BEFORE SHE WALKED AMONG US, THE WITCH ASTREA made her home among stars. They say her voice is like starlight and it’s more true than they know — the very core of her is shimmering, cosmic dust. When you speak, she listens with rapt attention, her lashes parted like the moon waxing, her eyes reflecting something golden, something molten, something set ablaze thousands of years ago, thousands of lightyears away. Her fire is too distant to burn, too tender for violence. It is a guiding light. Do not get lost in this. She will laugh to regather your attention. Try to remember what you started to stay.

Back then, many celestial rotations ago, she wasn’t a WITCH. Not as we know them. Not yet. She was an attendant to the moon, something of an organizer. Star patterns are not innately formed, you see, they require prodding, charming, often a mixture of flattery and firmness. It’s not easy work, I’ll tell you, as stars are notoriously stubborn. Fiery expansion makes one protective of personal space. It was ASTREA’s occupation to coax them into patterns, pin them in shapes and collections those of us below could parse. Looking up to the sky is one of the most ancient kinds of magic. What we see is no accident.

Some constellations are old; older than you or I or this rock we thrust our existence upon. They have taken many forms — animal, hero, lover, god — and with each identity grown stronger, stranger. They have absorbed collective wisdom from those that wander beneath, taken on the power of memory and belief. New constellations, in contrast, are capricious. Young stars want to immolate their beauty, churn the fire of their youth, hum their resplendence across all of time and space. To collect them, to form unions between them, could be the work of only a devoted, powerful creature. It had a cost. With each passing year, ASTREA’s spirit lost substance, her feet floated and flipped. She found it harder to stay upright, harder to tether herself in place. When she raised her palms she could, more and more, see through the flesh to the inky blackness of space beyond.

They say it was TAURUS himself who first elected ASTREA thrust out of the sky. SHE NEEDS SOLIDITY. GROUNDEDNESS, he roared. MUD BETWEEN HER TOES. A FORCE TO HOLD HER TAUT. ASTREA pleaded not to leave. She loved the moon and the stars and the expanse of space. The moon rolled and sloughed a single, chalky tear. She knew to let ASTREA stay meant that one day she would flicker out. She had to let her go.

Some say they were there the day the moon pulled ASTREA from the tail of a shooting star and sent her hurtling to Earth. She had waves of hair kicked up like sand, jewelry yellow like ears of corn, skin smooth like a river stone, eyes like ochre, like mirrors to distant skies. I didn’t see it myself. I can’t say if it was a graceful fall or a reckless one. What I can say is she wasn’t pleased about it. They say she struck out at a tree in anger, came away with kermes across her fists. They say it took her years of wandering, of staring up at a space she could no longer touch, of lying in the sun to burn away her indignation with the moon.

The people of the wilds were welcoming, but wary. We were private then, more so than now. ASTREA received hospitality from disparate settlements, traveled THE WOODS and WASTES under apologetic evening light. She brought gifts and stories from hut to castle to tree trunk to riverbank, wove a web of attachments and previously untrodden paths. We reminded her of her stars, they say. Stubborn, lively, competitive, bold. Over time, she knitted WITCHES together in song and remembrance, WITCHES who might otherwise have never crossed. She shared of her times in the skies, the wisdom of her work. Together we cried, we mourned, we learned to make sense of forgiveness in the wake of sorrow.

Seven years after her fall, after seven years of shunning the moon’s gaze at its fullest, she turned to face it for the first time. She joined hands with her friends. She spoke her mind, riled with old indignance at first, then calmness, then tears. She spoke of gratitude. Of being alive. Of gravity’s work to hold her together. She spoke of intention. Of her place here. Of the people she’d met and hoped to meet. She spoke of her sadness, of her longing, of searching the sky for guidance from old TAURUS, even after all this time. She spoke until there was nothing left in her to speak.

She spoke of gratitude. Of being alive. Of gravity’s work to hold her together. She spoke of intention. Of her place here. Of the people she’d met and hoped to meet. She spoke of her sadness, of her longing, of searching the sky for guidance from old TAURUS, even after all this time. She spoke until there was nothing left in her to speak.

The WITCH to her right went next.

That night, the WITCH ASTREA was the first to guide us in a moon ceremony. She does so even now, if you can intercept her in her winding travels. We give thanks in her wake. We speak what cannot be contained. We let go what cannot be held. We gather what will guide us forward. We feel a kind of longing, a longing that is not fully our own, for the star-riddled sky. We begin again.