Every Star in the Sky

  Every Star in the sky

  By: A.R. Asher

  Every Star In The Sky by A.R. Asher

  West Salem, Wisconsin

  © 2017 A.R. Asher

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  For permissions contact: A.R. Asher

  CHAPTER ONE

  Two hours in the frigid winter darkness, and nothing. I raise a gloved hand to my mouth and blow into my palm to fight the brisk morning frost. At first I feel relief, and then the bitter sting of wind as it lashes across my exposed cheeks. I had wanted to take Bear with me this time, but he still hollered and howled every time he saw wildlife, and he would take off into the snowy forest just to find his absurdly large body stuck in a snowbank. He probably won’t make it as a hunting dog, and I am okay with that. I just need his company. He makes the loneliness feel a lot less real.

  I hear the coarse splinter of wood in the undergrowth and freeze. It’s a 12-point stag, young and fresh looking: a full, white chest and a strong, able body. Muscles ripple under his tawny flesh. His velvet maw nuzzles its way through the snow as he searches for food strewn on the barren forest floor. He doesn’t look concerned, or even cautious. Young and stupid. Cocky, even.

  I raise my bow and draw.

  Despite the cold, my form is straight and strong. I narrow my eyes and pinpoint his heart from only about 50 yards off. Can’t he smell me?

  Suddenly, the trees begin to shudder and quake. The buck is alert— wide-eyed, frozen in place— as the ground throbs with life and thunder below us. I can’t find it. Where this came from. I run every possibility through my mind as quickly as I can when the Earth shatters into millions of pieces.

  A thick white haze clouds the earth. I hear the breaking of wood, the ripping sound of hooves in thick snow, a mottled deer-scream. Coppery blood is thick in my mouth and I feel the redness cover my eyes before I can register what color it is.

  MOM

  WHERE ARE YOU

  MOM

  BE SAFE

  MOM

  The words fail to escape from my frozen lips as the blistering cold of winter fills my every pore.

  MY BOW. DAD WHERE IS MY BOW DAD WHERE IS MY BOW DAD WHERE IS MY BOW DAD WHERE DID YOU GO THAT WAS ALL I HAD LEFT OF YOU

  I am buried.

  I reach for my face. I need to wipe the blood away. If I can see, then maybe I can escape the walls of snow that surround me and fracture my body heat. I’m not going to be able to breathe much longer at this rate. I feel the walls of snow with my fingertips and search for places of weakness. When I find the weakest wall, I thrust against it with a shaking fist. It collapses against me and disintegrates into powdery ruins. I worm toward the opening and blink enough to get a small bit of clarity. Luckily, the snow outside is malleable and thick. I form a solid grip on the edge of the tunnel I’ve created and drag my torso into the dim morning light. I look around me and can’t see much, but it’s obvious that an avalanche has hit the forest.

  I don’t believe in a god, and yet, I find myself praying for the safety of the village.

  For mom.

  I try getting to my feet but all I can see is blood, and my limbs are numb. I will succumb to hypothermia soon with the snow staining the insides my clothing. The burning cold now clings to me like a leech, but weakness will not find me here. My skin ripples in indignation, taut and trembling.

  I will not die.

  Not yet.

  I push my upper body against the snow and stagger towards a tree to frame my broken body against. I claw the snow from beneath my shirt and coat, and breathe warmth on to my skin.

  I need the bow but I am blinded by the ocean of white before me.

  My legs give out against my will. I try to think of ways to fight while icy tears form on my cheeks. I take a deep breath and muster enough energy to produce a single whistle. It is shaky but audible, and it echoes throughout the forest.

  Two minutes later he comes thundering through the snow, powerful black legs kicking back a spray of powder. Bear licks my face and eyes, his rancid dog breath more calming than anything else in the world could try to be. I try to respond in some way but can only manage to twitch my eyelids. He turns his head south and howls to the horizon. Before long I hear sobbing, the sounds of relief, of fear, of… something else. Something I can’t register. I hear three distinct voices despite my cloudy state.

  “Oh God… Jaybird, say something.”

  “Hide her. Hide her now!”

  “My… My baby! No!”

  Their cries engulf my ears and threaten my consciousness. A deep abyss unfolds within me and all at once, I am gone.

  Searing agony. Pain on the right side of my body. A hellish voltage I shouldn’t feel. Spiked hairs down the length of me. On fire. Burning everything away.

  My eyes shoot open to find the dark oak walls of my home. My left hand is wrist-deep in fur. My right… I can’t feel. Do I need… a doctor…?

  “Jaybird.” A sweet, tear-stricken whisper.

  My mom places her hand on my forehead, feels my hair, gently holds my shoulders in her grasp. I can feel my skin rattling under her arthritic, trembling hands. So sweet and warm. She smells of lily and lavender fields.

  “There was an avalanche, mom,” I whisper.

  She throws her arms around me and sobs into my chest. I return the favor as well as I can in my broken consciousness.

  “You’re safe.” I say to her as nausea springs up in my stomach. If I lost her. If I lost this woman, this only person who I loved and trusted. There would be nothing left for me. We cling to each other desperately, the two hemispheres of a whole world.

  “There was a big buck.” My voice is raspy, “I didn’t get to shoot. Everything broke all at once, Mom. Bear… I whistled, and he came. Who…”

  I realize there are other sets of eyes watching me. Mr. Olson’s cold, dark eyes lighten a bit as I meet his gaze. A huff of relief. His sparse gray hair makes a carpet-like texture on the back of his head and around his lips and chin.

  “Jay.” Evan Olson. My best friend. Rather, he was. I haven’t talked to him in five years. He must be about twenty now. He has thick, shaggy blonde hair, and eyes the color of a clear April sky. His face is roughly accented with a beard and mustache, unkempt but handsome nevertheless. He is a man now… a man who even stands straighter, who bears a broad chest and lean arms. He reminds me of the buck I almost shot, but he wears the garments of a soldier.

  “Get him out.” I say.

  “Honey, I don’t think you—“

  “I don’t want to look at him. Get him out.” My whole body is trembling furiously with rage and a lack of self-control no matter how intensely I fight to conceal my emotions. Namely, fear.

  I can’t trust him.

  I can’t trust anyone ever again.

  I see Evan tear up from the corner of my eye before he leaves. The closed door is a taciturn promise: You’ve driven him away, Jay.

  I dig my chin into my sternum and stare at my lap, avoiding Mr. Olson, my mom, wishing I was somewhere else. Maybe it’d have been better if I had just--

  No. Don’t think like that.

  I have to be rational. Other people will only hurt and abuse me, and they are out to get me. Mr. Olson is like an estranged father, and the village doctor, so he’s never bothered me. Plus, he’s so quiet. Always gentle. The only man I’ve ever met I can say such things about, even if he’s stoic and has eyes like dark glass. Eyes where shadows lurk. But I understand. Evan’s brother and mother’s death hurt the entire village. His brother was a few days old, and his fever brought the two of them down together.

  I miss t
hem. Every day. They were mine, too. Not just Evan’s. They were also mine.

  “Miss Jay… He misses you an awful lot. I figured ya coulda said somethin’ to him. Perk him up.”

  I hate him— I hate Evan. His name makes me sick. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Mr. Olson. I won’t.”

  It was “silly,” they told me. That I was upset. That I shouldn’t have been upset. All he did was enlist, Jay. He just wants to protect you.

  But he knew. He knew that the word “soldier” was not a happy word in these parts. He knew the mistake he’d made. Or did he? If he didn’t… that was worse.

  Soldiers took my father. Men. Soldiers. I can trust neither.

  “He helped save your life, Miss Jay. Whatever you think about my boy… jus’ know that he cares aboutcha. He’s awful sorry for everything. He swears by it. That boy doesn’t lie.”

  “Am I dead?” I ask him.

  He smiles a bit. “Nah, you’re plenty alive. Lucky thing Bear found ya. That’s a good boy you’ve got there.”

  I smile and reach down to pet Bear’s big fluffy head. “Can I go outside now? I can’t… I can’t breathe in here.”

  My mom frowns. “Honey.”

  “I feel so trapped… Please.” My life has always been a constant struggle to properly use the dictionary in my head. I’m smart, but I have never been able to talk. No matter how hard I’ve tried.

  “‘Fraid you’re not goin’ anyplace until that arm of yours heals up, little lady,” Mr. Olson rasps.

  I look down and slowly peel the blanket away from my skin with my left hand. The entire limb is covered in gauze and medical wrap, stained dark crimson down the center in a near perfect line. My hand is mottled with cuts, and I can only subtly shift my stiff, crumpled fingers, shaped like a claw. Past the curve of my upper thigh, I can see that my right leg is purple beyond recognition, covered in inch-long gashes that have been sewn shut. I’m a broken puppet. I feel tears well in my eyes.

  “Let me walk.”

  Mr. Olson understands. “Miss Hart… In a few days, you should be good to go. But you fell on your bow and arrow, kiddo. It was ugly. The things splintered into pieces. The arrow dug a hole all the way up and down yer arm, see there?” He points to the red bandages, “Real bad. I sewed you up fine. But it’ll scar. Yer cheek, too. I don’t want you walkin’--”

  “My cheek?”

  My mother sobs quietly as she hands me a mirror. I steady it with my left hand so I can look at myself. Long, thick black hair and green eyes like the forest. Snowy-pale skin. A spatter of freckles across my cheeks and the bridge of my nose. And on my right cheek, a scarlet red line of flesh that follows the line of my cheekbone. Forever. Scars are forever. I drop the mirror in my lap and force a smile.

  “It’s okay.”

  My mom looks at me. “You… you’re not upset?”

  I swallow. “I survived, at least. It’s just a scar.”

  My mom and Mr. Olson discuss “treatment” and “healing” while I absentmindedly run my good hand through Bear’s shaggy coat, finding solace in the gentle rise and fall of his stomach. Eventually Mr. Olson starts to leave. He stops at the door and looks at me, gives me a sad smile. He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something when he closes it up again and walks out the door. It closes, and I feel a strange peace.

  For three straight minutes, the world is silent and still.

  “I’ve had chicken noodle soup sitting in the pot, waiting for you to wake up,” my mom speaks up. She hands me a warm bowl from a pot on the stove. I smile and gulp it down while my mother watches me, probably making sure I don’t drink it too fast or some ‘mom thing’ like that. I spoon most of it into my mouth with my left hand, save for a few spills onto my shirt here and there. I probably could’ve eaten with my right hand, but it felt stiff and looked ugly. I didn’t want to see it.

  “Mom. The village. Did the avalanche hit the village?”

  She looks into her lap, threading her fingers together. “The… the village was…” Mom looks up at me, soft blue eyes full of a pain I wasn’t used to seeing.

  She clears her throat, “Honey… The village is fine. That’s not what you need to be concerned about right now..”

  “What do you mean?” I try to ignore the snake of doubt that wraps around my chest.

  “What with the shortages and the way you act around the villagers… With your arm broken you’re not much good as a hunter, and I…”

  Exile.

  She’s talking about exile.

  Neither of us say anything for several minutes, both of us fighting back tears in vain and saying nothing.

  “Mom,” I insist, “I’m suffocating in here. I need to get out of here-- just for a while. Please.”

  She sighs. She can’t hide the way her lips tremble as she blinks back tears. “Go on, then. Ten minutes only, okay?”

  The smile I try to force doesn’t come, but I’m still grateful. She is the only one who’s ever understood. She gets that I’m scared of the soldiers. That I’m scared of failure. That I’m scared of betrayal. That I can’t stay inside for too long or I will panic. That I can’t trust anyone but her and Mr. Olson. That I… that I’m not normal. And I never will be.

  I tried my best, once. I went to school for a long time but things would interest me that shouldn’t have, or I would fidget for hours without being able to control myself, and the kids, the people, never felt... okay. They picked on me for my freckles and fidgeting and general weirdness. That I liked playing with the grass and dirt, that I was obsessed with the anatomy of wolves at the time, that I learned some things very quickly and others I simply couldn’t learn at all. They picked on me because I had short hair, like a boy. They didn’t understand that I just felt more comfortable with short hair. Short hair made me feel strong and bold and capable. But I figured if I grew it out, they’d leave me alone… They didn’t.

  But I let the hair keep growing, in hopes of “maybe someday.”

  I ease one leg at a time over the side of the bed and stumble to my feet. I’m shaky as expected, and it stings, but I don’t mind the pain. Being inside would be worse than any pain right now.

  Bear pads after me, matching me step for step and curling up next to me when I lower myself onto the porch stair.

  “You saved my life today, buddy,” I say, and he lays his head in my lap. I pet the silky fur on his ears and look out into the distance, towards the village. I can see the various tents and merchant stalls; all abandoned because of the nighttime and the lack of wares. The drought had hit the crops hard, and the animals in consequence. Food is scarce, so there’s no way they’ll exile their best hunter… even if that hunter needs a few months before she can hunt again. I look up to the sky, the scythe-shaped full moon overhead, and two glittering stars.

  Dad had always talked about how there was a great spirit who lived up in the moon that watched over all of us and protected us from harm. Before the soldiers took him, that is.

  I wonder what this “great spirit” had decided we’d done so wrong.

  CHAPTER TWO

  He comes at around midnight. When my mother slept there was no waking her, which he knows. Why now? Why does he suddenly care about me now?

  He shakes my shoulders gently until I wake. “Jay. Please wake up… It’s really important.”

  “Get away,” I grumble, groggy with exhaustion and pain. I try to slap him away but needless to say; my drunken slapping doesn’t do much to deter him.

  “Please,” his voice quivers.

  I don’t know why. But there’s something about the urgency in his eyes, the fear in his crisp voice… concern. I find myself struggling between the man that stands before me and the boy I once knew.

  I think it’s his eyes. The childlike intensity, the fear they hold.

  I get out of bed with what little energy I have and we tiptoe out of the house, Bear at my side. Evan lights the way with a lantern. I watch the fire glimmer into being, shapeshifting into miraculous white ho
rses with orange manes, and I follow their life cycle-- from birth till embery death.

  “Tell me now. What do you have to say,” I mutter as I limp alongside him and gasp for air.

  “It’s not what I have to say. It’s what you need to see.”

  I roll my eyes, fighting the surge of anger that charges through me. I don’t have the energy to be mad. I don’t have the strength.

  Nor do I have the desire to communicate with the boy who left me for the army immediately after my father was stolen. He left me when I needed him the most. I don’t think I will ever forgive him.

  I try to register him as an inhuman source of information to remove the feeling from my chest. I ignore the register of his warmth next to me. I ignore the shuffling of our feet in the snow, his effortless and mine ragged. Bear pads along with a big derpy look on his face as usual, the same kind of look you’d expect from a big, slobbery mountain dog. I stroke his messy head to keep myself calm and upright.

  Information. Don’t register anything else.

  Protect her.

  Mom.

  “Impatient as ever, Jaybird.” He sounds nostalgic.

  “That’s not my name. Where are we going?”

  He frowns. “I’m sorry I enlisted… I just had to get away. From everything… Mom and Jack dead, my dad broken, and the way I felt about you. I’ve always liked you more than I was supposed to. You’re just so different. Exciting. The best kind of beautiful.”

  I fight a wave of sympathy in my chest along with a wave of anger that didn’t want to leave. How can any person expect different, exciting, and beautiful to secure a relationship? Nothing is secure. Nothing is permanent.

  “Not now,” I growl.

  “Jay...”

  They come all at once. The visions of the soldiers taking my father away. Dirty men who touched my mother and threatened her life for their pleasure. They wanted to take her beauty and tarnish it beneath their smelly, greasy bodies. They were bearded and strong; they were healthy physically, but mentally they were vermin.

  I stabbed him. One of them. Once. Twice. He threw me against the wall. Drunken breath in my nose. Screaming. Bloody spider web-vein eyes. Shaking, shaking-- I couldn’t control a thing. I was gone. Somewhere else. Don’t take my mom. It’s too late. Don’t take my dad. It’s too late.