The Astronomer Who Met the North Wind by Kate Hall

The Astronomer Who Met the North Wind
    H igh in the northern mountains, where for six months of the year the sun barely graced the sky, there lived a great astronomer. He was much sought after, both for his knowledge of the cosmos and his practical development of telescopes, which he was always refining to better see the sky. He was loved by his students and colleagues alike, and considered one of the finest scientists of his age.
    The astronomer, being an eligible man and scholar, married a young woman and they had a daughter, Minka, as smart and curious as her father. She loved the elegant simplicity of geometric proofs, created her own puzzles, and as she grew she impressed her parents with her cleverness.
    But when Minka was six, her parents went out on an expedition, and in the bitter winter cold her mother took ill with an infection of the lungs, and died.
    Minka mourned her lost mother with a child’s ferocity. The astronomer, unsure how to comfort his daughter and distracted by his own grief, tried everything he could think of to no avail. At last, he brought his reflecting telescope into Minka’s room, and angled it at the clear night sky. As she gazed at the glittering stars through the telescope’s eyepiece, Minka’s thoughts drifted away from grief and resolved on a new singular goal: Minka, too, would be an astronomer.
    But whenever she spoke of her plan, people smiled and patted her on the head.
    “What a sweet idea, wanting to be like your father!” they said. “But you’ll probably change your mind, you know. Children don’t ever know what they
really
want to be when they grow up.”
    Even her father, who let her keep the telescope in her room after that night, chuckled when she told him and ruffled her hair. “We’ll see, darling. You’re young yet, you may want to do something else.”
    Minka didn’t like it when people spoke so.
I know I’m smart
, she thought,
and I know what I want to be!
It annoyed her that people thought she didn’t know what she wanted just because she was young. So she saved her money to buy books on distant planets and galaxies, plotted constellations on her bedroom walls, and observed astral phenomena. Still, despite her studying and dedication, when her father went into the field and Minka begged him to let her come along, he always declined.
    “Going out in the dark is dangerous for a child,” he said, for the fear of losing his daughter like he had lost his wife weighed heavily on him. “Besides, it’s not very interesting! Much of the time you are waiting in the cold for something that isn’t there. You would be bored.”
    “You don’t know that.” Minka crossed her arms. “I think I’d find it fascinating.”
    But her father only tugged a curl of her hair with a fond smile, and left her to her books and telescope.
     
    For her twelfth birthday, the astronomer gave Minka new clothes, a jewelry box, and a spun-glass model of the night sky, dyed dark blue and filled with silver air bubbles for stars. He gave her only one book on constellations, and it was an introductory text for children with more pictures than words.
    “Are you pleased?” he asked her. A cake shaped like the constellation Cygnus sat between them, the gold icing stars twinkling in the lamplight. “I asked some of our friends in town for advice. Your mother would have known what to get you, were she here”—he offered a rueful smile—“but I was assured that these would be perfect for a young lady.”
    Minka turned the glass model over in her hands and set it aside. “They are very…pretty,” she said at last, because she knew her father had tried, and that he meant well. “But I didn’t want these things. All I want is to go out to make observations with you.”
    The astronomer wrung his hands. “But Minka—”
    “Please?” She pointed at his gear and field telescope—his latest refinement, with thin parabolic mirrors and long legs that could fold—stacked by the front