Once upon a time, there was a powerful alchemist who could turn tears into stars—brilliant, everlasting stars. Her name was Anomie, and she lived deep in the forest, in a treehouse so high up that at night, she could work by the light of the moon.
Anomie’s laboratory was filled with many mysterious vessels and instruments, and books were stacked everywhere. The shelves were lined with dozens of curious wooden boxes, none much bigger than your hand. Some were decades old, and worn smooth from handling. Others seemed newer, their cedar sides still fragrant. Each was fashioned with a tiny lock that opened by the same key—a key which Anomie wore on a silver chain around her neck. On the ancient oak table where she performed her distillations sat a gleaming glass alembic beside a bright copper basin that bubbled with something dark and smoky. From the table to the wide window that opened to the night sky, the floor glittered with a permanent trail of stardust.
Every evening at dusk, Anomie set about her work. She paced slowly alongside her rows of wooden boxes, lightly tapping the shelves with her fingertips. She walked and watched and waited and listened until eventually, one of the boxes would begin to shake and jingle, like a bell. Anomie would take the box down then, and bring it over to her table. Slipping off her silver necklace, she’d unlock the box and measure a small amount of its contents into the alembic. She needed to use more or less, depending on what was in the box. Lies and broken promises were potent enough to use in very small measure. So too was cruelty. In fact, some of Anomie’s most glorious stars had begun as the tiniest drops of unkindness and selfishness. Heartbreak and loss, on the other hand, required larger doses as time went on. These were what the oldest, most touch-worn boxes contained, and Anomie’s hands knew every groove and knot of them by heart.
Anomie distilled the sadness contained in the boxes down to a single teardrop. Sometimes this step took just a few minutes. Other times, it took days. When the tear appeared, she purified it with clarity and perspective. She then added an owl’s hoot of wisdom and, variously, a tail’s wag of love or a frost’s bite of revenge. These she combined with varying measures of humor and grace, depending on what sort of star she intended to make. Anomie could make every kind of star you can imagine, from red-hot supergiants, luminous and unmissable, to cool blue dwarves, softly pulsing at the edge of the horizon.
But there was one ingredient so mysterious that even Anomie didn’t know what it was. She didn’t know whether it was something she could pull from the earth with her own hands, or something she could catch in the wind. She’d never been able to see it, much less capture and bottle it. It was just a kind of silent, invisible magic that somehow always manifested in her recipe at exactly the right moment, in exactly the right amount.
Anomie worked slowly and with great concentration. Always she began with the same incantation:
Athanor and aludel
Mary’s Bath of tears
Crucible of words will fill
The days, the months, the years
Heavens bright, moon’s delight
Pain we hold so dear
Crush to dust this you must
For starlight, true and clear
She occasionally made mistakes, and would have to dump her potion’s contents out the window and start over. And she was not successful every night. Often, despite her best attempts, there would be no star. Sometimes the hurt—no matter how thoroughly she dissolved it—simply would not produce a single tear. Other times the tears were there, but the mysterious invisible element was not.
But on those nights when everything was just right, when the calculations were sound and the formula correct, Anomie created stars of dazzling depth and light. They burst into existence with blinding force, always catching Anomie off guard, for she never could predict the exact moment it would happen. And when it did, she had but a moment to look at it, before the star zoomed out the window and up into the sky.
It was rewarding but exhausting work, that somehow both replenished her spirit and depleted it. She knew that she was brightening the night sky. She liked to think that all across the land, people would look up every evening and enjoy the sight of something she’d helped make a little more beautiful. She hoped that seeing her stars made them feel a little less alone, and reminded them that they all slept under the same vast—and sometimes terrifying—darkness. So despite the mixed emotions it gave her, Anomie kept at her alchemy, making hundreds of stars over many years.
Then one day, the wooden boxes suddenly stopped ringing. She walked amongst them as usual, waiting and listening for one of them to call to her. Nothing happened. Gently she shook each in turn. Perhaps they were empty? But no, she could tell from the weight of them that they were not. She waited a few days and tried again. Nothing. She waited longer. Still the boxes stayed silent.
Anomie sat at her great ancient table and thought aloud. “Surely the sky is full enough of stars anyway? Surely I can stop and it won’t matter?” But the thought of doing so made her feel a little lost and hollow, and it was with a heavy heart that she fell into a fitful sleep.
Now, you’ll remember that Anomie’s laboratory was deep in the forest, hidden at the top of a very tall tree. Well, it just so happened that a clever old crow lived in this same tree. Everyone knows that crows love shiny things, so you’ll not be surprised to learn that he had enjoyed many years of seeing Anomie’s stars come streaking out of her window and into the night sky. Unbeknownst to Anomie, he’d been watching her alchemic endeavors with great affection and admiration for a very long time. And he had grown worried when so much time had passed with no new stars, so he’d been keeping a closer eye on the laboratory. The crow had heard what Anomie had said that day.
The crow kindly waited for her to have a nice long nap. Then he flew through the treehouse window and onto the distilling table. He hopped around a bit, peering in the copper basin and tapping curiously at the alembic with his beak. Anomie, who was sleeping only lightly, awoke to the sight of him and jumped in her chair, startled.
“Don’t be afraid,” said the crow. “I’ve been watching this operation you have up here for quite a while, and I’m mightily impressed.” His black eye twinkled. “You’re a one-woman star factory.”
Anomie, who’d always been surrounded by magical things, wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear the crow talk. She was completely at ease, as if she’d known him all her life.
“Not anymore,” she replied. “The magic’s gone. Dried up, I suppose. Nothing speaks to me anymore.”
“Nonsense,” said the crow. “You’ve got thousands of those little magic boxes. I bet there’s hundreds of them that would be ringing themselves right off the shelves, if you gave them a chance. I never see you up there, though.”
Anomie frowned, confused. “What are you talking about? I don’t have nearly that many. And what do you mean, ‘up there’? Up where?”
The crow cocked his head. He hopped a little closer to Anomie. “You really don’t know, do you? Why, girl, you’ve got an entire library in here!” And with that, he took wing and flew up to the treehouse ceiling, turning in gentle spirals as he flew higher and higher. Only, as Anomie watched in amazement, she saw that there was no ceiling to her laboratory, and that in fact, as far as her eye could see, the walls just went up, up, up in an endless sea of shelves—all filled with thousands and thousands of small wooden boxes.
Anomie could hardly believe what she saw. “What is this? What are all they? Why did I never see them before?”
“Have a look for yourself!” called the crow. He landed atop a polished cherrywood ladder with shiny brass casters attached to the shelves. Anomie laughed, delighted but somehow unsurprised at this moment, which felt like strangely familiar magic that she’d simply forgotten existed. She started climbing. As she got closer, she saw that most of the boxes were old—much, much older than any of her others. And something about them was different, though she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what. And as she gazed up at the expanse of them, she knew the crow was right. They would ring for her. Maybe not right now. Maybe not tomorrow. But if she was patient, and if she persevered—if she listened in a way that maybe she’d never listened before—they would ring for her. And best of all, she could tell just by sight that her key would open them. They were hers alone to unlock.
- - -
A few months later, the crow stopped by Anomie’s laboratory to see how she was getting on. He chose the evening of a new moon for his visit, since he wanted his black body to disappear against the darkness. He had no wish to interrupt her work, which he knew was new and different and challenging. He perched on a nearby branch and watched.
Inside, Anomie was bent over her table, making notes for a formula. She’d been testing the contents of some of the new boxes and she was excited about the results. She was confident she could still make stars. The same basic steps would be required, and the same fundamental additives. All her concentration and care would still be required, too. But this recipe relied on something other than tears for its base—something even more ephemeral, but much more precious. She wasn’t quite sure how it would all pan out, and what her new stars would be like. But she was determined to try and make something even more beautiful than she ever had.
“I just hope that when the time comes,” she mused softly to herself, “that mysterious, secret ingredient is there for me.”
Outside on his branch, the crow hopped left, then right again quickly—the crow equivalent of a dog wagging its tail. For he knew that mysterious, secret ingredient would be there for Anomie, just when she needed it. He could guarantee it, in fact.