky, I felt almost shy as I put my hands on my wife’s shoulders to turn her in the direction of the new star.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed softly. “It is a new one. But it isn’t moving, is it?”

  “Slowly,” I said. “Not like the regular stars in their courses, but little by little each night.”

  “When did it appear?”

  “Three weeks ago.”

  “And it isn’t a comet?”

  “No.”

  Reta shivered—with cold or fear I did not know. I placed my cloak around her shoulders and guided her downstairs to safety and warmth.

  When we lay in bed a short while later, I knew from her breathing that she was still awake. I wondered what she thought about and how I might ask. In my studies, I had learned that when a bird hatched from an egg, it would follow any other creature that happened to be in the nest as it would normally imitate its mother. Our marriage was like that—the behavior of our wedding night printed indelibly on our future. Both were characterized by mutual courtesy, if not pleasure or intimacy. We were silent, circling each other, perhaps afraid to nest. I was nearly asleep when her hand found mine.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  ~ 8 ~

  Questions

  Reta joined me several times to view the new star—or, rather, I joined her. Several nights when I came home from my meetings with the other magi, I found Reta curled up on a chair on the roof. I had given her one of my cloaks to use for this purpose, and she was always careful to avoid getting a chill. On one such occasion, I remarked to her that our encounters reminded me of our old meetings back in the village.