Set the Stars Alight

by Amanda Dykes

“This marks the end of an era,” Gerald W. Bessette said, clapping the watchmaker on the back as if they were old school chums. “Workers once tuned their ears to this very tower to keep watch over the beginning and end of their toiling each day. And now”—the man spread his arms wide, as if unrolling the horizon of the whole city—“it marks the beginning of a new epoch. A time of . . .” He furrowed his brow, apparently having used up all his words to capture his grandiose swell of feeling. “A time of something really, really good.”

me

The cottage was a place where tales spun inside every dusty shaft of golden-hour sunlight. Where each evening, stories and riddles were told around flickering flames—crackling hearth fire in winter months, pirouetting candlelight in the summer.

my dream home:

Her young fingers wrapped around chipped mugs of chamomile or, on Sundays, sipping chocolate. “Monday is upon us,” her mum would say with a conspiratorial wink. “We must prepare. Chocolate all ’round.”

“The best of friends come in the unlikeliest ways.”

But Lucy did not climb trees or study sundials. She did not have a “thing,” as most people seemed to. She kept waiting to find it, looking out over the Thames, or over the sea when they were on rare holiday, wondering who she would be.

“Why are you reading it if you don’t like it?” Lucy blinked, embarrassed to admit she had just liked the way the gold words shone against its old blue spine on the shelf. And more than that, it had been on the upper shelf, meaning she had an excuse to climb the rolling ladder. All her schoolmates had swing sets in their gardens or nearby parks. She . . . she had a fountain in place of a merry-go-round and a rolling ladder instead of monkey bars.

just one day,,, i want to climb a library rolling ladder

“Hey,” the boy said, as he stopped at what she assumed was the long hallway to his flat. “What’s your name?” “Lucy.” “I’m Dashel,” he said. “Dash.” He walked away in exactly the opposite speed of his name, slow and thoughtful, looking over his shoulder and offering a clumsy wave.

And so she invited the lost boy into their circle. That night, and the next, and the next—until it was just expected that Dash would be there for dinner each night. The brother she’d never had. The friend she hadn’t known she’d needed.

“Hey, Matchstick Girl,” Dash said one night. He had learned that her bedroom was once the place where sticks became matches, and the name had stuck. “Did you hear about the supernova?” He was always asking about some astronomical wonder or another. She gave him a sideways glance and a half smile, which she knew he would take to mean “no” as well as “please tell me everything you know about the supernova,” and he proceeded to fill her head with scientific jargon she hardly understood until he finished rambling, out of breath and red in the face with excitement.

so adorable 😭

She stifled a smile, put on her serious face, and pulled the watch on its long chain from her pocket. With a quick snap, she held it out for all to see and uttered her favorite words in all the world: “Let the story . . . begin.”

“Ah, but it is. You remember that, children. You mine for the colour and light in the dark, in the harshest terrain. Because these truths . . . as dazzling to the mind as they are . . . are only echoes.” “Echoes of what?” Lucy was always anxious to cut right to the heart of the matter. “The truest story of all.”

“‘I am constant as the northern star, of whose true-fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.’”

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.’

And that day she stopped seeing Dashel Greene as the lost boy. For he had found her in the dark, and given her a home.

“The secret to a good riddle,” he told them one night, his voice trying and not quite succeeding to reach the peaks and valleys of his old magical tone, “is to begin at the end. Know what your answer is, and slowly drop clues. Your listeners won’t know they are clues, of course—not until they lean in.”

“So,” he said, “riddlers we shall become. Something to set our hands to. I shall give you two clues, and you shall find a story. And along the way, we will dig for light. Continue to tell the stories of this world’s wonders. I think we could all use a bit of that, don’t you? Some reminding of what the Maker of such a world can do?”

what clues have you been dropping sir ,':)?

“I think it’s our duty to keep the stories, to pass them on. It is our duty—and our honor. In a world as dark as ours, we—that is, people—forget how to see the light. So we remind them by telling the truth, fighting the dark, paying attention . . . setting the stars alight. There are things shining brightly all along, if we will notice.”

Taking note of the good, the true, the just, the miracles hidden at every turn is like . . . a deliberate act of defiance against the darkness.

And remember—every good riddle has a safeguard built into it, a way for the seeker to solve the riddle, when all else fails.”

“To remember the God who is coming, and coming, and coming to find your heart,” he’d said. “Wherever you are, whatever’s happened. With every miracle around every ordinary corner.”

“When things seem dark, Lucy, that’s when you fight for the light.”

Time, as she had learned, did soothe the rough edges away from wounds, even if the wounds still ran deep and a distant ache remained.

He knew only solitude in his home. And though he did not mind the quiet . . . the isolation sometimes pierced.

He’d thought, perhaps, he might help someone. It would be a nice feeling, he imagined. Something to . . . to matter.

He’d seen the way the fierceness of her seemed to soften in his presence. The way she could sock him on the shoulder in jest, and an hour later, lay her head on that shoulder as if it were the truest home she knew. Frederick was glad of it—she deserved something good.

Unable to resist, she finally turned to him. There—beneath the bill of his baseball cap—she saw the brown eyes she knew better than her own reflection. Matured by years passed, but with that same earnest depth and spark of mirth. He seemed to be giving her this chance to see him before he spoke his name. Her heart, in response, tumbled about, madly trying to find a place for itself.

AHHH

“Forensic astronomy is sleuthing using the sky. We use what we know from science, history, observation of the night skies, to help bring answers to unanswered questions. Sometimes it’s art.” He gestured. “When was Van Gogh’s Evening Landscape with a Rising Moon painted? Sometimes it’s crime. What time was a crime committed? Abraham Lincoln, when he was a lawyer, even used the position of the moon on the night of a crime to prove his case. And sometimes it’s history. How is it possible that in the midst of the Civil War, Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own troops? I’ll tell you. Or rather, forensic astronomy will. A full moon caused him to be unrecognizable in silhouette. “Forensic astronomy uses calculations, logbooks, sky charts . . . and so much more.” He was looking, in his impassioned explanation, more like his boyhood self. She half expected him to turn and ask her if she’d seen any supernovas lately.

His voice speaking her name felt so foreign. She did not know this voice, deepened and full. And even if she had, he had rarely called her Lucy. It had been Matchstick Girl or, occasionally, Lu. But more often than those he’d greeted her with the illustrious “Hey”—which he had somehow infused with all the warmth in the world.

“That part’s my fault. I needed a dark-sky place near the Channel to do some research, so we struck a deal. They let me plant myself there and do my thing, and in return, I do a star party for their guests once a week. And . . .” He leaned forward, as if about to impart some great treasure. “There’s scones.” She laughed and had to keep herself from punching him on the shoulder, a gesture so familiar it had become a part of their shared language. A laugh with a sock. “Scones, you say.”

SCONES

“You won’t have to pay for board. I’ll get you in under my deal with the farm siblings. Two sisters and a brother. Did I mention there’s scones?” “It’s England. Scones are everywhere.” “Not like these. Come on! You can sleep and eat and study and find the Jubilee and get back to the shop and do whatever you need to do. Badda-bing, badda-boom.” She laughed through her nose. She couldn’t help it. He was his old incorrigible self, his enthusiasm contagious.

i love him so much

Beside her, the back of Dash’s hand brushed hers. For a split second, her fingers ached to lace themselves to his, like they had in the Underground when everything had gone black. As if her fingers sensed home nearby.

“Aw, that’s great,” Dash said, taking his cap from his head. His hair stuck up in the back, every bit the mad scientist. He never had been polished or professional. And apparently degrees from Harvard and roving astronomer positions hadn’t changed that.

“Yes, thank you. Truly,” Lucy said. “You won’t regret it,” Dash said, about to become effusive, if the glimmer in his eye meant what it used to. So before he could bring the whole building down around them in thanks, she nudged him and led the way out, tilting her head for him to follow.

okay wait...future me thought: they're literally like freddy and juliette in another timeline, right?!?!?

And always, they’d end the day at the prime meridian. She’d stand on one side of the line, he on the other, and they’d high-five one another—Dash’s idea. “Can’t keep us apart,” he’d once said. “Even in different hemispheres. Time starts here, you know. Greenwich mean time and all that. So we’re high-fiving”—he held his hand up with a cheesy smile—“right where time begins.”

She remembered how the stories made her feel. Full of longing, like she’d missed the times of yore and wonder and was born instead into a time of plastic and speed.

tell me about it

Grief did that, apparently. Snuck out of hidden exits.

What was it about this place that quickened her soul so? She felt, as she slipped into the cool haven, that she was cocooned inside a place that changed people, harbored hearts, grew stories.

“But it’s snug, and the bed is comfortable, and you’ll have birdsong to wake you in the morning. Not a bad lot in life, all things considered.”

the birds really do make the mornings brighter

“This is Salt,” Clara said. “Odd name, I know, but it’s a family tradition. None of us know why that is, but we carry it on, even so, and the pigs seem to like it. This here is Salt the Twenty-Ninth. Occasionally known as Morton.”

A door in a wall, to be more precise. A door in a wall in a hill, to be exact.

dream home

Clara nodded. “It does get a little cold in there. And I know it’s dark—but we tuck light in wherever light can be tucked. ‘Don’t let the gloom settle over your bones so,’ my grandmother used to say, and so we chase it off however we can.”

“Is that a hammock?” she asked of the platform hanging from four thick ropes that looked as if they’d been taken straight off a ship.

it just gets better

“Take it from me,” Clara said, laying a hand on Lucy’s shoulder. “When you’re so busy you can’t possibly rest, that’s when it’s most important to throw caution to the wind and take a nap.

Clara smiled and left the door ajar, and soon Lucy—who twelve hours before had stepped away from the only home she had ever known, was nearly jobless, and pretty much one hundred percent alone in the world—was laying her head against a feather pillow impossibly soft, sung to sleep by a stream running through her own bedchamber, with the best friend she’d ever known whistling a tune somewhere in the green meadow beyond.

“The locker is what I call this.” He tapped his forehead. “The place ideas go to . . .” He waited. Was Frederick to fill in the blank, then? “To die?” Killian Blackaby took a step back, hand to his chest as if Frederick had dealt him a blow. “Certainly not! To be kept safe from that fate. A balladmonger needs a healthy arsenal of rhymes.”

lol, freddy

“Stand up.” The words barely slipped past the prison of Frederick’s clenched teeth.

thats a great sentence right there

He ventured a half laugh that flopped like a cold squid upon humorless decks.

lol

But his mind was then drawn higher, to the One who created these stars that men assigned stories and names to. Here, he prayed.

But though they be cut, and though they be worn . . . they were victorious.

Truth, as it is wont to do, speared the tensions, and laughter broke through its crack. They collapsed into their hammocks as if they were the beds of kings, for they brought solace to tired bones and souls.