Cold Angel Days (Dica Series Book 4)
Page 17
After a few moments Nephril looked up, ignored her incredulous stare and turned to the drawing again. “This star be at a particular distance from us, Prescinda, one we purposely chose not to look beyond at the time. But, when we then set Leiyatel to peer deeper, this is what that same star’s path became.”
He did something with his right hand and the drawing changed. The outline now looked more like an apple. Prescinda stared blankly before asking, “So, what changed its path?”
“What indeed? The star, like many, is one of a pair, the other too dark to see. They dance one about the other, as does our world about the sun, or indeed the moon about our own world here, although these two stars are more equal.” He tapped the glass before giving her some time to think, but she again surprised him.
“So, if they swung about each other in the first two years to make the shape of a pear, who broke in on their dance after that, eh, and why?”
Nephril began to laugh, his eyes soon watering. “Thou hast a fine mind, mine dear. One I keep misjudging.”
He looked at the second drawing as his laugh subsided to a smile. “Thou art right, a gooseberry has indeed broken in to make an apple of their dance, and that gooseberry be yet another star, Prescinda, one but a little further away, beyond our first two dancers.”
He stretched over the desk to point with precision. “Here,” he said, tapping the glass that covered the drawing. “Here be that gooseberry!”
A click at Nephril’s hand made the two drawings appear one after the other, alternating in quick succession, the prick of light at the pencil’s point now clearly flashing.
“The gooseberry star be beyond where we could see at first,” Nephril began, but Prescinda leapt ahead.
“For our stars to dance a pear at first and then to have it change to an apple ... but, but only when we’re able to see far enough to make out the gooseberry star ... then...” She screwed up her face then lifted her eyes to Nephril. His smug look spurred her on to think again, to get her ideas clearer in her mind. Those eyes soon widened.
“Oh, by the Certain Power, you weren’t being metaphorical at all!” She swallowed. “For the two stars to have changed their dance, but only when we looked beyond them, must mean that we ... that we actually created...” She gulped, her voice lowering. “That we created the gooseberry star from nothing, just by looking there!”
By now her mouth had dropped, its tongue only held back by her lower lip. Her eyes, however, seemed drawn to Nephril’s, as strongly as two dancing stars would be to one another. “The Star Tower ... Leiyatel...” she at first tried, “just our stare through this tower into the heavens is ... is truly enough to prick actual star holes in the sky.”
She could say no more, could only lean forward and trace her fingers falteringly along the dance of the stars, adding yet more finger-smears to the glass. Not only did she look drunk but she felt it.
“Here,” Nephril said, waiting for her eyes to catch up, “here we have another patch of sky not far from the first. I know that what I do next will work for this whole swathe of the heavens has long been catalogued as having only ever been seen by this, our own true world. We know this, thou see, for all new stars made there do always cause perturbation of their neighbours.”
The drawing changed, this time to a simple spread of stars, annotated down one side. Nephril’s hand clicked at something, only the annotation appearing to alter.
“As before, mine dear, I will pass fleetingly between the two depths of seeing.” Another click at his hand and a small point of light started flashing. Prescinda leant forward, elbows on the desktop, finger seeming to feel for the new star beneath its tip.
“See here?” Nephril asked, pointing his own finger to within the annotation.
She peered closely but it all seemed unintelligible ... except, except for her name clearly written there.
“Congratulations,” Nephril beamed. “Say hello to the latest newcomer to our firmament. Meet the new star Prescinda.”
Nephril moved aside to give her some space of her own, but she looked up at him and asked, “Please, Lord Nephril? Can we give it a more appropriate name do you think?”
“More ... more appropriate?”
“Yes. Can we call it Geran, for that would seem far more fitting.”
Nephril smiled, sat back down and spent a few moments flitting his fingers across a panel. When he turned back to her, he said, “Star Geran it is. The first named star in several millennia, Prescinda. Dost though realise that? The first to take anything other than a simple catalogue number.”
“Can we see it? I mean with our own eyes?”
“Nay, mine dear, I am afraid not, but I can show thee where to look, within where all the stars be that man alone has long sustained.”
He stood, took a few paces and soon made what little light the Star Chamber had held slowly dim to darkness. Their eyes steadily revealed the vast spread of the Milky Way, arching into the sky from the south.
Nephril raised an arm and pointed. “There, Prescinda, there beside Orion’s Belt be Geran, unseen but real enough. A fresh, new star around which life may one day burst forth. Then, with their own gazes they will spread yet more stars across a universe Nature has so nearly reclaimed.”
The sky kept their gazes and their thoughts, although questions began to rise in Prescinda’s mind, questions she knew Nephril would have answers to. Ones, though, she felt happy to leave until another time, for the sake of that one first night of Geran’s own star.
About the Author
Clive Johnson was born in the mid-1950's in Bradford, in what was then the West Riding of the English county of Yorkshire. Mid-way through the 1970s, he found himself lured away by the bright lights of Manchester to attend Salford University.
In addition to getting a degree in electronics, he also had the good fortune of meeting Maureen (Kit) Medley - subsequently his partner and recent Editor. Manchester retained its lure and has thereafter been his hometown.
Torn between the arts (a natural and easy artist) and the sciences (struggled with maths), youthful rationality favoured science as a living, leaving art as a pastime pleasure. Consequently, after graduation, twenty years were spent implementing technologies for mainframe computer design and manufacture, and being a Group IT Manager for an international print company.
The catalyst of a corporate takeover led to a change of career, and the opportunity to return to the arts. The unearthing of a late seventies manuscript - during loft improvements - resurrected an interest in storytelling, and one thing led to another. A naïve and inexpert seed finally received benefit of mature loam, and from it his first novel - Leiyatel's Embrace - soon blossomed.
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