Stellar

Chapter 1

She wasn't in the least like a star, she reminded one of neither dark, nor light. Her parents were just the ordinary sort that lived in the remote area where she was born, where names like Anne, Mary, or Kate were the norm. Why they had chosen to name their only child, a girl born late in the autumn of her mother's life, late in the autumn of the year, after a star was a mystery no one could know. Her father, Owen, was asked of it, but his only response was, "'Twas so". The response made as little sense as the girl. No one could ask her mother, who had spoken not a word since the night of the birth, but sat in the rocker on the wooden porch, day long, night long, wrapped in a faded quilt and staring at nothing. She was never seen to move except for the gentle rocking of the chair, but she was always clean, her hair growing greyer each year but always pulled up into the never-changing loose bun at the nape of her neck. It is to be supposed that her husband or child took it upon themselves to care for her needs when no others were about. People avoided the old wooden cabin, so it would not have been difficult.

Stellar grew from a quiet pale baby to a shy pale toddler into a solemn pale adolescent, nothing particularly noteworthy except her name. She was suspicious of strangers and stayed to herself, but in that place, in that time, 'most everyone did. People kept to themselves, pretty much, and counted on the ties of blood that trickled through the generations to step in when need arose. Therefore, the stranger in Woodkiss Hollow would see very little beyond the weathered wooden homes, almost all with gardens and some even with a few flowers, an attempt to leaven the otherwise drab appearance of the remote community, set back in the old hills. They might even spy the shadow of a face, a brief glint as the light reflected off a wary eye through a window, quickly withdrawn if they looked that way.

Some went for schooling, some didn't, but most didn't stick with it much past 13 or so. Stellar's father could sign his own name, and that was about it; at the age of 8 he'd decided he'd rather be outdoors, and no one argued with him. Her mother had gone farther, making it clear to the 10th grade before her family needed her help more than she needed to be in school, so she had gone home to help her ailing mother deal with 5 younger siblings, and within the year the 15-year-old Malissa was wed to 17-year-old Owen, the strong and reticent second son of her nearest neighbor. The match was a good one, most felt. The two families had always been on good terms, and the blood ties were not so close as some. All the families were tied together by now, but anything closer than 2 generations was considered unwise by the old ones, who had seen more than enough children born who could not live to their first birthday, and those who grew to adulthood barely able to comprehend the world around them. Malissa and Owen were removed by 4, and folks approved.

As the years went by after the marriage and there were no children, the natural questions arose. The local women could attest that Malissa had all the normal womanly functions, and the men knew that there was nothing unmanly about Owen. There were no childhood accidents or illnesses of the type known to cause such troubles, so in the end, the people of Woodkiss shook their heads sadly at God's will, and went back to their own hard lives. Owen and Malissa never spoke a word of their grief to any outsider, but simply continued their toils as the years went on, growing old with the wiry sinews that go with a lifetime of physical labor. Skin was permanently browned from the outdoors, as the hair and the eyes grew more faded with the passage of time.

Then suddenly, at the end of the time allotted for child-bearing, Malissa's appearance began to change. Her eyes had new life, her face grew fuller until it almost erased the sunken cheeks and the lines around the eyes, and she looked much as she had in her twenties. Her body straightened to accommodate the growing child in her womb, and the hint of a smile was seen tugging at the edges of the thin lips. Owen walked strong and proud, his stride lengthening, and you could not have found a happier couple in the hollow. Despite her age, few were concerned that Malissa's labor would be any worse than that of most women, for she was strong and healthy, and the women of her line were built for child-bearing.

The child Stellar was born in the November of a strange year, long past the harvest but before the snows which should have come, but had not. The days were cold and grey, the wind blew through every crack, the dead leaves rattled as they danced across the ground. Animals with haunted eyes wandered in confusion through the homesites, unable to find food either high or low. They were too thin to face the long cold, as were the humans, but there were years like that. Slack years, some called them, but others called them Devil's years, or Fairy years, calling on vague memories of tales told them by the hearth when they were very very young, by the very very old. Details were long lost across the chasm of time, but the Devil touched some years, everyone knew that.

The village folk did not attend the birth, so they could only guess at what had transpired. They were called the next day when Owen hung a bloodstained cloth over the porch rail, tribute to the event that had passed. The women came first, those who had the closest blood ties, bearing the traditional gifts and prepared to offer the traditional assistance in the early days. What they found caused two to remain while one broke the stifling silence of the season by running down the path harum-scarum, racing breathlessly to her husband to bid him fetch aid.

By nightfall everyone knew that Malissa had been found lying in her own blood, neither moving nor seeing. The child, unwashed and still connected to her mother, lay on her mother's breast uncomplainingly. Owen sat by his wife's side, clutching her hand, refusing to move until the baby soiled the first muslin, and he had to fetch a new one. He ignored the visitors until one asked the baby's name, and he replied, "Stellar". Never a man of many words, that was the only sound heard from him for many long days. There were some who thought the name mis-heard, but he only shook his head impatiently when they pressed him. Stellar she was, then, and Stellar would remain. Country folk do not have much time to waste on such pointless pursuits as trying to force someone to talk when they don't want to.

They concentrated instead on cleaning up mother and child, cleaning the cabin, and putting up some food for Owen. By unspoken accord, they took turns visiting the cabin each day, going in twos or threes (for none wished to go alone), to look after the innocent young one and try to force the family to some form of normality. Days passed, then weeks, then months, and gradually the visits grew briefer and farther apart, until they ceased altogether. Malissa remained totally unresponsive to the world, Owen remained silent, and Stellar grew up as silent as her parents, big brown eyes in an unremarkable pale face, surrounded by tangled brown hair. The little family was tending to themselves, and it was time for the others to go and tend to their own.

They never forgot the little girl, and never ceased to love her parents in the taciturn fashion of their kind, but they knew less of them than they knew of world outside their little hollow, surrounded by the hills.

Chapter 2

Stellar grew up listening to the sound of the wind through the trees and the creek that ran near her house, of the birds in flight and the leaves under her feet. Few people came out to her home, and when they did, they said little, and she listened even less. She sat politely, staring at them with solemn eyes, but the words they said sounded unimportant in her ears. She couldn't take them seriously, because they knew so little. They would say that the weather looked fine, but she could tell from the wind that a storm was blowing in, even before the birds told her. They would say they missed having them around, but she could see that there was no pain within them, so there was no need to make the effort to go to church, or to school, or to the rare celebrations that took place.

They spoke in guarded whispers of her mother, looking cautiously from the corners of their eyes at the woman who sat, wrapped in blankets in the rocking chair on the porch, paying no heed to their words at all but keeping her eyes fixed on the woods and the sky. They said she was never seen to move, they said she had never spoken since Stellar was born. They shook their heads in concern that she had been too old, that her husband should have called the women to help. They worried that little Stellar would grow up as shy as the fawns she chased through the woods, not knowing of people, not being able to read or write at even the most basic level, and who would take care of this changeling child after her parents were gone?

Stellar knew it wasn't true, none of it, so she knew that the people were more fanciful than they let on. They knew it was impossible for a woman to live entirely in a rocking chair and stay clean and healthy, yet they half-believed it was so. They had been to the house after the birth, and had seen that there were no injuries to mother or child, that there had been no more than the usual amount of blood, and that except for her lack of interaction, Malissa recovered rapidly and fully.

If they had spoken to Stellar about anything she cared about, they would have found that she knew far more than most of the local children her age, of worlds far beyond Woodkiss Hollow.

Stellar knew these things because her nights were spent listening to her mother tell tales from books, reciting the words she had learned long ago in the school that was so dear to her. Stellar and Owen would bring Malissa indoors after night crossed the beam and turned to climb to daylight. Once inside, she would slowly rise and stretch, letting the blanket fall to the chair behind her. Then she'd move to the stove and put together some food, speaking in quiet tones with Owen about how the farm was doing, how was the cow, were the beehives producing a lot of honey this year. They'd discuss their home and their lives like any married couple, making decisions and sharing both joys and sorrows. Then Malissa would turn her attention to Stellar, and ask how she had spent her day. Stellar was always careful to share everything she could recall, because her mother would take her cue from something seen, or heard, or done, and would choose the story for the night.

For all the days of her life, Stellar would carry those memories burned upon her brain, of the nights that the little family spent inside by the smoky firelight, voices quiet as they knit themselves ever more tightly together. Owen's face would shine with pride as he watched his wife and child, voice warm and caressing when he spoke to them. Malissa's eyes would embrace them as she spoke of places across the far seas, of ancient kingdoms and heroes, of fantastic voyages and mythical beasts. The little cabin would fill up with amorphous shapes, men in armor, tall buildings, dark thickets, conjured by the voice of the woman who had never seen them, yet made them real. As Malissa spoke, she summoned them from their resting places, and the walls receded and the edges of time blurred. On fine nights, they might venture outside, and stare at the shapes that the stars made in the sky, and know that those shapes had been there, time out of mind. Malissa would cast off her cares and dance through the trees, joyous at being among them. When at last the night's tales were done, Malissa and Owen would lie together in their bed, while Stellar slept across the room, and they fell asleep, to rise just before daybreak, when Malissa would wash her hair, change to a clean dress, then wrap herself warmly to go out to her rocker and prepare to greet the dawn.

Malissa's life had changed forever the day she learned she was pregnant, and the mysterious old blood that ran through her veins began to open her eyes and ears, until the world unseen was mostly more real than the world seen. Deep in the recesses of time, the Morgan blood stirred within her, and she knew it flowed very near the surface of her only child. Malissa had grown up seeking answers all by herself, for there were none of her generation or the one before who understood such things. The old wise woman up the Hollow, old Nell, had died when Malissa was just 9 years of age, but she had imparted as much as she could to the child before she died. Now Malissa spent the bright hours seeking communion with the friendly spirits, and the dark hours nurturing those she loved, and teaching her child how to do the same.

Thus Stellar, they shy child of the woods who never went for schooling, knew of the epic battle over Helen of Troy, she knew of the Cup of Christ and the Crusaders who spent their lives looking for it, she knew of Robin Hood and King Arthur, of Beowulf, of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and Macbeth. She knew that dragons were relatives of the little skinks she saw darting through the underbrush, and that hurricanes were relatives of the storm winds that shook the tree branches during the blustery months. She saw the connections between things great, and things small; things past, and things present. She knew that old Rob Fisher had been Romeo in his youth, desperately in love with Idale Lemasters, who loved him back, but it could never be. She knew that Earl Dean quietly helped the poorest of the poor, by skimming a bit off the rich folk the next county over, just like Robin Hood. And she knew that Jake McLaughlin, the quiet old man in the house up the run, had pulled all Woodkiss Hollow together many years ago, to fight against some rich company that tried to take over, cut down all the trees, and chase all the families away. He had succeeded for long enough to keep the enemy at bay, but when it was over, it all fell apart, and the effort cost him his wife. So he was like King Arthur, helping them see that something better was possible, but sacrificing his personal happiness for the greater good.

And so Stellar grew, dreaming perhaps of visiting the places she had heard of someday, but knowing that in a way, she already had them at hand. She looked for them as she ran through the woods, she listened for their songs on the wind, and eagerly awaited each night, when her mother would hear her words, and then give her the story that went with them.

Chapter 3

Stellar grew into a slim, leggy coltish girl, pale of face and dark of eye, her hair no longer tangled and hanging loose but braided now, dull in some lights but showing hints of fire in others. The fine bone structure inherited from her mother started to refine itself as her baby fat faded into adolescence. She wasn't much for talking, but folks heard her in the woods sometimes, singing to herself, or the birds, or the trees, or the wind. Sometimes they recognized the tune, sometimes not, but the voice was light and ethereal, lacking any true power but seeming to blend seamlessly into the world of the woods and the old old hills.

Stellar at age 10 had known more than anyone in the Hollow except her mother, and at age 12, appeared in town mysteriously, clutching a few coins in one hand, and a letter in the other. Eyebrows raised even further to learn that the letter had been posted to New York City, of all places. No one could figure out who had written it, since Owen couldn't write but his name, Malissa did nothing but sit in her rocking chair on the porch, and Stellar had never had any schooling at all. But there it was, posted to New York City, and a little while later, a heavy box came, and wonder of wonders it was addressed to Malissa. This was unusual enough to send the postmaster's wife out to their remote homesite, with the added courtesy gift of some green beans she had put up for the winter. It was just past harvest time, turning to the dark months, and the earth had been generous that year. Food was plentiful, and it was neighborly to share.

Elenor was the first real visitor to the house in almost a year, and looked about her with curiosity as she trekked up the long, leaf-strewn path to the gate between the hedges. She would be able to tell the others that the land was well-tended, the hedges neatly trimmed and the flowers in neat rows. The vegetable garden had been harvested and tilled under for the winter, showing signs of having manure plowed in to ensure next year's fertility. Too much work for Owen to attend all by his lonesome; Stellar must be shaping into a woman.

Still, despite the neat appearance of the homesite, there remained the unnerving figure of Malissa in her rocking chair on the front porch, gently rocking, looking at you but not really seeing you. It was a long walk to make under such scrutiny, with no recognition. Elenor hoped that Stellar was to home, for at least she looked at you and responded to you, even if she had as few words as her father. Thus she was startled almost to the point of dropping the jar of beans when she reached the base of the stairs and Malissa's head slowly swiveled to look at her, then a thin hand raised in greeting. Looking at her eyes, Elenor saw that Malissa was looking back for once. Her astonishment was unparalleled, and must have shown on her face, for in a further shock, a slight smile once again tugged at the corners of the thin lips, the first anyone had seen since Stellar was born.

Elenor recovered herself and brusquely presented the jar of beans, which were taken by the raised hand and placed to rest in Malissa's lap. Her voice, when she spoke, was softer, speaking courteously of the weather and commenting on how nice the homesite looked, then moving on to Stellar and her letter. At the mention, Malissa's eyes seemed to sharpen still more, and a sensitive would have sworn that her inward energy shot skywards. Elenor, practical to the soles of her feet, felt no such thing, but she did speak even easier, feeling at last after 12 long years that in speaking to Malissa, she was speaking to a real person. When she mentioned the big heavy box, the faint smile reappeared, and the eyes seemed to sparkle as she nodded her head, ever so slightly, in acknowledgement.

Just then Stellar emerged from the woods to the east, the thicker forest where the leaves had turned but not yet fallen. Even someone as unimaginative as Elenor was reminded of a deer as the long legs paused hesitantly on the edge of the woods, unsure whether to approach. Malissa's head swiveled to see her daughter, and Stellar gave a visible start of surprise, then ran lightly up to the porch to rest her hand on her mother's shoulder. Elenor repeated the courteous words of greeting then told her of the mysterious box, and so moved was she by this human interaction with the silent family of the Hollow, she even offered her husband's services in bringing the box up to the house. Stellar smiled a big amused grin as she shook her head in polite refusal, then skipped to the other edge of the porch and let out a long whistle. Shortly thereafter, Owen appeared, spade in hand and eyes asking a question. He took in the trio on the porch, and on learning the news, nodded once, set down the spade, then motioned to Stellar and Elenor to accompany him back to town.

As Elenor passed out the gate to the path, she took a last look back, and saw that Malissa watched them still, smiling gently.