The Little Astronaut – Kelsey Claudius

My brother was always fascinated with the universe. He spoke of planets and stars the way you would a favourite book, the kind with a worn-out spine you could never put down. Some days I would listen to him for hours, his little freckled nose would scrunch up in excitement and his eyes would slightly bulge out of his head, words becoming quicker and quicker. He was always like that. He always spoke before he could even think of what to say.

Other days when I was in a mood, I would pretend to listen. Which now I realise was a cruel thing to do, he always listened to me—even when it wasn’t interesting to him.

His usual topic of discussion was other life that could be present on these planets. He believed we lived among aliens that lived on planets such as Pluto or Neptune. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was no way anything could live on them. These creatures would live a cold and lonely life. What a horrible way to live. He was very good at creating things from nothing, it was almost effortless for him. Me, however, I liked order, logic. I wasn’t very good at thinking outside my very small but reasonable box.

My mother was always entertained by his big imaginative brain. She believed he was going to cure cancer, or discover a new planet. She once asked him, ‘Why don’t you fly up there yourself and discover all this?’ He loved that idea.

He carried a blue hardcover journal where he wrote his thoughts and ideas down. The journal had seen better days: pages were ripped and scribbled on, the front cover had vegemite stains. But ‘it never bothered him; small things like that never phased him. As his older sister, it bothered me, like leaving the toothpaste lid off, or the lids off the jars, or eating toast with no plate.

Our old oak tree sat in the back corner of our backyard. It reached high into the air, with branches the length of my entire body. They curled around the air and stuck out in all places like they were stretching toward the sun. They were strong branches which only shook slightly when the wind would blow through. The thing that shook them the most was the wooden swing we had tied. Most days it would sit there swaying slightly, calling out for us to play. We fell to the grass, sometimes laying there for hours, where we would talk and murmur soft words and ideas about our solar system, but my brother did most of the talking on those afternoons.

Sometimes, on the windiest nights, the branches would smack around. I could never bear the thought of that tree getting loose. I imagined it would fly around swinging, tearing through the picket fence. It would fly into the air and turn back around falling onto the house, smashing up windows and breaking through the walls. But we were lucky that never happened. Instead of the tree ripping the soil, the swing would be the thing to go flying from its home. Living on a hill meant we often got heavy winds, we were used to the thumping of branches and the scratching of leaves against our windows throughout the night. Some nights the scratching and thumping got so loud I was convinced it was trying to warn me. If only I could’ve understood.

‘First, I will fly to another country to test myself”, he once said as we laid on the grass, the wind blowing over our long-sleeved clothes, tussling his curls around his face. But he didn’t seem to mind, he still spoke as though nothing was getting in his face.

‘—and if you don’t?’

‘Well, that’s a silly response. I’ll love it.’ He didn’t even acknowledge I was in the mood to push his buttons rather than listen to him talk.

‘You don’t know you’ll love it, you just think it’s cool. You may end up hating it.’ I was getting annoyed he wouldn’t take the bait.

‘Just because you don’t like things doesn’t mean you have to be rude about it.’

I think I was more annoyed that he was so carefree. He just wanted to talk to someone. He didn’t even care if they were listening, he just wanted company.

*** I wasn’t getting a reaction. He didn’t even deserve to be stirred the way I was stirring him. Sometimes I think he made up his mind to fly that night so he could find someone who wasn’t as mean as me. My brother decided he would fly into the sky and discover new planets and stars. He would float amongst the space dust naming stars after us. He had made it very clear that before he was old, he would fly.

Every time a star would twinkle in the sky, it was him waving back at us. Reminding us he was up there and he would come home.

*** He also made room in his bedroom in case he brought some uninvited guests home for a visit. This never bothered my mum. It just made her smile; it made us all smile. That night my brother finally flew. The wind picked up his tiny, scrawny bones and brought him to the stars.

We found our old wooden swing detached from the tree, thrown over the picket fence with crimson stains running down the white paint. His little body laid next to the fence. He was thrown against the fence and hit his head. We weren’t sure if maybe it was the force or the cold that killed him, perhaps it was both. His striped t-shirt was blowing in the wind, the fabric swaying in the breeze screaming out to us like a cry of surrender.

I could hear his voice with each swish of the material.

‘It’s okay.’ Swish. ‘I am safe.’ Swish. ‘I belong with the star dust.’

I imagined what he would have seen and heard as he swung on that swing. He would have had his head tilted up staring at the sky, watching himself get closer to the sounds of the crunching leaves. His bare feet would skim the dirt and blades of grass on his way down. He was growing so fast his legs were getting closer to the ground. I imagined the way the cold grass would have brushed up against his feet. Tickling his soles and reminding him he was on land. His hands would have been gripping the chains so tightly, leaving indents on his palms. Would he have let go before? Or would he have kept holding on, wishing that if he just held on he could make it.

Maybe if the wind have had of picked up, or if I had have stayed, perhaps he would still be here.

But I doubt that. He promised us that one day he would fly, and I think that night he made up his mind to join the stars and twinkle down at us every night. 15