When the star child fell to earth, almost no one in the small village of Anira noticed. His coming had not been foretold by prophetic signs, nor did the sky blaze into fire when he appeared.

He simply appeared out of the darkness.

It was like a star had broken away from its place in the sky. A phosphorescent streak shooting silently across the indigo folds of night. Only to land in a small creek that flowed at the bottom of a deep narrow gorge. About a mile away from the rustic home of Jono and Ariya Cotes.

They would not have witnessed his arrival if they had stopped work at the usual time while day still lit the sky. Instead, they had laboured in the fields on that evening until darkness fell.

Shouldering their tools, they made their way along a narrow, twisting dirt track. It led from their distant fields, to their small house beside the black Anira River.

As Jono led the way, his eyes were fixed on the thin, yellow beam of the torch that lit the path ahead. Ariya was thus the first to notice the bright object falling through the night.

“Look, Jono!” she exclaimed, “a falling star!”

Jono looked up and saw a thin, fiery arc cutting across the sky. It passed over their heads without a sound. and a dark stand of trees, before disappearing into the maw of the gorge some distance away.

“It fall in the gully,” Jono said. They looked at each other. Then they dropped the tools and hurried. They made their way with the limited torch light, through sharp grasses and tangled scrub. Until they came to the edge of the gorge.

Below lay the object. A glowing, pale green orb, half-sunk into the shallow creek.

“There’s something inside,” whispered Ariya. Jono looked and noticed a dark shape moving within the glowing sphere.

“It’s alive!” he said. They held each other's hands for courage and balance. Then they half slid, half climbed down the steep embankment.

Up close, the orb was not very large; about the size of an exercise ball and transparent-like frosted glass. Jono had read a little about objects falling to earth. So he wondered how such a fragile-looking thing had entered the atmosphere, without burning up. Or how it had landed without breaking apart. “The water must have cushioned its fall,” he murmured to Ariya. She nodded, though she was only half-listening to him.

A network of dark-red webbing pulsated around the moving mass within the orb. Ariya thought of the time she broke an egg. And saw a chicken embryo with its many blood vessels spreading like roots over the yolk.

With a soft, crunching noise, the object suddenly cracked down the middle. An iridescent green, gel-like substance flowed out into the water. It floated like oil on the surface as the current carried it away downstream. The couple stared in amazement at a tiny child, wrapped in a tangle of red membranous tissue within the orb.

“It’s a baby!” gasped Ariya, letting go of Jono’s hand and splashing through the shallow water. “Jono, the heavens have sent us a baby!”

Leaning over the jagged edges, she carefully lifted out the gel-covered child.

“Sent us? He fell into the gully, Ariya.” Jono said, doubt etched on his face. “Shouldn’t we be wondering who he is and where he came from?”

But Ariya was already wiping the baby’s face clean of the gel and smiling at him. The glow emanating from him lit up both their faces in a halo of soft green light.

“That’s hardly important,” she said.

“There’s something strange...”

“I don't care, Jono. This is fate. We lost our baby a year ago, now this child falls out of the sky. The heavens saw our loss and sent us one of their own.”

“Well, I don’t see any way of sending him back. So we might as well keep him until we figure out what to do,” Jono said. As he made his way through the water, remnants of oily green threads followed in his wake. His expression was thoughtful, as he pulled off the shirt he was wearing. He wrapped it gently around the naked baby.

“What shall we call him?” Ariya asked on the third day, as they watched him trying to roll over in the new crib Jono had made. There had been no more talk about what to do with the baby after that first night.

Jono had gone back to the creek very early the next morning after the child’s arrival. But all remnants of the orb had vanished. And the water flowed clear, with no traces of the green, gooey liquid from the night before.

He did notice something odd, however.

While exploring downstream, he had noticed that the water-lilies and reeds growing there were greener and more lush than the others. He pondered on the significance of it but did not immediately tell Ariya what he had observed.

“He came from the stars,” Jono said now, in answer to Ariya’s question. “His name is Starchild.”

*

The people of Anira initially wondered about the appearance of the strange child. Where he had come from and why, for Jono and Ariya did not keep the nature of his arrival a secret. Many thought that his falling from the stars into their village was, in itself, a sign. But as time passed, and he seemed to have neither plan nor purpose, their curiosity wore off.

In the dark of the night, his skin glowed with a pale green light. But apart from that, he was just a regular child. He had sparkling eyes full of life and springy ringlets of hair, like coils of black smoke, framing his face. Very few people remarked on his glow, however.

After all, he wasn't the only villager with inhuman features.

There was Pelon. A golden-eyed little girl, with iridescent purple and gold scales on her cheeks, shoulders and the small of her back. Pelon’s mother was known to half-transform into a fish whenever she entered the water. And all her family on her mother’s side had the ability in varying degrees, to grow fins when submerged in water. In a riverside village like Anira, fins are useful appendages.

When Pelon was born covered in shining scales, people assumed that she would transform into a fish person like her mother. But most of the scales fell off as she grew. This left just a few shimmering patches here and there, and no one had ever seen Pelon’s legs become a fish’s tail. They decided that her mother’s blood was not strong enough. And that she had taken after her very ordinary father instead.

Then there was Winslow. Dubbed Winslow-with-the-Wings since there were half a dozen Winslows in the village). A stunning pair of black and white wings, exactly like those of a Muscovy duck, sprang from his shoulders. Winslow was not deemed unusual. Because his great, great, great grandfather had been a water bird.

His avian ancestor had taken the form of a man to court a beautiful village girl. But the girl’s father, a man of high social standing, discovered his true form and was greatly dismayed. Unions of that nature were strongly discouraged. And he thought of the embarrassment he would have to endure if it became public knowledge.

So he lured the birdman to a deserted place and murdered him, burying the body to conceal his crime.

But the birdman’s death was avenged from beyond the grave. For the girl was already pregnant and when the baby was born the identity of its father was plain for all to see.

Since then, birdlike characteristics began to show up in their descendents. Sometimes it was glossy feathers interwoven with regular hair. Or distinctive webbing between their fingers and toes. Or, most often, wings sprouting from their shoulders.

Though these were usually tiny and vestigial, the wings were proudly displayed by members of this still prominent family. Winslow was an exception, his wings were large and well-feathered.

These two mutants would become Starchild’s best friends. They were the only ones who knew that he carried the light of the stars stored in the chambers of his heart.

Many evenings, the trio climbed to the top of a steep hill just outside of the village. All so Winslow could practice his flying. For his wings, magnificent as they were, were very weak. Yet, he convinced himself that if he practiced long enough. And believed hard enough. They would one day grow strong enough to lift him into the air.

So he stood on the top of the hill, flapping them as hard as he could; trying to lift off. But all he ever managed was a low glide down to the foot of the hill.

When weariness and disappointment forced him to stop, they would sit in a circle on the crest of the hill. And wait for the stars to come out. Then, with the light of galaxies shining in his eyes, Starchild told them how he had come to their world.

He told them of a long journey through cold darkness. Of great blazing suns that had warmed him with their fires. He spoke of glowing nebulae, within which new stars are formed. And of icy comets flying with great speed out of the inkiness of deep space. The comets would melt their way past the burning stars, to return once again into the darkness.

Together, his listeners were transported across the vast emptiness with him. They felt as if they too swam in effervescent alien oceans. And flew through clouds of shining cosmic dust, never tiring of his tales.

*

Starchild attended the village’s school with the rest of Anira’s children. One person who observed him more closely than others did was the schoolteacher. Miss Zoya was a quiet, wise, and inconspicuous woman. Having reached a perfect balance between youth and middle-age, Miss Zoya had ceased to age.

She had served as the village’s sole educator for as long as anyone living there could remember. And she had noticed the unusual effect Starchild had on the school’s vegetable garden.

That's when she decided to keep a closer look on Starchild.

Sometimes, when the temperate seasons forgot whose turn it was, droughts descended on the land. Seasons of drought had no mercy and remained until they had drained the last green colour from the earth.

One such season came when Starchild was nine years old. The rains did not come as promised and the earth dried up. Seeds that had been planted in anticipation of the rain, lay in the ground wrapped in their shells. The seeds refused to germinate. And the deep, swift-flowing waters of the Anira River shrunk to a shallow trickle.

Village farmers tried bringing water from the shrunken river to their fields. But the dry, thirsty earth sucked it up as soon as the wetness touched its face leaving none for the seeds to drink.

Then something happened. The rains did not come, but seeds started sprouting. They burst out of the ground, growing twice as fast as normal and three times as large. Corn, clothed in golden corn-silk and dark green leaves, towered in the fields. Huge orange pumpkins and green watermelons dotted the terraced hillsides. Green leafy vegetables grew with lush abandon over the dusty ground. While jewel-hued tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants glowed from overflowing baskets.

No one was certain what had caused the crops to grow so well at the height of the dry season. That is, until Miss Zoya made the honest mistake of admitting she had seen Starchild moving through the fields late at night. A proud Miss Zoya claimed Starchild would scatter glittering dust from his hands onto the earth. In whispers, the villagers discussed this information.

Jono and Ariya, unwilling to draw attention to Starchild, had nothing to say.

Over the next three years, regardless of the weather, the village crops flourished. That Starchild was responsible was no longer a secret.

While Zoya had watched Starchild with pride, one person had watched Anira’s dry, cracked fields come to life with resentment.

This man was prepared to take advantage of every lucrative avenue. Including human desperation.

He had invested in pipes and machinery and paid a water diviner from far away to show him where a deep water table lay. Then he waited for a drought to make him rich.

But the crops started growing. His machinery sat unused and the pipes rusted where they lay. As the fields flourished, this man counted his losses.

And so, the man instigated a rumour. Insidious and deliberate, the rumour began to circulate sometime in the third year.

“Maybe he means well, but it ain’t natural.” The man thought of his rusting pipes as he spoke. “There’s something not right about this whole magic dust thing.”

‘He’s a child,’ said someone else, “but he’s brought prosperity to our village.”

“Is he really?’ asked the first man. “Looks can be deceptive, he may be as old as time itself. Where is he from?"

“No one knows for sure. His parents say he came from the stars, but those are so far away,” a third person had joined in.

“He’s lived with us for twelve years without problems,” said another. “Why start now? Stop this foolish talk.”

“Yet we know nothing of him or his true intentions,” the first man insisted. “That glittery stuff, what is it? A slow-acting poison? Or some kind of mind-altering drug to give him control of us and our village?”

“You have a point,” said one of the listeners, “maybe that was his plan all along, to rule over us!”

So the rumour started gathering speed. People began to wonder. Wasn't there something unnatural and sinister about a child with such power in the palm of his hand.

Starchild, unaware of the change in feelings towards him, continued his nightly excursions. As his glowing form moved through the fields in the darkness, fountains of glittering dust spilled from his hands. But the faster Starchild cultivated the fields, the more the evil rumour spread.

The rumour crept under Miss Zoya’s door and slithered close to her ear.

It whispered its ugly suspicions in her ear. She slapped it down immediately. But worry at what she had heard sent her hurrying to warn Jono and Ariya. Alarmed at the darkness revealed in the hearts of people they had called friends, they pleaded with Starchild to conceal his light.

But one cannot tell the stars when to shine and Starchild was no different from any other star in that respect. The light burned in him and the night drew him out.

And so, the hostile ones began following him too. Black holes circling closer.

One evening, Starchild and Pelon made their way over to the hill where Winslow-with-the-Wings was trying in vain to fly.

That's when the shadows pounced.

They did not touch Pelon, but fell mercilessly upon Starchild. They hissed at him to go back to wherever he came from and take his poisonous sands with him.

Winslow-with-the-Wings saw the attack from the top of the hill. Overcome with terror for his friend, he began to flap his wings like never before. With a surge of unexpected strength, Winslow rose into the air and flew like a giant bird into the midst of the attackers.

Winslow screaming at them and flapped his wings, knocking one villager into a tree trunk. Startled by his sudden appearance and outstretched, powerful wings, the mob drew back. As Winslow swept Starchild up, he flew away into the gathering darkness with him.

Meanwhile, Pelon plunged into the water and swam swiftly up the river. Her eyes never left their path in the sky. She was so focused she had not even realized that her legs had fully transformed into a broad, gleaming tail.

In the small house beside the river, his parents held his battered body close to their hearts. It was as though they were trying desperately to take his hurts into themselves. But the hurt in his soul was too deep for them to reach.

“Why?” Starchild whispered, over and over. His voice trembled. “Why would they do this to me?’

“Because you are too different, my son,” said Jono. “We thought, we hoped, that in time they would see you as we did, see your light for what it is, but we were wrong. People fear what they don’t know and try to destroy those who are not like them.”

“But Winslow-with-the-Wings is different. And so is Pelon, with her beautiful scales and mother who transforms into a fish." Starchild muttered.

“Bird’s wings and fish’s tails are of this world and are easily explained,” said Ariya through her tears. “But you, with your unearthly glow and handfuls of stardust, you are not of this world.”

Starchild’s glow got dimmer. “Take me outside, please,” he whispered. His voice sounded resigned. “I want to see the stars.”

They took him outside and laid him in the garden. Soft murmurs and indistinct voices in the night, whispered all around them. And the stars shone overhead. His father and mother sat on either side, holding his hands in theirs. Pelon sat cradling his feet in her lap. And Winslow-with-the-Wings crouched at his head. His great wings were outstretched, shielding them all from the chilling wind.

As the night wore on Starchild’s light got fainter. Then the darkness paled. And the stars overhead winked out one by one. As the stars disappeared, his body, now fragile and transparent as glass, crumbled before their eyes.

They watched as his body disintegrated into a million glittering pieces that rose into the air and vanished, like fireflies in the light.

Starchild Origins