Set the Stars Alight

by Amanda Dykes

  “I intended to come see you both, when I got back from that outpost. But I was too late. I read of his passing while I was away and sent you that email. But after that, when I finally returned to civilization, I didn’t want to just plop myself into your world out of nowhere. I thought you deserved better, Lucy. I had trust to earn. I was a stranger to you. I know I still am. So eventually I moved here to be closer, to look for ways to build that bridge.”

  His words shamed her. He had deserved better, too. In this moment, that bespectacled kid waiting in her garden with his hands stuffed in his pockets didn’t seem so far away. Her Dash.

  Her head swam, trying to absorb it all. “But why to Stone’s Throw Farm?” She looked out at the sea stacks again. “Why Edgecliffe?”

  “Your father told me about the farm.”

  She swallowed, unsure what to say. “You said—you read of his passing? Where? He didn’t want an obituary. . . .”

  “When he went silent for so long, I went looking and saw it announced on the Worshipful Company of Clocksmiths’s website,” he said.

  Of course. Tempus custodit veritatem. Time was truth’s keeper, in more ways than one, it seemed.

  “I’m sorry, Dash,” she said. “I could have reached out, too. I just thought . . . I didn’t want to be a bother, and—”

  “A bother?” He vaulted himself from his leaning position to stand at his full height. With a flicker of hesitation, he lifted his hand and let his fingers touch her jawline. Steady, kind, familiar—and yet . . . entirely new, this jolt it sent straight into her heart. It was the first time he had touched her in fifteen years, and something, in that small gesture, fell away. Broke into a chasm within that scared her, for it was the place she kept the treasures—and she had so few of them now.

  “I was so stupid then,” he said.

  “Then?” She quirked a half smile, attempting to lighten the mood. “Only kidding, I was so shortsighted, Dash. It takes two, doesn’t it?”

  But he remained serious. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life,” he said, “and letting go of you was the biggest. I got busy with my studies, my head filled with hopes and dreams and reaching for the stars, and I lost sight of the moon in the process. The purest light I know. Your dad saw that. And he loved me enough to whack me over the head with the truth.”

  Lucy laughed past the cinching in her chest, and it eased the strain. “He was good at that,” she said. “He gave me a few truth-whacks myself.”

  “He told me Stone’s Throw Farm’s view of the night skies couldn’t be rivaled in England—and that you would be interested to know I’d found my way here. So . . . I came. And I studied the stars, began to measure their movements against those in local legends and lore. Which, let me tell you, is bountiful around here.”

  “Just ask Barnabas, right?”

  “Oh, Barnabas’ll give you an earful tonight after dinner, if you stick around. And I highly recommend you do. But there was one tale in particular that caught my attention. That of a local girl, born on a sheep farm at the time of the sea flood—a mega-tide that comes every eighteen years. She vowed she would be there to greet it the next time it rose, but that day, she just . . . disappeared.”

  “No one knows what happened to her?” Lucy’s mind raced over the tales she’d studied of life by the sea—everything from riptides to sinkholes to collapsing roofs of sea caves made this a treacherous place. Treachery amplified, no doubt, by a higher-than-normal tide.

  “Not a soul,” Dash said. “I started studying records, studying tales, and though it’s still more hunch than theory, I’m coming to wonder if her story could have something to do with your Jubilee.”

  Now, that was a leap, and one that had Lucy standing at attention. “Why would a nationally known ship be tied to a nameless girl in a fishing village?”

  Dash leaned in, mischief on his face. “Perhaps the better question,” he said, “is . . . why not?”

  Dad’s favorite question.

  “I don’t know, Lucy. I could be completely wrong. But when I saw you were presenting at the committee, I hopped on that train. They should’ve listened to you. Your proposal was strong. You were strong. But foundations like those are notoriously conservative when it comes to risk-taking in their funding. And I thought—I mean, I hoped—we might be able to work together.”

  Lucy inhaled. “So here we are.”

  “Here we are.”

  “Dash . . .”

  “Lucy . . .” he parroted, his playful side coming back. She was beginning to get used to him using her real name.

  “Thank you for taking a risk on me. Really. I know where that meeting with the committee was headed, and it’s taken me a while to catch up to all of this, but thanks. I mean it.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, beaming.

  “If we’re going to be a team . . . I mean if we’re really going to chase down theories and chart the tides and stars, there’s something you should know. I’d never heard of Stone’s Throw Farm until you told me about it. But this place . . . I mean this very spot looking out over the Channel, and the Towers . . .” She shook her head and plunged ahead. “I found a painting of this hidden back home.” She told him of the floorboards, of the painting that she’d tucked snugly back in its hiding place.

  “It was this precise view.” She framed the empty window and the sapphire blue beyond it with her hands. “Only perhaps . . . up? Could it have been painted from the rooftop? There was a night sky, no ceiling.”

  “Did it say anything on it?” Dash asked. “An artist’s name? Maybe we could look up the artist, find more information.”

  Lucy could picture the carefully scripted initial in the corner. “Just the letter J,” she said. “And a title. The Way Home.”

  They looked out at the choppy sea, gulls tossing about above it and waves smashing over and over into the sea towers.

  If that was the way home . . . then heaven help the sojourner.

  twenty

  That night, after a dinner of shepherd’s pie, they retreated to the cozy stone hearth for dessert. With a chipped china plate of sticky toffee pudding and a cup of garden-picked chamomile tea in hand, Lucy let the paying guests take the few chairs and chose instead to sit upon the humble hearth. There beside the warmth, it seemed a place where happiness was born. She sipped the tea—it wasn’t the Earl, but she had never had chamomile so fresh and fragrant and found herself enjoying the sun-drenched blend.

  Dash was out, charting what he called the summer triangle in his observatory. A family with young children lingered after finishing dessert, and the other families dispersed, all appearing both weary and happy from the day’s adventures. Sophie bustled about with preparations for upcoming meals, and Clara fluffed pillows and settled into an armchair beside Barnabas’s old wooden stool.

  “Best make room,” he said in his gruff voice, leaning over toward Clara. “Company’s coming.”

  Clara’s rosy countenance melted into a pool of horror. “Barnabas Smythe, you didn’t!”

  “Ah, but I did.”

  A knock sounded at the door.

  Clara stood, looking around as if searching for a place to hide. Barnabas took her hand and guided her back to the armchair.

  “Give the poor bloke a chance, will ye, Clara? You’re as stubborn and flighty as a gull. It’s just Roger.”

  A man entered, guided by Sophie, who for all her taciturn nature and stone-faced ways held a glimmer in her eye and spared a wink for her sister—followed immediately by a quick eyebrow raise that told her to stay put.

  “Good evening, everybody,” the newcomer said. “Barnabas. Sophie.” He took his hat off and held it to his rounding stomach. “Clara.”

  She nodded and fell silent. Clara Smythe with pursed lips and silence was about as natural as snow in July.

  “This is Roger Falke, owner of the inn in town,” Sophie said, and then introduced the visiting family. Roger’s gaze landed on the only remaining guest in the room—Lucy
.

  “Oh, and Lucy,” Sophie said, “in from the city.”

  Not “Dash’s friend,” or “here on research.” Just plain Lucy, in from the city. Story of her life, wrapped in distant anonymity and disconnectedness since her father’s death.

  Sophie surely meant no harm, but her manner was markedly colder toward her than the other guests, and it stung.

  But she would not sink into that now. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Falke,” she said, springing to her feet to shake his hand, then returning to her place.

  “Please. Folk around here call me Jolly Roger,” he said. “Named for my father, and his father before him, back and back as long as anyone on God’s green earth can say.”

  Lucy tried to picture family gatherings in a cottage full of truly jolly Rogers. How the laughter must have tumbled from the windows.

  “I, eh, I got somethin’ for ye, Clara,” he said, as he pulled a crumpled paper sack from behind his back.

  Clara slowly held out her hands to accept the proffered gift. Opening the crinkling bag, her jaw dropped as if the crown jewels were inside.

  She reached inside and pulled out a muddy lump. Turned it as if it were sparkling beneath museum lights for all to see, unheeding of the bits of soil that dropped onto her gleaming floor.

  “Is this a snowdrop?” she asked, eyes wide.

  “Aye,” Roger said. “Or it will be, when you stick it in the earth wherever you like, Clara. Always seemed the right sort of plant for you, popping up to cheer up the world after winter’s dropped down. And that there is the Weldensea snowdrop.”

  Her hazel eyes flashed sheer disbelief. “But that’s impossible! The only place those are found anymore is atop the hill. That’s much too far for you to climb with your lung trouble, Roger Falke. Why, the last time we were there we were mere schoolchildren.”

  “Some things are worth a long journey,” the man said. “You know that, Clara.”

  He ducked his head, and Lucy’s heart warmed at the way the man’s face flushed deep red. He shuffled backward out of the circle of chairs, pulled a seat up to the table, and accepted a steaming cup of chamomile from Sophie. “Thank you, Sophie.”

  “A pleasure, Roger. You’re always welcome here. Always.” This, with a drilling look at her sister, who turned the prized bulb in her hands. Lucy might have been mistaken, but there looked to be a sheen of tears over the woman’s eyes.

  “I’ll be back in two minutes,” Sophie said, slipping out the Dutch door with a tin bucket. “Going to water the dog. Go ahead with your stories, Barnabas.”

  Barnabas nodded, asking the guests what sort of tale they’d like to close the day out with. They bandied back and forth about giants and bogeymen, dragons of the land and sea, and legends. As they debated, Lucy pulled a book from beside her.

  Life at Stone’s Throw Farm, it read. She felt Clara’s kind study of her and lifted her gaze, silently asking permission. The woman nodded, and Lucy flipped through an album that went from black-and-white photographs yellowed with age, all the way to Polaroids, glossy printed snapshots, and images more recently printed from a home printer. The mixing and mingling of the generations of Smythes warmed her. She wondered if she might spy a sneak appearance of some version of her father. How had he known of this place, to tell Dash of it?

  She flipped through the images, each carefully labeled. Clara and Sophie as girls in their ruffled Easter dresses, out climbing Welden Hill. Barnabas and the older brother, Jonas, waving and grinning from a rowboat. A photo of Jonas on his wedding day with a beaming red-headed bride. That same couple, dated a year later, with a dark-haired baby in their arms—Violette. Lucy felt kinship to the girl, and her heart broke thinking of losing both parents at once, as Violette had, according to Clara’s whispered explanations these past days.

  And then another wedding picture. Sophie looking adoringly at a tall, thin man, kind in the face and with a lilt to his smile that seemed to harbor a sense of humor. Other pictures followed of the same man as his health rapidly declined in the few years that followed.

  Clara had mentioned this, too—that Sophie’s one true love had passed away young, the result of a genetic condition. She hadn’t elaborated, but the pictures told the story of a courageous, kind man.

  And then a picture dated three years later—Sophie holding a young boy with his father’s grin. A toddler, and the paper next to the photo labeled Jesse. 3 years old. Pride of his mother. Legacy and namesake of his father.

  A small paper fluttered out. Newsprint, an obituary. The son Jesse, who had lived until only a few years ago.

  Sophie, prickly Sophie, had loved deeply—and lost deeply. Husband and son, both. Lucy better understood, now, the abrasiveness that cloaked the willowy woman who held the strength of the land in her.

  The photos continued for several years after that. Portraits of the Smythe children being assembled bit by bit in Lucy’s mind.

  Clara: bringer of biscuits and smiles and delight. Wholehearted cheerer at siblings’ weddings, though never pictured with a special love of her own, living a full and beautiful life spilling light onto everyone around her. So many of her pictures, from childhood on, featured a ruddy youth who was unmistakably a younger version of Jolly Roger. They’d been inseparable friends, it seemed.

  Lucy traced their childhood smiles and thought of Dash. A longing grew within her for Roger and Clara to mend this broken fence between them, and she thrilled when she saw Clara send a small smile over her shoulder to the kind man.

  Flipping through the photos, she imagined Jonas, the oldest of the siblings, who never met a stranger. A man who lived bravely and fully and hard and good and fast, and wielded a paintbrush as well as an axe. He loved his wife and daughter, that small soul he carried more often than not upon his broad shoulders, but she disappeared from pictures when he and his wife met their tragic end.

  Barnabas: serious-faced and bearded, his presence larger than life as he picked up hurt lambs and carried them far, regaling friends with tall tales, and lending his gruff presence to a masquerading softer side, where compassion ran deep.

  And Sophie, with quiet strength and rugged beauty, had dared to love a man with numbered days. And when those days came to an end, she’d given every ounce of herself to the son he left, a son who later shared his father’s fate.

  All this she gleaned as these souls soaked into her heart’s crevices. She sensed a family that knew great joy and deep loss, and that could perhaps understand someone like her. They seemed to make it their purpose to usher in people like her and make them theirs.

  “And that’s when the great sea dragon leapt over the stacks and disappeared into the cave, never to be seen again, the night of the sea flood. There’s none who’ll venture there now, for fear of knocking into one of the old sea towers and waking the dragon inside.” Barnabas had the guests grinning at his telling of the local legend. “And if ye’re lucky,” he said, “or perhaps unlucky, you may just catch a glimpse of his tail swishing about when the sea flood comes again.”

  The door creaked open, and Dash entered along with Violette. Lucy had seen her several times in the past few days, always on the outskirts of the farm or disappearing into some hollow or hedge. “Building hedgehog homes,” Clara had informed her. “Poor creatures are endangered, you know. Violette builds little hovels for them. Knows what it is to be without a home, I expect.”

  Violette looked upon them all seriously now and pulled up a chair against the wall, where the firelight cast shadows.

  “Ah, Vi, my girl,” Barnabas said, slapping his knee. “What’ll I tell them next?”

  Violette gave him a timid look that said she didn’t appreciate being called upon. Lucy had yet to hear her say anything and wondered if she ever spoke at all. But the woman seemed content in her quiet life, overseeing the whole place, always at a distance.

  Violette shrugged, stood, and left the room, and Dash picked his way carefully around the smattering of people and settled on the floor next to L
ucy’s hearthside perch.

  “Our Violette don’t talk much,” Barnabas said, his voice low, in a rare tone of compassion, with none of his usual captivating bluster. “Sometimes you’ve lived so much life, the words just run out. But she’s a good one, mark that. Still waters and all that.” He leaned forward and whispered to Lucy, “She’s scarcely left this farm since the day she arrived.”

  The girl—for Lucy thought of her so, though she had figured out that Violette was actually a few years older than she—reentered the room and settled on the floor. Something about her seemed as ancient and knowing as the walls that enclosed them. A direct contrast to her wide-eyed youthful gaze.

  She pulled a handful of marbles from her pocket, opening her palm to the young boy in invitation. He clambered from his mother’s lap and onto the floor, where he looked up at Barnabas. He’d taken a liking to the bearded man, who picked up a marble and showed him how to furl his finger to flick it.

  “Right,” he said, nodding approval as the boy mimicked the antic and set to shooting marbles with Violette, sending glass orbs skittering across the stone floor. “Now, last tale of the night. I think we need to hear one of those stories Dash is always talkin’ about.”

  Lucy smiled, sitting straighter and filling with anticipation that she’d get to hear something important to Dash.

  Her gaze landed on him, but the look on his face froze her smile. He caught her gaze with apology written so deep she could feel it stretching across the room. He dropped his gaze . . . and she realized no one else was looking at him.

  They were looking at her.

  She gulped. “Oh . . . me?”

  “That’s right.” Barnabas slapped his knee. “Dash told us of your father’s stories. And right sorry we are for your loss, I might add.” Barnabas mingled his apology with his gruff speech, and she hardly had time to acknowledge it. “So, tell us a story, eh? We could use some fresh tales ’round here.”

  Silence blossomed. The fire snapped beside her, and she tugged at her turtleneck, which suddenly seemed to be tightening its grip on her throat.