The Stars Can Wait by Jay Basu

Author:Jay Basu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

It was deepest night now, when the sun is most distant from the earth. Gracian took the photograph from the sill and dropped it on the bed, letting it slip from his hand as a man might let slip a used wrapper or spent ticket. He stood by the window and saw the yard and the forest beyond that.

Something pulled his eye into focus, a warp of movement out among the shadows of the field beyond the yard. A small black shape was passing from each tree shadow to the next, as if made from the same substance as the darkness. It was making its way slowly, moving in bursts, quick and agile, leaping, stopping, vanishing, and then returning, in a wide zigzag motion down the face of the field. Gracian felt the small hairs rise up on his scalp. He thought what he saw was a phantom, born from the wanderings of his thoughts. But the closer it came, rushing out across the dark earth, the surer Gracian became of its reality.

Finally he remembered the telescope in his hand. He slid the chest over with the outside of his foot and stepped up onto it and tried to force the top pane further down to give him better vantage. It gave only a few inches before he felt it wedge there. He raised the telescope.

It was gone. There was nothing but the fields and the still air, in which seemed to hang low motes of dust, catching moonlight. As he moved the telescope in a small parabola around his eye, the scene became nervous, halting to right itself and then shattering again.

And then, finally, movement renewed. The spirit had detached itself from the far edge of the field and was passing quickly over an area of white. The boy could see that it left behind it a trail of shallow pockmarks in relief against the snow.

Footprints. It was, then, a figure. A man. A man running.

The man had reached the low end of the field and was almost at the perimeter wall of the backyard, and when he reached it he stopped. He bent down to catch his breath, his open mouth visible, and then stood again. Although Gracian could see the man now, see the muted colours and contours of his body and even a little detail on his hat and coat, both of which were as black as the trousers and shoes, he could not quite make out the face. It would not remain stationary and there was too much shadow; the hat drawn low over the brow seemed to leak its darkness onto the skin below.

Instead of moving on, the man seemed to be waiting. He had crooked one hand up onto his side as if to depress a stitch and the other hand was stroking his chin and so further obscuring his face to Gracian. The man was gazing out into the field beyond the rectangle of space prescribed by the window frame, and Gracian knew he had no chance of looking where the man looked.

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