“There is a planet, disguised as a girl, who wanders these woods.”
Maya has heard this story a thousand times, but it is her favorite. She settles into a creaking wooden chair to listen to her grandmother tell it again.
“This Girl has eyes as dark as matter, a gleaming star for a pupil. Her hair is the color of starlight. Her skin is the dark grey of cooled magma and it shimmers iridescent in the light. Over her shoulder, in a net hanging from the end of a pole, is a tiny star she carries everywhere. She does not age, nor does she change. She will come to us the same as she came to my great-grandmother and she will to your great-grandchildren.”
Crickets and peeper-song drift through the open windows of Gran’s farmhouse kitchen, thick with the smell of lilacs in bloom and the spice of a century of family dinners. Maya sinks into the carved wooden chair that is too big for her and hurts the bones of her bottom. She wants more story.
“Why does she come to us, Gran?”
“Her feet lead her back to us. Planets are unaccustomed to stillness, but her star is too small for her to orbit. She wanders rings around our wood instead. It is the duty of our secret society of kindness to feed her when she comes our way.”
Maya asks the question burning inside her. “Why is it a secret?”
Gran’s beloved, lined face takes on a worried expression before smoothing out again. She turns down the heat of her gurgling pot. “Hush, child, for we live in a world where kindness is too often considered a weakness. The Girl with Starlight Hair is secret, we are secret, and we tell no one of her existence. It keeps her safe.”
Maya’s eyes grow wide.
Gran carries on with her story. “The Girl with Starlight Hair began her life as a lonely, storm-clad planet whirling round a dying sun-star. Life sprouted in her fertile soils. Water filled her lowest places. She shivered with storms and cycled with seasons. Animals endlessly different from our own tickled her surface with their hooves, their paws, and their alien footsteps.”
Gran pauses to pull the rice from the burner and mash in herbs and butter. “When the Girl with Starlight Hair’s sun-star faltered and the life on her surface was threatened, her star called upon the magic of star-kind to save its one, beloved planet. The star-magic answered, compressing the planet down, compacting its every life-form into a single, solitary Earth-like girl. This sun-star, with the last of its magic, carried her to us for sake-keeping, begging your foremothers to keep her safe. We promised we would, out of kindness, and said nothing to our men-folk. We were entranced by this planet-Girl and the star who loved her.
“The Girl with Starlight Hair breathed her first breath as her feet touched upon the Earth, but her sun-star shrunk low in our gravity. Devoted, the Girl with Starlight Hair scooped her star from the ground, burning her fingers. Your foremothers made her a special net to carry her star in safety.”
Maya clutches the hard seat of her chair. Her favorite part is coming.
“You see, a planet never stops loving their sun. The Girl with Starlight Hair has discovered there is more to love than endless orbits. Love cares for stars as they die, slow as the universe itself, keeps their star above the ground and safe from wet and rot. Love stays in shady forests where a star needn’t be so aware of how dim it grew when it shrunk to fit this world and save the Girl with Starlight Hair.”
Maya clutches her knees, wishing, hoping that one day she will know love like this.
“It is strange for a Girl who was a planet to step over stones and trees which lie in her path after an existence whirling free in endless space, and stranger still to have a body which requires fuel. This is why we feed her. This is why the foremothers of our society have scattered themselves along the ring of her Earthly orbit: to watch over her and feed her when she comes to us. To protect her from humanity’s darker desires.”
Gran stops herself.
“That’s enough for now, little Maya.”
She reaches for a tangerine and squeezes sweet juices into the fragrant rice, pulpy orange drips racing down her fingertips and gleaming in the ebbing light before they sink deep into the grains.
Sleep weighs Maya’s eyelids heavy, but she rubs it away. Tonight is the first night she will go with Gran to feed the Girl with Starlight Hair. Maya has never seen her before, an image of the Girl wrought into her mind by Gran and her mother’s stories. Mom is gone now, but Maya can still make her proud from wherever it is people’s hearts end up when they die.
Gran dries her fingers on a tea towel and tugs on a sweater.
“Will the Girl with Starlight Hair talk to me, Gran?”
Gran smiles and shakes her head. “Planets are far different from little girls, my dear. She has learned to speak with us but she does not behave as humans. Keep an open mind, love, and don’t be hurt if she takes no notice of you. She is hungry when she finds us.” Gran hefts the pot of rice onto a thick towel and wraps it tight. “And our food is made fragrant to draw out her instinct to eat.”
They drive Gran’s old red truck to the Park and walk through a firefly twilight to a picnic area by the river. Other members of the society are already there, filling a table with wrapped dishes and squinting into the forest for the Girl with Starlight Hair.
A murmur rises as a glowing orb floats across a far meadow. Maya watches intently, slow to the realization that the orb is the star the Girl with Starlight Hair has always carried with her. The ladies hurry to unwrap the food they have brought, fanning the good smells into the forest with flapping hands.
Maya catches her breath as the Girl with Starlight Hair steps into the clearing, illuminated by a near full moon and the soft light of the dying star. Her white hair falls in deep contrast to her dark grey skin. Rainbows flicker over her shoulders as she reaches for a spoon of food a lady has rushed toward her. She walks strangely, like the ground is made of hot coals or a scattering of sharp rocks. The rainbows fascinate Maya, who draws closer to see them better. The Girl is naked in her shimmering rainbow skin and Maya thinks her beautiful.
The Girl with Starlight Hair turns, transfixed by the food she now eats like she’s under a spell, impolite, shoveling, bits of food falling onto her breasts and tumbling to the ground. When she turns, her star comes into Maya’s view. It is small yet infinitely bigger than the ones Maya sees in the sky, burning with an inner fire. It glows with an element of magic Maya senses from the fairy stories she has read, full of hope and truth and possibility. Tears flow from Maya’s eyes, and she understands at once why the Girl with Starlight Hair loves her star enough to carry it for a century.
She knows she shouldn’t, but Maya wants to touch the star. For who, besides the Girl with Starlight Hair, has ever touched a star? It will hurt, she warns herself, as she reaches up and cups the bottom of the star, lifting it a hair’s breadth before her nerves twitch it back, erupting in blinding pain.
Maya does not scream. The Girl with Starlight Hair whirls around to catch Maya’s hand, their eyes locking. Maya, in shock and moving outside of time, sees a soft smile lurk in the corner of the Girl’s mouth. She has a secret. It might be love. There is also sorrow there, ever so much sorrow. Maya does not want the Girl with Starlight Hair to be this full of sorrow.
The Girl with Starlight Hair whispers lyrical words Maya does not recognize into her burnt palm. The words waft above her flesh, cooling and quieting the pain.
The ladies flock around them, cooing, fussing, but Maya is determined that only her self and the Girl with Starlight Hair exist in this moment. The Girl holds up her own palm, rainbows shivering across her arm, the dark grey skin of her hand twisted and gnarled by ancient scarring. Maya squints to see it better. She could have sworn she glimpsed a map in the swirl of damaged tissue.
“Oh, my dear Maya.” It is Gran’s voice, pulling her away from the Girl with Starlight Hair, wrapping her up in a blanket. “Come, let’s get you home and that burn looked after before it gets infected.”
Maya doesn’t see the Girl with Starlight Hair again for another seven years. Gran finds excuses to go to the feast alone, but Maya knows Gran worries she’s too young and she’ll hurt herself again. Maya is content to wait at home and trace the lines of her own scar, dreaming of deep space and endless stars.
When she does see the Girl with Starlight Hair again Maya is shy, aware of the Girl with Starlight Hair’s lack of clothing. Maya’s awkwardness fades with time, until she sees nothing but the endless sorrow of the Girl with Starlight Hair’s existence.
“Do you think she’s happy?” Maya asks Gran the night before she begins her University studies.
“I’m not sure,” Gran answers, her voice soft. “But if she survives, the world survives inside her. I’m not sure how that’s different from life as a planet.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the star.”
Gran rolls out a lump of dough to knead, the scent of yeast and flour filling the air. “Her star has been dying a long time.”
“Is there no way to save it?”
Gran flicks a handful of flour over the dough. “That I couldn’t say, though I suppose that university of yours might offer some solutions.”
Maya nods, rubbing her star-scar. It itches deep beneath the skin.
She throws herself into her studies, working through summers, into her Master’s and then her PhD in stellar research. It is late one night when she finds what she is looking for and she runs into the forest to tell the Girl with Starlight Hair.
It does not occur to Maya that the odds of catching the Girl are impossible. She knows the Girl will be there as certain as she knows Gran’s house will be sitting at the end of its lane.
And she is.
Maya’s heart pounds to find herself alone with the Girl with Starlight Hair. She knows a planet cannot love her back but Maya’s mind wanders to kissing and impossible embraces just the same.
“I think it’s possible,” she blurts out to the Girl with Starlight Hair.
The Girl’s hips sway, a planet’s constant motion. Maya tries not to linger on the ways the rainbows tempt her fingertips to trace them.
“It is,” answers the Girl with Starlight Hair, as if she could have understood Maya’s flustered words.
“I can make a device that acts like a magnet for hydrogen. It will attract all of the available hydrogen in deep space to your star, effectively refueling it for another stellar lifetime. I just –” Her voice fails as Maya realizes the gap in her idea. “Just need a means to travel through deep space and collect it.” She sighs. “And find somewhere safe to ignite your star without destroying this solar system.” Her cheeks burn with her embarrassment. She wishes she said nothing.
“I have a vessel,” says the Girl with Starlight Hair. A bemused smile plays at her mouth. The stars in her eyes glitter and Maya’s breath catches in her throat.
She shakes her head, finding her focus. “You have a ship?”
“It is how I first arrived here.”
“But I thought your star carried you. That’s how the story goes.”
The Girl with Starlight Hair rubs her hand along the pole which holds her star over her shoulder. “Your story is beautiful, but my star is weak. I came here in a vessel built by my people.”
A beam of flashlight cuts through the dim forest and the Girl with Starlight Hair sighs. “It’s not safe to stay here anymore,” she says, and disappears into the bush.
Maya holds her ground as someone thrashes in the wood.
An older woman stumbles into view, her flashlight blinding Maya’s eyes. “Where’d she go?” the woman demands but Maya says nothing.
She asks Gran about the woman later. Gran quiets, fussing with her apron. “It would seem our secret is running out of time. The city’s getting closer, developers eyeing our old woods. There are rumors of a strange, naked woman roaming the forest.”
Maya’s fists clench, fear and anger flooding through her bloodstream.
Gran holds up her hand. “Don’t get too upset, our Girl is capable of defending herself but time is running out.”
“Maybe not,” says Maya and tells Gran everything, the magnet, the ship, and her tentative plan.
Gran sits on one of the kitchen chairs. “You can build this?”
“I’m certain of it.”
“How long will it take?”
Maya sighs. “Years, and that’s if I can get funding. Does she have years?”
“She’ll have to,” says Gran. “She can defend herself, she always has. The world inside her has its own defenses. There have been several men who tried to force themselves on her. We cannot protect her from everything, but when her world and her star are threatened, she reacts as fierce as any wild thing. To threaten her body is to threaten her world. She does not stand for it.”
“I had no idea.”
“I suppose I kept such darkness from you. A grandmother’s prerogative. Our world has changed so much and the Girl with Starlight Hair is running out of forest and the threats against her are growing. Can you imagine if one of your own peers discovered her existence?”
“She’d be caged, or worse.” For all her science, it has never occurred to Maya to study the Girl with Starlight Hair, to dissect her for her understanding of the universe, to separate her from her star and lock them somewhere safe.
Maya returns to her work with a new sense of urgency, listening for rumors of alien women. She secures funding for her hydrogen magnet with clever speeches regarding the application of hydrogen to propel deep space exploration. She works endless hours with little distraction until, at last, it is done.
The device is tiny but weighs heavy in Maya’s pocket as she leaves the lab and returns to Gran’s house. The Girl with Starlight Hair is waiting for her there.
“How did you know?” Maya asks her.
“Your lives and your sense of time travels a linear path, while ours unravels in an endless spiral.”
“Ours?”
“My star and I. We glimpsed your device when we passed this way on our last revolution,” says the Girl with Starlight Hair, her starry eyes lingering on Maya’s device.
“You saw this? Does it work, then?” Maya grows excited. “It works in the lab, but the conditions of deep space are difficult to replicate.”
“We saw you collecting gases from a distant nebula and we were at your side,” says the Girl With Starlight Hair. Her intent expression brings a blush to Maya’s cheeks.
“Wait.” Gran’s worry lines crease across her face. “Maya is going with you?”
Maya’s blood quickens. “I’m the only one who knows how to use the device. The only one who can troubleshoot any problems which arise.” She does not add that she cannot bear to say goodbye to the Girl with Starlight Hair.
The Girl brushes her fingers against Maya’s arm. Maya tells herself the gesture cannot mean anything. “And we must be together,” says the Girl with Starlight Hair.
Maya dares not breathe.
“Maya, a word?” Gran pulls her away. “My darling, I love you but are you certain this is wise? She will never love you as a human would. If you succeed she will be a planet and you will just be a heartbroken girl alone in outer space and far from home.”
“It’s okay, Gran. I can save her, like my foremothers would have if they were able.”
“You’ll be like her. Lost in orbit around something you love but ultimately alone. Is that what you want?”
Maya takes her Gran’s hand. “She has sorrowed for a hundred years. If I can stop that I have to try. I’ll be all right. I’ll mourn and I’ll recover. Just like when Mom died.” She kisses Gran’s cheek. “I promise.”
Gran squints into the sky. “There was a body found in the woods this morning,” she says softly to Maya. “It’s not safe for her anymore.”
“Then we should hurry,” says Maya. “I love you, Gran.”
Gran clasps Maya’s hands tight. “Promise me you’ll never give up on finding a lifetime of joy. Don’t choose to waste your life in sorrow.”
“I promise. I’m strong.”
Gran lets Maya’s hand go. “I will always love you. Come back to me if you can.”
Maya nods and turns to follow the Girl with Starlight Hair through the forest, deep into a ravine and along a stream, the star bobbing in dim silence between them. There is a soft path worn in the vegetation from a century of the Girl’s footsteps. At last she stops and says something in the language Maya recognizes from the long-ago day when she tried to touch the star.
The Earth rumbles and a low hill in the distance quivers. The soil splits, trees falling softly to the side. They land upright and whole. The ship which emerges shimmers with reflections that prove impossible for Maya to keep track of. She looks away, her eyes aching, and it hovers before them, a hatch opening. The Girl with Starlight Hair slips inside with her star and peers back to Maya.
Maya gazes back upon the forest, verdant with summer growth. She has always wanted to touch the stars but here, on the cusp of the adventure of her dreams, she hesitates. There is much she leaves behind.
“You may have my ship,” says the Girl with Starlight Hair. “It will bring you home again.” She holds out her hand. “It can take you anywhere you like.”
Maya steps aboard the ship to see the star floating to the top of a clear bubble. From within, the ship is transparent and Maya is uncertain where to step.
The ship rotates slowly, spiraling upward. Maya grows dizzy and nauseous.
“Sit here, in the center,” says the Girl with Starlight Hair, leading Maya to a spot beneath the star. Here the ship is still and Maya calms. The world she knows falls away at her feet while the stars grow closer. In moments they have left the atmosphere, twisting through a maze of satellites and past the moon. Maya’s mind whirls with a sudden unspooling of endless possibilities.
The Girl with Starlight Hair holds up her scarred palm before placing it against the inner surface of the bubble. “My star has drawn a map upon my hand. It knows the way and remembers the nebula you will use to give it life.”
“I thought I saw a map there, when I was little,” Maya says.
“My star recognized you then.” The Girl turns over Maya’s own scarred palm and traces her finger down it. “This is the map my star gave to you, to bring you home again.”
Maya still struggles to understand circular time, but it is leaving the Girl with Starlight Hair she cannot imagine now. “Do I have to go home?”
The Girl with Starlight Hair shakes her head. “You may stay with me forever if you like, but I will not ask it of you.”
“You have always lived in sorrow,” says Maya, lifting the Girl’s chin so she can see her eyes.
“No. Only on Earth did I live in sorrow. I shed my true name and called myself Eversorrow. My life-forms are all trapped inside me and they hunger for their old freedoms, to walk the planes of their old existence. My star has weakened day by day. This I had to carry.”
“I would have carried it with you,” says Maya.
“They are mine to carry,” says the Girl with Starlight Hair. “Though the hope of you made them lighter.”
“Will your star be able to transform you into a world again?”
“Oh yes,” says the Girl. Rainbows erupt over her flesh as she shivers with anticipation.
Maya shifts her attention to the stars streaking past. She does not want to think of losing the Girl, Eversorrow, yet.
The gas nebula in the distance appears as a purple column. It shifts, a murmuration of celestial dust in a non-existent wind. For a moment, Maya fancies she sees life inside the cloud’s movements.
“How do we collect the gas?” asks the Girl called Eversorrow.
Maya is relieved Eversorrow does not know every detail of the future. “When we’re close enough, I’ll turn it on. The device will attract the hydrogen molecules, causing them to crowd around it.” It strikes her as foolishly simple now the time has come. Her palms growing slick with sweat, Maya pets her pocket to reassure herself that the packet of diagnostics and repair tools are with her spare device. She designed the device simple and small for this purpose. It is nerves alone which sends her confidence to wing.
Close now, Maya flicks the device on. Nothing obvious happens. Maya waits. Without the instruments in her lab to measure exterior hydrogen levels she has little more than faith in her device to know it is working.
The device should surround the ship with a massive plume of hydrogen gas, which they will carry to their destination: the star’s home co-ordinates. Shutting down her magnet and moving away from the hydrogen cloud would allow May to place the magnet on the star itself and send it into the cloud of gas. From a safe distance, Maya would restart the device and wait until the star ignites. She is sweating harder now, the enormity of her plan suddenly real. The gas cloud in this nebula is larger than the entire solar system of home. She only has one spare magnet if something should go wrong.
The ship lurches to the side, sending Maya and Eversorrow tumbling. The star alone is unmoved.
Eversorrow gasps as a creature takes from in the purple cloud around them. It is vast, the texture of fog with the body of a ghost.
“Who is that?” Maya asks, her imagination leaping to aliens and gods and back again. It is not shaped like a human but it does have eyes.
Eversorrow says something Maya doesn’t understand to the star. She turns to Maya. “The beast is angry with us for stealing its star gas.”
Maya struggles to expand her worldview to include such a creature. “Should I turn it off?”
“I’m not sure,” says Eversorrow. The sorrow has returned to her eyes and her posture.
“What does it want the hydrogen for?”
“My star will ask.”
There follows a tense, silent waiting. Maya reaches out to squeeze Eversorrow’s hand.
“It is the beast’s collection. It wants to fill the universe with stars and uses the gas to make them.”
Maya gazes at the creature in wonder. Is it responsible for all life or is it a single artisan pursuing its own sense of creativity? “Can you explain our story? Tell them, let them know we will use the gas to re-ignite this star.”
Eversorrow whispers to her star. Maya’s breath comes fast. Please. They’ve waited all this time. Her fists clench, hidden in her pockets, nails digging deep into the meat of her palms.
She waits as Eversorrow listens to her star, her face showing disappointment. Eversorrow shakes her head. “The beast says no. They have travelled too long, too far, and the star-gas is difficult to collect. It has taken endless sols but soon they will have enough gas to craft a new star.” Her shoulders sag with iridescent green.
Maya clutches the spare magnet, her mind cataloguing the harm that could come if it were used to harm, to rob distant galaxies of their hydrogen. “Is it kind?” she asks.
“Kind?” A divot of confusion appears on Eversorrow’s brow. She speaks with her star. There is no relay with the gaseous beast this time. “My star says they are the mother of galaxies, raising them until they are capable of sustaining lives of their own. They might be our grandmother.”
This is enough for Maya. “Will they take my spare magnet in exchange for the hydrogen?”
The stars in Eversorrow’s eyes gleam bright.
“It will attract free star gas from the environment, perhaps more quickly than they can gather the gas without.”
Eversorrow speaks to the star. She turns back to Maya. “They have already seen how quickly we gathered the hydrogen.”
Maya’s palm tingles. She looks down to see her scar shifting, changing the ratio of the map she knows well. It offers more stars, a greater universe now. She does not know what this means, but the central star remains the same. Eversorrow’s home. Maya circles her index finger around it and looks out to the nebulous creature outside. She knows they have agreed before Eversorrow tells her.
Maya sets the ignition on the spare device with enough time for them to leave with their load of hydrogen before the second magnet attracts it back.
“Are we far from your home?” Maya asks Eversorrow as the stars stream by once more.
“Not far now,” says Eversorrow.
Eversorrow’s star swirls above Maya’s head, impossibly small. She wants to ask how much longer the star could have lasted on Earth but senses it too rude to ask aloud. She falls asleep at the bottom of the ship and dreams of Gran until the Girl with Starlight Hair wakes her.
“We have arrived.”
Maya blinks sleep from her eyes and sits up. She focuses, setting the ignition timer and attaching the device to the star. “The device won’t last forever. The heat of your star will destroy it, but not until your star is reignited and can hold the gas with its own gravity. It will have another stellar lifetime, but that is all.” Maya quiets, suddenly certain she will reignite the star again one day. She shakes the thought away. Impossible. A human life could never last so long.
She watches the star leave and drift far from their ship. It is almost out of sight when the star re-ignites. First there comes a pulse of white light, followed by ball of yellow fire which grows and expands. Tendrils of orange flare out from the orb of yellow as it grows. Maya has done it.
Eversorrow beams at Maya. “When my star is whole she will undo the magic that keeps me in this form.” She takes Maya’s hand. “You are welcome to stay. My people will embrace you.” She glances up to meet Maya’s eyes. “They will love you as I love you.”
Maya holds her breath, unwilling to break the spell of Eversorrow’s words.
Eversorrow continues. “I will leave and I will return to my true form, but your love for me is not unrequited.”
Maya’s heart warms.
“I cannot promise you fulfillment, for that is not possible. I am a planet in a false form and you are a woman but… we have a bit of time together still, in this form.”
Maya smiles and waits. The Girl with Starlight Hair steps toward her, rainbows shimmering across her cheeks, and softly brings her lips to Maya’s. The mismatched pair spend their last hours together by the gleam of a glowing sun in tender explorations of each other and what might have been.
Later, Maya looks on bravely as the love of her life drifts away from her and into deep space until the magic ensorcelling her unravels and her human-like form shifts into an orb of turquoise seas and emerald forests.
Tears slip from Maya’s eyes as the planet who was the Girl with Starlight Hair sinks back into her old orbit round her beloved, brilliant sun.
Maya almost leaves, her mission complete and heart heavy with loss, but who knows if she’ll ever come back, after all. The ship carries her to the planet’s surface. To pay respects, to say goodbye and be certain that the Girl she loved is gone forever now.
The ship lands on a bed of moss. Maya steps out, aware that she is the first human to step upon a new world. The air smells sweet. It smells like Eversorrow’s skin. Maya moves away from the ship, feeling Eversorrow’s presence everywhere, enveloping Maya in sudden wonder as her sense of loss evaporates. She places her scarred hand against the ground. “I feel you.” The sun beams down upon her, filling the planet with life and light.
Footsteps are soft on the moss, but she hears them. Maya holds her breath as two people step into the clearing. A sudden sob escapes from Maya’s throat when she sees their dark grey and iridescent skin, eyes as dark as matter, and hair like starlight.
| Jennifer Shelby hunts for stories in the beetled undergrowth of fairy-infested forests. She fishes for them in the dark space between stars. As part of her ongoing catch-and-release program, a collection of these stories are heading to the Moon with the Lunar Codex in late 2024. If you’d like to know more, you can visit Jennifer at jennifershelby.blog or @jennifershelby.bsky.social. |  |