No ordinary star, p.1
No Ordinary Star, page 1
part #1 of No Ordinary Star Series
no
ordinary
star
A soldier is summoned to the North Pole, days before the year changes, told to fix the great Clock for a celebration. He has no idea what to do.
A girl, hunted for the crime of being born, almost dies out on the ice. She is rescued by the last polar bear left alive.
A library waits for them both, a library built over a span of a hundred years, forgotten in the basement of an ice shack.
The world hasn't known hunger or sickness in hundreds of years. It has also forgotten love and beauty.
The year is 2524.
Inspired by the short stories of Ray Bradbury, this futuristic young adult novel is set in a world where Christmas -among other things- is obsolete and a Clock is what keeps the fragile balance of peace.
Written in three installments, this is the breathtaking and sensual story of how two unlikely people change the world, and each other, one book at a time.
Also by M.C. Frank
Ruined
a Jane Eyre Regency retelling
no
ordinary
star
part 1
M.C. FRANK
Title: No Ordinary Star – Part One
Author: M. C. Frank
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 M.C. Frank
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the author.
Inspired by the short stories of Ray Bradbury
and
dedicated to the person who taught me to love them.
In the end, you didn’t make me hate the sun*. On the night that you left there was a full moon.
I haven’t looked at it since.
*Reference to a short story by Ray Bradbury,
‘The Rocket Man’
from ‘The Illustrated Man’
the desert Is scorching hot outside his goggles. The soldier shoots an uneasy glance over his shoulder, to the rest of his squad. His fellow officers are walking briskly in a mostly straight line, boots sinking in the soft sand, cheeks tanned by the scorching sun.
The one walking in front of him lifts a hand to wipe the sweat from his brow, and the soldier smirks. His highly evolved skin-sculpt goggles prevent sweat, sand and dirt from landing on his eyes and obscuring his vision, making it easier to see.
Or at least they were, up until a few minutes ago.
A few minutes ago, a message cue popped up on his visor. He can see it in front of him now, as he trudges onto the next dune, blinking in the corner of his left eye, driving him crazy.
He can’t open it for a quite a few hours yet; he won’t take a break until tomorrow. They are only allowed a single one-hour break per day, and to do something like pause in the middle of a drill in the Morocco desert to open a message that’s waiting on your personal net, well… Cadets have been court-martialed for less -everyone knows that.
This soldier knows it better than most.
He’s the brightest, the best of the bunch, some say. Some others say he’s just the most obedient, the one less expected to deviate from the rules, that’s all there is to his success in the regiment. The truth is much simpler: he’s just the best at everything.
The soldier thinks that without conceit; it’s just a fact, written in his DNA.
“Ten seconds,” someone growls from the front. They’re supposed to walk a distance of two miles in under fifteen minutes. The soldier is almost done in nine and a half.
He lifts his long legs, hardly breaking a sweat, and pushes forward, quickly overtaking everyone but his General. His thigh muscles feel tense from the exercise and their familiar ache as they stretch numbs his mind pleasantly. A lock of white-blond hair flops to his forehead, and he lifts a gloved hand to push it back. His vision is clear for miles, the sky a sickening blue, the brown sand going on forever. The message cue interrupts the thin clouds, coming in and out of his vision maddeningly.
This is getting boring. When are they going to start some real training? The others are more than ten steps behind.
“Good job, lieutenant,” the General says to him as soon as the rest of the officers line up, snapping to attention.
The soldier -who is really a lieutenant- stands absolutely still, not nodding, not blinking, not acknowledging the General’s praise in any way. He disciplines his long body to stay silent, not a muscle twitching, not one breath out of order. His eyes look straight ahead. He knows that’s the kind of posture that will impress his General the most, after a tough drill like that.
What won’t impress him is how itchy his fingers are getting from wanting to open the message on his goggles. Just five more hours until free time, the soldier thinks. Then you can delete it.
one
Three hours earlier, in quite another part of the world, the old man everyone calls ‘the Clockmaster’ drags his feet to the green door of his shack and opens it with difficulty. There’s fresh snow behind it, weighing it down, and beads of sweat gather on his wrinkled brow, falling onto his white beard, as he pushes with all his strength into the steel and wood until it gives way. He closes the door behind him, locking it carefully, as he’s done every morning for the past fifteen years or so.
The sky is a dazzling painting of blues and reds and grays -it takes his breath away. The day is crisp and clear, almost like every other morning he’s taken the same walk in the snow, hiking to the forest and back.
Today is a bit different, though.
He has a feeling of finality at the pit of his stomach, as though every step he takes is changing the world. Old age is finally catching up with you, old timer, he thinks. Crystal snowflakes twirl about him, landing on his red cheeks. Every step lifts a cloud of them around his black, heavy boots as he walks towards the dim outline of the fir trees.
It will be Christmas in a week.
Not that anyone will notice.
You’ve lived alone for too long, old man, and you’re beginning to imagine things. Christmas! What a thing to remember at times like these.
He thinks of the huge hollow disc that has to be filled strategically with cogwheels and gears, standing in the middle of his cold little room, but he hasn’t been able to concentrate on his work for days.
The new year simply won’t dawn if his Clock isn’t ready to chime it in. He stops, breathless, lifting his eyes to the skies, and chuckles softly to himself. Will the truth ever be known?
Probably not.
So you say there is no Father Christmas
You say there is no Santa Claus
Reindeer cannot fly, it’s all a grown-up lie…
It’s a song older than time itself -older even than him; what made it suddenly pop into his head?
He murmurs it, prodding himself to keep walking in time with the melody. He doesn’t remember all the words, but the music is sad and nostalgic; it reminds him of a home long gone and sunny days filled with love and the smell of cinnamon. The love lives on.
So you say there is no Father Christmas
The Clockmaster walks on, burying his chin in the thick, fur lapels of his coat. His steps feel heavier today. His large, white head feels light, as though a mere gust of wind could blow it away like a bird. Like the icy powder that drifts from the sky to land on his collar.
He sees the sniper a split second before he shoots.
There’s a deafening sound, and the next minute a sharp pain blossoms in his chest, and he feels himself falling away from sight, sinking into the snow, its crystals parting to welcome his weight.
It takes him a moment to realize that he’s no longer moving. He tries to find his bearings, and buries his sturdy staff into the ground, pushing his weight on its hand-crafted handle so that he can stand, but he falls back on trembling limbs.
The sniper is gone; the Clockmaster he didn’t even have time to see if he was a member of the Guard or a free-shooter. He just appeared out of nowhere, a black silhouette somewhere behind the trees, and shot him. He surely was an easy target, walking in plain sight out in the open, a dark spot in stark contrast to the glowing twilight reflected off the bluish snow.
The pain is numbing but his mind is falling asleep with the cold, too. Something is gnawing at him, a mere sliver of a thought at the edges of his consciousness. What is it?
“So you say there is no Father Christmas…” No it’s not that. “Twenty-five twenty-five,” he mutters.
Two numbers, identical; they remind him of something, but he can’t quite grasp what that is. The numbers hover on the fringes of his tired memory, and still their meaning eludes him. So much information, so many experiences, all of them ticking away like minutes on one of his cuckoo clocks; wars, kisses, celebrations, changes, pain. All of it gone now.
Soon it will be gone forever. Irrevocably.
“Twenty-five twenty-five.”
People used to think he was something like a timekeeper, or at the very least, a memory-keeper. But these memories he’s collected so meticulously over the years -they have been his own personal demons as well.
It’s certainly not his job to keep them -it shouldn’t be anybody’s job.
He’s just another human being.
An
He used to hope that he would be able to pass the flame on to someone else, someone more worthy, more clever and compassionate, but as the cold travels to his extremities, he starts to think he may have no time for that. He wasted all his years, and now it’s too late.
“Constantine,” he whispers, and a lone tear freezes on his cheek. “Twenty-five, twenty-five. Felix, my hope.”
Now he remembers, if just for a second.
It takes less than a minute for the falling snow to cover him like a shroud.
He falls asleep looking at the stars.
And in his dreams comes a fairy, riding an angel clouded in plush white fur, her hair on fire. She looks down on him from atop her perch on the angel’s back.
He feels a smile creeping across his frozen face as her huge brown eyes fill his vision. He hears -in his dream, always- steps crunching on the snow beside him, he feels a warm, trembling hand gently touch his icy grave.
“Father…?” the fairy says, and he is convinced he’s dreaming, if he ever had a doubt, for this is a word he hasn’t heard in years. “Father Christmas?”
He wants to tell her that’s not his name, it was just a song of the Old Ones he was singing, but in the dream his lips are sealed shut and little icicles have begun to drift on his stiff white beard.
“It should have been me,” the fairy says in a trembling voice that sounds like a whispered bell. She starts to weep soundlessly.
If he could speak, he’d warn her about the sniper, he’d yell at her to run. If he could speak, he’d whisper to her the number one more time; maybe she could help avoid disaster.
But he can’t, and so the fairy just sits there beside him, her dirty, torn dress pooling around her on the grey snow, holding his hand and sobbing, in plain sight. There might still be snipers surrounding the plain, eyes peeking behind the snow-capped trees, but she doesn’t move. She holds his cold hand in her bare ones until his breathing gets even.
Until her beautiful dark eyes are the only thing he remembers from this broken, frozen world.
two
The world falls to pieces with a loud crash a few minutes later. Or maybe it is a few days later, or a few years; it’s all the same for the Clockmaster, who’s still lying in the ice.
The fairy is still crying three days later, crying for a life lost in vain, crying for the things the old man didn’t say as his life was spilled on the snow, soaking her dress red. She’s not a fairy, not really. She’s just a girl, small boned and wild-haired.
She’s a crying girl, a hunted girl. She’s a girl who’s about to become a dead girl. But suddenly, on the third day after the Clockmaster’s death, the girl’s crying turns to screams. There’s a harsh, breaking sound slicing the silence first, then a small splash. Then ice floating in a hole.
That’s when the screams start. At first they’re awful, blood-curling, sharp sounds that make the trees around the old man’s resting place shudder -even though by now she’s left it far behind- and the stars break to a million pieces.
The fairy -who isn’t a fairy- screams and screams and the angel -who, in fact, is something else entirely- takes off towards the horizon. Her screams escalate until they’re unbearable. But there’s no one to hear them.
Even the snipers have gone days ago, mistakenly thinking their job done when they killed the old man instead of the girl -they didn’t think for a minute there would be anybody else out in the vast whiteness, anybody but their prey. The girl screams with all she’s got one last time.
Then, silence.
three
tin soldier
It’s the shortest day of the year tonight. The Arctic is white, as it’s always been, an expanse of icy desert sprinkled with a few clusters of fir trees, star-studded heavens purple with night overhead.
This part of the world used to be called ‘Alaska’ or some such exotic name when there were people here, but it’s been years since human eyes have seen the breathtaking cold beauty of these lands. Traditions of candy-stripe-wrapped presents and a big, fat man who always wore red toiling among his pointy-eared helpers have long since ceased to exist, along with the civilizations which created them.
Change is a good thing, people have always said -and they still do, now, in the dawning of another year of the twenty-sixth century- and so they continue to improve themselves and their lives, driven by that elusive ambition to surpass each other and their own, degrading human needs. Which they have achieved, for the most part.
There is no hunger in the world, no illness, no discomfort. No discord. It’s simply been eliminated. How could the human race, after conquering the lengths of the Solar System, after perfecting the science of the body and the brain, after, in short, outgrowing its own strengths and amazing its own intelligence time and again; how could it fail to eliminate its own weaknesses? It has not. Everything is perfect, which in the case of the vast Arctic land, translates to quiet. Empty.
No need for towns up here, exposed to the cold and darkness and solar winds, so all that’s left is a few Power Towers and the Intergalactic Space Station.
And the Clockmaster’s ice shack.
It’s not really a ‘shack’, Felix thinks as he leans back on the swirly-patterned comforter on the low-back titanium sofa. On the inside it’s pretty much like any of the luxurious apartments piled on top of each other in the home where he grew up with four other children, in New Baghdad, in the European East. He’s seen pictures of how it looks on the outside, but he hasn’t been outside the door.
He imagines it as a sort of wooden structure like the one he’s seen in Visuals and Projections of fairytales from the Old World, half covered in thick eternal snow that never melts, its tin roof the only splotch of color in the endless white.
Truth be told, he couldn’t care less.
He’s been in this godforsaken place for more than two days now and he’s got nothing to show for it. It’s starting to get on his nerves.
The place smells of wood and fresh snow, and he’s not used to things smelling quite so much. His tiny cubicle at school is sterilized, as is every public place. There’s also a lot of unnecessary objects around, and he’s tired of feeling so cluttered and seeing so much color all the time. There’s even a bed in the second room -whoever heard of a home having a second room? But the shack is huge, three rooms in all, one filled with Old World electronics he has no idea how to work, as well as a wooden table, and one with an old-fashioned bed and a tilted roof which gives him a headache every time he looks at it.
He’s spent all of his time so far in this third room, which has only this sofa, the Pod and the Projector, covering a wall from the floor to the ceiling. The standard bathroom cubicle is tucked out of sight in the far-left corner. If he keeps his eyes trained away from the little windows with the frilly red curtains and the huge green door, he can almost concentrate.
He’s concentrating right now on his hunger.
He’s only got two pills left -he didn’t think to take provisions with him-, and he intends to ration them for as long as he can; hopefully he won’t have to stay much longer here, and he can go back before he gets to actually starving. Not that he’s done anything constructive so far. He’s got half a mind to get in the Transport Pod right now and get back to school, where his professors are already wondering what has happened to their star lieutenant.
He heard it on the news last night. It was a live Projection from the Terrestrial Channel, dubbing him ‘the lost prince’. They played it three times during the entire day. Every time it came on, he smirked, thinking that he’d been missing barely two days. He knows, of course, that the Counsil takes very seriously every facility that uses the Planet’s funds, and a military school even more so, and so it was only a matter of hours before he was missed at the half-day head count and hell was raised.
