The Movement of Stars: A Novel

by Amy Brill

  “What do you mean?”

  “My parents—it was the end of their time. They are gone.” Hannah rose and went to Isaac. She knelt beside him. His face contorted with grief, like a reflection in moving water. She swept the shawl so that it enclosed him, too, and put her arms around him. Now it was he who gave his weight; it took all her strength to stay upright, and the balls of her feet dug into the cool sand. She shouldered him, he wept, the moon began its ascent.

  “I am so sorry,” Hannah whispered. She wished she could look into his eyes, but they were closed. He rested his forehead on hers.

  “It is as it must be,” he said, the calm returning to his voice as he separated from her. They stayed on the sand, kneeling, facing each other, as if in some religious ritual.

  “And you have returned here from Flores? How?” Hannah asked, thinking that she should stop asking questions. He looked so tired. This close, she could see tiny lines around his eyes and lips that had not been there two years earlier.

  “I leave the Pearl almost a year ago. We tied up with a ship that has just make the Atlantic crossing, and from a man from my island on that ship I learn that my parents are not well. I join an outbound crew, and when this ship puts in at Flores I leave to see my parents. It was May,” he said, settling back on the sand, cross-legged. “They were very sick. He was dying. She could not see. Still he washed her feet. She prepared soup. Even on the edge of death. They must do these things.” His voice shook. Hannah settled beside him, then reached out and put a hand on his forearm.

  “It took two months for them to pass to the next world. He went first, then she followed. I buried them, and then I had to decide what to do. The crop was bad. It was never good, but in the last years there was— how do you say it? When everything die.”

  “Blight,” Hannah said.

  “Yes. I cannot work this land. And after so many years I am a stranger to it. I could not know it again, without my family. No one is there anymore. It is not the same place I knew as a child. So I sell it. I leave, knowing I am never coming back. But I have gold, in a cloth the size of my fist.” He clenched his fist under Hannah’s hand. “I tie it to the inside of my shirt, like an extra heart. I took the bowl my mother used to grind spice, and the cane of my father that my grandfather carve. I have nothing else. This is everything. I leave with a merchant vessel, I crew with her to Boston. Then I take a train to Mattapoisett, then I walk to Fall River.”

  “That’s twenty miles,” Hannah interjected, horrified.

  “A farmer drove me in his cart part of the way, looking back at me often to be sure I was not stealing his, what? His hay? There was nothing there.” He laughed, a short chuff of air. “Then a fisherman took me to New Bedford, and I took the morning boat.”

  “Why?” Hannah whispered. “Why here?”

  He reached for her face, his palm rough as tree bark on her cheek.

  “This is the place I remembered what it is to love the land, to have a place to walk, to think, to learn. You made me think that I can . . .” He paused, and Hannah waited for him to find the word he needed. “. . . expand. So I choose to come here. To find land. And to see you, if you are here.”

  “You didn’t even know for certain if I was here?”

  He shook his head. Hannah leaned back, resting her head on his thigh.

  “What will you do?” he asked. “Now that you have find what you seek?”

  Hannah paused, remembering the clean white envelope from Groton engraved with her name. It had lifted her like a balloon when she saw it earlier in the week; now its hard edges seemed like small knives piercing her heart.

  “I’m not sure the comet was really what I sought,” Hannah said slowly. “It was a path to what I wanted. A doorway. But now I know that there are other such passages.”

  “What did you want?” Isaac asked, stroking her hair.

  “To contribute something. Some knowledge. To matter, in a worldly sense. But more than that I wanted to advance myself—but I had such a limited idea of what my self comprised. Do you understand?”

  She tilted her head back to see his face, but it was impassive.

  “Before I met you, I saw only with my eyes. Judged only with my mind. Myself and everyone. I had no reason to consult my feelings, much less put my faith in them. You showed me how to do that. Even if I could not act upon it until now.”

  She fell silent, gathering strength.

  “I’ve been asked to move to northern New York State. To teach astronomy at a college. A college for women.”

  The breeze had stilled again. Hannah reached down and gathered a handful of sand, then let it sift out through her fist. She was home, and not home. Isaac had returned. How could she part from him again?

  “So you will go,” he said.

  His words were like a cold wave breaking over her. Hannah sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees.

  “You sound certain.” A knot of panic rose to her throat. Did he not want her to stay?

  He sat up and moved close in beside her, mirroring her posture, and looked at her.

  “How would I hold you here? Your world has also . . . expanded.” He swept his arm out before them, indicating the sea before them and all that lay beyond it. Then he brought his hand to rest on her knee. She covered it with her own, marveling by moonlight at the contrast.

  “What if I chose to stay?” Hannah asked. Her voice felt small.

  Isaac tipped his head down so that it rested on hers.

  “You said I was teaching you to find the truth of what you feel.” “Taught. Yes.”

  “Then look there and tell me that we can live here, on this Island, together. Without hiding. Without caring what happens after?”

  Though Hannah couldn’t see his face, she knew its sorrow.

  “It would be my choice,” she said. “And things may change. The country is changing. Attitudes are changing.” She tried to cling to the reason therein, but she knew that her words had the heft of dragonfly wing.

  He didn’t say anything else. In the distance, the lighthouse bell tolled.

  “You must go,” he whispered. “You will know where to find me.”

  He turned her face to him and kissed her. The salt from her tears burned her lips.

  Later, sometime before dawn, they walked along the shore. Hannah shivered, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders.

  “I met Mary Somerville,” Hannah said. “During my travels. She’s a famous scientist.”

  “I remember,” Isaac said.

  “She told me that faith and uncertainty must coexist.”

  “Yes.”

  “She believes in what cannot be proven. She said I must not forsake passion for reason.”

  “And what do you believe?”

  Hannah stopped, pulling Isaac to a halt so that they stood facing each other. She shivered. He put his hands on her shoulders and she lifted her chin, meeting his gaze, feeling herself grow taller until she was towering as a lamppost, a tree, a lighthouse.

  “I believe this is the first time in my life I have understood myself completely.”

  She let the shawl slip to the ground. The sea was warm, and nearly still, as they waded out, ankle, knee, thigh, chest. Hannah struck out, away from the shoreline, her legs kicking cleanly so there was nearly no wake, her rhythm smooth and steady. She did not look for Isaac or look back at the shore. With each stroke, she felt some part of herself disappear. First sweat and sand, then skin and nail, then flesh itself, leaving only a shell. As she swam, she wished for nothing, desired nothing, as if past and future could be annulled by the sea, leaving only the present.

  When she was far out, the water cool and dark and deep, she turned on her back and floated, the night sky a dark curtain overhead, sprinkled with stars she knew but declined to name. She let her eyes drift closer to closing, so that the objects above blurred together, indistinct and cloudy, a beautiful mystery she could not decipher. Without intention, without thought, Hannah floated, needing noth
ing but the water on which she was carried, light as a feather.

  August 10, 1847. Nantucket. Dear Isaac:

  I write by the very last of my candle; my trunk is packed and ready,

  and in a few hours, before dawn, I shall be bound for New York. When

  you left upon the Pearl, I felt as if a light were being extinguished. So did

  my life darken in your absence. Now, though, when I regard the events

  that followed, unfolding all the way until you found me again right up

  until this moment, it seems that without that darkness we could not have

  emerged into the light of these last golden weeks. I would have remained

  submerged in what I thought I knew. My “black-and-white” as you once

  called it. I would have denied my heart any flight it attempted without the

  endorsement of my mind and the approval of my elders; my orbit would

  have been confined, static. I would not have risked an aberration that

  could take me off my charted course.

  Even when I consider all the suffering we did weather, I would not

  choose to deny myself the light you did bring. How could I? You have

  always understood what Mary Somerville told me about Faith and

  uncertainty. I did once think them incompatible; yet they are inseparable.

  I shall bring this knowledge with me on my journey, and keep it close as

  the malachite you did give me so long ago. One of many treasures you

  bestowed upon me.

  I know there will be days when I am unable to penetrate the veils of

  mystery that yet shroud the Heavens, when I feel as if all the work of my

  life has barely yielded a single insight, when I feel as if my contributions

  are so very limited. Yet I shall not despair, but think of you, wherever in

  the world you might be, living under the same stars.

  Your devoted friend,

  HGP

  *

  August 11, 1847. Nantucket. Dear Hannah,

  After I read your letter, I went to the headland at dawn, and

  watched the sun rise, and the boat that would carry you away come in,

  and then go out, like a tide. I was too far to see you but I knew you

  were there.

  You say that your contributions are small, but you are more like your

  Comet than you know. All over this Earth people know of you, and observe

  you with wonder. It is you who creates the light you speak of, through

  Knowledge. I choose to stay in this place because it is where I am learning

  to See. I am learning this from you.

  I am the fixed star now, and you are the Wanderer. Know that I will

  watch for you in every night sky, and find you in each Sun rise. When

  and if you return to this place, I shall be here, like the Pole Star, anchored

  in place, rooted at last.

  Your faithful friend,

  Isaac Martin

  $

  Epilogue

  RQ

  JUNE 1889

  Nantucket

  *

  *

  T

  ell me again why this is necessary.”

  “I don’t need to tell you. You’ll just have to trust your old mother.” “I trust you. But I don’t like watching you struggle to trudge through mud on some unexplained mission related to Aunt Hannah.”

  “Well, there are many things I don’t like, Moses. Yet they must be done.”

  Mary sighs, and steps carefully over a stone in the road. The way to and from the old Newtown Gate is crowded with beachgoers, the thousands who descend at the start of each summer and inhabit the streets of Town and the hotels that line the shore from there to ’Sconset until the last days of August.

  “It’s busy for sixth day,” Mary comments.

  “Saturday is always like this.”

  “Saturday.” She rolls the word around. “Turn here.”

  Off the main road, there are fewer people, and nearly all are dark- skinned. Moses and Mary wave their greetings to the familiar faces of New Guinea. They walk for another half mile, Mary feeling it in her hip, though she does not pause until they reach the old farmhouse set back from the road, surrounded by a neat, low fence recently whitewashed and mended.

  “Mr. Martin’s place?”

  “He was a friend of your aunt. For longer than you’ve been alive. I believe they’ve written to each other every week since she moved off- Island.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Isaac sees the old woman and the middle- aged man coming up the path to the house and rises to his feet from where he is sitting on the porch. He shades his eyes. Mary still favors the old style of dress, high- necked and dark-hued. Nothing about her eyes has aged.

  “Mrs. Price. It’s good to see you.”

  “And you.”

  Moses and Isaac shake hands.

  “I’m going to sit with Mr. Martin a bit,” Mary says to her eldest son.

  “Shall I wait?”

  “You go on. He’ll see me back home.”

  Isaac nods and helps Mary into the chair on the porch. It overlooks the small yard, which blooms so improbably, it seems an oasis amid the yellow-green and dust brown of the surrounding fields. Mary breathes in the deep, twilight smell, fighting tears. A trellis, heavy with Nantucket roses, climbs the wall beside her, and the flowers comfort her.

  “Isaac,” Mary says into the buzzing air. “Hannah has passed.”

  Isaac had settled at her feet, on the step facing the garden, so she cannot see his face, and wonders if he has heard. She is about to repeat it when he speaks.

  “I knew it before you came,” he says slowly. “I had a dream.”

  “A dream?”

  He nods. In the dream he saw Hannah as she was at twenty-five, her dark hair loose. It had been night; she was asleep. Something woke her, a

  the movement of stars heavy acrid smell, a dim, distant thunder. Rising, ghost-like in white linen, she moved to the window. Isaac observed, unseen, as she drifted through the house—he realizes now it was the house on Little India, the old house—and up into her garret observatory, which both is and is not the one he remembers. Rather, this room holds all the things he remembers, the specimens and logbooks, the telescope and rocking horse, but all of it is bathed in an orange light streaming from the open arc of a giant dome atop the house. He had not expected such a grand structure on the small house, but it was so.

  Hannah ascended the stair in full stride, wanting to see, needing to know. It was not the comet she sought, but something else. At the top of the stair she turned the crank on a small wheel and the whole of the roof began to revolve and then dissolve, diminishing with each turn until there was only sky, a blazing sky so bright that in the dream Hannah shielded her eyes, then released herself and rose, or the stair itself dropped away, and, blinded, Isaac closed his own eyes.

  “Yes,” he says to Mary. “The stars were all burning at once.” They sit, quiet, in the stillness.

  “I’d like to see the lighting ceremony,” Mary says. “Would you

  take me?” Isaac nods and offers her his arm. Then he brings out his horse and cart and helps her up. They drive together through the deepening twilight as far as the old ironworks; Isaac has owned it for two decades, and as they draw up, the workers changing shifts wave.

  Mary steps carefully. Already, the crowds have gathered along Main, the ladies in fashionable dresses, poufing and puffing in every direction, clinging to men in straw hats. They make way for the old woman in her plain dress and the dignified black man who accompanies her. Mary ignores them. She knows that when they look at her they see a ghost, a relic of the old Island, and she does not care any more than a tree cares what a raindrop thinks of its roots.

  “Let’s go up to the top of Step Lane. The Veranda House is to be lit first, but we’ll see it all from there,�
� she says to Isaac.

  He nods, and they turn on Centre, skirting the crowds along Water Street, and make their way up to the very top of the steep and narrow path. They can hear the voices booming from the bandstand, the Mayor no doubt touting his own role in the bringing of electric current, as if history itself had not borne this like a tide to their tiny Island. Slowly, by some signal, all the lamps are blown out at once, and an eerie quiet seeps over the path along with the dark. Quiet descends all the way down into the Town, thousands of voices stilled, waiting, reverent, invisible.

  When they turn on the current, the vast hotel on the hillside bursts into view, a hundred electric lamps popping at once, like so many stars. After the Veranda, the Springfield is lit, then the Nantucket, and after the hotels come the lamps along Main Street. The Island blooms with light. All those around them on the high lane look down at Town. Isaac looks up.

  Mizor and Alcor, Arcturus and Spica, Denebola and Regulus are disappearing, as if bowing their heads against the sudden blaze. Isaac lowers his head, too, then, and closes his eyes.

  Forty miles away, on the mainland, for the first time, those who turn their gaze east, toward the horizon, observe a bright haze, a nimbus of light piercing the night sky where before there was only darkness.

  Author’s Note

  Ihad never heard of Maria Mitchell before taking a day trip to Nantucket in 1996. On the ferry, I picked up a flyer aimed at tourists, directing newcomers to Nantucket’s attractions. In one corner, a squib caught my eye: Come and see the home of the famous girl astronomer from Nantucket! The text explained that Maria Mitchell, born in 1818 to a large Quaker family, had shown interest and aptitude for observing the stars from a very young age. In spite of her isolated location and having only a high school education, she’d discovered a comet in 1847 and earned a medal from the king of Denmark for doing so. She went on to become the first professional female astronomer in America, and the founding professor of astronomy at Vassar College.

  Girl astronomer. I couldn’t get the phrase out of my head. What, I wondered, would compel a teenage girl to spend her nights alone on the roof of her house, staring at the stars for hours on end, sweeping the skies in hopes of spotting something so few people had the opportunity to see? The commitment required was beyond my understanding. I walked along the still-cobblestoned Main Street of Nantucket Town until I reached the side lane where the Mitchells had lived and observed. The little house and its garden of wildflowers bewitched me; my imagining of young Maria and her telescope took flight.