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<\/div>\u201cThere\u2019s no moon, but we can see very well. The sky is full of stars.\u201d The Milky Way in the Atacama desert<\/p>\n
Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
Chapter One<\/strong><\/p>\n All that you touch You Change.<\/p>\n All that you Change Changes you.<\/p>\n The only lasting truth Is Change.<\/p>\n God Is Change.<\/p>\n EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Saturday,<\/em> July<\/em> 20,<\/em> 2024<\/em><\/p>\n I had my recurring dream last night. I guess I should have expected it. It comes to me when I struggle \u2013 when I twist on my own personal hook and try to pretend that nothing unusual is happening. It comes to me when I try to be my father\u2019s daughter. Today is our birthday \u2013 my fifteenth and my father\u2019s fifty-fifth. Tomorrow, I\u2019ll try to please him \u2013 him and the community and God. So last night, I dreamed a reminder that it\u2019s all a lie. I think I need to write about the dream because this particular lie bothers me so much.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m learning to fly, to levitate myself. No one is teaching me. I\u2019m just learning on my own, little by little, dream lesson by dream lesson. Not a very subtle image, but a persistent one. I\u2019ve had many lessons, and I\u2019m better at flying than I used to be. I trust my ability more now, but I\u2019m still afraid. I can\u2019t quite control my directions yet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I lean forward toward the doorway. It\u2019s a doorway like the one between my room and the hall. It seems to be a long way from me, but I lean toward it. Holding my body stiff and tense, I let go of whatever I\u2019m grasping, whatever has kept me from rising or falling so far. And I lean into the air, straining upward, not moving upward, but not quite falling down either. Then I do begin to move, as though to slide on the air drifting a few feet above the floor, caught between terror and joy.<\/p>\n I drift toward the doorway. Cool, pale light glows from it. Then I slide a little to the right; and a little more. I can see that I\u2019m going to miss the door and hit the wall beside it, but I can\u2019t stop or turn. I drift away from the door, away from the cool glow into another light.<\/p>\n The wall before me is burning. Fire has sprung from nowhere, has eaten in through the wall, has begun to reach toward me, reach for me. The fire spreads. I drift into it. It blazes up around me. I thrash and scramble and try to swim back out of it, grabbing handfuls of air and fire, kicking, burning! Darkness.<\/p>\n Perhaps I awake a little. I do sometimes when the fire swallows me. That\u2019s bad. When I wake up all the way, I can\u2019t get back to sleep. I try, but I\u2019ve never been able to.<\/p>\n This time I don\u2019t wake up all the way. I fade into the second part of the dream \u2013 the part that\u2019s ordinary and real, the part that did happen years ago when I was little, though at the time it didn\u2019t seem to matter.<\/p>\n Darkness.<\/p>\n Darkness brightening. Stars.<\/p>\n Stars casting their cool, pale, glinting light.<\/p>\n \u201cWe couldn\u2019t see so <\/em>many stars when I was little,\u201d my stepmother says to me. She speaks in Spanish, her own first language. She stands still and small, looking up at the broad sweep of the Milky Way. She and I have gone out after dark to take the washing down from the clothesline. The day has been hot, as usual, and we both like the cool darkness of early night. There\u2019s no moon, but we can see very well. The sky is full of stars.<\/p>\n The neighborhood wall is a massive, looming presence nearby. I see it as a crouching animal, perhaps about to spring, more threatening than protective. But my stepmother is there, and she isn\u2019t afraid. I stay close to her. I\u2019m seven years old.<\/p>\n I look up at the stars and the deep, black sky. \u201cWhy couldn\u2019t you see the stars?\u201d I ask her. \u201cEveryone can see them.\u201d I speak in Spanish, too, as she\u2019s taught me. It\u2019s an intimacy somehow.<\/p>\n \u201cCity lights,\u201d she says. \u201cLights, progress, growth, all those things we\u2019re too hot and too poor to bother with anymore.\u201d She pauses. \u201cWhen I was your age, my mother told me that the stars \u2013 the few stars we could see \u2013 were windows into heaven. Windows for God to look through to keep an eye on us. I believed her for almost a year.\u201d My stepmother hands me an armload of my youngest brother\u2019s diapers. I take them, walk back toward the house where she has left her big wicker laundry basket, and pile the diapers atop the rest of the clothes. The basket is full. I look to see that my stepmother is not watching me, then let myself fall backward onto the soft mound of stiff, clean clothes. For a moment, the fall is like floating.<\/p>\n I lie there, looking up at the stars. I pick out some of the constellations and name the stars that make them up. I\u2019ve learned them from an astronomy book that belonged to my father\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n I see the sudden light streak of a meteor flashing westward across the sky. I stare after it, hoping to see another. Then my stepmother calls me and I go back to her.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are city lights now,\u201d I say to her. \u201cThey don\u2019t hide the stars.\u201d She shakes her head. \u201cThere aren\u2019t anywhere near as many as there were. Kids today have no idea what a blaze of light cities used to be \u2013 and not that long ago.\u201d \u201cI\u2019d rather have the stars,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n \u201cThe stars are free.\u201d She shrugs. \u201cI\u2019d rather have the city lights back myself, the sooner the better. But we can afford the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n Extract taken from Parable of the Sower <\/em><\/a>by Octavia E. Butler, published by Headline, the latest pick for the New Scientist Book Club<\/a>. Sign up to read along with us here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Topics:<\/p>\n