Molly and Pim and the Millions of Stars by Martine Murray

But tonight it was different,
because it was Molly who had seen it, and because she had seen it and said its name,
she felt she had introduced herself, and now she and Venus would forever know each
other. It was like this with everything around her. It was as if she was seeing it
all for the first time, seeing it with her very own self, taking the sense of it
inside her. The black shadowy tips of trees against the glow of light coming from
the houses, the dark-forever-and-ever sky, the cluster of homes in the valley, where
Molly imagined children snug in their beds, dogs flopped out tired on their rugs,
someone rising from a piano, someone else sinking into a couch.

    This cosy, golden light seeping out from windows made Molly feel she was watching
the very great drama of inside and outside. The wild, dark sky and the star and moon
and mountains and trees were all out of reach and beyond and wondrous and soaring
like dreams. And the houses with their small lights were the steady comforting bones
of life, set snugly, one next to the other, together and connected like beads on
a string. Yet inside wouldn’t be inside without the wild, quiet roar of outside.
    Somewhere out there, there was another child just like her, one who didn’t live in
a house, who didn’t have a lamp on, who didn’t have a mother or a father putting
her to bed and who didn’t feel all right at all. Out there in the wide world, there
were hundreds of worries much, much worse than Molly’s, maybe even thousands or millions
of them. Molly’s problem was a tiny dot in the night. And if you joined up all those
dots it would make the big inexplicable shape of lives being lived.
    Lives went in all ways. Life was a jagged dance of joys and sorrows, up and then
down and sometimes in knots or jolts or dizzying rushes over or round again. And
in Molly’s town at that moment among all those houses that sat there in the valley,
there was Ellen Palmer’s house, where everything was always snug. But Molly’s best
friend was gravely ill in her own bed with the pink curtains and the dressing table
and everything as nice as you could wish for.
    Molly closed her eyes and wished for Ellen. She clung on tightly to her branch as
if she and her mama were holding hands and both wishing for Ellen to get better.
And it seemed that the branch clung back, just as it seemed that the sky swelled
a little to fit that wish in, and the stars shone more with the feel of it.
    ‘A million tiny stars,’ said Molly to the night, ‘and one more now.’ And they swirled
in her head and jiggled in her heart. She slid along her branch and made her way
down the tree, swinging from branch to branch easily, nimble as a monkey. Perhaps
it was magic, perhaps it was that she knew her mama wouldn’t let her fall.
    Imagine if you were never scared of falling, how much higher you might climb, she
thought. Or, if you weren’t afraid of being clumsy and awkward, how much more gracefully
you might dance?
    Molly jumped to the ground. The dark crept towards her, long black fingers of it.
She leaned into the tree’s trunk. The sound of her breath echoed back from the tree.
She could break the dark’s quiet. She could shake it all off her.
    Molly stood so close to the tree the bark tickled her nose. She circled the trunk.
She stomped, she shook. Her mind gave way to the night. She cried out. She flung
her arms and shook her hands. She leapt and crouched and sprang as wide as she could
and twisted and twirled till she was too tired to move anymore.
    Then she stood very still and let her breath subside, but she watched the dark carefully.
Had she frightened it away?
    The night was still. The Mama tree was still, but Molly could feel something within
it. It had a strange paleness, and it moved high in the branches. Molly rose on her
tiptoes and angled her head to get a better look. Something lifted high above the
tree and rose, spinning in the dark sky like a small spaceship. Then it fell,