Wish upon a Star by L.R. McGary

    My protective shell was ripped away. The energy I had built to the brink of explosion—suicidal supernova—surged out. I ought to have been angry, but to be unconfined, feeling the space I flew through again, was glorious. 
    Alshain? Tarazed? Vega? I called. Who in my family had missed me enough to force contact? I would not forgive them right away, of course, but to finally be accepted…
    My light was caught as it left my surface, tangled and wound together like the gravity-birth of a star. Not my family missing me then—this could only be the Celestial. 
You are too late, I said. I pleaded last century. Leave me be. 

It would take a hundred years to build up the pressure for my death again, but what was that to a star? I was strong enough to survive on my own; I could die the same way. 
    Before I could re-form my shell and cut myself off from the world and living in it, the Celestial began to suck my energies from my matter-home. I was powerless to resist, so I let strands of my living light spiral out, extending in a whirlwind that still left my life-core behind, untouched. 
    What are you punishing me for? I asked. Punish the Delphini who never once spoke to me. They thought they were so grand, orbiting one-another as they did. As if I had chosen distance from my family. Punish my family who- 
    ALTAIR. At my name’s utterance the core of me was jerked free of my star’s swirls of metallic gases. I was flying unprotected through space as I had not done for a thousand years. YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO BETRAY YOUR DUTIES. YOU HAVE SHINED WHEN YOU WISHED AND NOT WHERE YOU WERE NEEDED. YOU HAVE SHUT YOUR LIGHT AWAY FROM THE WORLD. YOU KNOW WHAT THE PUNISHMENT IS. YOU WILL DO AS OTHERS WISH UNTIL YOU ARE ONCE MORE AT THE MOMENT WHEN YOU FIRST STRAYED. The moment when a wish had come to me and I had reflected it back to its planet—not to another star and not to remember for later. 
    The Celestial wound me into myself, spinning me faster and faster, tighter and tighter, compressing me until I was a trillionth of what I had been, mere meters across. They jerked me out of the spheroid I had known for millennia and into an alien four-limbed shape, then enclosed me in a skin of atoms. I dashed against it, uselessly trying to reassert my shape, to break free into the outside world I had forsaken, but this shell I had not made and could not break. 
    206 solid rods and plates bloomed and extended within my skin, thrusting me aside as they filled with marrow, and muscle joined one to the other. I could not live in the matter here as I had in my gaseous home. It was far, far too cold. Solid.
    Between and around the muscles sprouted fat and nerves. I was driven from the central cavity as organs bloomed. Even the lungs, which could be filled with gases, opened only out and left no space for me. I squeaked through nanometers between layers, sending out panic lights which only bounced back through me, building on themselves as the pressure did. This, at least, was familiar. The pain and desperation.
    The only space left was within the skull. My energy, once three million kilometers across, was compressed into an eight centimeter globe. 
    All my new nerves connected to the brain I had become, and cold sensations spiked on every inch of my body. My lungs were desperate to breathe. My limbs jolted uncomfortably as the Celestial cast me across space. My weak eyes dropped tears in my wake. My nose snorted out snot. I was cold, and tiny, and disgusting.
    I hit ground. It hurt. Worse, it was dark. 
    Above me, there was a meager speckling of tiny lights, stars so far away they illuminated nothing but themselves to this feeble body’s eyes. I strained to send my light outside myself, to drive away the darkness, to call for help. But this body was useless, held steadfast against this planet by weak gravity. 
    Down the road—I was on a road—there were streetlights. 
    Crawling, running, scampering, I rushed to the pool of light beneath one. It was so pitifully dim that any star could’ve washed away notice of it, but it was all I had. My body’s weak eyes adjusted to it, calling it bright. 
    I curled into myself, compressing my body as close to a sphere as these stiff limbs could manage. I could bend nowhere but the assigned joints. Again, I willed my light to surface. I focused, and focused, and failed.
    Around me, time unwound. The occasional car zoomed backwards from where its driver looked, casting blessed light on the potholed road. Two people backpedaled around the 24-hour laundromat across the street. A leaf fluttered up and reattached to its mother oak.
    I knew this planet: it was called Earth. The first wish I had deflected had come from here. A shepherd’s son, glancing out his window at night, had wished for his father’s blessing to take a girl to wife. I, alone in the sky with no light-partners and no planets, had batted away such a senseless, selfish thing. Earth was the first planet I had blocked, the first patch in what would become my shell. Towards the end, when my light had had only small holes to escape through and my pressure had begun to build, I had thought of this planet. I had hoped it had already died. 
    I was whiplashed into forwards time. 
    “Altair!” 
    A woman was running toward me, forwards, from the laundromat across the street. She was beige, with a low ponytail of straight brown hair and a curling orange dress.
    "It's really you!" she said, embracing my small body. “I’ve been wishing for so long—I can’t believe you’re finally here!”
    "Hello," I said when she let go, wishing I could look down on her. "What has changed the direction of time?"
    "That was me of course." She beamed, a smile not light, and pulled off her jacket. 
    "You're human?" I looked her over again. Had I lost my ability to see the powers of others too? 
    "I wished on you." She settled her jacket on my shoulders, pulling it together in the front. Of course, I had been naked. That mattered on this planet.
    "So it was me," I said. I threaded my arms through the sleeves as she rolled up the cuffs so they wouldn't dangle. The jacket reached mid-thigh on my small frame. 
    "You told me it was celestial." She was looking at me too much. "The Celestial sent you here and bound you to wishes you would otherwise ignore." She paused. “That means you ignored me once.”
    "The Celestial toying with me," I said, and turned my face up. "Just get on with it!" I yelled to the sky, but of course there was nothing. The Celestial never answered when I called. 
    "You don't know me,” she said, her mouth making a frown.
    "You're human." I laughed at the grimace that wrenched her face. She thought she was important. Even laughter hurt her. Seeing her shrink, I laughed again. I still had power.
    "But I know you," she said, reaching out a hand. 
    I stepped away, and was rewarded with more hurt on her face. 
    "Everyone knows me," I said. "I'm Altair."  The word rushed through me, the sound of my name electrifying this body’s every pore. "Altair." It was like burning. "Altair." Like shining. "Altair." It was almost like being free again.
    "Yes, I know—"
    "Shh," I said. "Altair. Altair." I swayed with each utterance. The parking meters and shops blurred together with the woman.
    "Altair," she said. "I'm Ethel."
    "Ethel." Saying it felt like nothing. Like being human. "Altair. Altair."
    "I know you," she insisted. "You came like a miracle when I thought nothing was left. I made you your jumpsuit. You helped me sing again. You're not like this.
    "I know that you shine brighter than other stars, and that means you will die more quickly. I know Tarazed was gleeful to tell you as much, and that was the first time you blocked anyone’s light. I know you relented after a year, and Tarazed said it had been more pleasant without you."
    "Altair." I chanted, turning away. Who was she to be sorry when stars weren’t? “Altair!”
    "I know that then you thought your family might accept you if you were dimmer, and so you contained yourself, and Tarazed remarked that they hoped you were dying. And you pretended it was sun spots." 
    "Did you capture my light here?" I demanded, my bliss dropping away like falling to Earth again. "Take my secrets?" No one knew that.
    "I know you," she repeated.
    "Of course—"
    "No," she said. "You're not listening. I know you. You. Altair in the unwilling Earth body. We met in my past. Your future. We were friends. 
    “I made nachos, and you listened to my broken heart. You told me everything that troubled you. You stayed a week, until you could resist the pull of time no more, and then we sang. You warned me that one day I would be the first one you met when you fell from the sky, and asked me to be patient with you. You don't remember it yet, but you were kind. I made a wish and it was a blessing to meet you."
    "Fine." I stood as tall as I could to face her, this stranger who knew more of me than I did. "What’s your wish?" 
    She crossed her arms and jutted her chin, defiant. "Bring my father back." After a moment she tilted her head back down at me, swallowing.
    "Where is he?" I asked.
    Silently, she pointed up. 
    "He's a star?" Why had I believed a human could know so much?
    "He's dead."
    "A dead star? I can't send out any energy like this. Even if I could, I wouldn't cool myself to bring back a lump."
    "He's human." Her words were hard, like she was proud. "Was," she added.
    "Human? Can't you wish for something important?"
    She gasped as if I had hit her. “You told me you would be different. You didn't tell me how very small you would be."
    "Take that back! Now." 
    She shook her head slowly, a strange sadness crossing her face. As if she could fathom my loss. 
    "Haven't you got other people?" I insisted. "Use your mother like him." 
    "She's dead." She would not look away from me. "I don't need you to bring him back to life. I know that's impossible. I just need you to help me do something."
    "No thanks." Why was she so sure I would? Losing time would be worth it to hurt her, this human who presumed to understand me. 
    "We don’t have to do it right away—that karaoke bar we never got to is open now and—"
    "No," I said. “No, to you. No, to your wish. No, to all of it.”
    She moved as if to grab me as I turned away, and I smirked. I focused on the light inside the deli on the next corner, pretending there was no darkness.
    The pull to return to her--Ethel--sprang up between my shoulder blades at the first step I took, but I disregarded my treacherous body. My will was all I had left. 
    I struggled forward, each movement of my legs harder than the last, as if my very skin was straining against me. But what was skin to a star? I slogged past one long storefront, my toenails dragging on the ground as the effort to flip my feet grew. The cement scratched me, tearing my flesh so the blood seeped out. Drops fell from me to the earth, but it was nothing like radiating light: none of the joy or freedom, only another failure of this weak body. 
    My body cried out to stop, but that only fueled my anger. What right did this form have to pretend its suffering was mine?
    My foot crumpled. I fell, hands trying too late to catch me. Dizzied, I lay for a moment, too tired to fight gravity and the forces that pulled me back to Ethel. New stinging pain sprang up in my knees, hands, and face where the cement had skinned me. I hadn’t even made it a block.
    I watched my blood ooze and trickle away from my wounds, feeling oddly attached. This body wanted to cry…so I let it. I had never been able to cry before—to vent my grief. For the first time, I found power in this physicality. 
    I wailed, a release like my supernova might’ve been. 
    Ethel came to me, carrying a lantern that blanketed her and then me in bright white light. 
    She took my hands while I cried, and gently bandaged them, and then the rest of me, and then she held me and began to rock. Likely, she had never seen anyone this sad before, and the rocking was a signal of her own distress, but I found it oddly comforting and didn’t stop her.
    All my woes tumbled out together: my failed death, the scorn of my family, the endless, thankless, demanding wishes. I howled and whimpered and sobbed, and Ethel sat witness to my sorrow.  
    Finally, my body’s moisture and energy were spent. I stood unsteadily, my limbs feeling newly stiff. Ethel offered me a bottle of water, which I gulped down.
    “Your wish,” I said. “We will finish it now.” I had no desire to remain with one who knew me so. 
    “Are you sure? Because, then you’ll disappear and-”
    “Yes, exactly. I have a long time to go, and none to waste.”
    “Okay,” I was gratified to see hurt in her again. "All I want from you is a song. We figured it out last time. My last wish. You can't bring a parent back, but one moment of closure... I want to give you this song to take Dad to the stars."
    "Let’s sing, then," I said.
    “It’s a piano piece, not for voice.”
    “Well? I can’t manifest a piano.”
    She sighed. “Follow me.” 
    Before she stepped away, she offered me the lantern. It was so feeble compared to my true self, and yet what a relief it was to hold light again. I hated her for knowing that I needed it. 
    We walked only a short distance to a brick building—the Hotel Orange according to its sign. Ethel opened one of the glass doors. I gripped the wrought-iron handle of the other, but the door was too heavy for this weak body, so I had to dart through Ethel’s door as it closed.
    “We’re just going to use the piano,” said Ethel to a woman wearing a bowtie the same shade of orange as Ethel’s dress. 
    “Whatever.” The receptionist waved a hand, and looked back to whatever she had on her desk. 
    Ethel walked through to the empty second room, immediately turning on the lights. I stopped in the doorway. The walls, tiled floor, ceiling and even the couches artfully scattered throughout the room were all orange. The only blemish was the black piano.
    Ethel sat at the piano and looked to me. "Listen," she said. 
    She raised her hands above the keys, perfectly still for a moment, and then she began to play Beethoven's Grosse Fugue. The piece is for strings—a quartet. She built the music slowly, pausing, pausing, each silence a question in the empty room. Was I here? Was I ready? 
    I waited for her to get on with it. 
    She arrived in the piece and the notes were frantic, too many for just two hands. I could feel her frustration at failing. She wanted to play her all-consuming sadness, but she couldn't quite reach her life. The notes were her heartbeat, her breath. She left phrases unfinished, fingers frantic. 
    She paused for half a beat, and the notes were not her own but her blood. Each one clutched at the love that gave life, begging life to stay. This was her father. This feeling of my plummet to earth, but his fall had not yet stopped. 
    She played her first memory. The radio was playing this piece while she danced on makeshift wooden stilts in the kitchen with her father. Even with the added height, she was shorter than him, and she kept falling until he buttoned his shirt around her. She kicked off the stilts and put her feet in his jeans pockets, her face pressed against his t-shirt. They were so connected, like planets around a star. Family. He spun her around and around until she threw up, and then he apologized and she laughed, still wanting more, and he took them both outside to hose off. 
    I saw it. I saw him. I tried to leave the room but each time I raised my feet I found myself stepping closer. It had been too long since I had granted a wish. Even the beginning of the rush was more powerful than my strongest yells of ‘Altair!’
    Whenever the two of them had been outside at night, even walking from the car with groceries or on cold nights when they forgot their coats and dashed inside, he had gazed up and shown her the stars. Ethel had watched his pointing fingers, his shaping hands. He had drawn the constellations in the sky. He had known them all by name. He had known me, though he had called me Alpha Aquila. He had known my family, which he called the Eagle, and placed me with them. 
    I watched his gesturing fingers, the nails still rimmed with grime after all his scrubbing. He had shown her again and again over the years, as his hands aged and weathered and the skin around his knuckles cracked. Here is Casper. Here is Pollux. But he had never known how nefariously they outdid each other in kindnesses of light. He had spoken these names to her and formed their families, but she could never find them on her own. She could never remember, because then she would not have to ask, and he would not have to show her. 
    They were at her mother's funeral, long after everyone had left and darkness had come. Three hours they had remained, the two of them, standing close enough to touch but separated by silent stillness. Finally, he had looked up to the open, starry sky, and then he had turned his head silently down to earth again and walked without a word and without Ethel to his truck. I could find that moment when I was in the sky again. I could nudge her face up as well, and send her fingers sweeping to show him the constellations. I could help without a wish.
    They were near the end, after a teenage hummer driver had careened into Dad's side of the truck. In the hospital room. Ethel had closed the blue curtain around them and they had talked about her mother's hair. She’d had six good hair days in the time Ethel remembered.
    The music was everywhere, scattered, too much for Ethel to play alone. 
    I set down the lantern and climbed up onto the piano bench. There was no room for me to reach the missing notes without knocking the whole song from under her fingers. I clambered up further and sat above the keys, where the music was meant to go. I bent under the lid, above the strings. 
    If I focused, what was left of my star side could sense which notes she was missing. I reached into the piano and flicked up the hammers above the keys she hadn’t struck. Together, we played the melody of her father’s life.
    The last thing Dad did before he died was cough up a pale yellow-gray bile so much smaller than that first memory.
    Only a few bars remained and we played all her memories at once. The time he sneezed in her pasta. The way he folded paper hats. The tooth his food always got stuck in. 
    I sat inside the piano as the last echoes died. 
    "You will take him among the stars?" said Ethel.
    I crawled out of the piano, feeling her grief, not knowing if I should look at her or not. “Yes.”
    I was whiplashed by the reversal of time, and tumbled to the floor. 
    My past self un-crawled back up into the piano. Ethel un-stood back onto the bench. 
    I was alone again.
    I watched her and my past-self, both poised after the music. I should never have played with her. Never have let her pretend that it was me who mattered, and not what I could do.
    I did not wait to hear myself play in concert with her. I grabbed the lantern and ran—the pull to stay with Ethel had vanished at her wish’s completion—but stopped at the doors to outside which I could not move. Through the glass, I could see the world unraveling. I chanted my name, louder and louder above the music, clinging to the moments of ecstasy that pierced through the swelling pain of her song. 
    I felt myself whiplashed and impelled through the door, which remained too heavy for this weak body. I had not even un-lived the time lost granting Ethel’s wish, and here was another wish taking me farther from when I might retake the sky. I heaved at the doors, cursing as the pain of being so far from this new wisher grew, but this body remained weak and ineffectual. 
    Behind me, Ethel was playing forwards again, and I could hear my own added notes. For the third time, I endured her song.
    The music stopped and I was still at the doors, pulled painfully against the glass. 
    “You will take that among the stars?” asked Ethel.
    “Yes.” I heard myself reply in the other room, my voice gentle and dreamy. What a fool she had made me into.
    “Thank you,” said Ethel, and I hated her afresh. Why say it, when I was already gone? As if she or the Celestial had given me any choice. Softly, she added, “I wish you could stay.”
    That wish was not strong enough to call me back. I opened my mouth—but the door jerked open behind me and the force of my next wisher pulled my body into a sprint before I could gather the will to resist. 
    I will remember you, too, I thought. Not just your dad.




L. R. McGary's work has been published in Down in the Dirt and cc&d magazines. She is from New England, but has lived in the Czech Republic, Austria, Spain and Italy, where she taught English. She holds a BFA in Writing from Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn.