Stars Fall On
“This is it,” Alex said to me. We walked through the huge double doors, leaving the cavernous lobby of the opera house dark and cool behind us. It was the last day. We had finished everything, we had fixed the resonance issue in the lobby, the sound in the hall was perfect. Outside, the sun was beginning to set, and the hush of the evening in our neighborhood was starting to fall as people began heading home to spend their quiet hours in their places. The sky was just beginning to turn into the pink sunset that we always got.
Suddenly, it felt to me as if the ground lurched beneath my feet. I almost stumbled from the scrambled velocity, gripping the door in an attempt to stand upright.
“Autumn?” Alex asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine!” I exclaimed, startled. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That weird thing that just happened to the ground.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just locking the door and then suddenly you just fell over, like the ground was moving too fast for you to stay up.”
"Yeah, I’d say that was an accurate assessment.” I steadied myself upright again. Blinking, I turned my face to the setting sun, which was rapidly going down. It was sinking faster than I had ever seen it before, pacing itself quickly through the motions of turning rose and blue. The street lamps flicked on all at once, not one by one like they normally did. I furrowed my brows, and looked at my hands, the ground upon which I stood, and then again at the sky.
In that short time the darkness had come, and the sky was littered with stars, the galaxies stretching out lazily across the sky, brighter than I had ever seen them in the city.
“Do you see that?” I asked, pointing to the sky.
“See what?”
“All those stars. I’ve never seen them like that before. Usually the light pollution kills them but I can see every single one, and they seem to be spinning overhead, rising like the sun does.”
“Where?”
“Up there!” I said, pointing. They were breathtaking in a way I could never describe, cold and dancing. They were a hundred thousand little jewels, points of life in the sky, dynamic but unchanging, and if you looked closely they seemed to have different colors - blues, oranges, violets. They flooded across the sky, and the longer I looked at them the brighter they became, the lower they looked, and the more intense they shone.
“Oh my God. Autumn.”
“The stars.” I breathed.
“I have never seen anything like that here before.”
“I know.”
We stood there, watching the sky as it seemed to fall, watching the innumerable stars come down to meet us here in Hel.
“I feel, Alex, like we are rushing up to meet them.”
“No, they’re staying there, up overhead.” He sounded breathless, awed.
“Alex, I know we are moving. I know we are.” The ground seemed to lurch again. “We are moving upwards, and spinning. This isn’t normal. Something’s wrong here.”
“I don’t feel that, but those stars...”
And at that moment I knew time, the way it worked in Hel. Everything Loki had told me on the train made sense, and I could see why it was dangerous to know. I knew how this realm danced and shook through the universe and I knew where we were in relation to everything else out there, to Asgard and Earth, the place that held everything I had ever wanted to know about myself.
We were the top, and Loki’s explanation about the realm falling over, needing to be rewound, that was all happening. And because I knew and understood it I could feel Hel lurching beneath my feet, the stars swinging up and over us as the whole place fell sideways. And if I timed it right, I instinctively knew, I could mutiny, jump ship. Catch those stars. I could go home or visit the other realms. But people like Alex, and the man in the cafe nursing his coffee and reading a book in yellow glow of the lights inside would never know and never notice. To them Hel was it. There was no way out of this eternity. I was terrified, feeling the world come to the close of it’s cycle of gyroscopic motion, falling sideways. I felt sick, and I wanted to reach out and catch one of those tiny, pulsing points of life and let it throw me, like a slingshot out of Hel, out of the eternal days, and back to the place where they wrote poetry about love and time and desolation, but also of hope and the magnitude of love.
I glanced at the man through the glass of the window, then at Alex, and finally the sky again. Alex’s eyes hadn’t left the cosmos spinning over head, the points of light dancing closer and closer.
How had I never known this before? How had I never caught the sickening thud of the realm of the dead spinning out of control. How had I never known that? Who would rescue us?
And then, suddenly, the heavens above went white, with a flash of light so bright and blinding that Alex and I both howled with pain and covered our eyes with our hands. Similar cries went up from the other people on the street. People began to pour out of their homes to see what was the matter.
And then, seconds later, there was the sound of the universe cracking in two, a noise sharper and less kind than thunder. It reverberated through the street, the glass in the buildings shook, and a few store fronts crumbled into shards on the street.
“Autumn.”
“Alex.”
“What was that?”
I paused to think and then realized I knew. Every possible scenario went through my mind as soon as it had happened and I stumbled upon the truth. I knew the irrevocable, beautiful truth behind the noise, the light, the temporary shattering of the universe of this realm. It was Loki’s exquisite and sublime escape plan. Hel, the spinning top, had finally teetered, rocked back and forth, and then capsized. As Hel dashed itself upon the forces of the universe Loki had gathered all the energy, kinetic and valuable to a god trying to leave, and had found his way out. His timing was impeccable.
I looked at the stars as they began to recede back into the sky, feeling the gentle hand picking up Hell, setting us to rights, setting us spinning again, winding up the top for another infinite number of years, years that I knew I would quietly begin to count.
“Autumn,” Alex whispered again. “What was that?”
“I don’t know, Alex.” I lied blankly, looking up. The stars were so small now, just the tiny ordinary points of light they had always been. The street was filled with people milling about, chatting, hypothesizing and theorizing about what had just happened. I felt cold, despite the warmth of the evening and my heart beat wildly.
“Alex, I think I need to go home.”
“Do you want me to walk you there?”
“No, it’s so busy outside nothing can happen to me.”
“Ok. Can you let me know if you make it? Call me or something?”
“Yeah, I will.”
I pushed my way into the crowd on the street, disappearing into the multitude. The only word on my lips was too dangerous to utter so I let my heartbeat pound out the rhythm of his name.
“I hope you are doing okay.” I whispered to no one.
I stopped pushing my way through the masses and looked up again, willing the stars to fall down on my head again. In the distance one star glowed brighter than the rest, a faint glimmer of green up in the heavens, competing with the lights of the city.
“I hope you made it home.”