Series Starter: The Great Conjunction

Series Fiction by Andrew Sweet. More chapters available on Wattpad.

I watched the slow, relentless narrowing of the gap between Jupiter and Saturn in the days that preceded the Great Conjunction. I couldn’t have known that another celestial body born of my own tumultuous past was at that very moment making its way toward me.

Certainly, of my multitude of reasons for taking occupancy in a frigid cabin embedded precariously into the side of a mountain, the inevitable collision of past with present, of which I had no knowledge, could scarcely have registered as a reason for my decision. A quaint experience in a Scottish village near Glencoe had teased at my longing for solitude (a solitude since denied to me by my obstinate and obtuse older brother who had self-invited himself and his new lover). My idolized isolation came to me in fleeting moments, afforded to me only at night and in the early mornings. That was why in the mornings I spent my time wading through styrofoam-like snow and crunching powder beneath black boots. 

Walking was my center, and the stubborn remaining stars were my companions as they performed their celestial dance.

Clouds flanked the mountain, lifting the peak from of its base higher up into darkness. With the illusion came a memory. Ages ago, on a distant evening little like this morning — that cast my breath into puffs of lingering smoke — I had known love. In the pre-dawn darkness, I saw her again — hair falling like a golden river splashing to the earth behind her upturned head. I remembered the smell of her, the taste of her, and the feel of her back beneath my fingertips as the water licked at us, struggling to escape its cement prison nearby. The circular breath I offered to her and received back into myself was never enough. Each kiss pulled us closer together until I ceased to be a dark haired and invisible child-man and instead turned into an angel and granter of miracles. Our souls swirled in ephemeral mist, tugging and pulling, and I only realize now, fighting, dodging, and whispering untrue promises of eternity.

The memories floated like sparks upon a wind that froze and tantalized me. I shivered with its breath and pulled my down-filled nylon coat closer to press out the chill that had crept up from the gap beneath. Before me lay only more fresh snow, no longer falling from the gray blankets above. Sunlight strobed across the bottoms of the clouds now, lighting them with pink and gray light that bounced back down to me — harbingers of Apollos crown, soon to crest the foothills. A heavy sigh carried my burden in white down the hillside toward the village centre below. Behind me, I heard the lift engage to escort those invested few ready to throw themselves from the side of the mountain like spurned lovers.

Wind slapped me back to reality. My lips tightened and pulled back, exposing my crooked bottom teeth in a forced grin. My exposed gums resisted whiplike lashes that worked into the roots of my teeth and sent spikes of pain up each in turn. I found myself awake, and somehow still alive. The odor of burned coffee and damp roofing tiles mingled in my nose, reminding me that I had chosen this moment to be awake. The cup clasped between my exposed, reddened fingers betrayed my decision to steal the only time in the day that could still be taken. But my seconds had all been spent now, and as the sky brightened, my mouth closed around the untainted mountain air.

No sooner had I circled, abandoning the empty trail that cut through the banks of snow to eventually end at the old Everrett tavern in the town below, than I heard the creek of the cold steel hinges setting my brother free.

“Ten inches fell last night,” he said, eyes sparkling with lust. My own eyes drew up from the boot holes that comprised evidence of my earlier exodus. “Should be clear today though. Maybe negative six degrees or so.” 

He’s always been taller than me, and with more hair — not that I’d lost any of mine. My own pitch-black frothy mane stayed close, very much like the snow on the hillside. His was a lumpy, half-melted brown snowman with greens and browns of the earth poking through. It didn’t frame so much as follow his large face and easy smile. I’d never known what it was that he ever had to be so happy about. There were reasons he’d come on my vacation instead of carving out one of his own, and most of those had to do with the fact that his expectation of life was that at some point, everything would fall in according to his will. Unlike in my own shattered life, everything did seem to bend to him. Including me.

A second later, the hinges sang again and a giggle escaped before the doorway relinquished the stark red hair and vain crimson lips of his second in life and philosophy — neither of whom had paid for the room they shared. I gave a half-smile as a snowball let fly almost as soon as her foot hit the first of the powder. The projectile sailed like magic through the air at his unprotected face, which had turned as soon as the creak emanated forth. Instead of the bruising collision I’d expected, he was suddenly not there, and the ball seemed to levitate toward me, directed by the force of the throw and aided by the will of a sudden gust of wind.

I picked icy flecks from my hair and rubbed the blistering cold dampness over my eyes.

“Artemis, I’m sooo sorry. That was for Kaleb.”

Kaleb only laughed his guttural yawp, a yelp-like laugh that echoed off of the hillsides and somehow still drove into my ears with the force of a snow plow. He turned toward me and stared through. I turned as well in the same direction. Smoke wafted up from the cabin across what might have been a street before the snow had taken over the entire world and painted it white.

“Somebody’s in. We should go say hi.”

I only shrugged, feeling the drippings of the snow’s remnants trail down my neck and under my clothes.

“Or we could go up the mountain before anyone else does.”

“Too late for that, Mina” I muttered, turning my attention now away from the rising smoke and instead toward the ski lift as it queued up passengers one after the other. “They started that thing ten minutes ago.”

“Let’s go then,” she said. “The longer we wait the longer the lines.”

“I haven’t even had coffee yet,” Kaleb said. He even grinned when he complained.

“There’s a shop up there,” I offered. “I saw it in the brochure.”

I didn’t want to go, but now that the two of them had decided to grace the world, hurling myself off of a mountain had become strangely compelling.

“Then it’s settled,” Mina said, her voice taking on a chirp that I noticed she always had when excited and sometimes, through the far-too-thin walls of the tiny snow cabin, during the peak of sex. That thought turned my stomach.

“Snowed in here,” I said. “We’ll have to walk to the bus stop and hope the roads are clear up the mountain.”

“Or we could go down to the lift,” she said, pointing down the hill to where the hanging wires and sealed buckets came to a stop, loaded up, and took off again.

“Faster on the bus,” Kaleb remarked, not even looking. I watched as she acquiesced without an argument and switched directions. She started out before us up the steep hillside, which was a little too steep for her as she fell backwards into Kaleb’s open arms.

“Easy,” he reassured. His deep voice seemed to steady her as she took another tentative step, and then sure of her footing, joined it with another. I followed behind Kaleb, who took one wide stride to her two. Their love was a strange bond of love and hate and tolerance.

“Left at that tree. There’s a trail…”

“That takes us up the the road with the bus stop just beyond. We all saw the map, Artemis.”

“Then why were you turning left, Kaleb?”

“A stump. That’s all. Remember it from when we came down from the stop?”

I sighed. The stump was reality, but not in this direction. This wasn’t even the way we’d come, as anyone could tell from the indentions still in the snow, ten inches or not, leading to the back of the cabin. I remembered it clearly because that bus is where Kaleb had seen to surprise me with his visit-turned-sqat-in.

“Whatever,” I murmered, turning myself now. I could hear the harsh whispers ahead.

“Is he always like this?” Mina asked.

“Not always. Usually he’s more fun. I don’t know what the problem is.”

“I can hear you both.”

“Then what is your problem?”

“Nothing.”

We walked like prisoners bound together by the ankles, one by one forward through the powder and between the trees that now wore their own cloaks of white. The first few steps were in blissful silence with nothing but the crunch of ice crystals beneath our feet. Then they grouped off like gazelles ahead of me as I fell back, then the chattering began again. I spent my time examining the trees, thin and sparse with arteries clogged by snow.

“The bus is arriving,” Kaleb told me, reaching into his coat pocket to produce a black cloth mask that he affixed to his face with one hand in a practiced, swift motion. Looking from him to Mina, I saw her struggling with her own, the loop dangling uselessly below her ear. In a deft motion, Kaleb corrected the misplaced ear loop over her left ear — now tinged with pink. My own mask was the navy blue of the sky just after dark settled on an overcast evening.

“The sign is over there, Kaleb,” I said, pointing to the other side of the road. He looked up to where my finger directed. 

“We want to go up,” he said with a smirk.

“Europe,” I reminded him. In one word, his smirk disappeared and a sheepish grin replaced it. I had humbled him, and the feeling of victory sank through my skin and into my bones. “Let’s cross.”

The bus arrived in seconds after we’d made it to the other side, compounding my inner gloat. I kept my face down, still seeking something of the isolation I required. I nodded to the driver and dropped three euros into his toll collector. A seat near the back remained unoccupied, even with the rows of passengers completely filling the front ones. I forwent the pleasure of my own need for reflection to allow Kaleb and Mina the only completely free seat available, opting instead to slide in next to a portly gentleman who I would learn tended to sweat on others.

Before I took that seat, I saw her eyes staring at me over the heads of the other riders. The blue was unmistakeable, and that would have warned me to her presence had I been in Texas instead of Scotland. As it was, I recall thinking only that once upon a time, I had known eyes like those — and when I had known them, they used to study me with the same intensity as the ones that peered over the back of the storm gray bus seat, hovering over an exposed neck, the rest concealed beneath a green mask.

It couldn’t have been her. 

I looked away. 

My part of the day had passed, and the rest belonged to everyone else. 

It couldn’t have been her. 

Stomach sinking, I took that seat offered, despite the lingering smell of armpits and desperation. The occupying man muttered something in Scottish, probably an insult. I nodded and flashed a thin smile that couldn’t have made it to my eyes, and behind my mask was rendered by Omicron as useless a gesture as the man’s unintelligible words. Trading nods, we dutifully ignored each other for the remainder of the trip until we emerged at the top of the mountain, overlooking a white bank of snow that stretched endlessly downward. From my vantage point, the snow looked pristine and clean and untouched. My eyes tumbled down the hillside and bounced off of the trees, then took flight across the valley below to an expansive rock bluff in the distance. Birds sailed from their homes, swarming into a giant seventy-foot tall tsunami that exploded at once into a million tiny fragments still caught in an invisible tornado. The sun glinted flecks of purple and blue and green as the starlings that sought direction from a drunken master.

“We’re here,” the man beside me said in broken English, having figured out that I am exactly the stupid American he thought I was who spoke only one language, and even that in limited capacity. His breath labored behind his words so much that I had to look at him — a mistake as I saw the raised eyebrows and darting eyes of someone whose patience I had clearly worn thin. With a muffled apology, I shoved my way into the disembarking stream of passengers and right into Mina who, in a surprising display of strength and agility and stubbornness, elbowed me back. Her eyes went slack as she saw that I was the target of her animosity.

“Sorry, Artemis,” she threw at me beneath her sparkling brown eyes. “I always thought folks are nicer in Europe, but you really have to fight for your place in the queue, don’t you?”

I gave her as polite a nod as I could in passing before I, too, was swept up and guided forcefully between the columns of seats to be ejected onto the snow. My hand went up to shield my eyes as the sun’s full toll became apparent, being magnified by a million tiny flecks of snow. Kaleb and Mina joined me six feet — or I guess I should say a third of a meter — away from the river of faces and bodies that dwindled to a stream and then died on the mountainside in a splash.

“No sunglasses?” Kaleb asked, sliding his own protective goggles down over his face.

“No,” I told him under my raised arm. “Forgot them back at the lodge.”

Not exactly true, but it was close enough. I did remember to bring the novel that I’d carried all the way from Texas. I know, I know. I travel halfway around the world to an exclusive ski resort in Scotland only to spend my time reading a novel I’d already read. Please remember that I hadn’t planned to be on the side of a mountain anyway. Without glasses, I could make my escape and once the two of them started down the mountain, I could ease into a booth in the slightly disappointing cafe

“Here. I brought an extra set.”

Of course he did. With as much grace as I could muster, I accepted them.

“Remember those?”

I turned them over in my hand.

“From?”

“That last trip we took to Ireland,” he said, taking the deep breath he normally took when preparing for a story. “Where was that we went? Was it Glasgow? And the bus? And Niamh? Do you still talk to her.”

The mention of Niamh snapped Mina into the conversation.

“Who was Niamh?” She asked.

“Nobody,” I answered, feeling my cheeks flush hot. “Just a girl.”

“Just a girl?” Kaleb posited, pivoting on his heels. “If you weren’t so hung up on what’s her name then you’d have seen that she was insane for you.”

“Lia,” I told him. “It wasn’t that.”

He turned to Mina as he stepped away toward a battered equipment rental sign suspended over a small shack caddy-corner to the cafe. She stepped forward to keep stride, and I followed closely to defend myself in this attack of a conversation.

“She gave him her number and everything.”

I mumbled something about international rates as Mina shot a woeful glance at me.

“She even invited him to an after-hours bar downtown, but my brother Artemis decided he didn’t want to go. He was ‘tired from traveling’ or something.”

“I was tired from traveling. It’s a nine hour flight and a time zone change.”

“She was hot too,” Kaleb continued.

“As hot as me,” Mina asked, batting her eyelashes above her mask.

“Of course not, Babe. Impossible. But she was damn close. Here. Look.”

He pulled out his phone and showed him the only picture we had of her. She hadn’t liked me though. The after-hours invitation was only a courtesy. Distracted by the conversation, I hadn’t realized that we’d made it to the rental stand until we came to a stop before it.

“They have toboggans,” Mina squealed. “We have to do that!”

“Let’s do it,” Kaleb replied, and turned to the man, gushing the Gaelic he’d learned for the trip. “Cia mheud?”

I took in the rental shop, little more than a one-room shed with a small window cut-out of it. The man whose eyes lit up at Kaleb’s attempt at Gaelic nodded like a machine gun, head bobbing up and down. He wore a dark green stocking cap over his pale freckle-pocked forehead. He was wrapped in a fluffy brown down coat and sported a sunburn just beginning around his eyes. A thick green mask covered his face. Behind him the sun lit a wall of sleds, snowboards, and other ski-related tools which I didn’t recognize, given that I rarely ever ski. Long poles that had to be used for something sat next to vials of topical ointments that warded off sun and windburn could be purchased for just under five euros. The man disappeared and returned carrying a toboggan sled as tall as he was.

“This one, seventeen euros for three hours,” he told Kaleb, who glanced at Mina. She nodded.

“Come back when you’re done to pay,” the man followed.

“Sure will, Fraser,” Kaleb said. “Tapadh beat.”

The man nodded with an expression around his eyes, unless it was my imagination, that seemed pained and relieved at the same time. Then he turned his attention to me.

“What would you like?”

Mina whispered something to Kaleb, who glanced at me with one open eye, and then whispered back.

“One sec,” I told the man. Inserting myself into the conspiracy, I addressed Mina first. “What?”

“Nothing. Just…”

“Just if you’re okay, we’d like to get going. Is that okay with you, little brother?”

I shrugged, and before my shoulders fell back to their original position, I found myself alone with the rental agent. My chance had arrived.

“Okay,” I whispered to the man through my mask. “I’d like some coffee. Do you all have that here?”

He seemed confused over his mask as his left eyebrow shot up.

“Coffee? No. There.”

He pointed to the coffee shop which was exactly where I knew it was. But I would rather seem ignorant than rudely taking up space in a queue for no apparent reason.

“Oh,” I exaggerated complete with hand gestures. “Great. I’ll go there then. My mistake.”

A gust of wind blew snow loose from the roof, dropping a glob of damp cold onto my stocking cap. I stepped out of the line as I knocked it loose, banging my head with my hand while trying to keep ice out of that gap between my stocking cap and my ski suit. In a frantic wave, I shifted my chest forward as melting snow dripped down between my shoulder blades.

“I didn’t know you ski,” came a voice that tensed my shoulders and thumped at the inside of my skull. “It’s hard to find a lot of skiers from central Texas.”

I turned and saw the eyes again — Lia’s eyes, as impossible as it was. There was a smile in them, possibly even directed at me. I looked closer, trying to imagine Lia’s triangular jawline under the pink mask and hair perpetually pony-tail beneath her lilac knit beanie.

“Who are you?” I asked, fear wracking through my body as my heart raced with expectation yet my mind grappled with the thousands of miles between where we stood and where I’d last seen her. The burly ape-looking man beside her stared at me though despite his size and the obvious intimacy between them held me in a coddling gaze.

“Is this him?” The man asked.

“I think so,” she said in a voice that was too familiar and yet had taken on the huskier tone of the years the spanned between my memories and now. I felt the pull, and that’s when I knew that it had to be her. A single step in her direction was all I dared to take.

“Lia?”

Her blue eyes brightened.

“You do recognize me. I thought that was you on the bus but I wasn’t sure. How have you been, Artemis. It’s been so long.”

The man stuck out his right arm and spoke with a Texas twang.

“I’ve heard so much about you. Well… in the last ten minutes or so, anyway. It’s nice to meet you Artemis. I’m Michael but you can call me Mike. Mike Summers.”

I took his hand, but my eyes never left hers, nor hers mine. Mike didn’t seem to notice.

“Artemis,” I said. “Friends call me Art, I guess.”

“Don’t fall for it,” Lauren said, eyes still drilling into mine. “He hates being called Art. Call him Artemis. Artemis Mallory.”

Her voice trailed off as she said it, then she finally broke gaze.

“Mike, do you mind if Artemis and I catch up? Just maybe get some coffee or something.” She looked at me and admitted. “I heard you ask for some.”

“Fine by me, hun. I’ll get the boards.”

“You snowboard?” I asked her.

“There’s a lot to talk about, Arty. So much has happened in the … what… twenty years since we’ve known each other?”

I noticed the start of wrinkles around those eyes then, and grew self-conscious about the ones surrounding mine.

“You think half an hour or so?”

She let slip another giggle that chimed through the air and massaged my ears.

“You are just anxious to get down the mountain, aren’t you?” She turned to me again. “Mike competes. For him, this blue square is pretty boring but he understands that for us beginners, we need to take it slow. Right, Mike?”

“Sure, doll. I was just going to zip over to the black diamond while you talk. Might be my only chance today — not that I’m complaining.”

“Go, Mike. We’ll be fine.”

And just like that, Jupiter and Saturn aligned. Gravitational forces went to work on my insides, pulling me into the past. Kisses so deep and passionate that if I didn’t come up for air I would suffocate in them. In my imagination, I did die, suffocated in her embrace with my molecules slowly spinning to a stop. I forced myself to remember that we’re not in the past, and there’s nothing between us now but the cold mountain air. I’d almost succeeded in convincing myself of that one solitary fact when I felt those thin fingers wrap around my arm, through the glove, through the down coat, and through two layers of underclothes.