Set the Stars Alight

by Amanda Dykes

  “Not any better or different than anyone else. My physical body just happened to be in a different physical place. I’m still me.”

  Lucy ached to find out what he loved. What he didn’t love. But more than anything, she wanted him to know that she saw him. And she figured the best way to do that was to call him out, like they always did for each other.

  “Dash.”

  “Hmm?” He scuffed the dirt some more.

  “Of course you’re still you. Nothing can or will change that. But you have to tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What was it like?” she whispered.

  His face broke into pure delight. “It’s amazing. It’s huge. Outside, in space, I mean. And inside it’s so small. It’s boundless, but with more boundaries and barcodes than I’ve ever seen in my life. Everything is catalogued and recorded. Every single thing. Every extreme you can think of, you’re right there in the middle of it all. Dark and light. Expanse and confinement. The cold of space, the heat of the sun. The earth up there looks like the blue marble, just like they call it, but it’s so much more than what you see in the pictures. Tides rising and falling. Oceans moving. Storms gathering. Clouds swirling. All four seasons and sixteen sunrises, sixteen sunsets every single day. I picked out this random spot up in Maine, where the sun rises first in the States, and I’d pray for them. For whoever was watching, and whatever it was that drove them to the edge of their world to find light.”

  “Light you saw over and over again,” Lucy said.

  Dash nodded. “When night moved over the earth, I watched thousands upon thousands of lights in cities—tiny echoes of the massive lights burning above them in space. All those lights represented people making their way through life.” He shook his head. “I wanted to reach down and tell them, ‘I see you. And everything’s okay up here in space. And I hope everything’s okay for you, too.’”

  “What cities?” Lucy pictured him saying those things.

  He shrugged. “Any of them. New York. Abu Dhabi. Dublin. Buenos Aires. Tokyo.” He studied her. “And . . . London. Always.”

  Lucy swallowed, thinking of the times she sat on the back stoop looking through the old telescope with her father—the scene never complete without Dash. Perhaps there were times they were actually looking right at him and hadn’t even known.

  “Dad would’ve been over-the-moon proud,” Lucy said. “No pun intended. And Mum, too. They’d have been busting with joy for you, Dash.”

  He seemed ready to say something, then dropped his stare. “I wish you could’ve seen it, Lucy. You’d love it.”

  Silence bloomed, airy and great, the whole of space seeming to reach down and stir the space between them.

  “But there was a time I would’ve given anything to be off that station and with you, Lucy.” Regret etched his voice.

  She pulled her sweater more tightly around herself. She would’ve given anything for that, too, that day alone on the Thames.

  “I . . . I’ve been making my way back to you ever since.” He inhaled, and his eyes shadowed, dropping away their jesting and morphing into pools of sincerity born of brokenness.

  She looked at him, questioning. And he looked back, a mirror of her questions. When he left, the magic of Candlewick Commons began to dissipate. And after Dad had died, it had just been a shell of a place. Nothing of the home it had once been. But here, standing before her, was all of the warmth and life of those lost years, in human form.

  Here . . . was home. Come knocking on her front door, when she’d thought it lost forever.

  “I’m glad you came back.”

  Later, in her room she treasured up these remembrances, stacked up questions born of them.

  Her fingers hovered over the keyboard with the search engine page open, its bright letters staring at her much too quixotically. Why didn’t Dad tell me he was writing to my oldest friend? She wished she could type her questions and have the answers stack up in search results, catalogued for her to peruse. What did they talk about in all those letters?

  But the plucky, colorful search engine letters stared back at her blank-faced, the blinking cursor ticking seconds away. Dashel Greene, she typed. International Space Station.

  A lengthy list of articles cropped up—detailing his selection, his years-long training skipping from Houston, to Star City in Russia, to Canada. His time served on a back-up crew before he became part of the primary crew. Old articles came up featuring him as a visiting fellow at universities, as a resident astronomer at observatories far and wide, from Hawaii to the Great Basin to Brazil to Baltimore to St. Petersburg.

  “His teachers were right,” she murmured. Dash had been, and still was, a genius. That guy with the goofy grin and the Astros baseball cap and dimples, so humble she’d had to hear from another that he’d made it to space.

  She clicked on a link to his Twitter profile, dormant for some time now. Scrolling, she read his tweets from space—part of the astronaut’s duties, apparently, and he’d made a grand time of it.

  @Dashintospace—Bumped into the commander in the Columbus module today. Had to Apollo-gize. #spacepuns #lightmatters

  Lucy laughed. She could almost hear him, see his laughing eyes, merry at his own pun. She read on, a few tweets about life on the ISS, about getting the stargazer prototype working.

  @Dashintospace—An astronomer in space is kind of like an optometrist diving into an eyeball. Suddenly surrounded by the thing he’s looked at from afar for so long . . . and let me tell you, this intergalactic eyeball is incredible. #starsupclose #lightmatters

  A picture of him, hair standing on end in the lack of gravity, posed with scissors in one hand about to snip a chunk of that dark hair. His face registering exaggerated concern, like he and the viewer shared an inside joke. Dash was always so good at making people feel at home. Even, apparently, when he was out of this world. She laughed out loud when she read his caption:

  How does an astronaut cut his hair? . . . Eclipse it! #spacepuns #hairysituation

  And then he waxed philosophical with just as much ease.

  @Dashintospace—That sunrise—incredible. Especially from way up here. But no more a miracle than the match you strike to light your home fire (N. Hemisphere—we see that blizzard coming your way, Ohio!) or your patio candle (S. Hemisphere) tonight. #lifeisbeautiful #physicsastound #lightmatters

  She slowed as she neared the end of his tweets, not wanting this glimpse to end. These snippets from Dash’s time in the place he had so longed for was a joy beyond what she could describe. So filling her lungs and feeling the warmth of a full heart, she began reading his last tweet.

  @Dashintospace—There are times, out here in the universe, when you’d give anything to cross it just to be with the people you love. Hold tight the people who are your universe. #lightmatters #matchstickgirl

  She stopped. Her eyes glued to the screen. Read it twice, three times . . . and then took in the date.

  She knew that date. It was seared into her very existence. The date of her father’s memorial service, her walk by the Thames. When she’d looked at the heavens and right there, surrounded by lights in one of the oldest, biggest cities in the world, felt entirely alone.

  The night she nearly tossed her phone into the Thames, but was stopped by the arrival of that document in the cloud.

  Dash.

  That had been the night he’d sent her the beginnings of the compendium. The night she’d seen his words appearing on the screen before her, a heartbeat in her silence. A ray of light.

  At the time she’d thought it ironic that the boy with his head in the stars was writing to her from the cloud. But now . . . it was anything but ironic. He had not written to her from the cloud. He had been in space, orbiting, looking down on her bright city perhaps even that moment. And with all the world before him . . . he’d thought of her.

  The balm of a promise kept smoothed over the ragged places in her heart.

  Her father’s familiar words g
ave chase in her heart. “Don’t you forget it, Lucy my girl. The God of the stars . . . He is coming, and coming, and coming after you. Always. The heart of a father who will never forget his daughter.”

  Her heart beat with the pulse of the words. Had the God of the stars been there that night? Reaching her heart through the words of a dear friend? Her throat ached with a truth that felt too large.

  She shivered, but she had a hunch that had less to do with the temperature and more to do with the warmth of the company, the tight-woven fabric of family and community she had seen at the campfire tonight. It swelled her soul and carved the longing deeper in her to find such community herself.

  Earlier that evening, as the star party had been wrapping up, Violette came to Lucy shyly, tentatively. “Will you still go with me?”

  Confused, Lucy had put a hand on Violette’s shoulder. “Where?”

  “I want to go . . . to Oxford, I mean. I talked to . . . Spencer. That’s his name.” She shook her head slowly, as if all the words were too much for her.

  Lucy understood how much of a stretch this was for the reclusive woman, so she’d just smiled and whispered, “Yes, Violette. Let’s go.”

  So tomorrow they would venture to Oxford. Meet Violette’s mystery man. Find out all they could about Killian Blackaby and his writing, and perhaps find more answers to the Jubilee mystery. And maybe—just maybe—she would continue to pick up the pieces of her heart, which seemed to be surfacing from hollows and shadows by the wayside.

  twenty-six

  HMS Avalon

  May 17, 1811

  Imminent death was a paradox. Each moment lived in sharp relief, then engulfed into a numbing blur. It began with Admiral Forsythe looking down on Frederick in the small boat where he sat bound and ready to be lowered to the ocean below and thence on to the prison ship, the Jubilee. Miniature compared with the Avalon, the Jubilee looked cheery and ridiculous as she bobbed upon the tide. Frederick thought she also looked a bit naïve, that she knew not what she had become. What the marks upon her prison walls meant, or whence her residents marched to after departing her decks.

  “Why,” the admiral uttered.

  Why. A statement, a demand, a question, a plea.

  Frederick looked up. The sails snapped like great white wings above the man, giving the grave appearance of an angel in uniform.

  “Why, Hanford. Tell me.”

  To explain would take a lifetime. It had taken a lifetime to live it. So he gave the admiral the only key by which he could be made to understand.

  “Your mourning dove,” Frederick said, remembering the bird who had led Forsythe away from its young, to give them a chance at life. “It’s . . . it’s because of the mourning dove.”

  He could not look the admiral in the eye. But in that instant, he felt the man’s countenance ease. A flicker of understanding in his stance, respect. And then just as quickly, that respect took on a note of vengeance.

  “Elias Flint!” the man barked. Elias appeared, face white as the sails, forcing his chin up. Forsythe held up a wax-sealed letter. “I hear you do not read. So I will be very clear. This details Frederick Hanford’s accused crimes. Be sure to place it in the bailiff’s hands,” he said, arresting Elias with a cold stare, “so that the man responsible can be brought to justice.”

  Forsythe held his stare and gripped the letter for a few seconds after Elias reached out to take it. Elias gulped. Forsythe raised his brows. Frederick’s insides cinched in pain. Perhaps Forsythe understood what Frederick had done . . . but it seemed he was intent on making it as excruciating for Elias as possible.

  Forsythe clapped Elias on the back, sending him stumbling into the skiff with Frederick, and the crew lowered them, faces grim.

  As they approached port, Frederick gripped Elias’s forearm with strength that would not be questioned. He gritted his teeth, schooled the desperation rising into three words muttered beneath his breath.

  “Go to her.”

  And they were twelve again, a pair of scared boys in an alley, facing the press gang, Frederick pleading with the cloaked figure. “Go to her.”

  Only this time, Elias would listen. He must. Frederick saw in the hollow desperation in Elias’s eyes that his friend understood every imploring unspoken word. Do not continue your traitorous ways. Go to her. Go, and sin no more. The age-old plea. Do right by her.

  He would go to Juliette. He had to. There was no chance on God’s green earth that he would resort to further treason. Frederick’s sacrifice had dashed his friend hard against the sharp shore of reality. Coming face-to-face with the unseen reaches of his own sin, Elias looked every bit the scared child left among rocks and seaweed, betrayed by a father who was meant to have cared for him. Elias Flint’s torment ran so deep it would either drive the man mad or knock sense into him for the rest of all time.

  At last, Elias spoke. “I . . . ” He met Frederick’s eyes with his own red-rimmed, fear-wrung ones. “I will do good,” he said. “I promise. This shall not be for nothing, Frederick.”

  No Freddy. No punch on the shoulder. Only solemnity. Frederick prayed it was a mark of turning.

  He could not speak in reply, only nodded as the skiff drew up next to the HMS Jubilee. With thick black paint and gilded carvings wherever there was room for such, she loomed in ornate mockery. Frederick had a sense he was landing in some ridiculous fairy tale, one that left him sick to his stomach.

  As he was ushered aboard, Frederick looked over his shoulder one last time. Elias looked back and folded his arm, bringing his fist to his heart, just as he had the night after that first battle aboard the Avalon.

  Frederick pressed his eyes closed around this image of Elias Flint. His brother. And saw him no more.

  The moments funneled into a numb blur after that, less sharp, each one serving, he knew, to tick the clock closer toward the moment he would die.

  Frederick was shoved onto the Jubilee’s deck as if he were an overgrown maggot—tossed down and left by his former crewmates, who did not so much as glance back at him.

  A gruff man with shiny buttons and a slur to his words saluted Frederick in mockery. “Welcome aboard the ship of doom. Your own prison palace, from now ’til kingdom come.” He secured Frederick into a dark hold belowdecks and promptly fell into a snoring slumber, flask lying tipped over beneath leaden fingers.

  For three days and two nights he suffered in the belly of the ship as it bobbed and pitched with an unsteadiness that could make even the most seaworthy sailor retch. All Frederick could think of was Jonah in the whale. But Frederick had chosen this. Jonah had not.

  Frederick made friends with the ship, for it was to be his last companion on earth. He felt sorry for the old girl. ’Twas not her fault that, with scrolled corbels, ornate figurehead, and baubles and bells galore, she’d been decorated to the point of defeat. He’d known life like that, once upon a time.

  He recalled Reskell quizzing him about the Jubilee. “Naught but a blight to the fleet, and a spectacle at that,” he’d said. But he’d not mentioned the smell of mellowed wood and seasoned sea, the wood grain his fingertips now traced, the tally marks of men who had come before him, counting down their days alive.

  His third and final night before his trial, he was brought above deck to sleep beneath the stars. A kindness, or a cruelty, given as tradition to men on the eve of their trials. Trials that were mere formalities, so clear were the articles of war when it came to espionage and treason.

  He slept little, letting his gaze fall among his old friends in the sky. He awoke to spears of sunlight slicing past ropes and masts. Slicing, too, through the fog of the past few days with cold truth:

  Today he would surely die.

  His trial and end would be swift, at least. And he need not lie, of that he was sure. He needed only say all he’d said so far: Take me. The guilt in his eyes enough to convince any judge, magistrate, or jury—though they would not know the guilt was for a wrong committed nearly ten years ago against a hum
ble country shepherd and his family.

  He clung to these same words in the skiff that took him ashore to his trial. It was high tide, and the ocean sloshed oddly far over the sea wall, as if it had heard it had a traitor to carry ashore, and meant to do it expediently.

  As his guard led him by ropes like a beast of the field, Frederick held fast to the vision of a courageous bird feigning its wound, that life elsewhere might have a chance.

  The crowd awaiting him on shore was armed with spittle and insults and jeering, twisting his name every which way they could. “Frederick Hanford, scum of the earth. Gettin’ what ye deserve, and none too quickly. Good-for-nothin’, sellin’ yer soul for a shilling and no more. Your soul ain’t worth no more’n a half-penny piece, if ye even have one. Bring yer friend? Where’s yer friend? Ol’ Elias Flint, no better’n you, we wager. Where is he? Elias Flint, scum o’ the earth. Where is he now?”

  Safe, Frederick hoped. Gone to see Juliette while ashore. But a deep sickness stirred in his belly. What would the crowd know of Elias? Nothing. They should know nothing of him, unless something had happened to make his name known.

  “Elias Flint,” he said beneath his breath, countering the jeers of the crowd who scorned that name, remembering him as the man who had saved him, the man who loved Juliette well, the man who would do better. His brother.

  “Elias Flint,” he repeated. “Truest friend a man could know.” His chin scratching his neck with the unshaven growth of days past. He planted his feet slowly, surely upon those words, letting the crunch of his boots echo honor into that name. Elias Flint. Elias Flint. E—

  “Elias!”

  The cry was that of love, and desperation, and disbelief, and hope—all in one fierce, stalwart, feminine voice.

  He wrenched his eyes from the ground, and though his mind told him not to, he met her gaze.

  Juliette. Beneath a hood, her growing figure hidden by a billowing, threadbare cape.

  Even in such a state, she was a force, parting the crowd. He saw fire in her eyes. She refused to be kept from her love.