Andromeda’s Creation

The bored daughter of the Divine Eternal, Andromeda searches for her own way to leave a mark on the vast darkness of creation. But being a creator isn't as easy as dreaming a universe into existence.

Jillian Wahlquist lives in Lancaster, California with her husband, two amazing children and the best dog in the world. When she isn't writing, she's fulfilling her fourth-grade dream of working for a toy store.

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Andromeda searched for Archimedes at the end of the universe. Outside the house, black snow fell like rain and jets of white-hot plasma — the innards of a supernova torn apart by physics and gravity — streaked across the patchwork sky. Everything was ending, again. The old, tired bones of a thousand galaxies splintering under the weight of a billion dying stars — the heartbeat of the Divine Eternal cycling through a never-ending cascade of misery and cosmic violence. And Andromeda was weary of it. 

“Oh, I give up.” 

Andromeda stretched out on her coverlet —  pink and frothy — a stark contrast to the blacks and grays that haunted the Last House. But she had insisted, and the Divine Eternal had finally relented, spinning her a fluffy mass of silk and ruffles from the fabric of time and space. But They had drawn the line at unicorns. Even in the vast expanse of the Divine Eternal’s cosmic imagination, unicorns were make-believe.

Andromeda squinted her eyes and pretended to snore. At first, nothing happened. Then she spied a streak of light near her pillow.

“Aha!” 

Archimedes chirped and chittered angrily as Andromeda caught his nebulous tail in-between her two fingers.
“That’s thirty-six million, seven thousand, four hundred and four for me…” she smiled and the light of a thousand suns flickered. “…and one for you. Play again?”

Outside, the world heaved — dark matter twisting and convulsing as it did every few trillion years, choking on the weight of escaped souls. Souls that lingered as the jumps and twitches of quarks and muons, making tiny mortals’ delicate neurons do backflips. Physics was the Divine Eternal’s constant headache. Physics… and Andromeda.

Why had the Divine Eternal needed a daughter? All knowing, and yet that question — that one enduring, burning question — They could not answer. Andromeda was. Andromeda is. Andromeda will be.

Archimedes, the tiny, captive comet, whistled and spun around her head, leaving a bright photon trail in the dim light. Somewhere below, in the bowels of the teetering house, an iron door creaked.

• • •

Sometimes the Divine Eternal visited the end of the universe as manifest and walked the dreary gray gardens with Their daughter, tracing a silent path around the jagged rocks and trickling rivulets of magma, smiling at the wailing of ten trillion petulant souls perched in the barren trees like red-eyed ravens. Andromeda found the lost souls annoying and had tried to say so more than once, but the Divine Eternal preferred Their star-eyed daughter to be seen and not heard. And so silent she was as they strolled — past the infinite coils of brittle pumice that crumbled at Andromeda’s touch, past the beds of wilting onyx hellebores and dolorous shrubbery, past the squat iron cellar doors at the bottom of the tower, sealed with a spiral lock of sanguine jasper stone.

“What is behind that lock?” Andromeda had asked, but the Divine Eternal said nothing.

“Take me through the door.” She would say as she walked with the Divine Eternal across empty nebulas dotted with patches of slumbering gravity — where Time was forced to crawl so slowly it nearly stopped.

But the Divine Eternal said nothing.

“What is beyond the door? Why is it locked?” Andromeda asked one afternoon as they sunned themselves on the beaches of a forgotten ocean.

NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS the Divine Eternal answered in the language of the stars and the heavens, and spoke no more. Andromeda knew the conversation was over — whatever lay beyond the door was forbidden. 

It was best if she forgot all about it, but forgetting about the door was as easy as ignoring the sighs and whispers of Fate as she reigned in Chaos across star-streaked millennia. In other words, it was impossible.

• • •

Andromeda hurried past the yammering crows and creeping midnight vines, brushing the ash from her hair. As she neared the door, she froze — the jasper lock hung like an empty mouth, unlocked, one of the low, weathered doors creaking in the celestial wind.

Andromeda paused at the entrance, Archimedes tugging on her streaming hair. She knew she shouldn’t go in. Whatever secret the Divine Eternal had locked up so long ago deserved to be left alone and yet… just one little look. One little look and she would run back to the house as fast as the infinite universe could carry her.

• • •

The ebony steps were clean and cool underneath Andromeda’s bare feet. Archimedes fizzed and spluttered and yanked on her sleeves and skirt until Andromeda stuffed him into her pocket. She knew he was only echoing the flutter of her heartbeat, but if she listened too closely to either one of them she would turn back and she would never get another chance.

The stairs ended in an empty room. No, not empty. Four black walls stood around her — four black mirrors echoing her reflection into distant fractals every time she moved. She stepped closer; the girl in the mirror did the same. She smiled and the girl in the mirror smiled too. Behind her reflection, the mirror was dark and empty, but not like the endless void of the Divine Eternal’s cosmos. It was flat and lusterless — like a chalkboard, thought Andromeda. A chalkboard that begged for an illustration. And so Andromeda drew without knowing how she drew, spinning pigments and ideas from her heart like silken floss into paints and brushes and chalks and pastels that blossomed and spread in all directions.

On the first day, Andromeda created Color. Brilliant pinks and subtle purples. Greens that carpeted the ground beneath her feet and yellows that demanded to be noticed. Cascades of coquelicot that shimmered and sparked against a background of lapis and cerulean. Rivers of ochre and waterfalls of phlox. Andromeda had never seen, never felt, such color in The Divine Eternal’s deep black void of creation — it was as though the hesitant flickering of a trillion brilliant stars suddenly flared to life and poured from Andromeda’s arms, her legs, her pores, into the flat black world around her. She felt exhausted and exhilarated, unsure how more she could sustain it and yet hungry for more. Andromeda drank it in, celebrating the sheer overpowering intensity, reveling in the riot of tincture. And there was indigo and there was amaranth the first day. And Andromeda saw that it was good.

Eventually she grew tired, her arms dragging and her vision blurring even though she still burned with the need for creation. Archimedes chirped in her ear. It was time for bed. Outside everything seemed so dull, so gray, she nearly turned back. When she left, she very carefully made sure the iron door was closed, but not locked. After all, who knew when the Divine Eternal would return to the Last House? Maybe she would be able to visit again tomorrow.

She wasn’t sure she could make it back to the house, but she managed, crawling into her bed and smiling as she closed her eyes to dream of a world in vibrant color. Eventually she woke again — day or night, night or day, it was all the same within the Last House — and rushed back to the bottom of the garden. There was so much work to do.

• • •

On the second day, Andromeda created Warmth. The soft warmth of sunlight in spring and the intense warmth of a welcome fire. The deep, healing warmth of a hug and the tiny whisper of warmth from a genuine smile. Andromeda felt the warmth spreading from her fingertips, escaping from her toes, filling this new space, her space, with comfort and peace. She reached into the bottom of her heart and found the little spark that had been locked away behind the Divine Eternal’s icy walls of logic and reason. The spark skittered up her spine and escaped in a rush of beautiful chaos, bathing Andromeda’s face in a sunlit embrace. And there was radiance and there was balminess the second day. And before Archimedes led her, stumbling, to her tower room, Andromeda saw that it was good.

On the third day, Andromeda created Home. Lush gardens in rainbow hues, sparkling waterfalls, and lawns of soft grass for cloud-watching and daydreaming. There were orchards hung with countless sweet fruits and shady bowers for when the golden warmth of the eternal daylight became too cumbersome. Unicorns pranced along the well-tended paths and everywhere she looked was a view perfect enough to take her breath away. In the middle of the Home, Andromeda sculpted a wide, branching tree with broad turquoise leaves and splashes of magenta flowers. And on those branches, she built a treehouse, molded from the living tree itself, bedecked in roses and a gentle, sloping roof to keep off the occasional raindrops. She wove words into her new creation — love, safety, hope, joy — whispering them into twirling tendrils before hanging them like lanterns from the eaves. After she was finished, Andromeda wandered her new Home, amazed that everything in it was hers— her creation. She played with the unicorns and splashed in the streams as Archimedes buzzed and whirled playfully. Eventually her eyes felt droopy and, instead of going back to her room, she climbed the delicate rope ladder to a downy bed. And there was safety and there was sleep the third day, as the little girl snuggled in her mountains of pillows with Archimedes nestled in the crook of her neck.

• • •

On the fourth day, Andromeda discovered, despite three days of exhausting work, that she was still haunted by Loneliness. She wandered along the lovely paths and lunched on fruit beneath the trees in the orchard. She built little stick figures and played hide-and-seek with Archimedes. Despite all the colors, all the warmth, all the coziness of her new creation, ennui still drifted at the edges of her mind like a rolling gray mist. The unicorns nuzzled her palms, looking for treats and Andromeda wished, more than anything, to have someone to share this world with. A Friend. That night, she tossed and turned, dreaming of red-eyed ravens, and shooting stars. 

“Hello. Are you awake?”

Andromeda rubbed her eyes. A freckled face stared down at her.

“Who are you?”

“I’m —” the boy paused, confused. “— I’m not sure.”

“What is your name?”

“I — I don’t know. I feel like I haven’t been here very long. Do you have a name?”

“My name is Andromeda.”

“Can my name be Andromeda?”

“No, silly. You can’t have the same name as me.”

Andromeda sat, looking at the boy.

“You look like a Sirius.”

“Can my name be Sirius?”

The boy looked at her with sweet, innocent sincerity and Andromeda smiled, realizing what she must have done. She had created a being. A real being, with tawny hair and knobby elbows and a tiny brown mole at the corner of his eyebrow. He was wearing a red shirt and short, tan pants. He smelled like coconut and sand and his smile was the most beautiful thing Andromeda had ever seen.

“Yes,” she grinned, taking the boy’s hands in her own. They felt so real. “Your name is Sirius. And you can play with me.”

Archimedes whirled around the boy’s head, whistling and spinning. Sirius laughed, Andromeda laughed, echoing the joy between them until the entire creation felt happy and light.

“Do you want to see my house?” Andromeda asked, tugging Sirius toward the ladder, “There’s so much to do!”

• • •

On the fifth day, Andromeda played. Tag and marbles and make-believe and making daisy chains in the grass under the fruit trees. Sirius loved the waterfalls, marveled at the rain, and made fast friends with the unicorns. They ran up the sloping green hills and rolled, giggling, down the other side. They played fairies and dragons and built sandcastles on the crystal beaches near the cobalt sea. They ran and jumped and swung from trailing vines, chasing Archimedes up and down Andromeda’s creation until they collapsed into a pile of satisfied sweat and exhaustion. That night, they slept beneath the iridescent stars, naming new constellations and drinking coconut milk until their eyes finally closed.

“Andromeda,” said Sirius. “This was the best day ever.”

The next day they played again. And the next. And the next. Andromeda lost track of how many days they had spent together in their world, almost forgot about the dreary eternity waiting for Andromeda in the garden outside, forgot about the Divine Eternal. Sirius was curious about everything, following Archimedes everywhere and asking Andromeda a million questions.

“Where did I come from? How big is the universe? Why is the sky aquamarine?”

But Andromeda didn’t want to answer questions. Andromeda wanted to play. And so, she’d say, “I don’t know, Sirius, it’s a mystery. But look at this!”

And Sirius would look at the wondrous new thing Andromeda had found, and the conversation would go no further.

• • •

A few weeks after creation, Andromeda packed a bag and they went on an adventure, exploring the outer edges of her world. It seemed endless — every time Andromeda thought they would reach the edge, find those dull black walls, they would discover some new and exciting place. Mountains of sparkling ice that never melted, deep blue oceans with friendly dolphins to carry them out to the colorful reefs. Andromeda didn’t even feel the process of creation anymore, it flowed from her naturally, like breathing.

“Do you see the sunset?” Andromeda asked for the fiftieth time as they sat beneath a spreading willow tree near a bubbling brook, but Sirius said nothing. Sirius had been getting quieter and quieter, less quick to suggest new games. If Andromeda didn’t know better, she’d say he was unhappy.

“It’s… nice.” Sirius said with a shrug. “It’s just that… I wonder…”

“What?”

“I wonder what’s beyond here. Is there anyone else like you and me?”

“Why does that matter? Aren’t you having fun with me?”

“Of course I am — you’re my friend Andromeda. Just sometimes… can’t we stop playing for a while?”

“But I want to play. I like playing. You like playing too.”

“But I’m not Archimedes, Andromeda. I can’t play forever. I want to learn. I want to discover where I came from, what I am. I want to think and maybe, sometimes, I… I want to be alone.”

A cold chill ran up Andromeda’s spine. She had created Sirius. Just like she had created everything else in this world. Why would he not want to be with her? Why would he want to leave her lonely?

“No. You can’t.” The words came out more harshly than she meant them and for a moment she thought the world around her dimmed, the willow leaves rustling in preparation for a coming storm. Then the sunset returned, as beautiful as ever.

“Why can’t I?” Sirius looked at her curiously. “I don’t want to leave forever. I’m just tired of playing. I just need a little —”

“No, I won’t allow it, I want you to be with me. Don’t you want to be with me?”

“Yes, of course, Andromeda, you’re my friend. I just have so many questions and I’m so tired…”

Andromeda felt heat rising in her cheeks, a strange rush of bile in her throat.

“No.” She climbed to her feet, staring down at Sirius, who leaned away from her, “No. You can’t leave me. I won’t let you.”

“Who are you?” Sirius stood as well, “You seem different, Andromeda. I’m sorry if I hurt you, I just was asking —”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that, sometimes, you —”

“I what?”

“Well, we always seem to play what you want to play and sometimes I was wondering if, maybe, I could make my own house…”

Andromeda could feel rage, hot and bitter, bubbling in her chest, threatening to spill out of her hands. At the corners of the horizon the colors flickered, and a tendril of icy air teased the bottom of her skirt. How dare he. How dare she create him and now he wanted to leave her to be lonely again. Always lonely. Betrayed. Archimedes shuddered and hid in the folds of her skirts.

“I’ll come back, Andromeda. Maybe I’ll find the perfect spot just over those hills. I — I just need to figure out what I want —”

“You CAN’T.” Andromeda’s words echoed in every direction, flattening trees sending rivers careening out of their banks. Sirius couldn’t look at her, tears in his eyes. He pulled his knees to his chest, trembling. She had never realized how small he was, how fragile. She could tear him apart like a blade of grass. This wasn’t the Divine Eternal’s creation; this was Hers, and She could do whatever She wanted. Archimedes screeched at the corners of her consciousness, his tail pulled this way and that by the gathering hurricane.

“Andromeda don’t hurt me! I’m sorry.”

But it was too late. Rage flooded Andromeda’s mind. Lightning split the world in two, icy, torrential rain churning through the canyons as they dissolved into masses of muddled colors and pain. Sirius’ cries were swept away in a tidal wave of utter, unbridled, destruction. Andromeda screamed — in pain, in fear, in grief, until she couldn’t. Until blackness — that hateful, empty blackness — wrapped itself around her once more.

• • •

That was where the Divine Eternal found her, huddled on the floor of Their office, surrounded by an ethereal mess of half-formed thoughts and flecks of riotous colors spattered like glitter across Their workspace. Archimedes whined anxiously, leaving a blue-white halo as he spun around her head, trying to wake her. 

The Divine Eternal sighed. It would take an age to clean up this mess. Children. Once an innocence was lost, once a mistake was made, it could not be regained or mended, no matter how many cycles of the universe were wasted on the pursuit. They gathered Andromeda in Their arms and tucked her into bed beneath her fluffy pink coverlet. Before They left, the Divine Eternal placed a hand on her cheek and, at a whispered word, she fell into a deep sleep. As They closed the shutters, tiny sparks glistened on the Divine Eternal’s cheeks. They never cried, but, as the soul-twined ravens rustled and squawked to each other below, where had They found the idea for mortal tears?

• • •

When Andromeda woke, her room was empty, save for Archimedes curdled in a happy ball of fiery gas on the window seat. She rubbed her eyes, and, like a lightning bolt, everything that had happened crashed over her like a tidal wave. The colors, the warmth, home, Sirius, willful destruction… it had all been her creation, her fault. The feeling surged and twisted within her, but here, outside of her creation, it did no more damage than soaking her pillowcase. When she was done, she wiped her eyes. She was grateful that the shutters were closed. She hated the Divine Eternal for Their bleak universe, for making her what she was, for dooming her to a lifetime of being more-than and less-than, stuck in the middle of immortality, all alone. And now everything was worse because it was still there — the longing. She had made a creation, a universe — and it had been hers, only hers. And now she wanted nothing more than to do it all again. No, the Divine Eternal carried her here, must have re-locked the door. How long would it be until They left it unlocked again? Probably never.

As she pulled the covers back over her head to sleep until the Last House turned to cosmic dust, a sparkle on her desk caught her eye. It was a crimson jasper key attached to a golden chain, and a note.

ANDROMEDA, it said in the plain, bold language of colliding stars, NOW YOU KNOW. FOR BETTER OR WORSE. BUILD IT BETTER, AS I KNOW YOU MUST. AS I DID.

Andromeda wrapped her fingers around the key as Archimedes settled on her shoulder. The thought of those four blank walls frightened her. The anger, the loss — how would she control so much feeling? But she had to. She would. She thought of Sirius and her heart broke into a million pieces, like fragments of the universe outside her windows. She knew he would never be quite the same. Once destroyed, a creation could not be remade in its entirety. The pieces of her heart hung in her chest, forming and breaking under the weight of guilt and grief and love and memory as Andromeda started down the stone steps to the bleak garden path.

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