Then someone from my right side splashed my face with cool water. I turned and gave a great bear hug to a white-haired, stoop-shouldered old codger who was grinning from ear to ear.

12

AWAKENED BY THE WHISPERS of distant suns, I pushed sleep from my eyes. Exhausted from the chasm-crossing and the subsequent celebrations with my companions, I had dozed off just after dinner for a few hours, lying in the softness of the meadow near the waterfall. The night was quiet and warm, and I gazed at the black sky, swollen with stars.

I could see not just pinpoints of light, but visible star surfaces, with planets dancing around them. Red giants, white dwarves, neutron stars, black holes made visible against the backdrop of exploding stars. I saw the swirls of distant galaxies, ringed planets, volcanic moons, giant ice-ball comets, the colored pallets of backwoods nebulae. Each had a story unknown to me, but I sensed they were waiting to tell me, waiting for the day I’d be ready to hear their stories and perhaps explore them.

My eyes were drawn to one section of the sky, where I saw two great red stars and above them six stars forming a shape … a mane! Of course. This was the constellation Shad had called the Lion. I couldn’t quite see the two clusters he’d called the Lion’s uplifted paws, but the head and mane were strikingly clear.

Why could I see now what I couldn’t before? Maybe I’d been too close to the man-made lights of the dark city. Or perhaps, as a chasm-crosser, I’d gained a new ability to see.

I heard in the darkness the whispers of the great music, the truth behind all legends, the object behind all longings. I lay there, tutored and soothed by the heavens.

How long had it been since I gazed so intently at the night sky? Since I was a child, with my little department-store telescope, sleeping out in the backyard with Jupiter, my golden retriever. For the next thirty-five years I lived under fluorescent light, artificial suns that didn’t allow me to see the stars, much less listen to them. My attention was absorbed by the counterfeit suns of klieg lights and streetlights and blazing marquees, man-made luminosity. I’d forgotten the stars, those pinpricks in the curtain of eternity, their light shining with the brilliance of the world beyond.

I lay flat on my back, hands cushioning my neck, and watched colliding galaxies a billion light-years away. The universe itself cried out in labor pains, longing for delivery. It was all so enormous, so overwhelming.

I remembered now why I’d stopped looking at the stars. They made me feel so lonely, so disconnected. But not anymore.