#38 The Ravine of Umrian

 

The Faurians clustered around me in the near total darkness, their damp fur bristling with voices. I was their translator. They spoke only in movement, having no mouths to vocalise sound. Each ripple was an intricate message which the other Faurians would interpret and pass on with their own shivering undulations. They operated only in unison, one after the other. The silent music of their speech was so linguistically exquisite that I lamented my own limitations in having to rely on a machine to understand their song.

The Faurians had been at war with the Umgorians for decades, they told me. Venturing out of their dark caverns had cost the tribe hundreds of warriors, and a great many had perished in the Ravine of Umrian. They had longed to regain a foothold in the bright, icy world beyond, but, cave-dwellers, their eyes were ill-equipped in the light. Adjustment would take time, they knew, but now the quest was becoming a matter of necessity. Their resources were dwindling. They had enlisted my help via the company, as an intermediary in the war. For the Faurians, who all spoke with one movement, one voice, the mocking, contrary motions of the Umgorians who would not come out of the ravine to join with them were tantamount to sacrilege. They could bear no more deaths, however.

I stood at the lip of the Ravine of Umrian now, the brave few Faurians who had ventured out to lead me here, hung back. They bristled nervously in the biting wind and hid from the light. Scattered about at the ravine’s base at intervals lay protruding the bones of Faurian warriors, a bed for newer carcasses broken by the fall. Scavengers did not pick all bodies clean, but left some frozen, hideously preserved by frost. But in spite of their numbers, piled awkwardly in clumps, they could not obscure the true marvel at the base of the Ravine. The bodies appeared like stick men on the surface of what was the most perfect ice sheet I had ever seen. It was utterly vast and stretched for miles, clear and sparkling. I saw myself faintly reflected in it; my snowsuit a small, beige blob on that mirror of ice.

In that moment I wondered how the machine would fair in translating the message now forming in my mind. For, when I raised a hand, reflected in the ice sheet the mirror version of myself did so too. I saw there what the Faurians could only glimpse in the hazy agony of their fading vision – my own Umgorian.

Photo by Lydia Torrey on Unsplash

37# The True Ancestors

 

I wrote this piece for an event called ‘Honouring Your Ancestors’ hosted by the Portsmouth T’articulation group during this year’s Darkfest.

The story has a science fiction feel, to coincide with the launch of my latest 5 track EP, Moon Heart, which is available now from Spotify, Apple, Amazon, & Google. It’s also available to purchase on Bandcamp, along with many of my previous releases.

Hope you enjoy the story!

*********************

Manoeuvring thrusters should have fired on the final descent, but instead, a high-pitched whine like a dying breath signalled the final demise of the craft. Hurtling through a forest of tall evergreens its hull was ditched into the regolith, and breached instantly. All that remained to break the stillness were gently falling motes of debris, and a rhythmic clicking as the metal of the hull began to cool and to crack.  Moonlight glanced off the ship’s flanks. The light was a shimmering wave cast by twin satellites, who in turn, diffused the light from a nearby red giant.

Cobex woke with a shudder. The first thing he noticed was a humming sound, somewhere on the edge of hearing. His ribs ached, but he appeared to have escaped any serious damage. He looked across at his First Officer. Borand was still inert, his hands limp at his sides, his mouth slightly open, and a bleeding wound on his head. He tried to rouse the man gently, but the Borand just groaned and wouldn’t open his eyes. Cobex became acutely aware of a presence watching at his back.

“The man is wounded,” her voice was melodic and low.

“I can assist you. I am Kora”

Cobex scanned her face, finding concern in wide, opalescent eyes. Her face was tinged the colour of lilac, and she offered up two hands towards him in some sort of cultural gesture which seemed to suggest openness. Kora beckoned out into the landscape beyond the hatch. She must have snuck in quietly while he was dealing with Borand.

“Come,” she said.

“But what about him?”

Kora was placid. “We will fetch him some medicine to revive him.” She said.

Out in the moonlight everything was cool and still. Only the rustle of the leaves of the forest far away to their left broke the tranquillity. Even when Kora spoke, her voice seemed in concert with the world around her, it merged with the rhythm of the hum which resonated across the landscape, and it was as if she was an integral part of it. For she did have a beautiful voice, Cobex realised. Her hair was straight and thick and fell all the way down to her waist, ebony black. They passed across the rocky plain in the pale blue light, and Cobex felt as if they might have been walking on the surface of a vast ocean.

“The compound is just where those rocks are, do you see?” she pointed. “What is your designator?”

Cobex looked blankly back at her.

“Your designator. How should we address you?”

“Zed Cobex. Captain of the Bison.”

“Your ship.”

“Yes. It was.”

Kora nodded, “you will be safe here” she said, and Cobex felt a surge of contentment he couldn’t rationalise. But space was vast; the ship had been a lonely place.

They reached a small cave entrance.

“Come,” Kora motioned him inside. “This is the home of the true ancestors.”

They made their way through stone corridors to a vast chamber lit by long lanterns which gave off a gentle aquamarine glow like luminescent sea creatures. In the centre sat a massive plinth, adorned with dancing figures. Kora’s voice rose in adoration.

“They love us with an endless love. Blessed are the true ancestors! Blessed are those who perpetuate love.”

Another, older, masculine voice joined her.

“And we perpetuate love. Blessed are the true ancestors!”

The old man who had spoken appeared from behind the stone, and came towards them. He wore the same shimmering gown as Kora did, but his egg-like bald head was painted a vibrant shade of blue, and his eyelids were smeared with green and gold.

“Welcome.” He said, and he stretched out his arms in the gesture Cobex recognised from the figures on the monolith.

Kora and the man spoke in a gentle, rolling language, then the man departed.

“Bayo has gone to fetch our medical devices,” she said.

Cobex nodded, relieved. He looked again at the monolith.

“The ancestors, they are your gods?” he asked.

Kora smiled as if his question were quaint. “Yes,” she replied. “In a way. They are our progenitors.”

“Why do you call them the ‘true ancestors’?”

Kora paused for a moment, her eyebrows furrowed.

“Because everything that is beautiful is haunted by darkness.” She said, then after a moment, she added.

“But those ones are now hidden. They will not be revived.” The thought seemed to comfort her.

Joined once again by the old man, now hefting his medical kit, they crossed the great moonlit terrain and it was as peaceful as ever. The rhythmic humming continued. Kora walked beside him silently, smiling obliquely in his direction from time to time. But when they reached the ship, Borand was gone.

His eyes stinging and still slightly blurred, Officer Borand lunged along, unknowingly tracing a path in the opposite direction to where Cobex and Kora had initially set off, and were now returning. His left arm dislocated at the shoulder, his head wound bleeding into his eyes, Borand stumbled like a drunkered, hopelessly concussed. The buzzing noise he had heard since waking was driving him insane and becoming steadily louder, and more insistent. All he knew, was that he had to shut it off. It made his head feel as if it was splitting in two.  Up ahead he saw a strange rocky outcropping. On closer inspection he saw that it was honeycombed with caverns. The caverns were lit by small lanterns which gave off an eerie red glow. Borand groped his way along the stone corridor in painful steps. There was a brighter glow up ahead. It was deep red like the lanterns, but felt hot and pulsing. The noise grew louder with each step Boreand took; the sound rattle his bones, but after a while, he noticed that the pain had become almost mesmeric. He was mumbling to himself a mantra he had no memory of. Just something that ran around, and around in his head:

“We hate them with an endless hatred. The false ancestors.”

Borand could feel something shifting within him. It was as if an urge was living inside his skin, and was pulling him forward. The red cloud. Suddenly it came back into his mind. The cochineal fog he had seen at the door of the ship when he had woken up and realised that Cobex gone. He reached the heart of the caverns, bathed in red light. There, almost as if he had expected it, sat a giant monolith, a finger pointed at the cavern ceiling which seemed to stretch up to the heavens.

It contained frescos at its base and sumit, of figures, dancing, or perhaps, on closer inspection, they were burning.

“Here,” a voice seemed to say from within him, compelling him forward, beyond the stone, into an antechamber.

The source of the humming came from a metal box, incongruous amongst the stone idolatry.

“There,” the voice insisted, guiding his hands over the metal like a lover’s over skin.

“And there,” the voice said, defiant.

Borand felt exhaltation sweep through him as he pressed first one switch, and then another. The old humming ceased, and a new thrum began, slightly lower in tone. The room became suffused with searing heat and a figure began to materialise before his eyes, a carmine haze taking on shape. She was the last thing Borand saw before he collapsed. A beautiful burning woman, tall and triumphant.

In the ship, Cobex stared at the empty seat, and the trail of blood which led out through the craft door. Kora, and the old man shot each other horrified glances. They began to speak urgently in their language, and Cobex, tired of waiting, stormed outside to search for footprints in the dust. Kora followed him.

“We have to find your friend immediately.” She said, a tremor in her voice.

“Maybe he met one of your people,” he said.

“No,” Kora replied, “no they would have taken him to the compound, we would have seen them.” Her rose in panic, “his steps are going the wrong way!” she cried, and as she did so, Cobex reached out to touch her.

He tried to say, “Everything is going to be okay,” but in that moment, the humming ceased.

Kora, who had been so real and so beautiful the instant before, became suddenly translucent. Her arms reaching out for him, terror stricken, before she vanished entirely. Rushing to the ship, Cobex saw that the old man was gone too.  He stumbled back outside into a wall of heat, and was on the brink of crying out, when he saw, up ahead a woman approaching. Her skin glowed like fire, and a strange smile snaked across her lips.

“Blessed are the true ancestors,” she said, and the essence of her swept through his body like a flame.

 

35# November (For Portsmouth Bookfest)

I wrote this story for Premature Articulation, a Portsmouth Bookfest spoken word event in February 2018. Photo courtesy of longwallpapers.com 

A man in an astronaut suit sat quietly in the corner of my yard with rain pouring down his face, his helmet on the wet ground beside him like a skid-marked egg.

It was November.

“The stress of re-entry can be hard on these older model suits,” he said, taking off first one puffy glove, and then the other.

I could barely think. I remember seeing myself reflected in the visor of his scuffed egg helmet, my silhouette stretched out of all proportion.

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you.” He said.

I asked him how on earth he had come to be there, and he replied,

“I’m waiting for a signal. They’re usually quite efficient about recovery on these miscalculated drops but I’ll be honest, it could take days.” He sounded like an electrician giving an estimate.

“It’s alright,” I said, shaking.

He had a long nose which the rain trickled down; his lips forming a vulnerable bow. He was like a man waiting for a train; easy to trust because he made no sudden movements. Suddenly I found I was offering him a sandwich.

He stayed for nine days, and he refused to be entreated indoors, casually remarking that his suit handled all ‘biological imperatives’. I brought him sandwiches and cups of Ovaltine, which he seemed to enjoy particularly. We began to talk a lot. He would not be drawn on any details of his life and so instead we covered the minutiae of mine, and of grander things, like whether God existed, or the relative nature of the concept of time. He was happy with physics, and metaphysics, but when I tried to turn the conversation back his way, he would only sigh, and say, “I wish I could tell you, I truly do.”

At night, I found it increasingly hard to sleep. My bed was next to the wall which was the boundary between the house and the yard. I swore that as I lay with my head near to the wall, I could feel him breathing through the brick, feel his breath falling softly on my cheek. A steady rhythm, a heartbeat.

It amazes me how quickly I told him everything of importance.

The question, “Do you live alone?” solicited effortless from me, utter honesty.

“I have a partner. We’ve been together a long time. He wants to move in, I keep him at arm’s length. I just can’t see myself, in him. I can’t see him within me.”

He nodded, as if the data were interesting, but not useful. He was not collecting anything. I trusted him.

When my partner came around, the astronaut stayed in my backyard, hidden under a stretch of black tarpaulin some builders had left behind long ago.

I apologised for the arrangement but he simply replied:

“I’ll be fine here. It won’t affect my monitoring of the transmissions.”

I threw the tarpaulin over him and just before they were lost under the sheet, my eyes met his. It was something like an electric shock.

My partner didn’t notice a thing, except he had a habit of throwing his boots at the back door when he pulled them off – something I had previously tolerated. I squirmed.

“Not the backdoor,” I thought.

“and what?”  he said.

That night, he and I became intimate, but when it reached the bedroom I faltered. I was too close to the wall. He realised what time it was and fell asleep. I stayed half undressed and pressed my damp eyes to the wallpaper.

The next day I found the astronaut, monitoring.

“Hello,” he said as if nothing had happened.

“Will you talk to me a while?” I asked him.

When I finally went back to my laptop, my hands shook. When bedtime came, I found myself bringing him the Ovaltine, and as he took it from me he said,

“Are you really happy here, with things the way that they are?”

I bit my lip, and it bled a little. His eyes wandered to the place.

After that he came inside.

His skin felt like static; it was so soft and clean. Our movements were soundless, in sync. I grasped hold of him so tightly, to make sure he was real. He tasted like malted milk, and I felt the rhythm of his breath on my cheek as surely as I had felt it through the wall.

As the sun came up I said,

” I don’t know what to call you.”

“November is fine.” He replied.

Later, we drank Ovaltine, and I went out to clear my head. My skin tingled with static.

My partner rang, and after I hung up the phone, I wondered at how such a mundane conversation was now so impossibly laden with horror. All the way home it haunted me.

At home, the man, November, was back in his corner, reading one of my books.

“Marquez,” he said, his mouth turned down in a kind of appreciative expression. He pointed to the reviews on the back cover, “one of the greats.” he said.

“I love that book.” I replied.

“Do you mind me – ”

“Keep it,” I said. “Keep it forever.”

I strode back into the house. I suddenly wished away my words, and that I had said he might only borrow the book. As I was making the Ovaltine I felt a surge climb up my back, I felt my skin itch, like a subtle charge.

I rushed out to the yard with an ache of regret,

but it was empty,

and he was gone.

28# Vestiges

Image by Pansa. Freedigitalphotos.net

They dissected his heart with fine tools, certainty and unwavering hands. Dr Plowers had performed the operation a total of one hundred and forty-six times before and his assistants were equally well trained and experienced men and women. The viewers watched on from the gallery and took notes, nodding, sharing the odd flat whisper, admiring technique and the technology. Dr Rawl looked down at the heart of the dead man being so carefully manipulated by his colleague and felt nothing out of the ordinary. There was no body for context, only the heart, penetrated by blades.

“Here we go, here’s where the magic happens,” Plowers said in a monotone. His catchphrase drew no smiles, it was routine. There were more nods from the viewers. Dr Plowers held open the now exposed chambers, making sure to get the best angle for the cameras above the operating table. There, sure enough, were the memories. They moved within the heart like living figures in a doll’s house.

“The vestiges,” Plowers said, indicating with a scalpel a particularly active figurine in one upper section which waved its tiny arms, demanding to be noticed.

“Patient history,” he demanded, and one of the shorter attendants shuffled forward and began speaking in clipped tones.

“Male, Caucasian, fifty years of age, death by drowning. Survived by a brother and sister. No offspring. Two nephews, one niece. One cat. Member of a local neighbourhood watch scheme. Played poker with colleagues once a fortnight. Considerable savings. Maintained a dating profile-“

“How active was this profile?” Plowers asked. He was staring down at the heart, and the little figures which phased in and out of being under the faint lavender light shed by lasers pointed into the chambers.

“Very active. Particular interest in a woman named Valerie Smythe. They had been dating on and off for approximately seven months, signs of significant attachment.”

“Yes I can see that. Describe Ms Smythe please, in terms of physical appearance.”

The attendant began to talk, his voice was pleasing, plain and without any significant inflections or flaws.

“Five foot five inches. Caucasian, freckled. Dark red hair, shoulder length. Grey eyes, wide set, hooded eyelids. Size twelve. You can see all these points from her account picture, plus some additional information listed on her voting profile.”

The attendant tapped the tablet he was holding and an image was projected onto a large screen both behind the operating table and in front where it was displayed on the glass in front of the viewers. Valerie Smythe surveyed them joyfully from out of her profile picture: her prominent teeth, her pink lipstick carelessly applied, the wind in her hair, the park backdrop with blazing greenery in the sunlight, the freckles on her nose.

Plowers nodded, he was staring intently at something inside the heart. “There she is,” he said, and turned to the viewing gallery. He let Dr Rawl shuffle into his place. Rawl took command of the heart with one hand as he adjusted the laser with the other in an almost offhand, effortless manner as Dr Plowers addressed the crowd through a small collar microphone.

“As you can see, here we have evidence of this patient’s love affair with this woman, Valerie Smythe.”

As he said her name, the woman’s image vanished and was replaced by a close up of the heart. There inside was a tiny shape which exactly matched the description of the woman, only in a different outfit, a distinctive vivid blue cocktail dress. She was waving her arms, pacing up and down and shouting, but no sound could be heard. She kept pointing to herself and then pointing outwards. There were many craning necks in the audience, the scratching of pens on paper, fingers jabbing at screens, notes being made and compared.

“As you can see,” Dr Plowers intoned, “using the Victor Phase-Light enables us to create memories from out of the past, holograms of emotions, not just artist reconstructions but images fashioned from genetic imprints left by human experience. Notice the snazzy outfit? She’s most likely dressed just as the patient chose to remember her best.” From over his shoulder, Rawl heard one of the attendants begin to hum, The Way You Look Tonight. A ripple of recognition shuddered through the nurses, mouths smirked behind masks. An old joke. Plower drawled on.

“Now as you can see, this man is dead, but Valerie is very much alive, both in the real world (according to her current voting status) and also in this man’s organs.” Here, Plower leered at Rawl who happened to be in his line of sight, Plower was ready for the big reveal.

“Of course, we use the heart as the example, because it is the organ most often associated with love,” he raised a hand to silence the murmurs, “yes I hear you, we could just as easily have opened up this man’s testicles, it makes no difference, you see any part of the body might retain these vestiges, see here:”

A trolley was wheeled into the centre of the room, on it was a foot. Even though he had seen this trick many times, Dr Rawl now found himself recoiling a little from the severed body part, from its disembodied coldness, its redundant flesh.

He did not watch as Dr Plowers began to dissect the foot under a new set of lights, revealing more vestiges within, and continuing with his spiel about how attached humans had become to the human body’s constituent parts as separate entities with separate imagined personalities when in truth, every part was ultimately composed of the same mixture of particles on a fundamental level. “Its all the same, everywhere you look,” he was saying, pointing to the Valerie, still storming up and down under the lights, still voiceless and irritated.

Dr Rawl was watching her also, but within the heart. In there too he saw the little tabby cat, licking its paws, beside it a ball of twine. He saw strange shapes flicker in and out of the light, people who had almost made an impression, but were not important enough to leave an indelible mark in the man’s heart. Heart Rawl sighed quietly under his mask. Heart, foot, testicle. Dr Plowers was debunking it all now, reducing the symbolism down to nothing, to atoms. Inside the heart Valerie had stopped shouting and was looking intently at Rawl. Is she looking at me? He felt a sudden shiver rush over his skin, he wondered what it would be like to have a little irate Valerie, pacing indefinitely throughout his own organs, forever catatonic. But in a moment the figure was moving again, storming off into another part of the heart. Rawl straightened up, sweating uncomfortably in the restrictive protective clothing which blocked out the radiation from the Victor light but not the heat. He felt unusually tired.

“My, look at the little woman go!” Dr Plowers was saying, cranking up the ringmaster patter for the final delivery. “You’re lucky to be able to see this folks because usually our vestiges aren’t so active. Guess Valerie must be a real cracker, and hey, good news, she’s single now!”

The audience laughed from behind the glass. The presentation was brought to a close and the trolleys were wheeled away. Dr Rawl stood for the ovation and the applause, realising that the demonstration had all passed him by in a blur.

Back in the executive locker suite, Plower addressed Rawl as he was pulling on his clothes after the precautionary decontamination shower.

“So how’s Pamela?” he asked in a light-hearted voice, with a winched up smile he perhaps intended as an indication that he cared about the answer.

“We broke up six months ago,” Rawl answered, tying his laces.

“Joel, I had no idea, and after all those years too-” the smile fell down like a stage curtain, but was not replaced with anything.

“That’s how it goes.”

“You got back out there yet?” it had only taken a minute for the jovial tone to be resumed.

“Yes actually, I’ve been on a few dates.”

“That’s my boy, you go tiger.” Dr Plower left the room. Joel Rawl watched him waddle away, pawing at his thinning grey hair, off to meet his acolytes.

Outside the skies emptied a waterfall onto the streets as Rawl ran to the car park. He hefted a duffle bag onto the back seat of his brand new car and slipped into the driver’s seat. The car smelled like plastic. The wheel felt smooth, the dashboard shone. He wanted to admire it for a moment, to admire the way he had picked up his life, how he had transitioned from aching, wrenching futility into a blank emotional canvas everyday with seemingly little effort. Inside he started the ignition. He thought about Valerie Smyth, and the realisation that it didn’t matter how well he recovered from heartbreak, because one day, some glib Dr Plower was going to pull open his chest, take out his heart, or his foot or his testicles and reveal inside them, all the people he had ever loved and could never be free off, even though they were gone.

 

 

10: Adam

Image by Koratmember, courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“And so you see, no one can be motherless,” he had said.

I raised my head from the desk, feeling half drunk as the walls of the class room seemed suddenly to loom in close. Mr Thomsen was smiling, and as he smiled his eyes crinkled up at the corners like potato chips. I found him the least offensive of my teachers, because he never bothered me, because he let me sleep if I wanted to.

“Anyway, I disgress, in this class we are supposed to stargaze, not naval-gaze.” He smiled again at his little joke, and the girl with the rose-coloured hair in the front row laughed and her long plaits thudded softly against the side of her desk. It was a small class today, snow lined the windows, and half the school was probably lying in bed sick, getting nursed and spoiled and brought little bowls of home-made soup. I rubbed my eyes, and wished then that I had been listening.

 After class I waited behind. The others streamed past me as if chasing the sound of the bell into the corridor and out and away, home. Mr Thomsen seemed not to notice me at first. He had busied himself with his desk, stuffing papers into folders, finding homes for orphaned pens. I coughed, and he looked up at me in surprise.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.” He said, smiling again. He was always smiling. I wondered what his secret was.

“I wanted to ask you, about what you said earlier”

I stopped then because something scared me. I think it was a wave of feeling that I hadn’t expected, I think it was because I knew I might have to reveal something of myself to a stranger, again.

“Yes go on.” Mr Thomsen sat on the edge of his desk and folded his arms. He inclined his head to me then, as if he thought I was about to say something of interest to him, or importance. It reminded me why I had decided to stay behind, because he wasn’t like the others. Most of the other teachers had this habit of looking at you like you were out of your mind if you spoke out, like nothing you said could mean anything.

“It was what you said, about no one being motherless”

I stopped again, I realised that I had not been listening really, that I didn’t even know how to frame my question. Mr Thomsen looked at me through his glasses.

“You’re Adam aren’t you?” He said, and I nodded. I knew then, that he wanted me to know that he knew about me, if that even makes sense. The classroom was cold now with all the bodies gone. It was just us and the silence was the loudest thing in the room.

Until he spoke.

“What I was saying Adam may sound foolish, but it’s true. Do you see this?” He pointed to the image on the projector. “Do you know what this is?”

I felt my cheeks burning red, I knew but I didn’t know.

“It’s a star being born Adam, and all this material you see here-” he waved his finger over the image. “-is gas and dust that will eventually bind together to form planets, just like the Earth”

I stared at the picture and wondered where he was taking me with all this planet talk.

“Adam.” He rubbed this bridge of his nose and looked momentarily weary. “How shall I put this…” There was that silence again that swallowed us up.

“I am aware of your family situation”

Now he stopped, now he was the one to feel awkward.

“I don’t have a family.” I said. But what he said next surprised me.

“Yes you do.”

At first I rolled my eyes. “They aren’t my family” I said, but he butted in.

“No I’m not talking about your foster parents. I’m talking about this.”

Again he pointed to the image, but he didn’t point vaguely. He pointed to the heart of the glow within the image, to the centre of the new sun.

“This is your family, my family, everybody’s family.”

I just laughed at him. “I have no idea what you’re saying.” I said. He laughed too.

“I know! But hear me out. What if I told you that the universe is a mother? That she is always pregnant, always giving birth to stars, formed in these amazing nursuries up there in space? Now you might say ‘what the heck does that have to do with me?’ but listen to me. The atoms that make up your body, all those particles that whizz around inside of you, and make you you, your DNA, all that was made using the same elements we find in star matter. I mean look at this guy, he doesn’t look anything like you ok, but he could be like your stellar ancestor!” I snorted and shook my head at him, but he knew I was thinking about it.

 ”In all seriousness, I know that you must feel like you have no one, that you are connected to no one, and that you don’t belong anywhere, but whenever you feel like that, I want you to remember that everyone, every last person, is connected, because of this.” Once again he stabbed at the heart of the star.

“Here, now just wait a minute.” He said, and jumping off the desk he began foraging in its drawers for something. I waited, and while I waited I stared and stared at that picture, at the golden light of that star in amongst all that stuff.

“There now.” Mr Thomsen thrust a book at me. I looked down at it. The cover showed the blackness of space, and in the midst of it, a giant rainbow coloured cloud.

“Take that, and I know what you must be thinking, but don’t worry about reading too much of the text if you don’t want to. Just look at those pictures, just think about what I’ve said.”

I thanked him and tucked the book in my bag, we smiled and said goodbye, and I felt alright about it all.

When I got back to the house, everything was a mess. Anna, the girl who they had taken in just after me was crying and Mrs Wilson was trying to get her to pick up her toys but she just kept howling like a kicked dog. Neither of them noticed me as I slipped up stairs.

 That night I lay awake and stared at the ceiling, like I always do. Mr Wilson had fallen asleep in front of the TV again and he’s deaf, so Ricki Lake was turned up so loud I could hear most of what the guests were saying. It was all nonsense to me, just old repeats, they seemed to go on, and on, and on, forever.

 I crawled out of my bed, and turned on the night light that was still covered in some kid’s old Disney stickers. I reached over to my satchel, pulling out the book Mr Thomsen had given me and thumbed through some of the pages. The pictures were beautiful. I loved the colours and the total darkness around them, how vibrant everything was. Most of all I liked the total absence of people in that book. It was all about science, and every image was like nothing you would ever see on Earth. I soon got tired flicking through it though, my eyes were heavy. I went over to the window, pulled back the curtain and wiped the glass. Outside in the street, snow was gathering on the pavements. The streetlamp outside the house was dead, but I could just about make out that blanket of whiteness glowing in the dark.

 Then I looked up and saw the stars.

They were like little crystals pinned to a blanket, winking away, on and off.

When my parents died, a lot of people tried to tell me that they were in heaven watching over me. I wanted to believe them but then my parents didn’t believe in God. My last foster mother had scolded at me when I said this, she had said that maybe He had punished them because they didn’t believe, and that was why they were dead.

 Now, I thought about what Mr Thomsen had said and something started to form in my mind. What if heaven wasn’t about angels? What if heaven means being a part of the hearts of stars? The Earth is going to get swallowed up one day, I remember Mr Thomsen saying that. He said that our sun will gobble up the solar system, and then all of what we were, will really become part of the universe again. What if heaven is about being a part of everything?

 I must have stared at those stars for a long time because suddenly I realised that my feet were frozen, and my hands were like ice from where the pressed against the glass. I went back to bed and as I got in, I found I couldn’t hear the TV set anymore. I wanted to sleep, I was so tired out, but a part of me just wanted to read that book, wanted to try to read it.

As I closed my eyes I said goodnight, I said the words out loud to no one. But I felt the stars all around me. I could see them in my minds eye, burning, constant. I smiled then, into the darkness.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, I felt ok, because I knew I had a family no one could ever take away from me.