Cast of Wonders 608: The light that became a star
The Light That Became A Star
by A.N. Pinckard
The old monk of the temple warned us not to go to the meadow, but Haru and I, we could not help ourselves. The strawberries were so ripe, like jewels, and we were so hungry. Other children had vanished there, but we were willing to take the risk.
It was the fifth year of the clan war and the seventh year of the drought. The dry, cracked rice paddies, the dusty taste of millet, and the ever-present gnawing in our bellies defined our existence.
That spring, Haru and I rose early each morning to fetch water from the Yubari river before the heat became unbearable. We’d haul it back to the rows of millet, dump it on the ground, and watch it disappear into the cracks. Year after year, the customary summer and fall rains had not come, and the earth’s thirst was insatiable.
The cloud dragon was sickened by the war, the old monk said. The thunder god was insulted by the poor offerings. The mountain gods were angry and withheld the rain. Every few days he had a different explanation. What were we to believe? We knew only our hunger.
On that morning, I was struck by how lean Haru had become. I could not stop staring at the jutting groove of her collar bones and the gaping hollow between them, visible when her movements loosened the fold of her robe across her chest. As she bent to scoop up the silty water, I touched her arm and took the pole off her shoulders. Her flesh was bruised where the bamboo had pressed against it, hour after hour, day after day. I took the cloth she tied about her head, wet it in the brown water, and pressed it against her neck. Rivulets trickled down her neck, soaking the downy black wisps that curled against her nape.
Then I took her hand and led her up the muddy river. We turned off into the bamboo forest. Although I walked first, we moved as one, one heart, one spirit, one intention. That’s how it was with us.
I remember now how it seemed as if our feet took us by their own will, as if they could go nowhere else. A song came to my lips as we walked: the one we still sing in the fields at planting, at harvest festivals, and to lull babies to sleep. It is a song as old as the village, although the words have changed a bit now. I hummed the melody as we walked, and before we knew it, we stood at the edge of the forbidden meadow.
The meadow had been the site of numerous battles over the centuries. The song referenced one of the greatest of them, fought many generations ago. Nearly all the soldiers on both sides had died. The story we’d been told was that their blood had become the berries, but the ghosts of the fallen still returned to the field, envious of the living and eager to take them.
The sun’s heat pressed down and the shadows of the clouds crossed before us. It was an odd meadow; there was grass in patches, reaching up to the knee, but most of the field was rocky, with strawberry plants nestled in the cracks. Given the dry conditions, the succulence of the berries defied logic.
We gripped hands, each knowing what the other wanted, but afraid. Then Haru turned to me and smiled. It was consent enough. I pulled her into the meadow, where we dropped to our knees and jammed the fruit into our mouths.
The berries were as sweet and juicy as I’d imagined, and soon our fingers and lips were stained red.
Haru lay down in the grass, squishing one last berry in her mouth. It burst between her lips, and for a moment the juice that oozed from her mouth looked like blood.
We fell asleep, there under the hot sun, the fruit in our bellies making us too sickened to move. Some time later, a snatch of laughter awakened me. The sun had wheeled in the sky, and Haru was gone, leaving only an indent in the grass where she’d lain. It was now late afternoon and we would be missed at home.
A wind rushed through the bamboo forest behind me and ripped through the grass. I sat up and swung around to look for Haru. She’d crossed to the middle of the field and stood there, stiff bodied. I called for her. When she did not respond, I scrambled to my feet and ran to her.
“I understand,” I overheard her say.
But whom was she talking to? The field was clear. Her back was to me, her robe and pants stained red from crushed berries.
“Haru!” I spun her around to face me.
She looked cross for a moment, then her face eased into its usual smile. “We’d better go back.”
On our journey home, I pressed her to tell me what had happened, but she gave no answer.
At first, we tried to resist. I was spooked by what I had witnessed, and she agreed we shouldn’t go. She wouldn’t confirm it, but I was convinced the ghosts had been trying to lure her. Furthermore, I remembered old stories of a demon that lived on the mountain and compelled the dolorous ghosts to serve him and bring him children. It was said he came with the wind, surely just like the gust that had come through the bamboo forest that day.
But steadily, our hunger became more urgent. Nothing tasted good to us, not even when the neighbor’s peach trees managed to produce a few mealy fruits. All was ashes compared to the sweet tartness of the berries.
We relinquished our will. As spring sharpened into summer, we went every afternoon to eat the berries, slipping away together when the heat became too much and the village rested. My friend quickly grew sleek and strong. The muscles returned to her arms and legs. Her face plumped.
We felt ashamed of our strength–after all, our fellow villagers were still starving. We tried to entice the children to join us, but one of them told our parents, who upbraided us. “Let’s not go anymore, all right?” Haru said, crying, and I agreed.
But she continued to grow strong. More than that, I noticed a change in how she moved. There was a new grace about her, a strange fluid purpose to her movements. Some of the other youths changed too. I can’t describe it–it was like a new light shone within them, as if they had become lanterns of spirit.
One day, I approached her as she caught grasshoppers in the millet field. I knew she’d been avoiding me, and this was the first time I’d found her alone. “You’re sneaking off to eat the berries without me,” I said.
“It’s not for the berries.”
“Isn’t it? Show me your tongue!” I was sure I would see the stain of her betrayal on it.
“I’ll do no such thing,” she cried, and ran off.
From that day on, I spied on her. I wanted to catch her in the act. She didn’t go during the day, so I looked for her at night. Sure enough, she and the other youths snuck off together in the dead of night, when the stars of the drum were overhead. Once they reached the bamboo forest, they fell into a line, singing softly.
It was too dark to see, so I followed the sound of their singing. As I walked, my feet took up the beat. It was the same song I had hummed, the words familiar as the baked crust of earth.
There was a stanza about a night march to the mountain to see the heavenly lights. I’d thought it described the soldiers marching to battle, but it had never quite made sense to me. And now here we were, acting out the lyrics. And when we approached the meadow and I saw there were indeed lights on the mountain, a coldness crept through me.
I crouched in a tall patch of grass to watch. As Haru and the others crossed the meadow, the lights seemed to swoop down and hover above them. I realized they were fireflies. The youths ate, then began a peculiar dance. No, not a dance; they were practicing military maneuvers.
The fireflies grew and became ghost warriors in full armor. I could make out the moon-like curves of the helmet crests, the brutal gleam of their masks. Beneath them, Haru and her friends moved with practiced confidence.
My fear kept me from stepping forward and crying out, so I watched, horrified, until I realized I should beat them home, and ran off.
The next morning, I watched Haru at the river, but she did not seem tired at all. In fact, she hummed while she worked, that same old song, hauling water to the millet fields with tireless grace.
“I saw you last night,” I said.
She pretended not to know what I was talking about, but I pressed, terrified that she would be taken away by the soldiers’ ghosts. At last, she admitted it.
“But it’s not what you think,” she said. The ghosts were training her to fight a heavenly battle to help the village, she explained. If they won, the drought would end and then she would return.
“Then let me come with you,” I pleaded, but she refused.
“We’ll be called away quite soon,” she said. “But please, you must stay out of it. I couldn’t stand it if you went, too. It’s dangerous, and you haven’t been training.”
I was sure that the ghosts had tricked her. But as the days passed, they remained unharmed, and my fear made way for jealousy. She and the other children were eating the delicious berries without me. Moreover, their clandestine activities brought them closer, so that now she spent all her time with them.
One day, when I caught them whispering among themselves along the river bank, I was overcome with rage and confessed to the monk. He immediately called on the parents to bring Haru and the others to him for purification and exorcism to rid them of the touch of the dead. Word spread, and soon all the villagers headed out to find the youths.
Haru saw us coming and realized our intentions immediately. The look she gave me, of confusion and hurt—even the memory of it makes me quail. She gestured to the other children and they ran off. We followed, but we hadn’t the benefit of strawberries or training, and they outran us easily, dispersing into the bamboo forest like a flock of sparrows.
I was the first among the villagers to arrive in the meadow. Breathless, I couldn’t speak. Then the sight before me took all thought of speech away.
Ahead of me, the youths had lined up before Haru and begun singing. Much like the day we’d first come, the sky was restless with clouds. One passed over the sun; as its shadow fell over the youths it seemed to gather itself and thicken into the form of a great tengu, its cruel beak flashing and its yellow raptor’s gaze on the children as it hovered above them. It wrapped the children up in its vast black wings and vanished.
It was only then that I managed to call for Haru.
I was too late.
The monk made me prostrate and recite the sutras while billowing incense smoke poured over me. By association, I too must be tainted by the tengu and its demonic ghost army, he’d claimed. But really, I think it was because he felt ashamed that he had not been able to save the others.
He told me the tengu used to live in the mountain long ago but that his predecessor had driven it away. Clearly it had returned and must be dealt with again. He strode off to the field to consecrate it. But the parents defied him, and prayed and made offerings to the tengu to return the children. Later that summer, they put up a shrine for the lost.
The berries vanished, as if one day someone had eaten them all. I went to Haru’s shrine every day. I told my parents I went to pay my respects, but I knew she wasn’t dead. When you love someone that much, you just know.
And that fall, at last, dark clouds gathered and the rain fell. We ran out of our homes and sang songs of thanks as the rain came pouring down. It felt like the earth shuddered with joy beneath our feet. And with the clap of thunder, the lost youths appeared. Haru was not among them. With the next flash of lightning, I saw the tengu hovering in the sky.
A great rage came over me, and I raced to the field. Sure enough, he flew by on his way to the mountain. I shouted up at him, daring him to face me. As he landed, with wet, black wings the span of the temple roof, I faltered. He turned his terrible, vermillion face to me. His gruesome beak clacked open and closed, his big yellow eyes rolled down to stare at me. He stood as tall as two men and his armor gleamed in the rain.
“Give her back,” I shouted.
He laughed. I recognized that sound. It was the same noise that had awoken me in the field. “She stays of her own accord,” he said.
“Then let me join her!” The request was a lie–I never intended to join Haru in his service. Rather, I would say anything for a chance to see her and bring her back.
His yellow gaze fixed on me, their holes constricting. “She is a great, noble warrior. You are made of a different substance.”
Had he sensed my lie? He unfurled his wings to fly away but I leaped forward and grabbed the tip of his wing. A feather came away in my hands. He made a strange cawing sound, like a crow.
Sensing the feather might have power over him, I held it up. “Prove to me that she’s not your prisoner.”
“You are very determined,” he said. “But so is she. Very well. Convince her to return, if you can.”
Before I could respond, he caught me around the waist, and with the sound of a thousand birds flapping, he flew up and toward the mountain.
I held my breath and closed my eyes against the pelting rain. I lived by the tengu’s whim, with nothing to stop me from falling to my death than that thick arm about me. When the rain stopped, I dared open my eyes. We flew above the mountains, the mist swirling around the green trees. Then he descended and the trees rose up alarmingly. But the tengu landed, lightly as a swallow, before a torii, its once-red paint faded and worn. Uneven stone stairs led up to a cave formed by an enormous cypress tree. Its muscular roots gripped the mountain rock and a frayed prayer rope, green with moss, ringed its trunk, which was thick enough that all the village children would have been needed to link hands around it.
I was sure the tengu’s nest was in that tree and we stood at its entrance. Curious, I thought–what need did he have for steps? Their centers were worn down, as happens with the passing of thousands of feet over the centuries.
I tucked the feather into my sash and took the first step. A voice that my ears yearned to hear called my name. Haru stood at the top of the stairs. She looked magnificent. Healthy, with an ethereal glow about her, dressed in the full armor of a warrior, her helmet tucked under her arm. She bowed in greeting.
I wanted to run up to her, but her splendid appearance, the formal gesture with which she greeted me, put me off. And then she smiled, and the smile was the same. I raced up the stairs and took her hand.
“Come back with me,” I said.
“My work is here with the honorable tengu.”
“Don’t call him that,” I cried. “He’s a demon and he’s tricked you.”
“That’s what the monk said, isn’t it? But he’s wrong. The song we sing–haven’t you figured it out? The Lord Tengu protects us. He’s trying to save us.”
All the stories we’d been told indicated otherwise, and I argued with her. In response, she simply asserted her point of view, almost amused at my confusion. The tengu had been the guardian of the village for a long time, she explained. A demon oni had captured the cloud dragons and sent his minions to foment war among the clans. Haru and the other children had volunteered to fight against the oni as part of a massive heavenly army. They’d won the first battle and freed the village, but the fight continued.
I countered her every statement, but she spoke with the assurance of someone who would not be moved. Finally, I wept before her. “Please,” I said. “You must come back. Think of your poor mother and father who miss you. Think of me–I am nothing without you. You have a duty to us. If the tengu is as powerful and noble as you say, what right does he have to lure youths away from their families? Let him recruit others to fight his battle.”
I sensed her resolve waver. I continued on until, finally, she put her helmet down and said, “I don’t want you to grieve for my sake. I’ll return.”
Just like that, we were back in the meadow. I staggered at the sudden change. Haru stood in her customary hempen robe and trousers.
“You must go see the monk immediately,” I said. “He’ll remove the tengu’s spell from you.”
“I know,” she said, and walked back to the village.
Haru’s family welcomed her with great joy, and the monk, who was also overjoyed to see her, performed the requisite rituals with great care. We labored in the fields together. The millet heads grew fat and heavy and we were able to grow late season barley, yams, and radishes, enough to see the village into winter.
The magnificent feather had shrunk to a crow’s. Every night I put it under my pillow. In the morning, I would twirl it between my fingers, gloating over my victory over the tengu, then tuck it in my sash.
As winter came on, Haru diligently applied herself to her duties. She prayed regularly with the monk and brought her family great joy. But I saw that the light in her had dimmed, as if the lantern within her had been covered with a cloth. I tried to express my concern.
“Of course I’m all right,” she would say. “I’m back where I belong, aren’t I?”
When spring returned, there was more than enough work planting rice to keep us occupied, but I discovered that every day she wandered off when the bulk of the work was done. I followed, knowing where I’d find her. Sure enough, she was kneeling in the meadow.
I knelt down beside her.
“Everyone thinks I was bespelled by the tengu, but what if I wasn’t?” she said.
“Of course you were! Why else would you want to be anywhere other than with those who care most about you?”
She covered her face in her hands. “I don’t know.”
The sight of her suffering caused me great pain and I thought about the feather I kept tucked away. “Do you want to return?”
“Yes,” came the muffled reply.
“Why?” What I meant, but could not say, was: why do you love the tengu more than me?
“Do you remember when we ate the strawberries for the first time? After that, nothing tasted right. It’s like that for me,” she said. “When I held the spear in my hands, when I learned the forms, I felt a great sense of purpose. For the first time, I understood what I must do. And now nothing else feels right. Maybe that is the tengu’s curse.”
My heart broke to hear her words. It was not the tengu that drew her, although he had become her beloved teacher. No, it was her own nature, and in my selfishness I had kept her from it. “Then let’s go to the mountain and find him.”
She dropped her hands, looking cross. “Why do you say that now? I’ve got to go talk to the monk, of course. Maybe he can help me.”
“I never should have doubted you, or caused you to doubt yourself. You must go back to him.”
“The path is closed to me.” The regret in her voice turned all else bitter.
“Maybe this will help,” I said. I pulled the crow’s feather from my sash.
When she took it, it grew big and glossy again, quivering as her hands trembled. “How did you get this?” she asked, then, after I explained, “Why did you hide it from me?”
“I suspected it would take you back. I thought that by keeping it, I could also keep you. I’m sorry.”
She turned it in her fingers. “You thought you were saving me. I would have done the same for you.”
In her gallant nature she believed her words, but I knew how untrue they were. I took them for the forgiveness that they were intended.
This time, she bid farewell to her parents. First they threatened to lock her up, then they pleaded with her, but in the end they concluded her need to go was a celestial purpose and they bid her farewell.
Hand in hand, we ran to the mountains. We saw the familiar paths the woodcutters took, but for us, a new path opened, as if the trees were inviting us in. The path ended with stone steps leading up, up, up into the forested mountain side. We raced up the stairs, as if some wind lifted us and carried us up. Then once again, we stood at the torii.
“Will he take you back?” I asked.
“I don’t think it would have worked, otherwise. Join me this time. We can fight together forever.”
Joy filled me at her invitation, but this was her purpose, not mine. “I have to go back.”
She handed me the feather. “Keep it. I don’t need it anymore. Use it every year to return here on the first full moon after the harvest festival. Call for me, and I’ll come.”
Her foot was already on the step above as we gripped hands one last time. Then she ran up the stairs.
As she ascended, her form once again took on an ethereal light. I saw the shimmer of her celestial armor, like a mist that condensed around her. Her helmet lay just where she had left it when she’d stepped away. At the cave of the cypress tree’s roots, she turned once more to bow. I returned the farewell. When I straightened, she’d disappeared.
Back in the field, I lay down and wept, with only the grass as my witness.
Every year at the appointed time, I took the feather from its box, ascended the stone steps to the torii, and called for Haru. She would emerge from the cave and come down the stairs to me. I always brought rice balls filled with pickled plums. She would sit down to eat and tell me about her exploits.
When we bid farewell, I would return and relate her stories to her parents. Soon the village celebrated her accomplishments. One of the youths who had gone with her that first time made up new verses to the old song, which is the one we now sing. And in the long time between our visits, I would lie in the meadow and stare at the stars.
Year after year, as the heavenly glow about her grew brighter, she dimmed from my life.
Time did not pass for her as it did for me. She always seemed startled to see me, saying it seemed only a few weeks since we’d last met, while I had watched the seasons creep by. I married and became a mature woman; she remained a slim muscled youth. I had children and labored in the field, she kept her maidenly form and disciplined spirit. She said she couldn’t meet every year, so I came every three years, then five, and now, every seven years.
And so it is that I, now an old woman bent from the weight of carrying water and wood and rice, who has seen her children grown and her children’s children born, take this feather from its box. It still smells the same, of holy incense and sky, still looks as fresh as the day I plucked it from the tengu. I will walk up the stone steps for the last time.
Haru will appear as a woman just coming into her power. She will not recognize me, old as I am. It’s been seven years, and last time, I saw the look of incomprehension cross her face. I will tell her of the newest village child, a healthy young girl born to her grandniece who reminds me of her; of the bountiful harvests we’ve had because of her; of the village’s growing fame for producing the sweetest rice, requested by the emperor himself. I will tell her that the villagers now climb the steps to the torii every year to make their offerings of thanks, that the monk has given her a heavenly name, and that the temple commissioned a statue of the tengu, carved from a magnificent camphor tree felled in the forest a few summers ago.
This time, I’ll bring dried sweet rice cakes to honor her. She’ll eat them, and nod and smile politely as I talk. Now the tengu’s general, she will tell me of her latest battle, of how they stormed one of the oni’s castles, she and these ghostly warriors of hers, and how the next wave of enemy soldiers must be stopped.
I already know these things. I can see her exploits drawn in the stars if I lie in the meadow where strawberries once grew, holding the tengu feather to my chest. Some nights they shimmer and fall around me, until the stars and the fireflies dance together as one.
About the Author
A. N. Pinckard

A. N. Pinckard was born in Japan, where they spent summers climbing the sacred mountains with their grandmother. A former science journalist, they now write speculative fiction, often themed around boundaries and liminal spaces. They live in Brooklyn, NY with their family, many houseplants, and the occasional sparrow that wanders in the window.
About the Narrator
Marie Brennan

Marie Brennan is a former anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly leans on her academic fields for inspiration. She recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to The Game of 100 Candles and the short novel Driftwood. She is the author of the Hugo Award-nominated Victorian adventure series The Memoirs of Lady Trent along with several other series, over eighty short stories, several poems, and the New Worlds series of worldbuilding guides; as half of M.A. Carrick, she has written the epic Rook and Rose trilogy, beginning with The Mask of Mirrors. For more information and social media, visit linktr.ee/swan_tower.
