The Wandering Star

In the autumn of 1979, I was eleven, and my best friend was a girl named Calla. She lived with her family in a sprawling, gingerbread-laden house on the edge of Millbrook, a town that seemed to have been frozen in time. The house was a relic of the previous century, with its turrets and wraparound porch, but it never felt haunted. It was warm and cluttered, filled with the laughter of Calla’s younger siblings and the scent of her mother’s baking. You could feel the history in the walls, but it was a comfortable history, like old photographs.

Calla was bewitching. She had hair the color of honey, eyes like chips of sky, and a pale complexion that seemed to glow in the dim light of our fort under the stairs. She was adamant that she wasn’t from Earth. She would look at the stars and speak of her ‘home world’ with such conviction that even I, a skeptic, would sometimes catch my breath. She told me she remembered her past lives: one as a pharaoh’s daughter, another as a courtesan in ancient Rome, and a third as a comet shepherd in the constellation Lyra. I never believed her, but her certainty was intoxicating. I would listen for hours, caught in her spell.

One crisp October evening, we were lying on the lawn of her backyard, the Milky Way splashed across the sky like a spilled cup of milk. Calla pointed to a dim, reddish star near the Pleiades. ‘See that? That’s where I’m from. It’s called Persephone’s Lantern. I’ll go back one day, but not until I’ve finished my work here.’ I asked what work. She turned to me, her eyes serious. ‘To remember. To find the others.’ The next morning, she was gone.

I didn’t hear from Calla for weeks. Her parents were frantic, the police searched the woods, but she had vanished without a trace. I was devastated. I spent hours in our fort, flipping through her notebooks filled with strange symbols and drawings of alien landscapes. One page caught my attention: a sketch of a key on a leather cord, with a note saying ‘For J.’ I didn’t know who J was.

Months passed, and I tried to move on, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Calla wasn’t just a runaway. She had a map tucked in her belongings, a map of the town with certain houses marked. One of them was our old school, another was the library, and a third was the abandoned observatory on Braxton Hill. The observatory had been closed since the 60s, but it held a peculiar significance in local lore. My curiosity turned to obsession.

On a cold December night, I sneaked out and climbed the hill to the observatory. The building was decrepit, with shattered windows and a dome that creaked in the wind. I used my flashlight to explore the dusty rooms. In the main chamber, beneath a thick layer of grime, I found a metal grating in the floor, and underneath it, a spiral staircase. I descended, my heart pounding. At the bottom was a massive, strange machine, covered in cables and antennas, its dials labeled with symbols that matched Calla’s notebook. An old leather satchel was on a table, and inside, I found a journal. It was Calla’s handwriting.

At first, the journal seemed like a diary, but soon I realized it was a manual. It detailed how the machine was a ‘celestial beacon’ built by her ancestors to contact their home world. But there was a warning: ‘Never operate without a fully charged battery, or the beacon will drain the operator. Three have already been lost.’ I wondered if Calla had tried to use it, and if that was why she disappeared.

Just as I was about to leave, I noticed a brown stain on the floor, and a faint humming from the machine. I touched a lever, and the machine shuddered to life, lights flickering. A low-frequency vibration filled the room, and suddenly I felt a sharp pressure in my head. Images flashed: Calla standing here, her hands on a different lever, her body convulsing, then falling silent. I pulled my hand away, and the machine died.

I ran home, terrified. I couldn’t sleep. The next day, I returned to the observatory, determined to understand. I found another lever, and when I pushed it, a hidden compartment clicked open, revealing a small box. Inside was a key, exactly like the one in Calla’s drawing, on a leather cord. A note was attached: ‘For J. I’m going home. Look for the star.’ I realized then that Calla might not be a liar—she might be something else entirely.

Years passed. I never saw Calla again. But every October, I look at Persephone’s Lantern, and I see a tiny flicker, as if something is winking at me. I’ve never told anyone about the key, which I now wear around my neck, hidden beneath my shirt. I’ve also never been able to shake the feeling that one day, the star will grow brighter, and Calla will return, and that time, she might not be alone.