The Kissing Stars Read online

  “That was Amy. It’s the signal.”

  “Signal?”

  “The stars are out.”

  The sudden bustle of activity below told Gabe the young man probably wasn’t talking about the evening star or something else that mundane. For the first time in years, Gabe was tempted to lift his gaze to the heavens to investigate the matter himself. He couldn’t do it.

  He followed the younger man to the ground, wincing when the colonel trumpeted right next to his ear. “All right, already,” he said “I think everyone has heard your signal.”

  For the next few minutes he watched the Aurorians’ bizarre behavior in wonder. The colonel shoved the trumpet into Gabe’s hands then dashed for his cabin. Seconds later he reappeared carrying a pair of divining rods. Twinkle and Tess ran from the communal kitchen to their houses. In a few short minutes, Twinkle reappeared wearing a purple and green gypsy skirt, white blouse, a turquoise turban, and enough jewelry to open a shop. In her hands she cradled a crystal ball.

  Tess emerged right after Twinkle. She hadn’t changed her clothes, but she now carried a small leather valise. “She packed?” Gabe muttered. “What? Does she think these stars are taking her to study Saturn’s rings in person or something?”

  Considering the company she kept, she might be eating a little loco weed mixed with her oatmeal after all.

  Without a word to him, they hurried toward the trail leading up out of the canyon toward the hill they called Lookout Peak which rose higher than Paintbrush Mountain. Gabe propped the trumpet against the wall of Tess’s cabin and headed out after them. A few steps down the path, he heard footsteps coming up fast behind him. Simultaneously, he caught a strong whiff of bay rum.

  “Hey!” he hollered as Jack barreled into him.

  “Sorry. Didn’t see you.”

  He tried to dart around, but Gabe caught his arm. “Hold on, there, Jack. Real quick now before the toilet water fumes knock me out, care to tell me what has you in such an all-fired hurry? I thought you were one of the sensible ones in this crowd.”

  Jack wasn’t putting up with any delay. He shrugged off Gabe’s hold. “I told you. It’s been three weeks.”

  “So?”

  “So I finally get to be with my wife again.”

  “Be with your wife?”

  “Sex, Montana! I’m not like you. I don’t go a decade without making love with my wife.” With that, he was gone.

  And not a moment too soon, to Gabe’s way of thinking. Scowling, he shoved his hands in his pockets and continued up the trail. What did these spooklights have to do with sex? Just how did the colonel use those divining rods of his with stars? What would he find when he reached the top of the hill? An orgy?

  He wouldn’t put it past Twinkle, but not Tess. She hadn’t changed that much. Of course, he wouldn’t have expected her to share intimate details about their marriage with her friends, either. The Tess he’d known a dozen years ago would never have spilled those particular celibacy beans.

  This Tess apparently didn’t think twice about it. At the end of his first day in Aurora Springs when he went looking for a place to sleep, she’d made sure everyone knew he’d be staying in her spare bedroom, not her own. The men of the village had offered him sympathetic looks. Twinkle’s and Amy’s expressions had told him he deserved what he had coming.

  Small town life. Where everyone knew your business better than you did. “Hell.”

  Gabe followed the sound of excited voices to the top of the hill. Instead of an orgy he found his wife standing behind a telescope making notations in a notebook. Jack and Amy were headed back down the hill by a different path, walking hand in hand. Jack held a quilt tucked under one arm. The colonel held his rods to the sky. Twinkle appeared to be conjuring, her crystal ball set atop a makeshift table, her hands outstretched over it as she gazed out over the West Texas plain.

  Then he heard a sound that stopped him in his tracks. Tess was laughing, that delighted, delightful music she’d once shared with him. Back then, it made him feel ten feet tall. Now it twisted his heart. He’d never thought to hear that particular song again.

  As always, her laughter cast a spell over him, drew him like the sparkle of moonlight on water. “What is it?” he asked.

  She turned. Her blue eyes glowed. Her smile shined like a sun in the gathering dusk. “Look at the colors. Look at them dance!”

  “What colors?”

  “The lights, Gabe. The Kissing Stars.” Tess laughed again and reached for his hand. “Look. You have to look at them.”

  His heart seemed to stop as a bittersweet yearning filled him. Her laughter, the music. Happiness lost long ago. His mouth went dry as sandpaper.

  Maybe he could do it. Maybe now was the time, here with Tess at his side. Maybe now was the moment to lay the ghosts to rest.

  Gabe drew a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. Then, swallowing the sudden lump in his throat, he tightened his grip on Tess’s hand and slowly lifted his eyes above the horizon.

  “Do you see them?” Tess asked. “Aren’t they beautiful? Tonight they’re blue and green. Some nights they’re red, and other times yellow. I think blue is my favorite, though. What do you think?”

  He stared at the sly for a long minute without speaking. Then abruptly he released her hand and turned away, headed for the path leading down to Aurora Springs. “What do I think? I think you’re all lunatics, that’s what.”

  Emotion churned like sour milk in his gut. Gabe had faced an old ghost and look what it had got him. Nothing. He’d looked into the sky. He’d searched for Tess’s Kissing Stars.

  And he hadn’t seen a damned thing.

  A MULTITUDE of stars pulsed in a black velvet sky, aiding the yellow glow of the lantern lighting Tess’s way down Lookout Peak. She made the trip alone at half past two in the morning, the others having sought their beds hours earlier. The chilled night air nipped at her skin, but the excitement thrumming through her blood helped keep her warm. It has been, she thought an exhilarating night.

  For months now she’d mapped the paths the Kissing Stars took as they bounced and hovered over the distant desert, and she’d come to suspect she’d uncovered a pattern to their movements. Tonight’s show had blown that theory to bits.

  For the first hour, the lights played back and forth across the flats in their customary north-to-south, east-to-west pattern at a distance of approximately five to ten miles from Lookout Peak. An exact measurement remained impossible to obtain because whenever anyone went out onto the desert to track them, they acted like mirages, migrating farther away. Always moving in pairs, the lights had separated, then come together, fusing, then splitting again. Hence the name, the Kissing Stars.

  But shortly after the second hour began, the lights acted in an altogether unusual manner. They moved close to Lookout Peak. Extremely close. Within half a mile, Tess would guess. And then they’d hovered. For seven straight hours they hovered, never moving, never once changing color, but slowly growing steadily bigger. Six individual stars, glowing an angry, orange color.

  The effect on the Aurorians had been significant. Colonel Wilhoit charged his divining rods until his arms gave out. He left the mountain elated, certain that now his tools finally contained enough starpower to locate his dream. Twinkle had spent hours hovered over her glass globe, positive that this time enough energy flowed into the sphere to call the individual spirits she wanted to summon. And finally at half past one, Jack and Amy had dragged through camp on their way home, exhausted but hopeful that the night’s efforts had achieved the desired results—the conception of the gifted child Amy’s dreams foretold.

  For her part, Tess spent the hours captivated by the stars’ unusual actions. She’d occupied her time by taking measurements and recording observations in her journal. And, despite her best intentions, wondering about Gabe. She didn’t know which to consider more of a puzzle—her husband or the Kissing Stars.

  Why had Gabe stormed off after looking at the lights? Surely th
e sight of the lights hadn’t reminded him of Billy’s death. A sky full of stars had shined above them that night; strange balls of fire didn’t bounce above the horizon. It was ludicrous to think the lights might have frightened Gabe, but they obviously disturbed him in some way. He’d all but kicked up dust in his rush back down the hill.

  His response proved to her how much her husband had changed. The Gabe Cameron she’d married would have stood and watched, enthralled, until the stars disappeared.

  Having reached the bottom of the trail down Lookout Peak, Tess sighed and firmly turned her attention away from her husband and back toward the Kissing Stars as she made her way into Aurora Springs. Intent upon the mystery, she paid little note to the fact that lamplight lit up her house. “A three week absence, then this unusual appearance,” she murmured aloud as she climbed her front steps. “I’ll need to go back through my books and see if I can find a reference to a similar phenomena.”

  Gabe’s gruff voice loomed from the porch swing. “First I want you to tell me about the lights.”

  Tess tripped on one of the steps and teetered, almost falling. “Gabe Cameron, you scared the stuffing out of me!”

  “Montana.”

  “Did you change it legally?”

  “Doesn’t matter. The name is Montana.”

  Orion, Aries, and Gemini, I’m not up for that name fight tonight. Tess smiled grimly and walked into her house. He followed her inside and right into her bedroom, something he’d never before dared.

  “Sorry I surprised you, Tess. Now tell me about these lights. Tell me what people see, what your studies have shown.”

  Tess lit her bedside lamp before turning to face him. He looks tired, she thought. Weariness shadowed his eyes and the slight slump to his shoulders was unusual. What was wrong with Gabe?

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and glared at her. “Talk to me. I want to know about these damned lights of yours.”

  The impatience reverberating through his voice reassured her, and a small seed of hope blossomed. He’d shown little interest in her work up until now and it had hurt her.

  “Tess?”

  “I’m trying to decide where to start.”

  “Try the beginning.”

  She smiled. “You’ll need to speak with the Apaches if you want to go that far back. I’m told their legends concerning the lights have been repeated for generations.”

  “You followed an Indian legend here?”

  “No.” She smiled. “Actually a friend sent a newspaper article about the lights to me. I had just finished my studies with Dr. Pierce, so it was perfect timing to begin a new project. We made the trip to this canyon after interviewing the rancher who first reported the lights. After seeing them for ourselves, we decided to settle here. We made the rancher an offer for his land and Aurora Springs was born.”

  “We? Who’s we? You and Twinkle?”

  She cursed her choice of pronouns and sidestepped the question. “Twinkle owns a large section. She was attracted by more than just the stars. Twinkle suffers respiratory difficulties and the climate here is good for her.”

  Gabe obviously didn’t want to hear about Twinkle’s health. “This rancher. What was it he saw?”

  “It was back in ‘83. Mr. Henderson was moving two thousand head of cattle through Snakeater Pass which is just south of here. One of his hands riding herd brought the lights to his attention. When I interviewed him he told me he saw strange, starlike flickers of light, and he assumed they were Apache campfires burning at the base of the distant mountains. But when he and his men went to investigate, they didn’t find a single sign of any Apache. For months afterward the stars appeared every night.”

  “But what was it that he saw? Just flickers?”

  Tess shook her head. “He saw the same thing then that we see now.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Usually something different than what I saw tonight,” she replied, her brow dipping in a perplexed frown as she recalled the evening’s entertainment. “It was after you were gone, Gabe. You saw the Kissing Light as colored spheres, like slow-bouncing balls, right? The tones were soft, more like distant stars than brilliant balls of fire. That’s what we see most often. But after you left, one of them did something I’d never seen before. It started swinging in an arc.” She made a motion with her hand like the rocker on a rocking chair to illustrate.

  Gabe walked over to her bed and sat down. He appeared attentive, but not at all pleased with her explanation.

  Her imagination caught with the retelling of the puzzle, Tess didn’t stop to wonder why. “Next it did a whole loop and another half loop, and then it stopped. It hung suspended for a moment before bursting into six small stars. Those stars in turn flashed a brilliant white and moved in close. They started growing and turned orange and hovered. They just hung there, Gabe, for hours. Growing bigger and brighter by the minute. It was truly the strangest thing, and it completely ruins a hypothesis I had developed about the phenomena.”

  Gabe dragged his hand down his jawline. “And the others. They saw the same thing?”

  She nodded. “All except for Andrew, of course. He came up the hill—against my instructions, I might add, since he’s still recovering. But Andrew never sees the lights.”

  Gabe’s hand fell back into his lap and he leaned forward. “He doesn’t?”

  “No. He only sees the horses. When the lights shine a herd of wild horses led by a beautiful white stallion sometimes comes out of the hills into the flats. It’s the only time any of us has ever seen the stallion. Andrew wants to catch the horse. He feels an affinity with it; some sort of connection. He’s determined to at least get close enough to touch it, even if they decide he shouldn’t try to keep it.”

  “They?”

  “He and the horse.”

  Gabe shook his head. “I’ll leave that be for now, but don’t you think the other is strange? That he doesn’t see these stars that the rest of you see, I mean.”

  Tess shrugged. “I think everything about these lights is strange. We don’t know what they are, Gabe. At this point we can’t say they’re not some type of optical trick that our eyes see when atmospheric conditions are a certain way. If that’s the answer, maybe Andrew and the others who don’t see them have a different eye shape or lens dimension that prevents their seeing the illusion we see. That’s something I’m attempting to study.”

  “But you’re an astronomer, not a physician.”

  “I know,” she replied almost ruefully. “The entire phenomena is fascinating and quite frankly, has captured my interest like no other work I’ve ever done. For instance, Amy Baker sees the stars, but she never sees the colors. They are always white to her. Why is that?”

  Gabe let out a breath, and she detected a sense of relief in the action. He reached around and propped her pillows behind him against the headboard, then he swung his legs up on the bed and leaned back, his hands linked behind his head, elbows outstretched. “I didn’t see them, either.”

  Tess swallowed her demand he get his boots off her bed “What?”

  “I didn’t see the spooklights.”

  She felt a wrench of sorrow as she recalled what he’d said about stargazing in the aftermath of the explosion. “Oh, Gabe. You couldn’t look at them?”

  “Oh, I looked. I just couldn’t see them.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I’m saying something now. So, Amy isn’t color blind in other areas?”

  “No.”

  “This is all very curious.” He focused his gaze upon her, and the intrigue glowing in their steel gray depths caused her breath to catch. This was the Gabe she remembered.

  He slowly nodded “You might be onto something by considering differences in eye shape. This group of yours is a small sampling of the population, and if two of them see the events differently than others, it lends credence to the hypothesis of a physical anomaly.”

  “It could just mean they ar
e nearsighted and need spectacles,” Tess replied “But I do see something out there, Gabe. The Kissing Stars exist. And I want an explanation for it.”

  He stared vacantly at a spot over her shoulder, his lips twisted in a contemplative frown, one foot rhythmically tapping the air.

  Watching him, Tess melted. This was the Gabe she fell in love with. She’d seen him sit exactly that same way so many times while he pondered the possibility of life on Mars or the number of galaxies in the universe. He was a man whose mind lent itself to puzzles, and for the first time she recognized the connection between his current occupation of railroad investigator and his previous interest. He’d abandoned celestial enigmas for earthly riddles.

  “You considered St. Elmo’s fire?”

  Tess shook her head. “Of course. I don’t think that’s it. The flat has no obvious source of such electricity.”

  “Wouldn’t be swamp gas in this part of the world. What about minerals? Could it be moonlight reflecting off large veins of mica?”

  “This region doesn’t have large veins of mica. Besides, I personally have seen the lights on cloudy and moonless nights. I’ve documented such conditions in my journals. Let me show you.” She walked over to her desk and removed a trio of bound books. Returning to the bed she sat beside him, feeling like a child at Christmas for having Gabe join her in an intellectual discussion again. She had missed this so much.

  Opening the earliest volume, she said, “I’ve kept a daily journal since moving to Aurora Springs. Perhaps you’ll see a pattern I have missed.” Sighing, she added, “For all the facts I’ve gathered, I’ve not come up with a theory any better than Twinkle’s belief in the supernatural.”

  Gabe pinned her with a gaze. “You believe they’re spooklights?”

  “No, not really. I don’t believe in ghosts.” She gave a half-smile as emotion stabbed like a dirk at her heart. Softly, she added, “Now, angels are another matter.”

  His eyes narrowed, but thankfully he didn’t pursue that question. He took the journal from her hands and resettled back against the pillows. “Let’s take a look at your journal.”