Lysander Spark's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Lysander stood in the dark library and knew the trail would go cold. Somewhere in this heap lay the chart of the lost constellation. But the scrolls sat in a jumbled pile, no order, no labels. He had four stars fixed in his mind and a dying window to find the rest. He could not read a hundred scrolls before dawn. He needed a way to sort them fast. He knelt and dug through the pile. Dust rose and stung his eyes. He unrolled one scroll, then another. Faded ink. Broken seals. No pattern he knew. His hands shook. The stars in his memory would drift by morning, and the pattern would slip away again. Then he saw a pale glow near the collapsed roof. A flower grew from a crack in the sunken wall. Its layered petals shone soft, like light held in cupped hands. Lysander had read of such blooms in his old manuals. They opened only under true starlight and closed against false. He stared at it, and a plan formed. He gathered an armful of scrolls and carried them beneath the broken roof. Above, the open sky showed real stars. He set the bloom on the floor and laid the first scroll beside it. He watched the petals. They stayed shut. He set down the next. The petals leaned and opened wide. He understood. The charts drawn from true sky carried some trace the bloom answered to. The false and copied charts left it dead. He worked fast now. Scroll after scroll passed the flower. Most it ignored. A few made it open. He set those apart in a small, growing stack. His knees ached against the cold stone. Hours slid past. The pile shrank. His true stack held nine scrolls. He unrolled the first and pulled his telescope apart to read the fine marks. Stars, named and placed. He matched them against the four he had fixed at the tower. The third scroll held them all, and three more beside. Seven stars. The full pattern of the lost constellation, drawn by a hand long dead. Lysander pressed the chart flat and traced the seven points with his finger. His breath caught. Forty years, and here lay the shape at last. He rolled the chart tight and held it to his chest. But as he read the marks again, his heart sank. Three of the seven stars sat far to the south, below any line the ruined tower could reach. The chart showed him what he sought. It also showed him he could never see it from where he had come. The flower closed as a cloud crossed the moon. Lysander stood in the gray dark, the chart safe in his grip. He had the pattern now. He had lost the one place he knew to watch the sky. He would have to find another.