His eyes remained on the light for some time, and only after a longer silence did he return his attention to me.You look dry,he remarked as if commenting on the weather outside.
I looked down at myself.He was evaluating me—peering into my creativity and finding the dry spot.I nodded in affirmation.“Dry.Yes.I try to iron out a project so that it will work, but everything in my head is, well, dry.”
He appeared confused at my words.No… I meant to say that I can hear the water outside.We’re near a beach, aren’t we?Near the ocean.Don’t you ever go for a dip?
“I didn’t come here to go swimming,” I said, and a flush crept across my cheeks.I could hardly pass by a window of this house without stealing a glance of the specified shore from my vantage point in the lighthouse.Most people would find it easy to spend a summer day on the beach.But those people were little better than insects, as far as I was concerned.They had no thought to their purpose or future.My higher purpose meant that I could not afford a day off until I reached my goals.
Aster’s eyes darkened with my confession.He looked sad, as if I had said something wrong.
I swallowed.“It’s a beautiful beach, and I might go once we get started.But there’s a lot to do, and I have only a couple months before the residency ends and I leave.”
Leave?You’re a wanderer, then?
His inquisitiveness reminded me very much of a little child.He could have been fascinated at the prospect of my going on from here, of my moving somewhere else, or he could have wanted to know more of my journey from here.
“I’m only here for the summer,” I explained.“I won a residency, a type of prize for an essay I wrote.When I’m done, I’ll go back to Green Bay, where I live.”
Green… Bay.He split the phrase like a name that he didn’t know.I wondered about his knowledge about geography, about culture and technology and many other things that I took for granted.Was Aster a new being, come fresh into existence upon my wish, or had he been here as long as the Earth itself?Had he worked with others besides me?
My own questions had begun to multiply.Aster’s newness scared me, and with it the suddenness of his appearance.One wrong word, and he would disappear just as instantly as he had come.Perhaps in a poof of black smoke.Perhaps in the blink of an eye.Maybe faster than either of those, an instant notion that would leave me wondering if I had imagined this entire thing.
He seemed to understand me at last.This is a temporary home, then.A residence for a short time to allow you to complete a work of significance.Am I right?
I exhaled a sigh of relief.“Yes.Yes, that’s exactly it.”
And what is it you wish to create?
My skin prickled, and for a moment my mind turned blank.Again I couldn’t believe it.Again I thought there had to be a trick, a loophole.But one look at the stars in Aster’s eyes and I knew I had to answer the question.
I glanced at my laptop on the secretary desk.A novel.A set of poems.A book of personal essays reporting on the life of the lighthouse and Illumination Point and the waxing and waning of the Atlantic coast in New England.“I’m a writer,” I said.“Nothing more specific than that.Anything that I write that would last forever.”
His eyes sparkled.They didn’t simply catch the light the way his hands had earlier on the wall.They shone independently, with their own light, their own tiny pinprick stars in the backdrop of the black of space set in his pupils.I expect we will work very well together, Stella, he told me.
He lifted his hand and curled one finger under my chin.My skin prickled into goosebumps.There was something uncanny about his touch, something electrifying that frightened me and allured me at the same time.Only as our eyes met did I realize that his touch wasn’t real.Aster touched me like a phantom, a ghost, a gentle breeze without full physical stimulation.
What I had seen as flesh and hair and eyes was merely a capture of the light around me with the presence of a spirit just strong enough to become visible.It wasn’t that he didn’t exist.It was that his existence belonged to a different category of life than anything before documented.
Again I thought of him as an angel.
And now he smiled, a perfect, angelic smile, and when he blinked, he silently assured me that summoning him was the greatest decision I would ever make.
THE BREAD AND WINE
One of thefirst things I learned about Aster was that he didn’t care about art.
That was odd, for a muse.I would have thought that he’d idolize anything aesthetic or provocative.If I were to describe a muse before I met Aster, I would have envisioned a poetic young man or woman—equally as beautiful as Aster himself—plucking silky strings on a lyre or speaking in poetic cadences, lounging aesthetically on a windowsill or on a corner of the couch while the artist worked and pointing out a string of hidden mysteries of the universe that blended perfectly with what I wanted to say.I thought of traditional depictions of Euterpe playing a double flute or Calliope with a stylus and tablet, muse and medium entwined.
Aster preferred standing over lounging.He had a cat’s curiosity, though he avoided asking questions outright as some kind of formality.He looked more at me than at the rest of our surroundings, and sometimes I suspected that Aster himself was an artist who wished to capture my likeness in a painting or song, but at other times his interests took unexpected turns.
In the evening after his miraculous appearance, I learned that Aster could eat.
At first I believed my muse to be half-imaginary, like a cross between a fairy and a ghost who was only as corporeal as a cloud or a heavy vapor, but his physical prowess became more pronounced, more undeniable, by the hour.
I had selected for myself a baguette and a few toppings from the store for a pair of fresh sandwiches to last the first few days.I skipped lunch when Aster appeared.I couldn’t think of something as humble as food when an arguable demigod had just beamed himself into the living room, when he didn’t go away and when I had to tell myself over and over that he was real and that any dream like this would have ended by now.
Eventually, my hunger caught up.When I finished distracting myself with Aster’s existence long enough to realize that I had physical needs, I walked into the kitchen and pulled the bread out of its bag, and from the fridge I retrieved a plastic-sealed pack of sliced deli rotisserie chicken and Swiss cheese.
Is this food?asked Aster, following me and standing beside me like a dutiful child.
