The Singing Stars - a Short Story by V.P. Fieg

By Judy Kestner

When we were little Dad would tell us bedtime stories that were, well, different.  In fact we called them "Different Stories."  For example there was Jack and the Beanstalk Different, where the giant's wife cooked roast beef for supper every night.  "Roast beef??" the giant would groan when she served him.  (Of course every time Mom fixed roast beef we all had to shout, "Roast beef??")

From those stories rose the idea for his one and only published book -- which many of his nieces and nephews have in their libraries at home -- called "Why There Aren't Many Witches and Other Stories."

Here is another story he wrote, typing it out on the old Underwood manual typewriter.  I think it would have made a wonderful Little Golden Book.

It was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen, Bartholomew thought.

He stood and watched them pass along the road until the man and the woman on the donkey faded into the night, then turned to climb the hill beside the road.

He looked under shrubs and behind boulders that were still warm from the sun's heat, hoping to find the lamb lying down with its forefeet tucked under itself. When he reached the top of the hill he turned slowly all around. He tried not to blink, so that if the lamb moved he would see it.

The lamb would want to find its mother, he knew. If he had a mother, he would want to be near her at night.

Then he lifted his eyes and gazed into the silent sky filled with stars. So many stars. Little, faint stars; big, bold, bright stars; some that twinkled like a distant campfire; some that shone with a steady brilliance.

And as he looked out at the stars, he began to hear a sound. It was a sound he could not describe, but it gave him the same kind of feeling he had when the woman on the donkey smiled. Only now the feeling grew inside him until he was filled with it. And at first he stood still, with the sound in his ears and full of the wonderful, warm feeling. And then he started back toward his father's fire. He was running when he came within the light of the fire. His father was there and Bartholomew called out to him.

"Father, father! Do you hear it?"

He was running so fast and so lightly only his toes seemed to touch the ground. His father turned toward him.

"Father! Do you hear it?" Bartholomew called out, and he was running, oh, so easily. "Do you hear the stars? The stars are singing!"



                                                                               The End