Wandering StarSarena Ulibarri
5000 words Iva aimed her telescope in the opposite direction of the village’s sparkling fireworks, waiting for the sun to fully set so she could track the faint blur that had been growing brighter over the last few nights. The mystery and quiet melody of the comet wandering through the constellation of the Separated Lovers excited her much more than the villagers’ drunken merriment. Especially on a holiday that only reminded Iva of all she’d lost, of the culture and family she could never regain. As she tinkered with the telescope’s eyepiece, something whooshed past, much closer and more colorful than any star. Iva’s heart sped up, hope blooming. “Lotkia,” she whispered, the name nearly a song on her lips. She couldn’t see who steered the green and purple paraglider, but who else ever arrived in the village this way? Iva abandoned the telescope and ran, leaping over flowers and dodging mossy boulders, guessing where her beloved friend was likely to land. Lotkia passed overhead, pulling at ropes and handles. She veered uncomfortably close to the trees, but Iva knew she could attune with the winds, ask them to carry her wherever she wanted. Once she landed, Iva stopped a dozen feet away and watched Lotkia unstrap herself from the deflating parachute and pull a lever to retract the fan blades into a pouch on her back. Then their eyes met, and Lotkia dropped all her equipment with a sly smile. Iva stood still, letting Lotkia come to her. “Did the winds tell you I was coming?” The songs of the air were too transient, too chaotic for Iva. She preferred the stability and subtle hum of the stars, and the faraway planets she could only see through her telescope. “My heart told me,” Iva answered. Lotkia pulled her into a kiss that melted away all the time they’d spent apart. Lotkia touched the streak of silver among the rest of Iva’s dark hair. It wasn’t there the last time Lotkia visited. “You should come to the city; it will keep you younger.” “Maybe so,” Iva said. Lotkia’s dark skin was still perfectly smooth, not a wrinkle visible around her green eyes, her hair as shiny black as always. Lotkia snaked an arm around Iva’s shoulders, guiding her back toward the paraglider. Together they folded and packed it into the pouch. “How is your father?” Lotkia asked. Iva paused, a knot half-tied. “He… passed.” “Just recently?” “Almost a year ago,” Iva admitted. Lotkia finished securing the pouch. “Why didn’t you tell me?” It had been two years since Lotkia visited the village, but Iva could have written. She drew lines in the loose dirt with her fingertip, refusing to meet Lotkia’s gaze. “I didn’t want to spread the grief. And…if I wrote it down, it would become too real. This way, at least you still lived in a world where he was alive.” Lotkia kissed Iva’s forehead. “I’ll burn my herbs for him tonight at the solstice.” Iva sighed, and Lotkia gently pinched her arm. “You were going to skip it again, weren’t you?” Indeed, she was. Summer solstice had been her favorite holiday when they were children, back on their island home, before stone magic gone wrong had awakened the dormant volcano and turned the island paradise of Nor into a fiery disaster zone. The villagers only celebrated as an excuse to feast, drink, and dance, with little regard for connecting to the planetary rhythms. But Lotkia still loved it, and Iva loved Lotkia. “Let me take down my telescope,” Iva said. 
A caravan had pulled up to the village earlier that day, bringing nomadic performers who traveled between the two continents, trading tricks and entertainment for food and supplies. They added an extra flair to the solstice, breathing fire and dancing with swords, doing back handsprings across the tables and juggling fruits. After the feast, Iva helped clean the tables while everyone else, including Lotkia, wandered out to the celebration grounds to set off fireworks. Iva found her later in a small group clustered around a bonfire. Lotkia sat close to a man—one of the performers, the firebreather. One of her hands clutched a flask, the other rested on his thigh. Iva fought down a surge of jealousy, and put on a smile as she strode toward them. Lotkia spotted Iva and stood, unsteady on her feet. Clearly, she’d had too much of whatever the flask held. She clasped Iva’s arm and drew her toward the fire. “This is Sev. He’s Norian. He’s like us!” Iva recognized Sev as the type of man that women often found appealing. Skin a little darker than Lotkia’s, thick dreadlocks that brushed broad, muscled shoulders. His teeth were straight and white, and his cheeks dimpled when he smiled. Iva could appreciate his beauty, but men never sparked any desire in her. Lotkia, on the other hand, seemed enraptured. Iva intentionally sat in between them. “You’re a survivor?” Iva asked. “I was very young,” he said. “I don’t remember much.” “Too bad,” Iva said. “Nor was a place to remember. But you can hear the songs?” In answer, Sev caught a curl of the bonfire without burning his hand. He guided the fire to grow, then change into the shape of a beautiful woman. With a clap of his palms, the fire disappeared. “It’s just tricks and games, anymore,” he said. Lotkia leaned across Iva toward Sev. “Show me more tricks and games.” Sev stood, taking Lotkia’s hand and pulling her up with him. “Come back to camp with us.” “Oh no,” Iva said. She pushed between them and draped Lotkia’s arm over her shoulder. “It’s time for us to go home.” After a little more cajoling, Iva led Lotkia away from the bonfires and firebreathers. The usual constellations decorated the sky, but the faint blur she’d spotted was not quite bright enough to see without her telescope. “I want to show you something,” Iva said once they reached her cabin. She set up her telescope at the bedroom window and found the comet, a little clearer now than the night before. Lotkia stumbled and her hand hit the telescope, knocking it off of its target. Iva patiently guided the scope back to the right part of the sky, but Lotkia was unimpressed by the wandering star. She dropped onto the bed with a dramatic sigh. “Why do you waste your time with stars?” “I hear their songs, just like you hear the winds’.” “But the wind is useful,” Lotkia said. “What good are the songs of something so far away?” “Have you ever heard the song of our whole planet?” At Lotkia’s baffled look, Iva continued, “You can’t hear the song of our own planet because all we can hear is the voice of each stream or mountain, drowning out everything around it. But when you’re far enough away, the song of a whole planet creates a harmonious chorus, all those songs blending together into something that’s more than the sum of its parts.” “But you can’t do anything with that.” Attuned with the wind, Lotkia could ask them to change direction, to speed up or slow down. Those who attuned with plants and trees could ask them to grow faster, or in a particular configuration, like the great castles of Nor, which had been formed from living wood. “Maybe I could,” Iva said. She flopped onto the bed and brushed a strand of pitch-dark hair out of Lotkia’s face. “Every earthquake or aurora on our planet could be the whisper of someone listening from another star. Maybe the very rotation of this planet was decided by faraway voices.” “Mmm,” Lotkia said, but she had buried her face in Iva’s neck, not listening anymore. Iva wrapped her arm around Lotkia, and the songs of the stars disappeared beneath the rhythm of their heartbeats, ticking away the shortest night of the year. 
When Iva woke the next morning, Lotkia was already hooking her pouch onto her back. She rolled over in bed and rested her chin on stacked hands, watching Lotkia fuss with the tangled straps. Iva bit back all the questions she wanted to ask: Why couldn’t she stay longer? When would she be back? Might she visit more often? She’d learned long ago that these questions only irritated Lotkia, and the answers, when she would give them, were never accurate. Lotkia was as unpredictable as the winds she attuned with, as ephemeral as a passing breeze. Iva dressed and followed Lotkia to the edge of the cliff. “Will the winds carry you to the top?” Iva stared out across the foggy bay to the massive cliffs of the northern continent, barely visible on the horizon. “No, it’s too high.” Lotkia tenderly touched Iva’s cheek. “Come to Kezik with me. We can hike down to the fishing hamlet instead, and take the train that climbs to the top. Together.” Iva shook her head, not bothering to offer the usual excuses. They kissed once more, and then Lotkia backed up, holding onto Iva’s fingers until the last second. Iva crept to the edge and watched her fall, the purple and green paraglider puffing out just before she disappeared into the clouds below. 
The anniversary of her father’s death arrived. The villagers believed the soul lingered near the body for a whole year, so the one-year ritual was even more significant than the funeral. They all claimed they wanted to support Iva in her grief, and yet Iva found herself sitting on the Griever’s Stone by herself. Even the groundskeeper who prepared her father’s body had apologized and told her they were too busy to stay. “It’s nothing against you or your father, you know?” “Of course,” Iva replied with a tight smile. The village had welcomed the Norian refugees after the disaster that destroyed the island. Iva’s father had held her hand the entire long hike from the southern shore, but told her only “hush” each time she asked where her mother was. She remembered the kind smiles of the villagers who took them in, the bland food that had tasted like a miracle. A few dozen Norians had made their home here during Iva’s childhood, but as she stared at the cairn covering her father’s body, Iva appreciated that now she was the only one left. Anger flared through her. She twisted the mourner’s veil in her hands, then yanked it off and tore the thin fabric in half. She’d honored the villagers’ death traditions, yet they hadn’t even bothered to show up. She and her father had never truly been a part of this village; these customs had never been their own. Now Iva was the only one here who remembered the tropical fruits of Nor, the only one who could hear the songs of the mountains and trees and rivers. All of those vibrations rushed in on her now, a loud cacophony of stone, plant, water, and wind. Everything she usually blocked out in favor of the subtle sounds of the stars. Come to Kezik, Lotkia had pleaded, this time and every time she’d visited for years. Iva had always resisted, not willing to lose a second home. But there were more Norians in Kezik. Lotkia was in Kezik. Despite the cold weather and crowded streets, the city might be more like home than the village had ever been. 
At sunrise, without saying goodbye to a single person in the village, Iva left the door to her cabin wide open and started down the cliffside trail. The path wound past the ossuary, but Iva resisted a last look at her father’s cairn. She was looking forward now, not back. Fog thickened as she descended, obscuring both the sun and the fishing hamlet below. One misstep on a steep part of the trail sent her tumbling off the path, somersaulting until she crashed against a boulder. She scrambled to check the telescope. It was intact, no cracks or scratches on the lenses. She breathed a sigh of relief. Her ankle, on the other hand, was in much worse shape. Iva freed her boot laces to lessen the constriction. Pain flooded in. Her whole foot swelled, the skin red and mottled. She wasn’t sure she could stand, much less make the rest of this journey. “Need a hand, love?” In her pain and confusion, Iva thought for a moment that it was Lotkia. But the accent was all wrong, the voice higher pitched. Fog swirled around a man and woman wearing loose knit clothes, each carrying a basket full of a fruit that grew on vines along the cliff. They were olive-skinned, with silver hoops in their ears and noses. “I don’t think I can walk.” The woman handed her basket to the man and tied her long brown hair into a loose bun as she navigated the uneven ground to reach Iva. “Little thing like you, that’s no problem.” She scooped Iva effortlessly into strong arms. The outlines of buildings and houses peeked through the fog after a few minutes, all stone and brick rather than the wooden structures of the cliff-top village. She’d nearly made it all the way to the hamlet before she fell. “I need to get to Kezik,” Iva said. “Of course, love. Let’s take a look at your foot, then we’ll get you on the first boat over.” 
The woman’s name was Zefira, and the house she took Iva to was warm and smelled of fresh-cooked food. Every time Iva thought she’d counted everyone who lived there, a new face appeared. “The kids are yours?” Iva asked as two little girls played catch with the roll of tape Zefira had used to wrap Iva’s ankle. “Not mine,” Zefira said. “Sisters, nieces, cousins.” “They all live here?” “Aye. Rest tonight, and we’ll go to the docks in the morning.” But Iva, used to living alone except for Lotkia’s infrequent visits, had trouble resting in this strange house, full of the sounds of so many people. A strong wind blew in as the sun set, rattling the windows and clearing the fog away. Iva dug her telescope out of her bag and hobbled through the large, labyrinthine house with it tucked under one arm. The sky was completely clear now, the night air crisp. Trees full of fragrant white flowers bloomed along the streets, covering the reek of fish that occasionally drifted up from the docks. Iva spotted the wandering star within the constellation of the Separated Lovers. She trained her telescope onto it, and tuned out the sounds around her, focusing on its quiet song. “They say it’s a bad omen.” Iva looked up from the telescope to see Zefira, holding out a sweater. “It’s harmless,” Iva said. She took the sweater and wrapped it around herself. It smelled of sea salt and fresh-baked bread. “It’s a comet. A large ball of ice that loops around the sun the way the planets do.” “How can you possibly know what it’s made of?” She didn’t, really, but the castles of Nor had telescopes vastly more advanced than hers, and Norian children had learned as much about stars and other worlds as they did about their own. She settled for, “My elders told me,” and that seemed answer enough for Zefira. “My elders are more concerned with whether the dishes got done, and whether I’m ever going to marry.” “You’re lucky to have them,” Iva said solemnly. “Aye,” Zefira agreed. Iva gestured to the telescope, inviting her to look. Zefira lowered her face to the eyepiece and gasped. “It’s a skyfish!” Iva laughed. “What is a skyfish?” Zefira shrugged, embarrassed. “That long body, swimming between the stars.” “I suppose it is.” Iva looked at the comet as though for the first time, no longer able to concentrate enough to hear its soft song. 
In the morning, Zefira inspected the swollen ankle. “But I need to get to Kezik,” Iva protested when she advised her to stay off of it for a few more days. “What’s so urgent?” Iva bit her tongue. Honestly, she didn’t know if Lotkia was even there. The village was not the only place she traveled with that paraglider. So she stayed, learning the names of Zefira’s many relatives and sharing meals with them. One dish on large half shells looked new and exotic, but the second Iva bit into it, her senses flooded with memory. “This is Nepo,” she said. The familiar taste lingered on her tongue. Zefira offered some other name for it, but Iva shook her head. “It may be that, but on Nor, we called it ‘Nepo.’” “You’re Norian?” Zefira’s eyes sparked with curiousity. “Is it true you can talk to the waves, change the tides?” “Some can, but I don’t know water songs. I—” She stopped herself before admitting that she heard the songs of stars, worried that might be too strange. “I was young when the island was destroyed.” Iva expected disappointment, but instead, the other woman kept her soft smile and offered Iva another Nepo. 
Once Iva could walk pain-free on her swollen ankle, Zefira took her to the docks to help her negotiate passage across the bay. Iva was surprised at how calm she felt near the water. The cold spray and white soggy sand was very different from the blazing black beaches of Nor, and yet the sound of the slapping waves, the swell and dip of the water’s surface was familiar, a friend she hadn’t realized she’d been missing. “Will you stop by when you come back through?” Zefira asked. She caught the same longing in Zefira’s voice that Iva herself had whenever Lotkia left. Indeed, Iva had entertained the idea of staying longer in the hamlet, of staying for good. If her ties to Lotkia were not so strong, if her love had not been so deep, she probably would have. “I don’t know when that will be,” Iva said, “But, yes, I will find you again.” It felt unnatural to make such a promise. Iva was the one who stayed put. She was not the wandering star, not the one who came and went like the winds. Only now, she was. Their embrace lingered a little too long. Iva climbed into the boat, turning back to look at Zefira one more time. The journey across the bay was cold, the train ride through a steep tunnel even colder. It took two days at a slow crawl to ascend all the way to the top of the cliff. Two days without seeing the stars. Two days surrounded by rough stone walls, the low hum of the stone’s song almost indistinguishable from the mechanical clang of the funicular. It was night when the train surfaced at the outskirts of Kezik, and Iva was shocked to see that the comet’s tail stretched nearly half the width of the constellation now, and glowed brighter than any of the stars. She navigated the narrow streets of Kezik on foot, searching for the address she’d only ever seen on an envelope. A chaotic energy pervaded those nighttime streets. Shouting voices echoed off the stone walls. Animals ran free, tearing apart overflowing rubbish bins. Boards covered shop windows, some of them broken or graffitied. Iva knew little about the city except from Lotkia’s stories, but none of this seemed normal. It took all night to find Lotkia’s apartment. As sun rays finally sneaked through the city’s shadows, Iva knocked. A shuffle came from inside, and the door opened. She was radiant. Barefoot in a green silk robe that drooped off of one shoulder, dark mess of curls framing her head. Lotkia’s hand flew to her mouth in surprise and the corners of eyes crinkled in delight. “Iva!” She took half a step out the door, glancing over her shoulder. “I wish you’d told me you were coming.” “I wanted—” Iva started, but through the door Lotkia was attempting to block, she saw a man pass by. Dark skin, broad shoulders, and dreadlocks—the firebreather, from the traveling performance troupe back in the village. All the words Iva had rehearsed for this reunion fled her mind. She turned and fled as well, down the hallway, down the long spiral staircase that descended through the building’s heart. “Iva, wait!” Lotkia yelled. Iva could hardly breathe. She should have known that Lotkia had other lovers. She had known, but in an abstract way that let her believe their love meant more than whatever flings might come and go while they were apart. But that was foolish, she saw now. Wishful thinking. She was only one of those flings as well. As she kicked open the ground level door, Lotkia caught up and grabbed her arm. “Iva, wait. I’m glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’re here. I want to be with you when it happens.” That caught Iva off-guard, and she blinked in confusion. “When what happens?” Lotkia gave a bewildered shake of her head. “The end of the world, of course.” 
Iva and Sev sat across from each other at Lotkia’s kitchen table, an uncomfortable tension between them while Lotkia set newspapers in front of Iva. Iva picked up the papers, holding them high enough to block Sev from her view. Apparently, Kezik scientists had determined the comet was on a direct collision course with the planet. A few days were all they had. “So it was a bad omen after all,” Iva muttered. “Are any of the astronomers Norian?” Lotkia sat down beside her and wrapped her hands around a steaming mug. She shook her head. “I didn’t recognize any.” She tapped one of the pages on the table. Iva skimmed but, indeed, there were no names on the list of scientists that looked of Norian origin. “Then that means no one has asked it not to,” Iva said. “Asked…?” Sev said. Iva shot him an annoyed look. “I’ve heard the comet’s song.” Lotkia bit her lip, worrying at a chip on the mug with her thumb. “Something so massive would be impossible to move.” “Something so massive,” Iva countered, “needs only a small shift to change its course.” 
The three of them went to the edge of the high cliff that evening, away from the chaos and lights of the city. As the sun set, Iva watched the fog blow away from the bay far below, the lights of the fishing hamlet twinkling on at the same rate as the stars overhead. Lotkia came with her because she knew the songs of the wind, and though she’d never attuned with solar winds before, how different could it be? Sev mainly attuned with fire, but he claimed he heard the songs of water as well, which might help since the comet was mainly ice. Most importantly, all three of them understood that attuning was easier when surrounded by other Norians. Their presence would amplify each other’s abilities. “Listen, about…about Sev,” Lotkia said as they walked to the cliff. “When we’re apart, you didn’t think that…” Iva glanced over her shoulder at Sev, trailing behind. “No, I didn’t. But it hurts to finally see it face to face.” “Why?” “Why?” Iva shook her head. The question didn’t make enough sense to bother with an answer. Instead, she took a deep breath and asked, “Do you love him?” “Yes,” Lotkia answered without hesitation. “Deeply. And I love you as well. Love is not a finite resource.” Iva was quiet for the rest of the journey. Lotkia’s declaration made Iva think of Zefira and her huge family, all the children and elders and everyone in between squeezed into that sprawling house. The way they’d just built on new wings and rooms to fit the family’s growth. By the time they reached the cliff, the comet had risen on the horizon like a second moon. It was so much brighter, so much closer than it had been the night before. “Skyfish, you grew,” Iva whispered. The three of them sat back-to-back on the rim of the cliff, Iva facing the comet, Sev and Lotkia facing away. Iva started by just listening, which is all she’d ever done before, watching it rise over the horizon until the full, glistening tail became visible. The comet had begun as a small dot between the Separated Lovers, but now it spanned the whole constellation. After listening for a long time, she began to attune. The difference between hearing the songs and attuning with them, her father had told her, was the difference between hearing a language and understanding it. You could recognize sounds as words without understanding what those words meant. It had been a metaphor she easily related to, as a refugee child in a strange land, where people were always trying to tell her things she didn’t understand. Several times, the attunement slipped, and if she hadn’t had two other Norians there to anchor her, Iva probably couldn’t have held it at all. The comet’s song recounted its journey through the solar system, the centuries spent in the deep cold of the far away, the tug and pull of celestial bodies, the joyous heating and thawing as it approached the sun, releasing dust and ice to mark its path. Then something shifted. The comet became aware of the attunement, and demanded to know who she was. Iva tried to convey herself the way the comet had, through the sum of her experiences. The destruction of her island home, her quiet village life, her love for her father, her love for Lotkia. Was the comet listening? Could it possibly understand the song of such a small being on such a different path? Iva felt the attunement waver; if she was going to make a request, she was running out of time. She asked the comet to change its course, just enough to avoid the pull of this planet’s gravity. “I am Life-Bringer,” the comet declared. It reminded her of the booming voice of a Norian priest, echoing off the walls of a cavernous castle. “There is life here already,” Iva told the comet. “If you come here, you will be Death-Bringer.” “I am Life-Bringer,” it repeated. Iva tried to convey the disaster she had lived through, how an ill-intentioned attunement had awoken a dormant volcano and sent ash and lava pouring across the walls of the castles and into the homes of everyone she had ever known. How the sea had steamed and boiled, fish and coral floating charred on the water’s surface. How the ground and wind, the water and fire, were all in such turmoil that even the most advanced priests could no longer affect their paths. How she escaped, but so many others did not. She tried to magnify that experience to the size of a comet strike, to multiply her grief from the scale of an island to the scale of a planet. “You are Life-Bringer,” Iva said. “Not Death-Bringer.” She realized she’d spoken that last part out loud. The attunement had broken. “Did it work?” Lotkia asked. Her back was still pressed against Iva’s. “I don’t know.” Iva looked up at the comet, which had nearly crossed the sky by now. More time had passed than she realized—hours that had felt like minutes. Iva, Lotkia, and Sev made their way to the funicular station, where an all-night tavern served warm stew and cold ale. They were the only ones there, and they ate together in silence. In the cold dawn outside the tavern, Iva listened to the clang and pull of the funicular inside the tunnel, the memory of the taste of Nepo from Zefira’s kitchen overpowering the lingering taste of the stew. Lotkia grasped her hands and pulled her attention away from the abyss. “Come back to Kezik with me.” There was more pleading in her voice than usual, a sincerity that Iva realized had been lacking each time she’d asked before. “I may,” she said. “Someday. But for now, our paths are different.” Lotkia kissed her, and it was just as wonderful as always, and just as painful as always. But this time it was Iva who walked away. 
The world did not end while Iva rode the train down to the bay, and an unexpected contentment washed over her when she stepped out onto the rocky, foggy shoreline. She negotiated passage across on a fishing boat full of men and women with pierced noses and eyebrows. Life appeared to be going on as usual in the fishing hamlet, with none of the hysteria she’d seen in Kezik. The wood felt hard beneath her knuckles, the sound of the knock loud in her ears. The time before the door opened stretched to infinity and looped back on itself. Then there she was. Zefira’s eyes widened in surprise and her lips stretched into a grin. “You came back!” Iva reached for Zefira’s hand and raised it to her lips, planting a soft kiss. “I thought I might stay a while. If that’s okay with you.” Zefira interlaced her fingers with Iva’s and stepped closer. “Stay as long as you want.” The children swarmed out the door and surrounded them, shrieking Iva’s name, asking for news from the city. They swept her into the house to show off their latest drawings and inventions. Later that night, after the fog cleared from the bay, Iva left Zefira sleeping in the bed they’d shared and navigated out of the house so she could go look at the sky. Her telescope stayed packed away, the comet still bright enough to see without it. But it had left the constellation of the Separated Lovers now, and was smaller than the last time she’d seen it. She quieted her mind, focused, and listened to the Skyfish’s song as it swam away. 
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Sarena Ulibarri
Sarena Ulibarri is the author of two novellas (Another Life from Stelliform Press and Steel Tree from Android Press) as well as nearly 50 published short stories. This year, she has stories appearing in the anthologies Strange Locations: An Anthology of Dark Travel Guides (from Apex) and Solarpunk: Short Stories From Many Futures (from Flame Tree Press). She is editor-in-chief of World Weaver Press, and a story reviewer and climate fiction editor for Grist Magazine's annual contest Imagine 2200. Find more at www.SarenaUlibarri.com.
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