Under A Thousand Stars

467.

Aurora had exactly four hundred and sixty-seven shotgun shells left. On nights when the loneliness became too much to bear, as the fire crackled and the wolves howled in the distance, she counted out each shell, hoping to quiet her racing mind. For now, she was on number 124.

She had started out with a full case: 500 shells. 500 chances to kill something- or someone. Now, on a small wooden shelf next to her fireplace, 21 shells lay, each tied to a tooth from the large game the individual bullet had been used to kill. 5 times she had missed. As for the other 7...

These were the thoughts she tried to escape. Aurora shook her head side to side viciously. No. NO. Stay away. She couldn’t remember their faces, but their shapes continuously moved towards her. A red sweatshirt. Black dress shoes. Corduroy pants. She had promised to do no harm, and it had been a promise she could not keep.

“Aurora. Look at me.” This memory, however, was as clear as a lake on a windless summer day. Henry’s normally cheery face had not once ounce of sunshine, and his typically gentle eyes looked black. Brow furrowed, he grabbed her hand as he locked his gaze with her own.

“Two warnings unless they charge. In that case, shoot first. Do not let anyone get within a 15-foot radius of the truck. They will take it, and they will kill you. It doesn’t matter if it’s one person or a family. You will survive if you have this truck, and you have to protect it no matter what.”

“Henry, I don’t...”

“Aurora.” One word from Henry silenced her. “You are strong, you are tough, you are capable. And you can do this. You must do this.

Henry pulled her close and Aurora nestled her head into his chest. Though his voice was steady, she could feel his heartbeat racing, betraying the calm he exuded before her.

“I have something for you.” Henry reached into his pocket and brought out a small leather box with a golden clasp. Inside the box was a golden locket, shaped like a heart. The front of the locket was engraved with an image of the big dipper, with tiny diamonds in place of each star. In the top right corner of the heart, a small hole was visible where the North Star should have been.

“This locket is a tracker. Unfortunately, the farthest range we could get is 300 miles, so it won’t connect us until we’re close enough. Once we are in the same 300-mile radius, this will make a low beep accompanied by a red light.” Henry pointed to hole. “You’ll see the light here. It’ll flash every 10 minutes but speed up the closer we get to each other. You can turn off the sound in here.”

Henry opened the locket. The left half of the heart was flat with a tiny switch on the edge of the panel.

“The battery is behind here. It’s supposed to last for 60 years, but just in case I put two more in the truck. One’s in the emergency ammo kit, and one’s with the first aid supplies. They’re both taped to the back walls of the kits. This panel pops open so you can replace the battery if you must, but don’t mess with it if you can help it. The panel is a biometric scanner. We weren’t able to get a strong enough signal to make the trackers work for longer distances, but a very weak signal was possible to connect your tracker to mine.”

At this, Henry pulled a larger, oval locket out from inside his shirt.

“Once a day, place your thumb on the biometric scanner. When you do, it will send out a signal that has a range of 8,000 miles. It piggybacks off of the satellites that are left. At midnight, my tracker will beep if you’ve scanned your finger today, and it’ll do the same for yours if I’ve scanned mine. It only does it once a day so that we know when to check it, and if you’re in danger, you can turn off the sound by flipping the switch. This is the best I could do, but at least you’ll know I’m out there, and I’m ok, and I’ll know you’re ok too.”

Henry took a deep breath.

“It has also been programmed to work for your other fingers and all of your toes. Just in case.”

A silence fell between them, as they once more became aware of the heaviness of their reality, and the space and time that would soon part them.

“The whole locket is waterproof, so never take it off.”

Henry pointed to the right side of the heart. Set inside the heart was a small compass, with a red arrow and a green arrow.

“The red arrow always points North. The green arrow won’t move until the tracker goes off, and for now it will always sit pointing towards the N on the Compass. Once the tracker’s connected, the green arrow will point you towards me. Ok, one last thing.”

Henry opened the box again, lifted the velvet stand where the locket had sat to reveal another compartment, where a plain golden ring sat.

“This is your backup. If anything happens to your locket, put this on, and it will transmit the signal to me once we’re in a 100-mile range. You won’t be able to see where I am, but it will guide me to you. If I’m wearing the ring, but not the locket, the light will flash twice for every signal, and you’ll have to follow the compass to find me because I won’t know where you are. Wear this until you get to the North, and then hide it somewhere safe. But not so safe that even you can’t find it.”

Henry grinned at Aurora, and her heart skipped. Only Henry would be able to bring out a smile from her when things were so dire. Even now, thousands of miles and hundreds of days from that moment, his beautiful smile was ingrained in her mind. They had packed hundreds of items. Sutures. Antibiotics. Fishing hooks. Bows. Miles of Kevlar fishing line. Dozens of knives. 24 tarps. 30 pairs of waterproof boots. Never had Aurora been so grateful that her abnormally wide feet were the same size as Henry’s. They only needed one size. And in one box, tucked deep within the truck bed, they had packed heavy duty winter clothing and shoes for a child of every age before adulthood.

There it was. The reason why Aurora and Henry would have chosen such danger by separating amid war and chaos. Henry had sensed trouble coming in the years approaching that fateful day. They had met when Aurora was in medical school, and Henry was serving as a SEAL medic, and night and day was inadequate in terms of describing their differences. Aurora was the youngest of 3, raised in the city by a lawyer father and a socialite mother. Henry had been raised by his single father in a rural mountain town, and had learned to hunt, trap, fish, and live off the land of his ancestors. Their adoration for each other had covered their differences, as was their extraordinary ability to enter and adapt worlds different from their own. Soon Aurora had become an avid forager, identifying plants and bird watching to destress, while Henry assimilated with ease to cocktail parties and brunches with Aurora’s family and friends. Despite the stress of school, work, and deployments, life was peaceful- even more so when they moved back to Henry’s hometown as global tensions and unrest rose. Hidden away from the rest of the world, it seemed that nothing could touch them. Snow covered mountains and meadows of flowers continued to flourish, even as missiles destroyed cities and hundreds of thousands of lives in the lower country. But Henry had seen it coming. He had seen enough war to know when things were going to implode. So, two years before the first missile strike came, Henry began preparing. He taught Aurora how to hunt and trap, how to fell trees and build cabins by hand. Aurora grew stronger as they lifted weights and tree trunks, and Henry, with a black belt in several martial arts, trained her to protect herself. Aurora couldn’t understand what Henry saw, but her trust in him was unwavering, and with the same dedication she had applied to her career, she absorbed and practiced everything he taught her. Henry stockpiled everything they could possibly need into their truck, ready at any moment to go.

“Aurora, it’s Hallie.” Aurora had walked in the door from a house call. Jillian Paulson’s daughter had fallen, but it was just a sprain. Hospitals in their area had been closed for six weeks, so neighbors and friends called her when they needed medical care. Thank heavens she had become an ER doctor.

“She’s gone.”

Aurora felt her knees go weak as she sunk to the floor. Before she could even comprehend what was happening, her face was wet, covered in tears. Hallie was the wife of Henry’s best friend. Henry and Aaron had met when they were 7, had grown up together, enlisted together, and served together. Brothers wasn’t even a strong enough word to describe their bond. Hallie had been a bridesmaid in Aurora and Henry’s wedding. Hallie’s pregnancy was difficult, and they had gone to one of the last standing hospitals in the district, 8 hours away.

“Benji?”

“Hallie gave birth without trouble. But the hospital was bombed, and Hallie was in the wing that was directly hit. Aaron was with Benji in the nursery on the other side of the hospital, so they weren’t hurt. The area’s been raided, soldiers and guerilla groups are battling it out, and vandals are ransacking the city. Aaron called me from his SAT phone before it went dead, and he told me where he’s hiding. He’s armed, but he can’t get out alone while also carrying Benji.”

“So, you have to go.”

“I do. I can’t leave Aaron behind.”

“Alright. Tell me what to do.”

So they packed, and planned, and did their best to fit Aaron’s most needed items in with their supplies, with Henry hiding the rest of Aaron’s items and Aaron’s truck deep in the neighboring woods. He and Aaron would retrieve it on their way North, but in case anything was stolen, the most important items would go with Aurora. After equipping Aurora with a map, the locket, and the coordinates of the lake where they would meet, he was gone.

Now, Aurora curled into her sleeping bag after counting to 467 and stared at the wood stump she had been using as a makeshift table. On the table sat a photo album and two framed pictures from their wedding. One photo was of Aurora and Henry, the other was with their entire family. The last that Aurora had heard, her parents had fled the country on an oil tanker. That had been nearly a year ago, and Aurora couldn’t bear to think about what may have happened to them since then. Both her brothers had fled far south, into distant rainforests. Aurora wondered if she would ever see them again.

It took Aurora 3 weeks to find her way to the lake. She had nearly been robbed twice, and it was then that she had done the unthinkable- ending another human life. Most of those days she had felt as though she were existing in a body and a world that were not her own, but she knew that she had to press on for Henry. Henry had spent every summer out here with his father as a boy, and he knew of old ranger trails where a truck could pass through. The trail ended three miles before reaching the lake. It had taken Aurora 10 days to find a good campsite, a month to build her cabin, and another 15 days to carry their supplies to her cabin. She hunted when the opportunity presented itself but focused first on building her shelter. Amongst their supplies had been dozens of MREs, but she only ate one if she had been unable to find food elsewhere. They would be needed in the winter.

She had arrived in August, and now it was March. Winter had come with a ferocity that she could never have imagined, but Aurora had been ready. Several months before they had parted ways, Henry had given Aurora a leather-bound book of instructions for any possible scenario he could think of that could happen in the wilderness. Entries ranged from “How to Skin a Bear” to “Recipe for Porcupine Stew”. This book, along with several other survival and plant identification books, sat protected in a plastic box in the corner of the cabin. She had survived. Her sleeping bag now lay atop a bear pelt, and a musk ox hide lay on the floor. The meat and fish she had preserved had helped her get through the winter without using all her emergency food supplies, and she had spent the coldest months learning to sew by the fireplace.

It had been late December when the midnight alerts on the locket stopped. There had been endless tears and prayers, but the locket had stayed silent. Every night, when the locket should have beeped, Aurora went out of her cabin and looked at that glorious night sky. There, under the lights for which she was named, and under a sea of a thousand stars, she wished and begged over and over.

Please bring Henry back to me.

Aurora was almost comfortable when she realized she hadn’t gone outside that night. Exhausted, she dragged herself out of her sleeping bag, and opened her door just a crack, just enough to see the stars. Before her she saw the Big Dipper, and Polaris, the North Star, shining in all its brilliance.

Please.

Aurora retreated into the warmth of her cabin and her sleeping bag. She had nearly fallen asleep when her dreams were disturbed.

Beep Beep.

She shot up, awake in an instant. She grabbed her flashlight and shone it on the compass. Sure enough, the green arrow was pointing South-East. But was it real? Had she imagined it? Could the compass just be malfunctioning?

The ten minutes felt like ten years. But then it came again. The sound she had spent over 8 months waiting to hear.

Beep Beep.

Henry.

He had returned to her at last.