The Path of Minor Planets: A Novel

by Greer, Andrew Sean

  Now he was out into the humid shadow of the jungle. The path lay there before him, nothing more than dry gold grass flattened by passing feet, shining where it left the trees and went into the sunlight, but it crunched satisfyingly under his shoes. A few yards away stood that same grove of sealing-wax palms he’d seen before, bending in the breeze, flashing their gaudy stems among the leaves. He stood and rested. The grass smelled dry and good against the muggy scent of the jungle. For one last time, he let himself pretend things had gone differently. That quantum physics was correct, and all the ways that life can go—it goes there. Not time as a woman, picking up our choices one by one, but as the wind, which touches everything at once. A pact, a sandal stepping from the shade, now.

  He heard a rustle in the leaves before him. Two birds flew out of the shadows and landed on a vine, trying to find footing before they looped again into the sky. He watched them as they crossed one particular point of blue. Where the comet lay. It couldn’t be seen in daylight, but he of course knew where it would be: just there, beside that cloud. Not far off, but invisible, and moving away. He knew the fate that nobody on the overlook would speak of; he had noted the late arrival, done the calculations, and seen the obvious. It would not return. It was headed on a parabola out of this system forever. The last of Comet Swift-Manday, and of his own, Lanham-Spivak, which he knew now was lost as well.

  The shooting stars, though, would return. Every year, on this day, as always, Earth would continue to turn through that trail of dust, and so the meteors would continue as well. But not forever. With no comet to replenish it, the meteor shower would begin to fade. Gradually, there would be fewer falling stars each year, until the day arrived when they were all in their graves—Manday, Eli, Lydia, all of them—and some boy might look up on this night, from this overlook, and notice nothing but the bright, still stars. The sky, Eli thought as he watched the hidden comet, even that forgets.

  A breeze cooled his face and he looked down, staring at the bower of the palms. A few dead flowers had broken loose from a vine and fallen into the wind, sailing a little ways down the path before settling into the weeds where dragonflies rushed and halted in the sun. The jungle was still now; just an orchid smell, and the scent of mud and rotting. He waited, watching the blue trembling shade before him. Parrots jabbered in the trees. It would be now.