Spiderwort
09 Jul 2020Terra Sheer
"Oh, the stars!"There was a time, when I was a little girl, that I used to say it out loud.
"They're just balls of gas," my Uncle told me. "Nothing special."
"You're just a ball of gas, " I thought.
And I suppose, in some ways, that nihilist conceit has grown with me through the years. The stars aren't as pretty as they used to be. But then I think back to those moment when I found him asleep. When he lay dying. When he would declare, with all the reckless enthusiasm of a naive little girl...
"Oh, the stars!"
... when the stars were the most beautiful thing he could see, even with his eyes closed.
I thought at first, he might have meant the flowers. Little flowers, speckled over every surface he would give them, brilliant and purple, spitting yellow droplets like the stubborn, vicious things they were. They grew everywhere. Got everywhere. I couldn't understand why he loved them, but I understood that he loved them more than me. To disturb them was to disturb the very order of things. He had a sixth sense about it. If ever I had the nerve to disturb them, he'd disturb me with a hard right cross that would put me to admiring his beloved stars in my own unique way. And in my way I hated them.
Turns out, there are thing old men see that little girls don't. Like when purple flowers turn pink. Like when the stars you've cherished all your life evoke the kind of terror you haven't learned to hide. Not even from the niece who's seen you calm through everything.
"Get into the shelter," he says.
"I'm busy."
"The hell you are! It's a flare!"
He hauls me by the collar. Damn near takes my shirt off, with the force he hauls me up. In some dim way, I notice that the flowers have turned pink around us. A field full of twilight suddenly roused to dawn. Their bright yellow faces dance on the breeze of the air vents, maybe darker than I remember them, but certainly pinker.
"Down!"
He shoves me through the hatch into the central cavity of the ship. The "Storm Shelter," he calls it. The deepest part of the ship where supposedly nothing can reach us. Except for his damn spiderwort garden. He's got plots here, too, lining the walls. Puckered, purple buds sneering at me as he throws me down and seals the hatch above me.
I wait for him to come get me. An hour. Maybe two. It's hard to keep track of time down here. The computers are out. None of the tricks he's taught me to keep them online seem to work, so I figure this is one of his punishments. I must have done something wrong. He'll come down to lecture me, eventually. He always does. Big-sounding words like responsibility and honor and dedication to the community of mankind.
Except this time. An hour goes by. Maybe three. I sleep for a bit, so I really can't tell. But I'm getting hungry. And I'm getting restless. I'd have picked the lock on the security hatch by now, had the damn computers come back on line.
Just as I start to wonder what it would take to force it, it opens up. He comes through. Not like usual. Like he's turned to liquid somehow. He pours through the hatch, and it's up to me to stop him spinning in the storm shelter like some rag doll tossed out of a locker. He coughs. His hair is white now. It had gray in it before, but it's all white now. And his face is red like an old sun.
"Flare!" he huffs. "Should have known better than to run this close without shields!"
His hand is full of spiderwort. Bright pink. There's a reason why it's pink now. The thought hits me like a fist.
"Oh, the stars!" I whisper.
He grins. That big, leering grin that has always made me uneasy. "The stars, you little bitch!" he says.
There's pride in his voice. I've done something. I don't know what.
He puts the clump of wilting spiderwort into my hand.
"You remember this," he says. "All these little things. Your crazy uncle ... he's maybe not so crazy all the time, eh?"
Cold dirt slides through my fingers. His fingers are cold.
"Why didn't you know the star would flare?" I ask.
He seems to laugh. Wobbles his head. "Old men get sloppy." He heaves a sigh. "See that you don't, you stupid little girl. The ship knows you now." For a second, there is tenderness in his eyes. He pushes a lock of hair back over my ear. "Remember to take care of her, okay? And remember to take care of the spiderwort."
His head falls back. His eyes gleam. "Oh, the stars!" he breathes.
And never again. It's the last thing he says to me, and the last thing I'll forget.
He wasn't much of a horticulturist. Spiderwort was about the only damn thing he knew how to grow, and it's not a difficult thing to grow of you know how to give it dirt and water. It has a decent tolerance for freefall, a forgiving nature to those who might overprune it. And it has a peculiar sensitivity to radiation that turns its stamens bright pink. It finds the same cracks in hulls that flare stars do. It cares as little about disabled shield sensors as little girls do when they play in the commons and bat away those itchy little purple flowers that always seem to get in the way. And while my uncle was an obsessive old codger, he wasn't a fool. He hated the thought of having to bring me up, but he'd never been so interested in horticulture until after I'd come on.
I remember how that little pot of spiderwort blossomed into ship-wide thicket.
I had to prune it back. It was everywhere. But it belongs here in the cockpit, next to the shield readout, with its little purple flowers facing the stars.
