Night Light

The reflection in her grandfather's eyes of the night stars rippling across the sky.

That was what she always thought of first when his memory came to her. Lying out Summer nights in the desert canyon near his small ranch, a warm, comforting breeze flowing slowly across the rocky plateau, filling the air with rich sage and earthy dust - as they'd stare out from the cliffs, grandpa spinning ancient tales of warriors and fantastical entities inhabiting the cosmos, imbuing the universe with riddles and metaphysical power-plays on a galactic scale.

Between the constellations, she would pepper him with questions for hours, whywhywhy until eventually dozing off, dreaming of ancient space secrets and alien worlds. Her grandfather would teach her a seemingly endless trove of amusing facts, curiosities and riddles - and watch her delight in unfolding their puzzling secrets.

It was the first thing Kaya thought of as well, when her mother told her on the phone that morning that Grandpa was gone.

The stars.

She kept trying to remind herself of the good things, the warmth. Especially now, as she sat clutching her blue shawl, nervous and awkwardly cramped into the back office of the assistant to J. Rettles-Visski, Attorney-at-Law. Beside her, her three rarely-seen brothers, then her mom, uncle Ray and aunt Barb.

Now, awkwardly close, they  sat in a small half-circle of chairs, awaiting the final word from the wiry and bird-like young man who finally swept into the room and stood behind the large onyx desk that loomed over the space. He then tried his best to distribute sets of documents to everyone while stammering through a brief sort of explanation to the family.

"Sorry, I don't normally do this, but Jessup's... out of town and he - I'm - just gonna fill you guys in here and you'll be all set. Ok..." He shuffled into the semi-circle, handing out stapled documents, sandwiched within a thin, parchment folder.

"Ok so, if you could just open up to page... six...uh, yes, six... you should see, uh an itemized list of the assets that... have been divided accordingly, to each of the 5 beneficiaries. Ok."

It took several moments as they all flipped the pages, then they heard him slowly read aloud.

"To each of the boys, I leave $1000, free use of my lakehouse every Summer, and 1/4 of my old photos and memorabilia."

"Nice." "Huh."

A quiet, muted disappointment from two of her brothers, but "Lake. House. Yeaa!" - Kaya's eldest brother Torlund pumped his fist in the air with a sideways grin, before being shot down with mom's dagger eyes.

The bird-man continued the reading:

"My beautiful daughter Sheila shall take my primary home in Westland; it's furnishings and my Jeep."

Mom handled the information with closed eyes, a quiet nod, and a little more.

A thin pair of wire glasses clutched in his right hand, the man paused and glanced up at them, seemingly unsure of how to deliver the last line.

"To - to my wonderful granddaughter Kaya, I leave... this old book... of some sketches, and notes, from a long time ago. Sorry, I'm not a great artist and they're not very good."

Everyone's face seemed to melt into a differing degree of shock, as they watched the young man extend his thin arm across the center of the room. Extended in the air, a ratty, and weathered-looking journal, quite small, and bound with leather strapping, wrapped 'round the cover several times, a cover worn smooth with age, and exuding that deep, rich maroon that must have once been a bold and vibrant red.

Feeling slightly stunned, Kaya snatched the small book from the apologetic-seeming bird-man and glanced down quickly at the diminutive tome. Thumbing through the 50 or so pages, she tried to quickly gather a sense of what they contained. scribblings -- half-thoughts -- doodles -- fleeting notions. That appeared to be... about it.

Her youngest brother Beyron, who also knew how fond Grandpa was of Kaya, raised an eyebrow and narrowed his gaze at her.

"Hey that's not some sort of new book or anything, right? Like a manuscript or something?" He leaned forward.  "Let's see it!". He held his hand out expectantly and stared at the booklet.

"No, getaway, punk!", Kaya shot at him, twisting away. "It's mine..."

Beyron was curious, and thought he sensed something odd, insisting - "Doesn't seem a little weird that she didn't get any money, and just gets a book of "old sketches" or whatever? Yeah right, I don't buy it..."

Aunt Barb tried to interject on her behalf, as she did. "Don't be a jerk Beyron, you got a thousand dollars ok, just leave it alone."

It was at this point that a lengthy inter-family dispute erupted over everything from the value to the quality of their grandfather's books. Or stories, rather - published across a patchwork array of outlets over the years, with varying degrees of success and fame along the way. He was rather well-known in the tight-knit experimental adventure fiction community, which he helped both pioneer and bring into the mainstream with the release of his highly-regarded Telehypnosis trilogy 26 years prior. He had been a bit of a trailblazer in the short-story as hit arena, and though 'blockbuster' may be a tad generous - he nonetheless enjoyed the recognition he did get from the devoted.

And none were more devoted than Kaya.

While most of the family, her brothers included seemed to take the view that Grandpa's books were, politely, eccentric - she felt like the only one to truly "get" it; what he was going for, what his metaphors and interlocking narrative parables really meant.

At least what they meant to her. She was pretty sure she was the only one in the family to have actually read more than a few of his works anyway.

There were, of course, several oft-rumored sequels and spin-offs that never materialized. Kaya alone knew that he had secretly enjoyed the speculation about what he would do, more than the satisfaction of actually answering the questions themselves. To most everyone else, it was a matter of constant guessing, and following a multitude of scattered theories and their evolving variations, derived from clues supposedly laced into the cleverly-woven details of his many short stories. Nothing ever really emerged, though. And now... now, well...

Finally relenting, Kaya revealed the book to the rest of her family's now curious eyes. Reluctantly, she offered the book to Beyron.

"A little red book for you, huh?", he said, swiping it from her grasp. He lightly laughed as he scoffed, flipping the pages.

Flipping through several dozen pages, his expression slid from skeptical to flat, and muted.

"Ok, so... this is...pretty much a bunch of lame old sketches and scribblings."

She wouldn't forget his long pause that followed.

Finally; "So I guess this is yours!", he offered, jabbing the booklet back into Kaya's hands.

The next few days were a bit blurry, between work, coming home, staring at the little book, ignoring it, holding it, laughing then crying about it. Trying to forget it.

She didn't want to read through it too quickly, feeling she could somehow preserve the moments of the journey if she took it slowly.

So, reading about one small page each evening, she planned to work her way through it over two months time.

Of course, that was before she got to page 9.

What began as a sneaking curiosity a couple pages prior suddenly expanded into full-blown, wild theorization.

Small sentence fragments that she recalled hearing him say over the years, as well as scattered representations of archaic number systems, tucked into lines of almost rhyming prose, and upside-down sketches of what could be landscapes or physical features made of loose shapes.

..."Secrets move the feet"...

..."Where stars told stories"...

..."Ancient knowledge for clearest eyes"...

Dusting off the old scanner she rarely got to use, Kaya carefully and methodically scanned every single page of the book and dumped them into photo-editing software so she could blow everything up big.

The next several days were again a blur, but this time energized by a manic excitement as she slowly but surely pieced together the fractured riddle fragments woven throughout the seemingly innocuous book of scribbles.

Her heart raced and she barely ate, fueled by a steady flow of adrenaline, which only seemed to build as she placed another poetic sentence in its correct position, copied onto her notebooks with her own set of hastily written notes, lines, arrows and diagrams, trying to piece it all together.

Finally, the starting point coalesced into sharp focus.

"...The boulder of infinite knowledge."

She knew the one. It had to be.

The large, flat rock they had often laid upon to watch for shooting stars and satellites, a short hike from the parking lot of the wilderness area that ran adjacent to his property.

Then; what seemed to be a series of apparent movements - 100 medium paces toward the warrior on your birthday, then 230 yards toward the twins on mine, 1/16 mile toward the Andromeda Strain on your mom's...

The Warrior, she realized, could be Hercules, the Warrior constellation. Except, small, weaving arrows crossed the page to the corner, terminating at a small but unmistakable sketch of a...female warrior? Kaya wracked her mind for what that could mean. As always, it soon clicked. Bellatrix, the third brightest star in Orion. The Amazonian female warrior.

She furiously etched this into her notes, moving on to the next clues. Gemini, the twins. The Andromeda Strain? She laughed quietly. "Very funny grandpa..."

Three days later, she prepared a backpack with snacks, water, a compass and knife. Just as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, she set out.

The stars were her guide - speaking for her grandfather, and she gleefully followed - up behind rocks, along sandy ridges, desert outcroppings and questionable gulches. With each seemingly innocent landmark she came across, she knew she was on the right track. What would look like a random pile of desert rocks to anyone, made Kaya giddily electric with the sense of discovery.

Stringing the clues together in the right sequence, led by small symbols, amusing mathematical riddles and partial map fragments led to further clues about which steps to next take.

Sometimes, they led to a funny-shaped crack in the ground, possibly a weird fold in the Earth which resembled a lightning bolt or a raven spreading her wings. Each step just difficult enough to parse on first inspection, but inevitably came into focus on further examination and curious study.

Ultimately, Kaya was guided to a flat patch of ground on a ridge, which, when studied, revealed itself to be a series of buried boulders, arranged in such a way to be camouflaged from any potential passerby.

After double-checking for rattlers with her pen-light, she reached down within the nexus of these large rocks, and wrapped her fingers around it - a bound cylindrical shape, wrapped in brown tarp-like material and several types of rope. Inside, lay a metal cylinder which she eagerly pulled apart to reveal a plastic, sealed envelope - containing a medium-sized black, leather notebook, in perfect, pristine condition.

Her heart racing out of her chest, she slowly flipped through it, almost immediately recognizing what she held. The long-awaited follow-up to the much-loved, fan-favorite Aeterniata series. It had always driven fans crazy with it's maddeningly abrupt, though admittedly satisfying ending. Grandpa's fans had long hoped-for and speculated whether anything would follow. And now, here it was. She could hardly believe it. Dropping to her knees in the dusty sand, Kaya stared up into the night sky, and wept warm tears of joy.

A week later, she found herself in the office of Grandpa's long-time publisher, repeatedly turning over the number in her mind that he had written on a check and slid across his desk to her.

Twenty thousand. She kept repeating to herself.

Twenty thousand.

The same number of stars visible in night sky, through that first telescope Grandpa had gifted her on her 8th birthday.