Ken Liu - Broken Stars

The symbols and lines on the paper coiled and extended, as strange as the first time she had seen them. A rapidly spinning disk.

ἀστρολάβος

astrolabos

The Star-Taker

“Look, these are your stars.” The pale woman laughed.

For PE, they were supposed to do an 800-meter run. But after the first lap, few girls could be seen on the track.

From a distance, Jiaming saw the PE teacher chasing girls back onto the track who had been trying to get out of running by hiding in the shade of trees. Reluctantly, they minced their way down the track. As soon as girls hit puberty, they seemed to lose the ability to run properly; it wasn’t only because of their bouncing breasts—overall they became indolent, or perhaps they were learning that this was part of the art of being coy.

“You’re in a good mood today,” Zhu Yin said.

Jiaming looked at her, surprised. They were hiding among the girls on the basketball court, pretending to be practicing their shots.

Zhu Yin came closer, like a mouse who has scented cake. “I bet there’s something.”

Jiaming said nothing.

“Did you dream about her?”

When she was seven, Jiaming had told Zhu Yin that she dreamed of a woman who was so pale that her skin appeared pure white. Zhu Yin had never forgotten about her.

“What did you talk about last night?”

“I told her about my dad’s birthday.”

“Were you able to see her face clearly this time? Did she look like your mom?”

Jiaming had always been able to see the pale woman’s face clearly, but she couldn’t remember what her mom looked like. Her mother had died in an accident at sea when she was four.

“Hey, you two!” a male voice next to them interrupted. “Is that your teacher?”

The man coming toward them with the whistle in his mouth was indeed their PE teacher. Jiaming and Zhu Yin looked at each other and then slipped onto the track, hurrying to catch up with the group ahead of them.

“Thanks!” As they passed the boy who had warned them, Zhu Yin winked at him.

Jiaming and the boy locked eyes for a moment. She recognized him.

“You know the guy we just passed?” Jiaming asked.

“I know of him. He’s in the cram class. A bit of a freak.”

“What’s his name?”

“Zhang Xiaobo.”

Without the storm; without the trees thinking of escape; without the wild, mad fire; without him sitting on the wall he looked calm and friendly, perfectly normal. Jiaming told herself not to look back; there was no need for suspicion.

The pale woman had told her that the stars wished her luck.

She hadn’t even noticed her own smile.

“What are you so happy about?” asked Zhu Yin.

“I was thinking of my dream from last night. I showed her the hairbands that are so popular right now, and she thought they’re really ugly, too.”

“Which kind?”

Jiaming looked at the girl sitting on the bench next to the track without speaking. Only someone who had gotten a note from the nurse could sit there so openly, excused from having to run up a sweat. As they crossed the finish line, the girl on the bench got up and walked toward them.

“You saw the ones she’s wearing?”

Zhu Yin laughed. “Yeah, pretty ugly.”

The new girl approached Jiaming but hesitated when she saw Zhu Yin.

Zhu Yin rolled her eyes. She turned to Jiaming. “I’ll wait for you back in the classroom.”

“Jiaming!” The bright sun made the new girl squint as she smiled.

“Lina.”

Lina was one of the first girls to attract the attention of the boys. Once she turned twelve, her body lost its baby fat and began to acquire curves and contours, giving off a warm scent and unconsciously attracting the gazes of the opposite sex onto the bulges in her school uniform. She was always surrounded by boys, and not only boys her age.

No one worried that Lina was going to do something improper. She was as decorous as a cow elephant slowly maneuvering her enormous body, unmoved by everything around her. Only when the need presented itself would she deign to notice the boys’ existence, and she knew how to make use of the gazes always trained on her.

For instance, that note from the nurse’s office.

She also knew how to take advantage in other ways.

For instance, now she was grabbing Jiaming by the hand to get a snack from the campus store.

Lina paid for both of them. Jiaming let her and asked for two ice creams.

“I’m getting one for Zhu Yin,” she said.

Lina smiled. “My doctor—he’s a traditional Chinese medicine specialist—won’t let me eat anything cold, not even sashimi….”

The best thing about conversing with Lina was that you could let her talk without listening. Unlike other girls their age, she knew that one didn’t have to take everything so seriously all the time. Jiaming had always felt relaxed around her.

“I hear that the study hall sessions are pretty easy.”

“Sure, there’s no extra homework. I’m sure you work much harder in the cram sessions.”

Something was stuffed into her hand. Jiaming stopped and stared expressionlessly at the gift box from Lina: velvet, satin, exquisitely made. She opened it to find a brand-new Parker pen. “Lina?”

“We used to sit at the same desk, didn’t we? I happen to have an extra pen.” Lina’s smile was like a piece of chocolate about to melt.

“Looks expensive. Do you fill it with regular ink?” The pale woman uncapped the pen and tested the tip of the nib.

“I’m sure they sell fancy ink that goes with it. Probably comes with its own gift box.”

“Why did she give you this?”

Jiaming said nothing. She didn’t think one or two secrets were much of a burden to carry.

The pale woman lifted Jiaming’s face by the chin. “Give it back to her. I’m worried about you.”

“If I were to do that, you’d be worrying about me even more.”

The pale woman held her still and forced her to meet her gaze. “I’ve seen her stars. I don’t like them.”

“If I don’t accept her bribe, she’ll think that I’ve decided to betray her. Do you understand?”

The pale woman released her and moved away.

Jiaming walked over and sat down next to her. “Do you like my stars?”

“I do.” The woman’s eyes were as gentle as a sigh. “You’re a good child. The stars told me so as soon as you were born.”

A thought flitted across her heart like a shadow. Her chest tightened in the senseless, flickering light from the TV screen.

“Can the stars really talk?” She had never asked this question; she had never believed.

“Yes. Yes!” the pale woman said earnestly. “Yesterday, yesterday the stars told me that you would meet… someone very special. He would appear in water, and then disappear in fire. The stars also wished you good luck. I told you.”

“Then, what about today? What do the stars say?”

The pale woman opened her astrolabe. Jiaming paid attention to her every movement, scrutinizing the details of this process she had already witnessed countless times. The more she focused, the more she felt like she was elsewhere. She was here, but also not here. She had been abandoned by herself—somewhere in her body, there was unquestionably the emptiness left by abandonment. No matter how much she tried to ignore it, she could feel the nauseating chill as well as… the dizzying sweetness.

Those stars: the symbols drifting from the depths of the vast space appeared on the sheet of paper with unprecedented clarity.

“Tomorrow, there will be happiness. You’ll walk a path that you don’t normally walk, and make a date in the morning. The stars say that you’ll meet someone important, someone you’ll spend the rest of your life with. The date will change your destiny, so be careful of wrong turns. The stars are speaking. Listen, the stars are talking, all of them. Can you hear them? The stars want you to be happy.”