The Fox Cub and the Stars

Ember had been asking to go to the top of the hill ever since she was old enough to look up.

Her father always said: when the sky is right, we'll go. And this clear autumn evening, when he appeared in the doorway of their earth with his long orange tail and his easy smile and said simply, "Tonight's the night," Ember was out of her blanket and beside him before he had finished the sentence.

They climbed together, father and daughter, through the bracken and the dark grass, the air cold and clean and smelling of damp earth and something distant and excellent. Ember's paws were quick on the path. Her father took his time.

When they reached the top, the sky was extraordinary.

She had seen stars before, from the garden, but always framed by trees or rooftops. Up here there was nothing between her and all of it — thousands upon thousands of stars from horizon to horizon, scattered and clustered, faint and blazing, more than she had known were possible.

She sat down in the grass and just looked for a long while.

Then her father lay down beside her and pointed. "Do you see those four? Making a square?" He traced the shape with his claw in the air. "That's the Lantern. An old story says a badger carried it through the longest winter to bring back the spring. She walked for a hundred nights without sleeping."

Ember found the four stars. "Is that really why spring comes?"

"It's one reason," said her father. "There are others."

He showed her the Heron — five stars in an elegant curve — and the River, which was a long wandering band of faint light that he said had been running since before foxes were foxes. He showed her the Twins, two bright stars close together, and said those were for pairs of things: sisters, friends, people who always find each other again.

"What about that cluster?" said Ember, pointing.

Her father was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "That's the Spark. Your grandmother's name for it. She showed it to me the way I'm showing it to you, on a hill just like this one, when I was about your age."

Ember looked at the small cluster of lights. They were close together and bright and seemed to flicker a little, the way things do when you look at them sideways.

"She said the Spark is for anyone who is new to the world and still figuring out what shape they are," her father said. "Which is everyone, for a while."

The wind moved softly through the grass. Far below, their earth was a warm dark shape with a faint light in the window.

Ember lay back and looked at the Spark until she could find it without searching, until she could close her eyes and still see where it was.

She thought she might always know where it was now.

Her father said nothing more. The two of them lay side by side under the enormous sky, the grass cool beneath them, the stars wheeling very slowly overhead.