A Blight of Stars

by Sophie Hoss

Ralph talks to Hattie, and Hattie talks to us. Some years ago, she found her husband fish-gutted, shredded crimson into a bare patch of prairie. She tells us Ralph reached down from the sky and ripped him up. It was a punishment—not for him, but for her.

I didn’t listen, she said. Ralph told me to leave him and I didn’t.

She doesn’t ignore Ralph’s requests anymore.

Hattie sought us out. We were frontier scavengers, all of us, left by our parties or lost or fleeing, picking our way across the whirling grasslands—limbs brittle, bellies knotted inward. Hattie said there would be fire and food. We thought she was a miracle. She said she was a friend.

Hattie needed no compass, didn’t even glance up to track the meandering northern star.

She and her husband arrived on this land in their covered wagon. We don’t know where they lived before. Their house is an oasis in reverse. There’s something broken in the earth, and it seeps up black and oil-slick.

Ralph says this is where life comes from, says Hattie. It’s a potion.

We lower our heads and inhale deep. It smells sweet and a little bit like bad eggs. Lightning skids across the horizon. Tornadoes orbit each other like galaxies. Our heads throb. Grease pours thick.

There isn’t fire here, but the potion makes us warm. Happy. It’s good to drink—no more sour than liquor.

Ralph is talking to me, one of us says suddenly.

No he’s not, says Hattie.

He is so.

And what’s he saying?

Ralph says not to tell you.

Hattie tore off a scrap of her grimy apron and swallowed it whole. She continued doing this until nothing was left of the apron but string. Her teeth were blunt from chewing petrified bark. She dug her long nails into the dirt and ripped up the grass. Her muscles strained. It looked like she was trying to become a werewolf. We all watched her for a while, but when no transformation happened, we turned away and let her howl.

Ralph’s talking to me too, says another one of us. He says we’re beautiful.

Yes, yes, says another one. That’s what he’s saying to me now.

The stars slur and tip sideways. Hattie screams so loud that one of them falls down. She insists that Ralph has sent it. It is a gift for her, and no one else is allowed to have it. We can’t even look.