The Opposite of Nothing

The little girl thought she was seeing things at first as she peered out of the tent’s tiny window. Her mother had told her stars only fell from the sky in storybooks. She didn’t believe her. Since stars were real, they had to fall. Why else would grownups write about them for little kids like her to read? Why would her mother bother reading the same story to her every time they camped together as a family in the backyard if she didn’t want it to be true?

The falling star streaked across the sky. The others stayed still.

She should have been asleep like her parents.

The star was hers and hers alone. All she had to do was catch it.

She sprang from her open sleeping bag. Tip toeing around the two other bodies, she unzipped the opening of the tent as quietly as she could. If she got caught, a lie about having to use the bathroom was on the tip of her tongue.

When no one stirred, she ran out into the summer night.

The star went in the direction of the barn, close enough for her to reach. Throwing open the door, she tumbled as it swung inward. With a roll, she grabbed the star just before it hit the ground.

It twinkled like the ones still left in the sky. Smaller than she would have thought though she needed both hands to keep it in her grip. It had a face. Two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. It did not look like the one in the book her mother read to her only an hour before.

“You caught me,” it said. “Thank you for breaking my fall.” When it talked, it did not sound like a boy or a girl. Nor did it sound like a robot on tv. The star moved its mouth and words came out.

She smiled. Maybe she could keep it forever. Or maybe it wanted to rejoin the others it had left behind. How was she to put a star back in the sky? What did stars do when the sun alone shone? Her mother had told her the sun too was a star. If it fell, she didn’t think she could catch it. The sun looked so much larger than the tiny thing in her hands.

“Do stars have names?” she asked. “Do you have a name?”

The star shook its head. A strange sight to see. Its entire body moved side to side. It did not look like the stars in the stories.

“People do,” the star said. “Sometimes they name us.”

“Has someone named you?”

Again the star shook its head.

“Your name is Makenna,” the star stated.

The girl nodded. It was right. “May I name you?”

It nodded.

Makenna dubbed the star Vega for it was the only star’s name she knew aside from the clusters of constellations.

“You’re small, Vega,” the little girl said.

“So are you, Makenna,” the star stated. “However, I was bigger yesterday before my death. I am the soul of the core that remains.”

“But you aren’t dead. I couldn’t hold you if you were.”

The star only smiled. It did not have teeth. “Most of me will be another galaxy someday soon.”

The little girl lifted the star higher to compare it to the new hole in the barn’s roof. The structure needed work since her grandparents passed away. The hole did not seem so great.

“Can I really make a wish on you?”

The star looked at her with solid dark eyes stark against its fiery orange coloring. It did not burn. Stars were supposed to be hot according to her mother. The one she held was not. Maybe stars cooled when they fell from space.

“Yes,” the star said, “but I will not grant your wish.”

Makenna frowned. She’d run to catch a star and dirtied her night clothes for nothing.

“But I will grant the opposite of your wish,” the star said.

“I want a wish right now!” the little girl demanded.

The star gave a toothless grin full of fire and glowed so bright Makenna had to close her eyes.

She awoke the next day alone in the barn to the sound of her parents calling out to her. The hole in the roof that hadn’t been there before let in a bit of the rising sun’s rays.

For a week, Makenna returned to the barn in hopes of finding evidence of Vega outside of the new hole in the roof. When her parents patched it up, she spoke of Vega no longer.

Even after its repair Makenna could see the outline of where Vega had fallen through if she squinted.

Over the years as she grew up, she read every book about stars she could find. Declared astronomy as her major long before she went to college. When her parents gave her a telescope, she used it every day the weather was fair enough from the barn’s roof.

On her last night home before she was off to pursue a degree, not many stars peaked out as she settled down to look through her telescope. Despite the haze, the moon shone bright and full.

She stayed outside until clouds finished darkening the sky. Thunder and lightning accompanied them. Hoping to avoid the worst of the storm, she made her way down the ladder leading to solid ground.

The rain caught her in a downpour.

She slipped too far away to jump to safety and screamed.

Her fall stopped abruptly.

“It seems I’m just in time,” the not-so-human voice from long ago said. “You don’t have much later left.”

It seemed impossible for the man on the ladder holding her hand to be the same entity as the little ball of flame and wonder Makenna only half remembered. But he looked like a man whose features she couldn’t quite decipher.

Vega pulled her up with ease.

Makenna gripped the ladder so tight her knuckles hurt. The fear of falling to her death would not leave her.

“Make your wish for you have no more time,” Vega said.

The rain continued to fall. It might have been warm and pleasant if not for her frazzled nerves. Her breath came in anxious pants as she gulped in air to calm herself.

They stayed silent for a time.

The storm subsided.

Makenna’s grip on the ladder loosened. She did not climb down, even as her muscles tired and her limbs grew sore.

Vega only looked at her, waiting for her to make the wish she had forgotten.

“I have nothing to wish for,” she finally said when fatigue threatened to overtake her.

Even if stars were real and fell from the sky, wishes couldn’t come true.

“Nothing,” the star said.

Makenna could see Vega’s face clearly now. It was unremarkable, like any other she might have seen in a crowd.

“Nothing,” she repeated, glancing upwards at the clear sky. More muscles than she realized she had protested as she finished her climb down the ladder.

Rain’s scent remained in the air, overshadowed by the mugginess of the lingering humidity.

The house seemed so far away. The barn was closer. Vega followed when she went inside.

Sleep deprivation provided an explanation to the vividness of her hallucination of a star taking on the form of a man dressed in clothes of an age past. But she wasn’t seeing things. She knew it when the hole which had been repaired reappeared.

The moon shone down on them. Vega looked up at her with eyes not quite brown nor black.

“How is this possible?” she asked.

Her legs wobbled. She gave them a break and sat in the dirt.

The star joined her, expression holding the same curiosity as a child. “Everything is made of star dust,” it said.

“Stars are not people.”

Vega shook its head. “People are made of stars and stars just are.”

She opened her mouth to offer a scientific explanation then closed it. What good would it do to argue? All she really wanted to do was sleep. When the strength to stand eluded her, she lay down.

“The opposite of nothing is something,” Vega explained.

He looked so real. He even breathed.

Makenna fought to keep her eyes open. Sleep would come easy. The warmth of the summer air stayed with her as her weary limbs relaxed. She glanced over at her side to find Vega still there before the world went black.

She awoke to find herself looking down. All that she knew convened beneath her. She saw the shining sun. Below that her unmoving cadaver lying underneath the roof of the old barn from the hole where Vega had fallen. Once again she heard her parents calling out for her only this time she did not respond. They found her corpse.

She turned away from the scene of sorrow that followed to find herself surrounded by stars.

Vega was the only one she recognized. The others appeared like those she’d seen through her telescope and every book on astronomy she’d gotten her hands on. She saw nothing of herself just the expanse of all things. Though she had no body to move, she did so. And now without eyes she saw more than she ever had with them.

If she looked behind, she saw the past long before her birth and ahead showed the future longer still after her death.

She turned away from both to the star who stood tall in the vastness of space.

The explosion of another celestial body in the distance captured her attention for the briefest moment. It fell from the sky. A blazing core persisted when all the rest cleared away.

Everywhere she focused her gaze she saw all things. The smallest objects to the largest. She heard both sound and silence. Felt nothing. No pain or fear. Just a growing curiosity.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

No noise carried though her voice was heard. She was still herself and yet she was more.

“The opposite of nothing is something,” Vega answered her.

“So what is this?” she asked.

Vega smiled. This time it had teeth, the two rows she expected to find in a human mouth. “Everything.”

“Everything?” Makenna echoed. She’d wished for nothing.

Vega nodded.

“How can one person have everything?”

“Everything is not to be had,” Vega said. “But seen.”

Makenna glanced behind. Saw her little girl self run from the tent just as eager and curious as she was now.

She glanced ahead. Saw the birth of another star made in part by her long dead body.

“Can I see the beginning?” Makenna asked.

Vega took her hand. Instead of viewing back, the star looked ahead. “After the end.”