Rochita Loenen-Ruiz

         "Come, Eranta, come," the call rang from outside.

         "What is it?" Eranta Magalinda asked.

         Outside, her neighbour Gemima stood waving her hand in excitement.

         "The star showers are coming, Eranta.  Do come and join us at the Starcatcher's Meadow."

         "Why?"

         "Because...don't they teach you about this on Earth, Eranta?" 

         "Teach us what?"

         "Children whose mothers catch brilliance of stars during pregnancy are born blessed and wise, sure and confident of their place in the universe and of the path the great I Am has set for them."

         Eranta laughed.

         "Surely you don't believe that, Gemima. Not an educated woman like you."

         But Gemima was shaking her head and looking at Eranta very seriously.

         "Don't laugh," she said.  "The radiance from those stars imbues mothers with strengths passed on to babies in the womb."

         Eranta bit her tongue before blurting out that her neighbour's belief was nonsense.  She was a newcomer to B543 and it wasn't her place to criticize customs that existed long before her arrival. 

         "Why didn't Yshael tell me about this?" Eranta said.

         Gemima grimaced.

         "He's a typical male.  His head is probably too full of equations to think about telling you."

         Eranta laughed.  Gemima was so right about Yshael.  It was what attracted her in the first place.  Math and calculus had never been her strong points, and she'd found it fascinating to listen to the gentle brown-eyed man who explained things to her in terms that made math seemed more like a friend than an enemy.

         "You go ahead, Gemima," she said.  "Go to the fields.  I'll see if I can catch up later.  But if I don't, it's okay."

         Eranta saw the look of doubt on Gemima's face.

         "Go," she repeated.  "I'll catch up with you later."

         After Gemima left, Eranta went back to folding baby clothes into the wooden chest her mother had sent from Earth.  It was one of the family heirlooms, and to Eranta the gift was like a long distance embrace from her mother.

         Its interior smelled of rose leaves and pine.  Breathing in the scent, Eranta felt as if she were transported back to Earth, back to where the windows of her bedroom looked out over a rich forest of pine trees.  It was one of the things she missed about Earth, one of the things she'd had to face leaving behind.

         When the first technologists arrived on B543 six hundred years ago, they were only satisfied to note that it was capable of sustaining life.  True, the ground was hard, and in place of trees, ore grew up out of the ground; but there was water, and the air was clean and breathable.

         If there was air and water, surely there must be some way to grow trees.  That was how they reasoned. 

         Even though there were still no real trees on the planet, Eranta thought B543 was the perfect place to live.  From the first moment it had captured her heart and her imagination.

         Here was purple dust over red-gold earth, rugged mountains crowned with pink and ivory rocks, a sky that changed from rose to purple-orange when it was night, swift rushing streams where the famous Bantu fish swam. Even the air tasted crisper, cooler, and cleaner than on Earth.

         Eranta discovered wonder after wonder, but as the days passed, her loneliness grew.  She felt like a tree whose roots had been torn off.  Even as the baby grew inside her, she could not escape moments of intense grief. She longed for home, and yet she could not imagine going back to the life she'd said goodbye to when she married Yshael. 

         Watching the other women go about their daily tasks, she felt cut off, excluded from some secret everyone else knew about. No matter how much she tried to tell Yshael, she never could find the right words to express herself.

         After the sixth attempt she shut up.

         "It's just the pregnancy," she said.

         Determined to prove nothing was wrong, she'd gone about preparing for the baby's coming with a cheerfulness that weighed down on her shoulders like a burden.

         Sometimes she grew so tired of pretending.  And then, Gemima moved in next door.

         Gemima was one of the best techno-scientists on B543.  Her specialty was the conversion of water into energy sources.  And she, too, was expecting a baby. 

         "My third," Gemima said with a proud smile. 

         Eranta watched Gemima carefully, wondering whether the other's warmth and friendliness were real. 

         "You'll want to see the Gamelan mines," Gemima said.  And she took Eranta with her on a tour of the mines where miner robots with heavy machinery dug the hard Gamelan ore out of the ground.

         "This is B543's main source of income," Gemima told her. "It's used to power the star drives.  Our technologists discovered that by using Gamelan ore, they could increase the star drive on the transports by a hundred percent.  These days, travel between the stars takes only days where it took years for the first pioneers."

         In its native environment, the veins of ore twinkled from the rock face of the mines with colors so brilliant and vivid that Eranta wished she could capture them with her brush.

         On Earth, Eranta had been a painter.  She had brought her canvas and her paints with her, but since her arrival on B543, she had not yet found the time or the energy to paint anything. She'd seen some cubic sculpture cut out of grey ore, but when she inquired about the sculptor, she'd been told that what she mistook for artwork functioned as data receiving discs for the entire planet.

         "There used to be an artist once," the man monitoring the discs told her.  "Some say he went to live in the mountains of Ishor, others say he went back to Earth, and then again, there are those who say he went mad from loneliness."

         Eranta could not explain why the man's words filled her with foreboding.

         Arriving home, she took out her paints and her easel.  She set them up beside the window, determined to paint what she had seen.  To her dismay, she could not even recall what the mines looked like.

         She sat there for more than two hours, staring at the blank canvas, paintbrush in hand, staring out into a landscape that changed as night approached.

         When she told Yshael about it, he looked at her blankly.

         "But you don't have to paint," he said.  "You can do something else if you wish."

         "You don't understand," she cried.  "It's always been there for me, and now, it's gone.  I can't paint anymore.  It's this planet.  It's taken everything away from me."

         She saw the look on Yshael's face and regretted her harsh words the moment she said them.

         "I'm sorry," she said.  "I'm sorry, Yshael."

         "You're my wife, Eranta," Yshael said. "If you say, let's go home and make a life on Earth, I'd be willing to do that too."

         Eranta shook her head.

         "Your place is here, Yshael.  When I married you, I knew it meant leaving Earth behind.  I just have to get used to living here, that's all."

         As the days passed, she confined herself indoors, making excuses each time Gemima invited her somewhere.

         "The star showers are coming," the cry rang out in the streets, pulling Eranta from her reverie.

         Shaking her head, Eranta went and stood in the doorway, watching as the other women from childbirth class hurried by.

         "Come, Eranta," they called to her. 

         "Maybe I should go with them," she thought. Wasn't there an Earth saying about doing as the Romans do?

         "What's the point of going?" she argued with herself. "You'll never be one of them."

         "But what if Gemima was right?" she said aloud.

         As the last of the women turned the corner, Eranta made up her mind.  She stepped out into the street, pulled the door closed behind her and followed after into the fields where a growing mass of pregnant women now stood, singing and holding hands, waiting for the star showers to pass overhead.

         "I'm so glad, you made it just in time."

         She turned at the sound of Gemima's voice.

         "I really don't know if I believe all this, Gemima.  But I did promise I'd come.  Besides, I didn't want to offend the general public."

         "It's not about pleasing the public, Eranta.  It's for you and your baby.  The star showers are the one reason why we have been able to overcome the folly of original Earth. Here on B543, we know we're connected to each other. Each of us is here to fulfill a purpose." Gemima's face glowed with earnestness.

         "What about those who don't know their place?" Eranta asked.

         "That never happens. The star showers are sent especially for that."

         Above them, the sky changed its normal rosy color to the purple-orange hue of night. From where they stood, Eranta could see the ragged mountains where women also stood under the same sky, waiting for the same phenomenon.

         "Is it like this every year?" Eranta asked.

         "Every year," Gemima replied. 

         Above the mountains, the first star appeared.  To Eranta, it seemed as if its tail struck bright sparks off the atmosphere.

         Soft exclamations burst from the crowd.  Eranta could see the looks of ecstasy on the women's faces; their lips moved as if in silent prayer.  One after the other, the stars came streaking across the sky, illuminating the mountains, the valleys, and the meadows where women waited with hands outstretched and mouths wide open for the brilliance to fall upon them.

         "This is madness," Eranta wanted to say. 

         But before she could speak, the stars passed above them, raining down bright sparks of warm light. 

         Warm air embraced her, and she felt as if she was caught up in bright tails of light that burned away all her masks, exposing her grief and her need.  Shivering under the night sky, weeping and laughing at the same time, she confronted her nameless longing. Counting the seasons of her grief, she understood why she had been removed, lifted up out of her native soil, transferred to this planet so full of life and beauty.

         The stars moved onwards.  Looking around, Eranta saw glowing faces and knew her own face glowed too.

         Inside her womb, the baby kicked.  A sense of well-being flowed through her, she was one with B543, one with the planet and with the women who stood in these fields.

         Her baby kicked again, and she reached down her hands to cover her belly. 

         "We'll make those pictures," she whispered to her child.  "You and me, we'll paint this world of color and light.  We'll fill the canvas with what other eyes can't see."

         Above them, the sky, still bright from the stars' passing, echoed with a melodic strain that the women in the fields took up.

         Eranta felt Gemima take hold of her left hand.  On her right, another woman smiled as their hands linked together.  They were singing the song of the falling stars, smiling at one another, joined and connected, women of B543, mothers of a generation meant to fill the planet with purpose and beauty.

         "It isn't madness," Eranta thought.  "No, it isn't madness at all."

 

 

Copyright 2006, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz