For I Have Loved the Stars
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"'I'm only telling you the truth,' he said. 'If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.'"
-Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
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Chapter Two
Walking home felt less like a death march and more like a stride toward inevitability. The inevitable thing being finding an adult that actually had a grasp for global affairs and, at the very least, reliable knowledge of the town of the country we resided in.
He's crazy, Valerie thought irritably, kicking every rock in her path. Absolutely gone in his old age!
After Nitinsan's kind, condescending, probably inaccurate explanation, Valerie quickly finished her food (while keeping an ear on Nitinsan, who kept trying to explain) with no more questions and all but flew out the door, childish mannerisms be damned.
She spent a few steps wondering if the reason her mother and Nitinsan stopped talking a year ago was because he began to get delusions. He looked about fifty or sixty years old but the brain could be a very fickle thing, she knew.
Valerie bit her lip harshly in vain when she felt her eyes well up with tears.
I was depending on that man to be stable more than I knew, she thought miserably, what the hell am I supposed to do now?
She crouched down on the worn grassy trail, pressing her closed eyes against her knees before the tears could fall, and wrapped her hands around her ankles tightly.
What am I supposed to do now, she wondered again hopelessly. She couldn't, no, she refused to step back in her neighbor's house with the previous reliance she had today. He could only be relied on for meals and nothing more. She didn't want to entertain the notion that she was reborn in some far off future where the whole world agreed to rename the oceans after inaccurate directions.
And why in God's name would they call one of them the Grand Line?
Valerie only knew three people in this life. One walked out this morning and another spoke garbage in a factual tone. The only other person she could consider talking to was her father, a man who punched a whole in the wall and went to work drunk just that morning.
The only certainty she had was that this was, in fact, an island. Mentioned by her mother this morning and confirmed with Nitinsan this afternoon. It was only two sources but it was better than blindly following Nitinsan's words solely because he spoke confidently.
A Southern Ocean island with native English speakers wasn't much to go on but it was all she had. Technology is minimal, with the most advanced thing she's seen yet being electricity, the refrigerator, and the gas stove, which didn't say much. Clothing seemed modern as well, by her standards.
Nitinsan was a beekeeper, she's seen for herself over a year ago standing by her mother's side the bee suit he hung by the backdoor, seen the glass bottles baring his name that used to regularly reside in their refrigerator. Her mother stayed at home with her while her father's job remained a mystery-
He went to work drunk this morning, Valerie jerked to standing and began walking quickly back to her house. I knew he was drunk but could he get fired for it? How would he pay for my schooling or the bills if-
Valerie realized with a slow rising dread that if her father didn't become reliable within the next week, she would have to do something-
I can't get a job at four years old!
There had to be a town nearby. Either past Nitinsan's house or her own. She could at least buy groceries-
No money!
She slowed to a stop in front of her house, staring blankly at the wooden front door, wondering what she would even do once she went inside.
Her mother had been teaching her, or re-teaching her really, how to write. Valerie easily played it off as new knowledge with her shaky penmanship and crooked scrawl. For the past few months she'd quietly spend her days sitting down practicing while her mother sat next to her at the kitchen table either cooking or writing in her journal, which was always too high for Valerie to make sense of any words.
Wasting time pretending to learn to read and write held no more benefits at this point.
Valerie jerked out of her thoughts when she felt her front tooth wobble where it was biting into her lower lip.
Great. On top of losing my mother and trust in adults, I'm about to start losing my teeth.
She slowly made her way into the house, avoiding the darker patch of floorboards under her feet which she knew creaked.
While passing her parents room down the dark hallway, she darted a glance inside and saw her mother's clothes thrown everywhere and the mattress halfway on the floor. Her makeup was strewn open and the foundation and blush alone were almost certainly staining the carpet.
(Valerie spent a long second grieving the makeup on behalf of her old self, remembering how she once considered herself decent makeup guru. She hoped in vain that her mother hadn't spent too much money on it.)
Keeping a wary eye out for her father now, she went to her room and tried closing the door as silently as possible with an exhale.
Valerie definitely wasn't going to that man for questions. Their only interactions so far only involved an occasional hair ruffle and him setting her plate at the table for her. At this point it was best to assume he didn't love her so much as held a vague fondness for her.
She kicked off her sandals and laid facedown on the bed, slightly turning her head so her lip didn't press into her loose tooth, which was an uncomfortable phenomenon she hoped would be over with soon.
Her throat felt tight again but she didn't fight her body's urges this time. She allowed her tears to fall and mouth to screw up as she finally cried out the day's stress, sobbing quietly into her pillow.
At some point she realized she was thinking of every bad thing in her new life, from her loose tooth to the lack of curtains in her room.
They weren't silly thoughts though, she knew. One good cry for every bad thing would ensure she didn't have extra baggage in a few months until she decided to cry again. Her last life was pretty mentally stable, her college years were excluded, in her opinion. Her crying method was simple but effective.
Have a good cry and move the hell on.
So when her body ran out of tears and was done gasping for breath, she flipped her pillow over to the dry side and rolled over to stare at her ceiling.
Valerie knew she couldn't risk finding a town being as young as she was. To do so without knowledge of the island's residents was just asking to be abducted. As much as it made her stomach churn, she'd have to suck it up and return to Nitinsan's house for dinner tonight armed with questions.
He worked from home so he would probably be free to show her the town if she somehow managed to put him in a good mood as they ate and she asked nicely. If he said no, she would have to try again at breakfast tomorrow.
She hoped he would say yes. Her only other option without unknown repercussions would be to ask her father, who worked everyday if he hadn't gotten fired for showing up drunk that morning.
Her eyelids felt heavy. A glance at the clock on the wall told her it was a bit past three o'clock, her usual napping time, which probably explained why she was so negative.
Valerie reached down near her feet to pull her soft red blanket over herself, and told herself things would make more sense once she was well rested.
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Almost two hours later, Valerie found herself trudging back to Nitinsan's house. She did feel better, but could only blame her four-year-old body for not ever having experienced emotional stress recently. Today was the most hopeless she had felt since her rebirth, when she realized all the work she put into succeeding in her last life was for nothing.
It wasn't the first time she'd ever thought about how useless being reborn was. At the start of this life she'd spend hours laying down, mourning everything she was and could have been. Had she known rebirth was what came next then she would have spent more time researching religions that clearly knew what was going on there. Some sort of karma had to come into play, right?
With that in mind, she reached Nitinsan's door and knocked three times.
Only a few seconds passed before the door opened. Valerie watched him look around the yard for a moment before darting a glance down at her with an embarrassed smile.
"Valerie! I wasn't expecting to see you so soon." He greeted, stepping to the side to allow her to pass into the house.
She walked in and made her way to one of the couches in his living room, sitting as close to the arm rest as possible, briefly irritated at that her feet barely hung off the edge. "There's nothing to do at home without mom there and dad is at work still," she said, watching him make his way to the recliner.
A few beats passed before he nodded. "About that…Valerie, I want you to know that you're always welcome here, even if I'm not home. It might get a little lonely in your house now and I understand that," he told her slowly, rubbing the back of his greying hair. "I'll talk to your father later so he…won't worry about where you are."
The first thing Valerie felt was a sort of hand shaking relief. She didn't have to get a job! It would be easier this way as well, to avoid her father for the next week while he raged at her mother!
The next thing she felt was guilt at her prior raging opinion of him.
"Thank you," she said, and hoped none of her shame showed on her face.
Nitinsan nodded along easily. "Anyway," he said cheerfully, all of his prior seriousness gone in a second, "I'm not starting on dinner for an hour or two. I don't actually have anything I think you would enjoy but I have some picture books in my book room."
He stood up and gestured for Valerie to follow him. She meekly followed, eyeing the old newspaper printings framed on the walls. There were old sepia photographs and several framed Dead or Alive Wanted posters with odd looking men, either silly or mean looking. A pang of nostalgia hit her, remembering old Snapchat filters.
She wondered if those were Nitinsan's friends in their youth.
Nitinsan opened a door and flicked on the light to a room that probably held enough books for a small town library. Bookshelves lined every wall, books pushed horizontally on top of stacks where there was no more room for them. The light green carpet had splotches of ink stains and the room was overly warm from the lack of blinds over the window.
The room was the most comfortable one she'd been in…in a very long time.
Valerie watched Nitinsan pull down books from the shelves, seemingly at random, and put them carefully in two piles on the ground. After they were as high as his knees, he sat down next to them, sitting with his legs crossed, and patted the ground next to him.
Valerie remembered her abuelo struggling to get out of chairs, and complaining about his back when he would try to get on them them. He had only been fifty years old when his bones began to deteriorate. She'd never seen him sit on the floor in her whole life, or even considered that he could. She looked at Nitinsan's defined muscles the smile lines around his mouth and wondered how young he was, to be able to sit on the ground with ease.
Do you lift?
She sat next to him on her knees and pulled a dark green text only half an inch thick from the top next to her called Ocean Monsters: A Brief Guide to Grand Line Beasts. There was no name of the author from what she could see.
Grand Line was the name of one of his oceans, if she remembered correctly.
"Do you know how to read? I picked books that had more pictures than words just in case." Nitinsan said, picking up a book several inches thick.
"Yes. Mom finished teaching me before she left," she told him, and it was easier to not be offended at such questions when he offered up his own home up for shelter. Not that she'd ever say it out loud (not that she'd ever admit to many things out loud), but she felt a little warm at the thought.
"Good, good. If you run into a big word just ask me and I'll help you out," he told her, and she wondered at his kindness. "That book there has some pretty scary pictures. It's also the most up to date book on Sea Kings in the market. It came out just last month."
People can rule the ocean now? I thought this was a book on fish, not kings.
Valerie cracked open the book in the middle, telling herself to keep an open mind. She could afford to indulge him until he was confirmed by another source.
The first picture was of a hand drawn eel-like creature. It's white bulbous eyes were its most terrifying and dominant trait. Long, screw driver like teeth adorned its mouth and a vivid green beard fell in waves on its jaw.
The words next to it said it was forty feet long.
She'd never heard of it before. Surely she would have heard of such a creature when she went through an ocean documentary phase when she was a high school senior! Or even in passing from a friend that was trying to major in marine biology!
It even had a scientific name! Scorpaena plumieri mystes, it read. An official creature that was recognized by the scientific community and she'd never even…
Valerie quickly flipped the book to the front page, looking at the small print desperately for a publication year. Skimming past the publication company and oh, there's the author, her eyes darted to-
"Nitinsan, you said this book was up to date?" she asked, staring at the book.
"Hm? Yes. I read it just this morning. They only added four new species, from what I understand." His voice was muffled and she glanced up to see the book directly in front of his nose, squinting slightly.
He clearly needed glasses but- "Nitinsan what year is it?"
Nitinsan pulled the book away from his face and looked down at the page her book was on. "Oh? Yeah, that's a pretty big number. How high can you count?"
She wobbled the tooth in her mouth irritably, wishing she could bounce her leg in the position she was in. "Nitinsan, I can count to 100," she said honestly, trying to ignore the pounding in her ears.
He smiled at her, in what she knew could be interpreted at encouraging, but she could only see as the fake smiles people sometimes gave children for accomplishing basic skills.
He's trying, which is more than what anybody else has done for you, she berated herself.
"Wow, that's a lot!" Oh my god!
"Nitinsan, what number is this?" Valerie asked, after a few seconds of praying for her heartbeat to slow. She turned the book towards him and pointed at the number.
"You don't have to call me Nitin-san, you know? Just Nitin is fine at this point," he said, squinting at the page for a few seconds before sighing and pulling it towards his face.
Aren't you too old for nicknames?
"That's right. It's the year," he said, and handed her the book back.
You're mixing up our conversation, Valerie wanted to say, but refrained.
"Can you read it to me? I don't know that number," she tried again.
She had read theories before of time travel. The three different theories of how it can change the future, if it did. How going back and killing Hitler could change nothing, with fate reassigning another person Hitler's destiny. Or how the protagonist went back and killed him as a baby but faced charges of child slaughter when he returned to the present, because he prevented the war and killed a person innocent of crime.
The truth was that she could read the number easily. The truth was she began assuming she was reborn in some far off future. The truth was-
"Oh! It's 1508-"
- she hadn't faced the possibility that reincarnation could work backwards.
Valerie quietly took the book back from Nitinsan, flipping through the pages, looking as each monster became uglier than the last as the pages progressed.
They had scientific names. Measured scale, teeth, and eyeball sizes. Imperial, she noted. The locations named the nearest island, rather than the roughest coordinates available.
Dismissing the book and picking up another, she immediately looked for the publishing date.
The Florian Triangle: The Most Mysterious Disappearances. Released in 1478 by Driv Thorot.
An early version of the Bermuda Triangle, maybe?
Assuming it was the sixteenth century…Nitinsan house, as well as her own, had electricity. Valerie could easily admit she didn't know jack about anything until the late 1800s. In high school and college, she preferred math and science before history. Her friends called her a god send and allowed her to cheat off their history and english homework. Technology is far more advanced than the 1500's called for.
Alternate universes can exist…
She skimmed through the book for a few minutes. It went on about how merchants, pirates, and Marines were all equal there. Just lost souls and blah blah blah.
Valerie shut it loudly, startling Nitinsan beside her. "What's a pirate?" she asked.
He looked, in her opinion, a little too happy at the question. "A pirate is a man who lives freely on the oceans under the sun!" he said, but paused under her blank look. "That is to say, a criminal who doesn't listen to the law," he said in a monotone, looking like he didn't believe his own words, before bursting into laughter, presumably at himself or his words. She wondered if it was an inside joke?
It was very out of character however, and made her uncomfortable how quickly he switched moods.
"Nitinsan, I'm hungry. Can we eat?"
"Hm? Oh sure, we can read together later."
The words made her happy but she focused on keeping his thoughts on her and not the pirate thing which made his mood swing.
Pirates existed in this age then, did they?
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Author's Notes:
I promise you I researched the OP timeline based off Noland's notes. You can even check the OP wiki for confirmation. I even drew up a timeline to help me along!
Please review! I'm trying my hand at foreshadowing but I'm not sure how good it'll be for a while. I don't know what I'm doing wrong or right. Even a simple 'nice' will be enough encouragement! Thank you for reading!