The Way Home

The stars are cold but very bright and they fill the dark with pale, flickering fire as they swirl and dance across the dome high above. They are the only source of light. This world has no sun, no moon, these are but legends to us. My sister and I often lie on our backs, hand in hand, staring up at them and dreaming of the day we might go back.

It is hard to dream. Although our world is perpetual darkness, we sleep little, and the breath wheezes between mother’s teeth as though her chest cannot catch the air. The sound often awakens me. Sometimes I see my sister in the ghost glow, see that she too is awake, and her face glistens until she smears her tears away.

“Don’t worry little brother,” she says to me, and smiles her bravest smile. “We’ll return, one day. I promise.”

Alais is two years older, and slithers among the mossy rocks as lithe as a whipsting. She always knows where the best fungi grows, knows how to hide from the basilisks and stone vipers. She is the best at finding everything, and today she has found a man from the stars.

I hear her shout and my heart is in my throat, remembering my father’s shout when he slipped and fell and the dark claimed him. I grab a glowworm torch and run toward the sound, as fast as I dare, denial already on my lips.

I skid to a stop as a giant emerges from the gloom before me. He is massive, nearly twice as tall as us, legs thicker than my chest, chest wider than three men. Yet he takes Alais’s hand the way a child does, and follows her uncertainly down the path towards the village. His bright blue eyes trace the walls and roofs of our homes, panels that once sheltered us across the stars, and he mouths the sounds of the words he sees: “No step,” he says. “Rescue.”

Alais leads him to the center of the village and makes him sit. We gather around, all the uncles and aunts and cousins and nieces and nephews. There is silence, edged with anticipation, but the man just smiles, nods and says nothing. He drinks when a cup is placed in his hand, eats when dried fungus is offered, automatic, dumb.

“Is he really from the stars?” I whisper to Alais.

“Look at the size of him,” she hisses back. “Can there be any doubt? He has come to take us back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Have you come to take us back?” Alais prompts him, raising her voice.

His head moves jerkily, muscles twitch, he grimaces then smiles without pattern. His head snaps to one side, then the other. The uncles and cousins and aunts and nieces mutter to one another and our suspicions grow. Is he a madman, a freak, some outcast of another tribe?

Alais tries again: “Have you come to take us home?”

“Home?” he repeats and there is no recognition in the word.

“Home,” Alais nods, and gestures heavenwards. “The stars.”

He follows her hand and grimaces, then laughs. “The stars,” he repeats. “The stars, the stars, the stars.” Then he stops and is very, very still. He is still for a long time and he looks right at Alais. He says, “Yes, I’ve seen the stars.”

“Can you take us there?”

He laughs again and it is high, shrilly, totally unsuited to his titan frame and boulder face. “Yes, I’ll take you to see the stars.”

He tosses aside his cup and uneaten fungus, lurches to his feet and we all scrabble back in fear and alarm. He stands though, waits, looking at Alais expectantly.

“Now?” she half-whispers. “We can go now?”

He nods happily. “Yes, I’ll take you to see the stars.”

“But, but,” Alais pulls her hair and looks in panic to me. “But what about mother, our clothes, we need food for such a journey—”

The man of the stars laughs again and says, “You will not need them. It is not so far. Not so hard. You can come back, anytime.”

It is his turn to take her hand, and then mine, and the touch is gentle but irresistible. The aunts and uncles, cousins and nephews eye us warily, muttering that yes, we should go first, and test the way. Yes, it is better that we go. We found him so it is only right, only fitting. Off you go. But hurry back.

And so he leads us, both pushing and pulling us one in each hand, up the path and away from the village.

Over razor rock and grim stone we climb, ever upwards, clambering, elbows scraping, knees skinning, up and up and up and up. I would rest, but the man urges us on, until my breath wheezes worse than mother, every fingernail is cracked and my skin is more scrapes and bruises than flesh. And still, the man plunges tirelessly on.

“He’s lost,” I moan to Alais.

“Look up,” she says.

I do, and gasp. The stars are so close now. No mere splinter-point anymore, no, but great incandescent bulbs, as big as my thumb held before my eye. They look almost close enough to touch.

“The stars,” the man says happily.

A star falls from the sky, and lands on my hand. It digs into my skin with six needle legs, and its belly flashes blue and green. I yelp in pain and surprise and try to shake the thing loose but it clings and clings and more of them are falling, on my shoulders, into my hair. I hear Alais scream and see she too is covered in wriggling, glowing lights. My own scream is choked off as one crawls in my open mouth, another finds my ear. I swat and beat at them, I see—

—I see stars.

Pretty stars.

Pretty, pretty stars.

Must tell the nice people about the stars.