‘Esther’s Star’ by Imogen Pawcett
A team of astronomers at the National Space Laboratory, led by the bright and brilliant Dr Sarah Marwell, worked tirelessly to understand the sudden appearance of Theta D, a new star twinkling smack-bang in the middle of The Plough.
Esther was not amongst them, but she’d seen the new star glinting in the night sky before she’d seen it plastered over the news, so she felt some ownership of it anyway.
Peering through her plasticy telescope in her attic flat, the pattern of the heavens ought to have been as old as time: Hatshepsut looked at the same stars we see today. As did Odysseus and Gilgamesh. The new star unbalanced the heavens, an old folk song sung with a jarring new note.
It was thrilling. Esther looked and looked.
She’d stargazed since childhood, peering up through birding binoculars she’d bought in Oxfam. At seventeen, dreams of becoming an astronomer had burnt on UCAS’s joint pyres of exam underperformance and a lack of confidence. Not everyone is made to shine, Esther mum reasoned.
Instead, Esther taught physics to thirteen-year-olds who hated her, her subject, and everything else.
Since Esther had neither the time nor the equipment to unravel the mystery of Theta D, a vestigial part of her psyche took over, inherited from serf-ancestors who predicted wars, harvests, and messiahs. In the empty pockets of Esther’s day, on the bus and in free periods, her star transfigured into an omen.
That week, Esther scanned her world for a change her star could herald.
On Monday, a new history teacher started at her school, Mr Samson. He was handsome in a Romanesque way and a few years on from being newly qualified, just like Esther. He’d walked her to her bus stop, and she’d asked for his phone number. He’d given it with a wide smile, and she’d squirmed as a giddy crush took root. This could be what the star signified.
On Wednesday, the elderly Head of Physics slipped on a fidget toy and tripped down a fire escape. He decided he had better retire. Esther was the prime candidate for his role. This could be what the star signified.
On Thursday, Esther bought a scratch card. Under its chalky filament, fuzzy glyphs revealed she’d won ten thousand pounds. Enough for a round-the-world trip, or a nicer flat to rent, or a car, or savings for a house. This could be what the star signified.
On Friday night, whilst draining a glass of supermarket-red in the dark, the bubble of Esther’s hope burst spectacularly.
She recalled a documentary she’d seen - well, not a documentary, a reel she’d seen on Instagram - which said that in their final battle with the Conquistadors, the Aztecs summoned gods to destroy the world, unsuccessfully, obviously. It had been a last resort, the spiritual equivalent of dropping an atom bomb. Montezuma had stood eye to eye with Cortés, faith pumping through his heart as hot as blood, and called forth nothing.
Unlike Montezuma, Esther knew that she lived in an impassive universe. When she peered into space’s empty chasms, black nothingness vastly outweighed glimmers of something.
Where was the sense in searching for signs in a void?
The effervescent froth of optimism in her stomach that the star gave her had curdled. It was unsettling, nauseating, loathsome.
Early on Saturday morning, Esther ripped her winning scratch card into tiny pieces and threw those pieces in four different bins without claiming the money. She deleted Mr Samson’s number. She emailed the school admin to let them know she wouldn’t be applying for Head of Physics. She put her telescope on a garden wall for someone to take.
By that evening, the churning in her stomach had dwindled to nothing, like God’s punishing flood drying up after humanity had successfully been drowned. It felt comfortable. A familiar sort of emptiness.
That night, Esther did not look at the star. In any case, the star was gone.
In deepest Oxfordshire, astronomers, astrophysicists, and lab techs gathered in a kitchen on the third floor of the National Space Laboratory. Coffee was sipped. Chocolate Digestives were shared.
Stars did not just appear and disappear. They were born out of 50,000-year nebulas. When they died, they collapsed into fiery supernovae or neutron stars, which twisted into black holes.
“Anyone want to guess what the heck happened to Theta D?” Dr Marwell asked. Her team shook their heads grimly. It would take them years to understand that they would never know
Imogen Pawcett wrote this story in response to the prompt The Things They Couldn’t Know, as part of September’s Just Write! short story competition.
