by Amanda Dykes
“That’s right,” Clara said, stirring a pot sitting on a grate by the fire. “Dash insisted we have no light at first, but I told him, ‘You can’t look at burning balls of fire in the sky while you’re freezing. That’s too iconic.’”
“Ironic, Clara,” Barnabas said from his perch on a nearby boulder.
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
Barnabas rolled his eyes and smiled affectionately at his sister. “Right. Well, we have a great grand fire here. Clara was right. What’re we doin’, lookin’ at a fire while freezing our toes off, says I? Too spacely minded to be of any earthly good. So? Here we are.”
Barnabas grabbed a paper bag from a stack and held it out to Clara, who gave him a look and shoveled something caramelly and smelling of the heavens from a bucket and into his bag.
“Pass those around,” she said. “Guests first.”
Barnabas froze with a handful of the confection halfway to his mouth.
He ate his quickly, then took fresh bags from Clara and did as he was told. “Candied almonds,” he said. “Good as gold.” And they were. Buttery and sweet and salty, with just the right crunch.
Somewhere in the distance, church bells began to toll. Strange, for a quick look at her pocket watch told Lucy it wasn’t marking a new hour. “What is that?” she said. “A wedding?”
Clara narrowed her eyes, thinking. “It could be the Shepherd’s Bells.”
Lucy leaned in. “What are the Shepherd’s Bells?”
“Well, legend has it that a beloved shepherd was lost to these parts a couple hundred years ago. He was so well-loved, in fact, that an anonymous benefactor paid to have the bells rung in his memory every year for some time after that. When the benefactor’s payments stopped, it had become so much a tradition that the people could no sooner think of stopping than they could stop needing food and water. Tradition is like oxygen around here, you see. So every year, the Shepherd’s Bells ring, and we remember.”
Lucy thought of the noises that filled her world back home. Wake-up alarms and message alerts and broadcasts that ushered her forward and forward, always forward. These bells seemed to do the opposite. They called her to pause. Breathe. Consider a soul who loved well and was well loved. “I like that,” she said. “We could do with a great deal more remembering.”
And she tucked those bells into her heart.
Soon, they all moved to the back of the cottage, where two telescopes stood. Dash and Roger each stood near one, Dash’s black and shiny and connected with a cord to some mechanized apparatus. “It’s a go-to telescope,” he said. “I put in the coordinates, and it searches the sky and hones in on it. Meanwhile, Roger over there takes his relic and races me by hand. Checking his maps and charts—”
“Or using my head,” the jolly man spouted.
“And we race. We’ll show you, after the star talk,” he said. “When it’s nice and dark.”
“Can we find the Plough?”
“The Plough,” Dash said with a smirk. “I think you mean the Big Dipper.”
“Well, if you’re going to be all American about it, then yes. The Big Dipper. Could we find that?”
“Sure! Anything you like, if it’s in season. The universe is yours, Matchstick Girl.”
She laughed, enjoying seeing his world. “It really is amazing,” she said. “Seems impossible, sometimes. All those stars, and the ones we see are only a fraction of what’s out there.”
“Nothing is impossible,” Dash said.
That phrase had her once again sitting at her dad’s workbench, listening to his tales. Wondering where it was all going. Having it all boil down to a truth he repeated regularly—nothing is impossible.
They stood looking at the approaching-night sky, awestruck. “Do you still think of going up there, Dash?” She thought of the books lining his roving observatory. The papers he had stashed on the bottom shelf, peer reviewed and published in scientific journals. The certifications, and the map with pins marking where he’d studied: Palomar. Griffith Observatory. Great Basin. Houston. Maryland. St. Petersburg.
He shuffled beside her, and for a moment, he was that bespectacled gangly youth once more, stumbling over his past and future, tripping and landing in the safety net of her home.
His silence stretched, billowing between them.
She fixed her eyes on him—he fixed his on the stars. “Dash?”
“There’s nothing up there for me,” he said. “Nothing that I don’t already have.”
This didn’t sound like Dash. He was the boy who would’ve given his right arm to be among the beacons in the sky.
He finally looked to her. “You ever hear that quote, shoot for the moon, and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars?”
Lucy nodded. Her undergraduate advisor had had that taped to her wall. She’d always looked away, for the pang in her heart, thinking of Dash off chasing the moon and stars.
But he was shaking his head, slow and thoughtful. “I think of your parents, sitting on the back stoop in that tiny garden, with the bushes blocking out the light. They—and you—gave me more in that minuscule plot of land than anything up there ever could. Because what people are chasing up there all amounts to one thing. It took me a decade and a half to learn this, but what they’re chasing . . . it was present right there with the crickets in that garden.”
Her breath came thick, as if her lungs knew the words she meant to speak could cost her much. “What was it?”
“Hope. Wonder. Light. All wrapped up in the stories, in truth.”
“They were fairy tales, though,” she said. “Weren’t they?”
“Parts of them. But don’t you remember the way he used the fairy tales to tell us the true stories, after? The more I studied this universe—the more places I went—the more I realized what your parents were doing.”
She waited.
“They were building us a scaffolding. Story upon story, account after account, of true, impossible things—to hold up the truest story of all, when we would find it later.”
He paused, and she sensed he was holding something back. Some shadowed part of his story he was not ready to let her in on, yet. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking at the stars. “There’s nothing up there that can’t be found here,” he said. “It took a long time to realize that. And I learned it the hard way. The longest way.”
There was still admiration in his voice when he spoke of the heavens, calling the stars by their Roman names like they were good chums, no hint of disillusionment or bitterness. But neither was there a worshipful reverence directed toward them.
“The stars are magnificent, Lucy. Always have been, always will be. But no more magnificent or miraculous than the ground beneath our feet, where life grows from dirt and water and sunlight. Or the depths of your ocean. Or the very air we breathe. It all points to the same truth.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and fell silent, but she could tell he wasn’t finished. After several seconds, he spoke again, an edge of nerves causing his words to come out choppy. “Lucy, you should know . . . there was a time . . . I-I mean, I went—”
“Dash.” Sophie neared them, looking warily at their closeness. Seeing Beatrix leaning against Lucy, she stopped in her tracks. “She doesn’t do that,” she said, stooping to pet her dog. “Not to anyone. Not since . . .” She stood, puzzling over Lucy. Her gaze softening from censure into something more nostalgic. “Well. Anyway. Dash, the guests are ready for your star talk.”
Lucy shivered, wishing she’d brought a heavier sweater.
“Cold snap,” Dash said. “I should’ve warned you. Go hang out by the fire. I’ll meet up with you after.”
Lucy nodded. She would’ve loved to hear his talk, but her chattering teeth might have been a distraction to his guests.
“You can tell me then,” she said, wanting to be sure he knew she saw him, heard him. Wanted to hear whatever was proving so difficult to say.
At the fire, Clara sat in a wood-
slat chair and patted the one next to her. She spread her blanket over Lucy’s lap and smiled at the sound of Dash beginning his lecture. He certainly did know how to keep a crowd.
“We’ve got an expert in our own backyard,” Clara said, proud. “Think of what it would do for this place if he would let us advertise that. But I can’t say I blame him for not wanting to make himself known.”
“But doesn’t he? I saw his name on the posters in the village,” Lucy said. “Dashel Greene, PhD and star guide.”
Clara’s smile dipped a little, giving way to puzzlement in the firelight.
“Yes, dear, but . . .” Her voice hushed. “You don’t know.”
“Know what?” Lucy tilted her head, taking a sip of tea Clara had poured for her from a Thermos.
“He’s not just a star guide, Lucy. He could give tours in person. He’s a star veteran.”
Lucy took another sip, nodding. “Yes,” she laughed. “He told me he was a dark ranger.” She chuckled, recalling the Great Basin Observatory’s name for the late-night park rangers he had briefly been a part of, giving star talks out in the desert for campers.
“Lucy. Dear. Your Dash . . .” Clara set her mug down and placed her hand gently on Lucy’s shoulder. “Did you ever wonder why he didn’t come to you in London when you lost your father? From what he’s told us, yours were the closest thing to parents he ever knew.”
She had wondered. Again and again, until she couldn’t wonder any more, else it turn her heart bitter and break it all over again.
She gave a small nod, pulled her sweater cuffs up over her fingers, which were trembling despite holding the warm mug.
“He couldn’t go to you.” She pointed at the sky. “He was up there.”
Lucy swallowed her tea, concern washing over her. Clara was eccentric in the warmest, most endearing of ways, but this was something more troubling. Did she think Dash had passed into the next life and somehow come back? Compassion washed over her, wondering how to gently speak truth to this kind soul before her.
And yet the woman looked at her with that same sympathy. With pity and patience—waiting for her to realize something.
Dash’s earlier words tiptoed up in the dark, swirling about her in a whisper. “There’s nothing up there that can’t be found here . . . I learned it the hard way. The longest way.”
And it hit her. By the look on her face, Clara saw it happen, saw the widening of Lucy’s eyes, the way she set down her mug suddenly on the wooden arm of the chair, fearing she’d drop it.
“No,” she whispered. “He didn’t—”
Clara nodded.
“He did?”
“He most certainly did.”
Lucy shook her head no. “He hasn’t been . . . But that’s not possible.”
“He most certainly has, dear. And it most certainly is. Little thing they call the International Space Station. I confess I hadn’t even heard of it, ’til our Dashel came along.”
Our Dashel. Hearing those words did something to Lucy’s heart as she thought of the lost boy having someone call him their own. It warmed her gently and made her ache, all at the same time.
Lucy looked to the pinpricks in the dark sky above. And over her shoulder, as if the empty cottage would open up and let her see right through it, right to the down-to-earth man pointing out constellations. The boy who used to throw wads of paper at her when she got too immersed in her ocean books and teased her for having her head in the clouds.
It appeared she had much to learn about him. And the night would not pass before the truth unrolled between them.
After the star talk, and wrapped in one of Clara’s spare blankets warmed by the fire, Lucy joined the clutch of guests and village friends gathered around the telescopes. Dash and Roger stood poised like unlikely track stars. Roger with his wide stance and Dash’s height making him look lankier than usual against the night sky. Their silhouettes were jubilant. Barnabas stood between them, hands in the air.
“Your constellation is . . . Pleiades. Ready . . . steady . . . go!”
And they were off. Dash typed something into his computerized telescope, its robotic gears kicking into action and moving it ever-so-slowly, with a mechanical whir.
Roger, meanwhile, stood stock-still. As she drew near, Lucy saw his eyes pressed closed, intense concentration wrinkling his forehead beneath his news cap, fingers running back and forth over his brows. Suddenly, he froze. Eyes flew open, intense with purpose, entirely unfazed by the fact that Dash’s scope was shifting its pitch higher, lower, higher, showing its process was nearing an end.
Roger moved his telescope smoothly, swiftly, like a fisherman dipping his oar into placid waters, scooping the sky until he stilled.
“Just . . . like . . . that,” Roger said, a slow grin spreading across his face.
“Got it!” Dash said, barely behind Roger and grinning just as wide.
Each of them stepped aside, opening his hand toward his telescope, inviting the onlookers to see the heavens through their scope.
“Come and see, Clara,” Roger said, imploring as he opened his arm toward the telescope.
Hesitantly, she did, bending and looking, face a pinch of puzzlement until it broke into a wide smile. When Clara smiled, her whole countenance smiled. “I see it,” she said. “Oh, my. ‘Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades . . .’” She sighed contentedly. “Such freedom, to know our limits. And to know the God who has none.”
“Aye, Clara. And He’ll see us through, you know,” Roger replied.
Lucy felt herself an eavesdropper, suddenly, and stepped over to Dash’s telescope.
“What happened with those two?” she asked quietly, thinking of the closeness they had so visibly shared in the family photo album.
“More like what didn’t happen. They’re in love,” Dash said. “They both know it. But Roger’s waited a lifetime to say anything. He finally asked her to the Smugglers’ Ball this year, and it scared her out of her wits.
“Sophie says she’s afraid she’ll lose her closest friend if it doesn’t work out. Barnabas says she’s doing exactly that by pushing him away. So there you have it.” Dash tipped his head subtly toward the pair who were dancing about each other on a floor of eggshells.
Roger noticed their gaze and smiled.
Dash bent to peer through Roger’s “dinosaur,” as he called the dated telescope. “Bested me again, Rog,” Dash said, holding his hands up in surrender. “Don’t think I’ll ever know the skies as well as you do.”
“Oh, aye”—Roger slapped him on the back and winked—“says the man who—”
“No, no, you’re the reigning champion, and that’s all there is to it.” Dash glanced at Lucy sheepishly, making the lines of his face look suddenly boyish. He tipped his head at her, beckoning her over.
As she neared the telescope, she had to remind herself this was the boy with whom she’d shared this ritual more times than she could count. And yet . . . this was a man entirely new to her, too. His presence strong and kind, and smelling of clean pine and cold air.
“Have a look,” he said. Just like he used to when he’d push his glasses up on his nose in the garden of the glass house, letting her into his world.
She inhaled and squinted, her eyelashes blinking clumsily against the finder scope until they, too, remembered that she knew this. Searching the night sky was a part of her, as deep in her bones as the sea.
She did not see the constellation right away, but the memory of her father’s laughing voice coached her. “Just wait, Lucy. You’ll see the light. You just have to wait.”
So she did. And slowly, sure as the dawn, the darkness sparked with pricks of light so pure white they pierced right into her. The warmth of Dash hovered beside her, and she sensed him grinning his contagious grin. So with her eyes fixed to his homeland of the sky, she decided to come right out and say it. “You did it, Dash.”
“No.” His voice was light. “Roger beat me again. But one of these days, if I can
garner half the knowledge of the sky that he has engraved on his brain . . .”
Lucy laughed gently, gazing still at the Pleiades. The Seven Sisters, she recalled. “I mean, you did it.” She straightened, looked at him, searching.
The corners of his grin sobered. Knowing.
“You made it up there.” Wonder slipped into her voice, a laugh skipping across her words.
“Sort of,” Dash said, his foot pivoting back and forth on his heel like a windscreen wiper. He still had his tell, the way she knew he was nervous or embarrassed.
Lucy raised her eyebrows. “You made it onto the International Space Station. That thing that orbits the earth a billion times a day.”
“Sixteen times,” he said, looking sheepish.
“And you say ‘sort of’? Dash. You did it.”
She remembered his words on his postcard from Harvard: Next stop—the moon! But not before stopping back at Candlewick to pick you up, Lucy. A tinge of melancholy twisted in her chest—which was ridiculous. Dash couldn’t have packed her in a suitcase and smuggled her on board. Still, that old feeling of being left behind reared its head. This is not about you, Lucy. She put it in its place and focused on her friend.
He pursed his mouth, scrunching up his nose. “Okay, yah, I did, once . . . or twice?”
“Once or twice?”
“Maybe more like twice.”
Lucy opened her mouth but no words came. She shook her head, speechless. So her arm reverted to its old habit and whacked his elbow in mock censure. “Way to bury the lead, astronaut Dash! Why didn’t you tell me?”
He stared up at the stars, shaking his head. “I still can’t believe it, most of the time. How can I expect others to believe it?”
“Dash. It’s me. I took down your notes when you dictated your flight plan in the reading room when you were twelve years old. I would have believed you.”
He nodded. “You’re right. You would have. I know you . . .”
She heard a but in his voice and waited.
“But there are other things, too. When people find out, suddenly they think I’m something special.”
Lucy tipped her head to the side. “Well, you are.”