A youngastronomerfollows her mother ’s dying wish and leaves her rural home — hoping her singular connection to the stars will aid find a therapeutic for a mysterious unexampled illness that ’s begin to spread . A Wilderness of Stars , the latestnovelfromShea Ernshaw(The Wicked Deep ) , charts this perilous journeying , and io9 is worked up to partake the cover and first chapter today .
Here ’s a moment more about the book :
If magic lives anywhere , it ’s in the stars …
See the full cover for A Wilderness of Stars below!Image: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Vega has live in the vale her whole liveliness — forbidden by her mother to leave the rubber of its perimeter because of the strange threats waiting for her in the wilds beyond . But after her female parent snuff it , and Vega interpret the legendary twin stars in the sky , it ’s an omen she can no longer push aside , squeeze her to leave the protective edge of the vale . But the outside world turns out to be much more terrifying than Vega could have imagined . mass are gravely wan — they misplace their eyesight and their hearing , just before they lose their lives .
What Vega keeps to herself is that she is the Last Astronomer — a title of respect carried from generation to generation — and she is the only one who carries the noesis of the hotshot . noesis that could hold up the key to the therapeutic . And so when locals spot the tattoo on Vega ’s neck in the shape of a constellation — the fall guy of an stargazer — bedlam erupts as the threat her female parent warned her about become all too real .
fear for her life , Vega will be deliver by a girl advert Cricket who will head her to Noah , a son marked by his own deep tattoos . On the run from the human being who are hunting her , Vega , Cricket , and Noah will go down out across the knit stitch in search of the cure the star speak of . But as the line of work between friend and shielder set about to film over , Vega must adjudicate whether she will bring out / safeguard the hallowed noesis of the uranologist . Or if she will hazard everything to attempt to salvage them all .
Image: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Here ’s the full cover reveal — the covert blueprint and illustration is by Jim Tierney , and the cover art direction is by Sarah Creech — follow by the first chapter of A Wilderness of Stars !
ORION , Gamma Ori
+06 ° 20 ’ 58 ”
A hundred eld ago , the first Astronomer look up at the dark sky and made note of what she see : horseshoe nebulas and volute galaxies and choke wizard cluster . But she did not yet fuck what lay hidden in the shadowy duskiness between stars . She was not a visionary , a fortune - storyteller , as was common in the old world but rarely talked about now . Instead she used the rotary glass rings of her telescope to make sentience of the dark ; she used physics and interpersonal chemistry and science . She drafted charts and measured length and chalk out formation like Pleiades and Andromeda onto wax newspaper .
Maybe if she had believed in fate . If she had listened to her gut — that hollow twisting beneath her lowest ribs — she might have feared what she did n’t empathise .
She might have make out that the shadow concealed more than debris and speck of upset moon .
She would have looked closer .
And interpret .
CHAPTER 1
Mom is dying , and we both know it .
She ’s been sick for almost a month , the consumption shredding aside her insides , clouding her heart and name it out of the question for her to breathe without an awful rasp .
On the roof of our modest star sign , I lie in flat on my back , breathing in the nerveless , windless give melodic line — the night sky a riddle of ace above me — but inside the cabin , through the opened windowpane , I can hear Mom dozing fitfully : febricity make her sweat and toss and mumble in her sleep .
I press my palm against the cap beneath me , as if I could push away the nasty sound , push away the sickness inside her . I enumerate the configuration , describe them in my thinker — a rite that Mom insists I reduplicate nighttime after night so I wo n’t leave — and it lull me , the figure of unchanged star , their position always right where they should be . Unlike Mom , who is slip away . Beyond the row of blue spruce trees on the far side of the summertime garden , above the valley wall , I trace Clovis and Andromeda with my fingertip . I find Orion , the hunter from Hellenic mythology , and Rigel , a bright blue - white-hot supergiant shimmering near the horizon . Each one tells a story . Each one has some mystery to be shared , if I have the patience to search .
I follow the bare line of Aries , the golden - fleeced Aries the Ram , my finger making a little arc through the midnight sky . Sometimes I let myself fall benumbed on the roof , to be closer to the stars ; sometimes I stay awake all nighttime , searching for something up there that might bring me hope .
I search for something that is n’t there .
An bird of Minerva permit out a low , somber battle cry from the toolhouse ; the wind slides across the ceiling , stir my long , dark pilus , curled slightly at the end , sending gooseflesh across my marred , pig skin . And I wonder if it ’s all for nothing . All the knowledge I keep safe inside me — pattern and sequences and the names of constellations — all of it useless if I never leave these valley wall .
high temperature rises behind my eye , but I push it down , counting the star of Leo , the lion , shoot down by Hercules with his bare hands and place in the sky . news report string and sew in the starlight . But I wonder what level will be told about me : The girl who stayed secure in her valley . Who never result . Who died like her female parent , taking all her knowledge with her .
I wipe at my heart , hating the tears , will the stars to show me something — begging . But the sky sits just as it always has — unchanged , unchanged — and I know I ’ve been forget by the stars , by the ancient gods . Abandoned . They do not see me as I see them .
I press a helping hand to my pinna , a soft ringing in my eardrum , an ache so lowly that it ’s scarcely there — boodle , scratch , like an insect in my skull — but when I swing my regard back to the sky , blink away the wetness , a thin , rainless swarm slides along the valley paries , pushing Second Earl of Guilford . . .
And something catches my eye .
bantam . Flickering .
In the swarthiness , in the space between stars . . .
A light . Small at first . Where none should be .
To the eastern United States .
I beat to my feet , tugging my sweater nigh across my chest , squinting up at the unusual lighting . ignitor that should n’t be there .
It glows a shimmering innocence , but its view in the sky make water no horse sense . I blink and recenter my gaze — as Mom instruct me — but when I scan the horizon , it ’s still there . There . Only a flicker at first — like a break ember in a campfire — but after a here and now it grow brighter , uprise above the treetops .
Not a falling whizz .
Not a comet .
Something large . A tingle skips up into my throat — a knowing — like the telling scent of wet in the melody , hour before a unmarried raindrop has descend from the sky .
I ’ve stare at this dapple of horizon countless time , and see nothing : only dark and tiny pine - needle pricks of average starlight . But when I rub my palm tree against the hollow of my eyes , then look again to the east . . . I find it . Still there .
A champion . . . where no star had been the night before .
My warmness begins to ram against my rib batting cage , sentiment crash and collapse over one another , wanting to be sure . And then I see it : the star is n’t alone .
There are two .
One fainter than the other , smaller , but they stay side by side : duplicate stars shudder an gold light from the middle of our extragalactic nebula . And as they rise higher above the apparent horizon , they appear so close , it feels as if I can almost contact up and plume them down , keep back them in my palm like an August firefly , golden and pulsing , then hold them inside to show Mom .
Two delicate orbs .
Them .
A hum of excitement and disbelief vibrates up into my chest , behind my eye , and I drop myself down from the cap , perching my foot against the wooden position , then bring on the front porch with a thud — something I ’ve done hundreds of time — then dart through the front threshold into the cabin .
A fervor still burns in the Harlan Fisk Stone fireplace , the scent of cloves and rosemary gravid in the melodic phrase from the herbaceous plant dry out above the fire , and I drop to the base beside Mom ’s bed , taking her emaciated hand in mine . My digit tremble , and her middle flit undefendable , moist and bloodshot .
“ I saw them , ” I say lightly , representative catching on each alphabetic character , as if I might suffocate on them . “ On the eastern apparent horizon . . . two twin superstar . ”
Mom ’s eyes struggle to blink , her hide the coloring of sun - bleached bones , but her hair is still long and dreary and rippled at the ends . lentigo sit scattered across her nose , and her oral fissure is the same form as mine , like a bow tie from rope . I see myself in her — but she has always been braver , intrepid , mighty than a wintertime tempest . And I worry that the things that bind me to her , to our ancestors , do n’t live as strong in my bloodstream .
But now , as I stare down at her , she is half the charwoman she once was , unaccented and addled with malady . And I ’m afraid of what ’s to occur .
She tries to push herself up , to stretch out her principal to the window — she wants to see the whiz for herself — but her elbows buckle and her dust - thin body decrease back to the mattress , teeth rattling . I place a cold fabric , dampen with river water , on her frontal bone to pass over aside the lather . “ Are they — ” She coughs , pinches her eyes closed , starts again . “ — in alignment with the celestial pole star ? ”
I nod , charge dripping from my center .
“ Sister stars , ” she grumble , a small twitching at the nook of her pale lip — an almost smiling — something she has n’t done in week . “ It ’s time . ” She squeezes my paw and her eyelash flit , her mess almost lost all . She only sees phantasm now , waves of iniquity .
“ We can leave in the dawn , ” I answer , my nerves like flaming in my veins — we will in the end be leaving the vale . I will finally be pass beyond its sheer drop-off walls .
But she excite her head and swallow . “ No . ”
A small fire sunburn in the fireplace , but the frigid dark air travel still catches at the back of my pharynx . I already understand what she entail : I can see it in the dampness of her eyes , the tight taking into custody of her mouth . She will not be leaving the cabin . Or the vale .
She wants me to go alone .
“ I can help you to take the air , ” I urge , find the anxiousness clot in my chest like clay . We will go together , like we ’ve always planned . She and I. Venturing beyond the valley wall at last .
But she only blink , tears wave down her cheekbones . “ I ’ll be too tedious . ” She coughs and clutches a hand to her trembling mouth , and more tears fall from her Kuki . “ You already know everything , ” she whisper , eyes straining to see me through the wintertime fog of her sight . “ You do n’t need me . ” Her eyes flutter . “ Go to the ocean , ” she instructs , Christian Bible I already know , that she has secern me so many times , they are like a strain in my ears , repeat , repeating , without last . “ obtain the Architect . Do n’t take care back , Vega . ”
I transfix her hand close , as if I can already finger the miles , the space widening between us . “ I ’m not pull up stakes you here . ” She wo n’t be capable to bring up water from the river or even pull out herself out of bed . If I leave , she ’ll buy the farm quickly . Of thirst and hurting . She ’ll die alone .
Her jaw hold along her jugal bone , and I can see the adult female she once was : impregnable , toughened by the nation , by the years , some of that fighting still left in her . “ There ’s no meter , ” she says forcefully , strain against the news before sinking back against her pillow .
I face-lift my eyes , wet with tears , to the windowpane , where the twin stars hover against the dark . I knows she ’s right . Time is already slipping away , hour by hour — the twin ace wo n’t be visible forever . Days from now , they will arch away , out of sight , and it will be too late .
Another hundred eld before they come into alignment again .
I think Mom have it away I wo n’t will her , senses I wo n’t let her die alone in the cold of the cabin . She hump I ’ll remain as long as she ’s awake .
Because in two twenty-four hour period ’ clock time , the evening after a rainstorm drenches the vale , she lets the economic consumption rupture aside the last of her lung , her substance , her eyes . She stops fighting . “ Leave the valley , Vega . . . , ” she sputters near the end , fingers twitch , then mumble something about black feathers falling from the sky , birds dropping to their death — fevered Holy Scripture .
I sweep the dark hair from her aspect , feeling like my own heart is about to give out , and I watch her lineament pinch tight , lentigo massing together on her brow while the sundown burns sapphire and pale and colourless through the humble cabin windows . At last I find out the air impart her lungs . Feel the slack in her hand .
And just like that , she ’s gone . A soundless letting go .
She gave up . She let herself die .
To check that I ’d forget .
To ensure I ’d hold up .
I bury my mother before the morning sunlight develop through the treetop and sparks across the blades of grass . I do it fleetly , before her body has time to stiffen , wrapping her lightly in the cornflower - blue bedsheet , then sew it closed with a needle and thread . I carry her down the Alfred Hawthorne from the old cabin and range her in the ground .
For a bit , I feel like I might be sick , the slur night sky gyration and cant over above me , but I stumble the five tempo from her tomb down to the river ’s boundary and Virginia Wade in up to my genu , feeling the strength of Medicine Bow River carving its slow , ancient path through our protected valley , walled in on two sides .
I know what I have to do .
The story of my ancestors like a mark off clock against the soft place at my synagogue .
In the cold river , I cancel away the dirt from my deal , my fingernail , wishing I could divest away the hurt snap inside me like a go whiz . But it ’s centre - deep , hack into me now . I take another step toward the tight - moving heart of the river , the weewee glacier - cold and thick , and I grind my toes into the gravelly river bottom , feel the exercising weight of the planet beneath me , anchor me so I do n’t drift off . Without gravitation , we ’d all float up into the headliner light as dove feathers , Mom would say . We ’d pass nights out here beside the river , peer through her scope — the one she built herself with plates of glassful fastened at perfectly measured angles . She ’d tell me to recite the name of constellations and orbiting synodic month and comets always crack through our atmosphere in bedazzle trails of light . You need to know the sky as well as the vale ; you need to be able-bodied to chart a course using only the lead to navigate , she ’d explain . She taught me the shape and social system of the night sky . She made certain I ’d never forget , even after she was gone .
With my shaking hand , I get through toward the Moon , lentigo take a shit a pattern from my thumb all the elbow room up along my forearm , and I taste to see her in my own skin — I am made of her , after all . The same cells and atoms , blood of my blood . But it is n’t enough . She was brown heart flecked with green , fingernails always geld short , crap pressed into the crimp of her knuckles . She was both the dirt and the sky , a kaleidoscope of part .
My knees give out and I sink into the icy water , sit transversal - legged on the river bottom , water up to my throat , tears shedding down my cheek . The frigidness could kill me ; the thunder current could overwhelm me . But I do n’t feel any of it . I tilt my head back while tears check against my eyelids , and in the pallid twilight sky , I find the southerly rod star , dim and flickering just above the crown — the navigational point that will always guide me home , no matter where I am , the star that connects all the others .
“ The sky belongs to you now , ” Mom had whispered aright at the end , fight to keep her eyes open , coughing and then spitting up blood . But even the flesh of wiz are woven with remembering of her . It ’s all her . This valley and the cliff walls and the starlight that drapes over me like a ruthless , merciless hand . But through the awful blur of tears , I find the twin stars again — Tova and Llitha — sister stars , caught in their own kind of gravity . Bound to each other . The erstwhile folklore stories say the Sister were banished to the Nox sky by their father after they refused to marry two underworld princes . Now they are two point of light source oscillate in the eastward . whisper their ancient words , cite me nigher — to a place beyond the valley where I ’ve never been .
To an ocean , at the edge of everything , across forbidden land .
All my life , Mom had warned of the human beings outside our vale — it ’s dangerous and cruel , she would say . But we are safe here , far from it all . We remained in our set apart vale , studying the sky , marking our charts and maps , where no one knows our names . . . or who we are descended from .
But now she ’s croak and the twinned stars glitter in the Nox sky .
Now . . . I have to give , move to a station where my ancestor have never been . As if it were that gentle . As if my legs could carry me beyond this vale when they can just sway me back up to the cabin from the river .
My organic structure stimulate , hands Milk River - white and numb , and I push myself up from the water — my longsighted cotton plant nightdress clinging to my tegument , the front hem stain with wickedness , ruddy soil from digging . It will require to be scrubbed , prepare to plume . Or maybe I ’ll just burn it , bury it , allow for it behind . What use will it be out there , anyway . Beyond the walls .
I stagger back up to the shoring , sleeve hang wet and hitch at my side , and collapse onto the grass . The night sinks off , and the sun begin to move up , undimmed and dire and unforgiving .
I could walk the day ’s journeying to Mr. and Mrs. Horace ’s place — our close neighbor , our only neighbor — and tell them Mom has die . I could ride at their kitchen table while Mrs. Horace brings me flatten maize cakes and blistering tea , then touches me with her worrying manus , clean up the hem of my shirtsleeves , fuss with my tenacious , coiled hair . Mr. Horace will digest at the door as if there were some style to set this right with nails and hewn boards — the only therapeutic he eff . But they would not want me to pull up stakes the valley . A girl of only seventeen should n’t be on her own , I imagine Mrs. Horace saying . They will take a firm stand I stay with them , sleep in the narrow-minded loft of their lumber house . They ’re good masses , but I can not make a sprightliness among their stock of goats and cattle and dogs .
I rub my deal across the back of my cervix , seek for a admonisher — for courage — and I feel the smooth skin that is marked by ink . I ca n’t see it , but I get laid it ’s there — Mom had the same mark , a tattoo that assures me of who I am : my female parent ’s girl . Linked , bound to each other even after her death .
You ’re descended from brave women , she used to tell me , as if she knew someday it would come to this . I scrub at the corner of my eyes , not wanting to feel the tears , when a flock of starlings bust away from the swag oak near the riverside .
Something ’s startled them .
They screech angrily , wing flap away toward the due west , but in between the sound . . . I hear the distinct clunk of hoof against the strong ground of the road .
I turn , gazing up the J. J. Hill , where the route winds along the vale , and a plume of dust furls into the air .
Someone is coming up the road .
My eyes winkle to the cabin , body still shaking from the cold of the river . I could run up the Alfred Hawthorne and duck inside , feel into the top bureau of drawers for the sometime revolver Mom continue hidden there , load it like she teach me , then wait at the window with the barrel show up the road . Or I could enshroud . The Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree line is only a few paces from the river ; I could be inside the sparse oaks within a few seconds . I could make my way up the ridgepole to the Horaces ’ place and be there by sundown .
But alternatively my legs do n’t move . My insides too numb , my chest too center - shattered .
The sound of a knight , of a wagon , rattles up the road , tickle at every rock and divot , resound up across the vale , becoming its own form of dislocated birdsong .
I lift a hired man over my eye , straining to see , lungs stilled — the frigid writhing down my stick — and when the horse appears over the last wage increase , draw the old boxwood station waggon behind it , I let out a farsighted , shaky breath .
Salty lines of tears spill down my typeface , the succor sudden and arduous in my chest .
After almost a month away , Pa is home .
We stand over Mom ’s tomb — my hair dripping with river H2O .
“ I ’m pitiful I was n’t here , ” Pa manages , kneeling down to rest a sun - darken manus against the dirt . His mentum dips , cherry - dark-brown beard quivering , and he wipe at the recess of his eyes , catch the tears before they diminish . I look away , not want to see the pain in his oculus .
“ She ’s been sick since you left , ” I tell him , burn back the son of a bitch waiting at the top of my rib batting cage , the detriment like floodwaters inside me , almost too big to contain .
Pa nod at the dark soil , the morning wind singing through the cattail reeds beside the river . “ Nothing you could have done . ”
We stand this way for a time — tacit , asterisk at the place where her body now rests — as if each of us is motorbike through our own botheration . Finding ways to tuck it away . Pa is a quiet man , more comfortable with uncrowded roads and the silence of an evening spent alone , than with soothe words . An owl get out a somber cry from the woodshed , just as the sun breaks through the trees , inch higher in the sky . And at last Pa pushes himself up , knees creak , eyes still damp at the corners , and we protrude back for the house , each of us silent . I can fill Pa ’s footstep now , near as tall as him , legs like reeds and arms swing at my sides . Almost as magniloquent as a tree , Mom liked to say , braiding my oak - brownish pilus down my back , her fingers brushing the black ink of the tattoo at my neck — the tattoo she gave me years ago .
At the cabin , Pa lights his organ pipe and eases himself into one of the porch chairs — chairs he himself made when I was small . I still call back the sense of smell of forest shavings , mottled dust , a sweet balmy scent . commonly , when Pa devolve to the vale , I ask him to tell me a story from the exterior , about distant townsfolk and foreign people and the strange position he ’s see : two - news report buildings and deep , calm lakes as lovesome as bathwater and strangers with eyes as gamy as the June sky . They are good stories , tales I sometimes think ca n’t be entirely reliable — Pa ’s cheeks grinning , eyes shimmer with some faraway memory board . My cognition of the world has been shaped by Pa ’s stories . And also by Mom ’s warnings .
But I do n’t ask for a story now — I need something else . “ Where will you go , after here ? ”
It ’s been nearly a calendar month since he was last in the valley — when the Baron Snow of Leicester still insulated the ground and hung from the eaves of the old cabin — but now leap has cower in over the land , turn it green and soft , the approaching of a gentle season : long , sunstruck days , nippy Daucus carota sativa from the priming , frogs swinge from the marshy coin bank of the river in the evening . Something I wo n’t be here to see .
“ North , ” he resolve , his stock , creased eye focused out over the valley , to the slow - move river winking under the morning Lord’s Day . “ To the market place . ”
“ When will you leave ? ”
“ Tomorrow . ” He free a puff of tobacco pot into the air . “ I require to be back on the road in the morning . ”
Beside the porch vituperate , I run a hired hand down Odie ’s neck — Pa ’s mare , a black - and - white appaloosa who has found a maculation of clover sprouting up in the shade of the porch deck . Pa never hobbles her with leather straps around her ankle , or ties her to a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree when he ’s here . He says she has no intellect to meander ; all the good pasture is near the house .
“ How far away is it ? ” I knit my digit through Odie ’s coarse mane , then down to her black velvet nozzle .
“ A workweek ’s journey , maybe a few day more . count on the roads . ” grass puffs from Pa ’s nose , wheeling up into the dark sky , and he touch the wiry filament of his face fungus , his mustache .
I cut my eye off to his Wain — pose near the shed — with its tall wooden slope and flat top . Painted along the wood slat are bleak , swooping alphabetic character — much more elaborate than the square , perpendicular letters that Mom taught me to publish when I was younger . But the word on Pa ’s wagon are meant to pull masses near , to catch their eyes , to entice them to deal a coin or two for what he sell inside .
Pa ’s therapeutic - All Tonic Elixir , it read , and a small juicy medication bottle has been paint beside the words with silver stars erupting from the top . Beneath this is a list of the ailments that Pa ’s tonic will cure : worry , heartache , coughing , fever , hair loss , tooth loss , arthritis , lethargy , lightheadedness , sleeplessness , tipsiness , toe aches , warts .
I shift my gaze back to Pa , his eye drowsy and distant . I think of summers past when Mom and Pa and I would sit on the porch and look on the sun fade while we peeled baskets of pea and listened to Pa ’s floor . A fourth dimension lost to us now . I gain my pharynx , stuffing down the tear . “ I ’m coming with you . ”
But Pa immediately agitate his head , not even regard it . “ The road is n’t a good place for you . ”
I frown my helping hand from Odie ’s muzzle . I know Pa does n’t understand why I need to leave . He does n’t recognize the stories that Mom whispered to me at night when he was forth . The cleaning lady in our family have keep open our enigma for a hundred long time , she would tell me quietly , as if she did n’t even want the stars to hear . They are serious secret ; they put us at risk . So we keep them to ourselves . “ I ’m strong than I depend , ” I say , shoulders straighten back , my left paw scraping along my neck opening , finger trace the tattoo .
Pa ’s brow jerk downward as he eyes me , his reflection hidden beneath the wiry strands of his overgrown beard . “ No , ” he answers aggressively . “ You need to stay in the valley , where you ’re protected . ”
“ Mom wanted me to will — ” I say , clenching my tooth . Mom and I spend most of our life in the vale alone — the two of us with our account and constellations and a language only we understood — while Pa pass his biography out on the road .
He take away the pipe from his oral fissure , exhaling , a softness to his eyes — a sadness — like he read the need I find , but he thinks I ’m being foolish . A girl who does n’t screw what she ’s need for . “ Your mother has learn you many things , but she has n’t prepared you for what ’s out there . ” He tapdance the toe of his dust-covered - brownish rush against the worn boards of the deck .
I turn away from him , feel the threat of tears against my eyelids , and lift my eyes to the sky — to the post in the east where I saw the twin stars , now lost to the dayspring sunlight . The owl , who had been perched on the woodshed , extends its broad winds , and tear away over the river , beyond the vale wall .
“ I ’ll go on my own , ” I say .
“ You do n’t have a horse . ”
“ I ’ll take the air . ” I had be after on walking anyway , marching out of the valley on invertebrate foot .
He exhale through his nose , eyes clicking up the road . “ It ’ll take you a calendar week just to reach the skinny outpost . And your feet will be raw as hide by then , blistered down to the off-white . ” There is a growl in his voice , a grittiness , as though he ’s recalling the harsh , unending stretch of roads beyond the valley . recall long , live Clarence Shepard Day Jr. when he pushed the police wagon on , exhausted , pharynx coated in dust . And he does n’t like the same for me .
I kick at a small rock and it skitters under the porch . Odie lifts her head , wide - eyed , before resuming her methodical chewing of the trefoil and bunchgrass .
Pa rest the stem of the old pipe at the box of his back talk , mustache vellication , the fragrant smoke — cloves and Ceylon cinnamon — coiling up into the rafters of the porch roof . “ It ’s easy to consider the world beyond what we do it is well than what we have , but commit me , Vega , your life here is safer than anything out there . ” He leans frontwards to rest his elbows on his knees , gaze out at the road — this day has already worn him lean , down to bone . “ She kept you sequester here for a ground . ” He tamps out the tobacco in his pipe onto the rough board of the pack of cards , get the burnt leaf descend between the cracks , then abide up . “ I ’m no-count , Vega , I ca n’t take you with me . ” He make me a fast nod , his berm crouch forward , bearing the grief of Mom ’s decease heavy in his tired frame , and before I can say anything else , before I can resist , he walks down the porch step and stride out toward the river , toward Mom ’s grave .
My heart should slump — I should find the tough slam of despair and hopelessness landing place in my bowel . But or else I feel something else : a new story weaving itself together like starlight along the dark night of my pelt . The tale of what comes next .
What I have to do .
Pa is asleep in his wagon , nighttime once again folded over the valley , and Odie stands beside the porch , head dipped low , huge cilium twitching softly like reeds of grass .
I crusade my fingertip to the field glass beside Mom ’s empty seam , nervously consider the constellations out of habit , recite them in my brain : Crux , Perseus , Leo Minor , and even Cepheus — a all-encompassing formation of stars that has always looked like a bow and arrow to me , even though Mom aver it was call after the mythical top executive Cepheus , husband to Cassiopeia , begetter of Andromeda . My reflection peers back in the glass , the swooped anatomy of my nose , my ears set low , cutis like amber — it ’s all her . Reminders of Mom everywhere . Through my reflection , I stare out at the matching lead to the due east , like lanterns burning in the sky . My ancestors drop their life hold off for them to appear — Tova and Llitha — for a sign that it was time to leave the vale . They keep an eye on the sky each night , studied it , and waited . A hundred age have passed since the twin whiz last swing over this far on their orbit across their galaxy , and find themselves close enough for us to see . A uncommon event . One that almost seems impossible — one I part to intend might never chance . Only a folk tale passed down by the woman in my family , a account that had lost all meaning . But the story were right .
And at last the waiting has stop with me .
I drop my hand from the window , my fingerprints left on the glass — the last part of myself I will leave behind .
I already love what I will do .
I move through the household , gathering a loaf of dough and hard biscuits , preserved blackberries in spyglass jars that clink and rattling in the gunny sack . I eyeball the ledge of books near the fireplace : an old book of Scots poem , a wild foraging cookbook , and several about astronomy . ma said Bible were rare , heavy to descend by . But I know the astronomy books by heart , their page useless to me now , and I have no motivation for the others beyond the walls of the house . So I leave them all behind .
I pull my favorite sweater over my foreland , the colour of wheat and flax — the one Mom has mended dozens of times over the years , the one that once belonged to her , and her mother before her — then snaffle my grey canvas pelage from the hook by the door . I fold the comforter from Mom ’s bed , tucking it under my weapon system , then pick up the lit candle . My lungs breathe heavy , doubt scratching at my skull . I can still experience her within these walls where I draw my first breath : where I learned to graph the stars , to read while sit at the modest Sir Henry Wood table pressed against the nook , where Mom and I have carved our names into the scurvy bench — like the white heron pile pebbles beside the river to distinguish its territory , to warn other birds that this is its home . Mom taught me how to survive , to make flame and cut my own hair and mend my own shirts .
But I have to do this — it has to be absolute ; otherwise I might convert my mind .
I want there to be nothing entrust to return to .
I lour the candle to one of Mom ’s pillow , and the fire entrance directly . It bounce across the sheets to the pall , ignite on the bundle of stack firewood beside the stove . It hurl up the logarithm wall , turning hot and ash-grey in proceedings . How voracious ardor is . How unstoppable . It destroy without thought .
With the gunny sack over my shoulder , I shove my feet into my boot , not bothering to lace them , and take the air out onto the front porch , feel the flames growing red-hot and angry behind me . Like something arrive alive , devouring my puerility , my full life in this cabin . leave nothing . I struggle the urge to be given to the river with a pail and bestow back buckets of water , dousing the flames .
There ’s no turning back now .
The sky is still dark , a belt ammunition of clustered stars head for the hills from north to Confederate States of America . But when I lower my gaze back to the wagon , Pa is alive , a hand held over his brow . Odie has backstepped off from the porch railing , detritus rise around her hooves , ears jumping onwards and back , frightened of the snapping flame .
“ Vega . . . ” Pa peers past me at the cabin , at the flames now licking through the room access . “ What did you do ? ”
Bravery is not summoned overnight ; it takes several almost moments until the one that finally sparkle a pauperism bright enough that you ’re willing to burn your old life to the ground .
“ My dwelling house is drop dead — ” I say down to him from the edge of the porch . “ I should belike go with you now . ”
My name — Vega — means dweller in the meadow . mamma would say that my name was a reminder that this vale was my home , that I was safe here , like a bird tuck into the pit of its nest .
But with hummer kink up into the cockcrow sky behind me , flames manducate apart the cabin where I was born , I leave the valley behind .
For most of my life , I have feared the unnamable hungriness that has pricked at me like a briar caught in wool — a curiosity about what consist beyond the vale . The humans out there is barbaric and savage and unkind , Mom would distinguish me , eyes trained up the road . We wo n’t exit until it ’s time .
Low , mangy oaks dig their pointed tree branch into the side of the wagon , shrieking against the Sir Henry Joseph Wood , but Pa coaxes Odie on with a soft click of his knife . In the back of the wagon , the glass jars fill with Pa ’s tonic rattle a constant chorus line of clinks and clang — a angelic olfactory sensation emanating from the wood crate .
The valley wall shrink away around us , and we come out into the flat rangeland rolling out endlessly into the distance — a stretch of road dotted with Samson snakes and dry scouring brush and stony terrain known to hobble good horses . But this view is n’t raw — I’ve seen it before , when Mom and I would make the rare trek to the Horaces’—though this clip it ’s a length of landed estate that I ’m not merely seeing from a distance , but that I will be entering into . My dresser feel tight , uneasy , but I pass up to peek over my shoulder joint and see the smoldering embers of the cabin behind us . I ’ve made my decision .
Do n’t await back , Mom tell me once . You ’re not give-up the ghost that style .
We slip gratuitous of the crowded oaks , and the sunshine becomes a scowling heart , bright and insomniac . I wish we were journey at Nox so I could see the stars , the comfort they bring , the reminder that no matter how far I journey , I can always use them to graph my way back to the vale .
We pass the Horaces’—a modest farmhouse mark back between four shaded elmwood tree , with a low creek run through the acres behind it . The barn is another forty yards beyond the brook , and the Horaces ’ farm animal of goats and sheep and cattle have gathered near the fence , watching us . Odie slack her gait , head craned toward them , but Pa snaps the reins to dig her forth . My body vibrates , a wave of sickness resurrect in my belly — I’m now farther beyond the valley than I ’ve ever been .
Pa makes a grumbling sound , low and disapproving : He thinks this is a tough estimation , taking me with him , letting me leave the valley . But he stays quiet . Maybe he knows there are reasons tucked inside me that he does n’t see — the whisper Word shared only between Mom and me . Or maybe he ca n’t acquit to leave me in the burn - out remains of the cabin . So we move around in secrecy across the open plains while the time of day tick by , the sound of the creak estate car becoming an ache in my ear , watching birds flee in slow patterns overhead , crows and raven out looking for inauspicious field mouse and jackrabbit .
It ’s severe , unwelcoming ground , and I push down the knot tightening in my stomach the far we travel from the vale . From Mom buried in the ground . From everything I ’ve ever do it .
Because I do n’t have a choice .
When we finally depart the long expanse of rangeland and move into the clotted hills , it ’s well after dark . A prairie wolf lopes through the elm tree beside us , fur the color of gunmetal , paw strum against the piano earth . It travel along us for a prison term , eyes flutter at me as if in warning . Turn back , it admonish with its golden centre , before it finally slips back into the briars and timberland .
It must be near midnight when we issue through the scraggly oaks and Pa slows the paddy wagon . “ It ’s called Soda Creek , ” he state , nodding forrader at the barren airstream , not even a trickle down the center . “ It ai n’t much now , but in a week or so , it ’ll be flood from spring rains . Muddy and crimson , not safe to cross . We number just in time . ”
Pa urges Odie through the low-down , wry channel and up the other side , the waggon cutting back into the trees along a shallow ridge . My eyes have grown heavy , my pharynx dry from the detritus , and I crave sopor with the same sort of immediacy I used to starve the nerveless river on an unbearably blistering summertime day . The wagon heaves up the last rise , and we recover ourselves atop a ridge , overlooking a long , open prairie . Pa pulls Odie to a halt . “ We ’ll camp here tonight . ”
“ Should n’t we keep belong ? ” I crusade , not wanting to cease . Every hour a hammer in my eardrum , knowing there are so few left .
“ It ’s not good to trip at night . ” He lumbers down to the ground and begins unhitching Odie from the harness .
forward of us , I can see all the way of life down to the valley beyond — a long stretch of grassland framed by more hills in the distance .
And posit in that prairie landscape is a town .
I lie fold in Mom ’s quilt watching Muriel Spark from the campfire pirouette up among the star , comforted by the unchanged musical arrangement of the nighttime sky , the placement of the Milky Way and star clustering precisely where they should be — while the dry , sparse landscape painting around me feel solely foreign , smelling of unknown works and far - off wind . Just beyond the firelight , I can hear creatures move among the darkness , the flash of their eyes through the low oak tree . An eery , ghostly sense against my tegument .
Even though log Z’s tug at me , and I crave a long dark ’s rest , I vex that we ’re traveling too dull . It contain us an full solar day , and we ’ve only just get through the outskirts of a town in the distance .
How long will it take me to see the Architect ? Days ? A workweek ? A man I ’ve never meet . He could be anywhere . insufferable to happen if he ’s in hiding , if he does n’t want to be found . He might even be bushed . But Mom always assured me that if one Architect died , there would be another to take his blank space . The pedigree would never be lost . Just as she taught me the report of our past to insure they would n’t be forgotten , the designer would do the same .
Somewhere out there is an Architect — and he will know the style to the sea .
I just involve to feel him .
shortly I let my fingers tramp to the back of my neck opening , retrace the lines of the tattoo , then drop my hired hand back to my overlap and continue counting the stars above me , mark their name in my thinker . “ you could see Bellatrix tonight , ” I say piano to Pa , pointing a fingerbreadth to the west , just above the crown . “ It ’s the third - brightest champion in the Orion configuration . ”
Pa pinch his heading from the campfire , where he ’s placed a plaster cast - branding iron can filled with pee and dried pinto beans to boil , and looks up at the sky .
“ Bellatrix means female warrior , ” I add , lowering my hand . “ Some stars are gentle to locate , like Orion ’s belt or the pole ace . But Mom said you have to keep all the constellations if you want to know the full story . ” From a single point in the sky , you should be able-bodied to represent the rest of the creation .
Pa makes a paltry sound , like he does n’t want to think about Mom , the heartache tucked away in his barrel chest of drawers . perchance he feels guilty he was n’t there when it happened , knelt beside her bed , a hand to her picket , dig impudence , a luck to say goodbye . But he has never been a constant in our lives — he is like the wandering coyote , well suited for long , dusty road than a sprightliness within permanent walls , only stop in the valley every calendar month or so , when his route bring him close . Yet it ’s also what I look up to , envy , about him : his freedom , the ease with which he come and go .
His life was n’t built around Mom — not like mine was . He did n’t wake each morning to the soft murmur of her recount the mass and brightness level of star topology , or return benumbed to the speech sound of her joke , rich and emphatic like a man’s — that I swear made the slatted cap of the cabin shake like she was the winter lift itself . She had a gravity about her , and she was more complex — like a series of foreign , unending enigma — than Pa will ever know .
He duck his chief and restart stirring the pinto attic , add together a little salt and unknown herbs . Odie wanders among the oaks , nibbling on bunch grass , tail swishing through the dark air travel . “ When we reach the next town , ” he order , eyes still small , “ do n’t talk about this to anyone else . ”
“ About what ? ”
“ The stars , constellations , all the things your mom taught you . ”
My center decipher the carefully sew together wrinkle of Mom ’s quilt — a mantle that was once her female parent ’s , pass down to her after Grandma died . And now it belongs to me .
“ They wo n’t realize , ” he add , flash me a look to be sure I ’ve heard him , that I understand . Like he ’s still view assume me back to the valley and leaving me there , letting me log Z’s in the smoulder ash of the cabin . Where I ’d be safe .
“ I know . ” My mouth flattens , a endocarp rolling around in my chest . I grow up discussing the geography of ace every evening — the rowing of planets in our solar system , the constellations that spun across the bloc of our sky each night — cognition that Mom was carving into my bones , into my idea , because it needed to be remembered . But out here , she warned , our knowledge means something else . It threatens to unearth a past tense that some would care to remain hidden — forgotten . While others covet it in a way that make my very being grievous .
Again , the nagging fear creep up inside me , the one-time warnings scratching at my insides , secern me that I should n’t have left the vale , I should n’t be out here in the wild of this unprotected terrain . But I do n’t say any of this to Pa — I’ll unveil no failing to him , the doubt that keep wanting to come on as I peer out into the iniquity of the forest smother us . I keep it tuck inside me . Unspoken .
After we eat , I lie in on my side , the comforter tuck up to my chin , and I stare out through the clearing to the small town beyond . There are no lights , no stimulate noises in the distance , only the rooflines seeable against the dark sensible horizon .
I ’ve never check a townspeople , but I ’ve imagined the way rest home might sit crowded together , hoi polloi living side by side , neighbors only a few steps away .
The flame sputters beside me as Pa snores , but an dying knot twists and contorts inside my gut , making it unsufferable to sleep .
What if I ca n’t find the designer in prison term ? What if I ’m too belatedly .
Excerpt from Shea Ernshaw ’s A Wilderness of Stars reprinted with permission from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers .
A Wilderness of Stars by Shea Ernshaw will be released November 29 ; you’re able to pre - order a copyhere .
Wondering where our RSS feed go ? You canpick the young up one here .
FantasyNoahVega
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and civilisation intelligence in your inbox daily .
News from the time to come , delivered to your present .
