The zodiacal light is very faint and so are we, from hunger, a hunger for the stars, the stars we can never reach. Yes, it is faint and so are our hopes, but that doesn’t matter if we enjoy the standing and reaching, on the shoulders of our friends, on a ladder, on chairs piled on chairs. We are nearer the stars that way. The zodiacal light is a cone of glow that extends from the horizon and along the constellations of astrology. It is a false dawn, but any dawn is better than none.
 
Aries
 
I had never taken astrology seriously and in many ways I still don’t, but Octavia was good at changing the minds of men. She dressed in a very anachronistic way but the eyes that saw her soon came to believe that modernity is overrated. She insisted that the stars really did influence our fates.
 
“They also control what happens to inanimate objects.”
 
“Don’t be absurd,” I protested.
 
She swished the hem of her toga and smirked.
 
“What zodiac sign are computers?”
 
I shrugged at the question.
 
“Aries, of course. The Ram,” as if this was enough.
 
“I don’t believe you.”
 
Later we went for a walk in the park. It was a spring day and the sunlight pushed through the branches of the trees like honey. I bathed in the glow, but Octavia pulled my sleeve and soon we were running towards the lake. She wanted to hire a boat and row across to the other side. So I said:
 
“What will you be doing while I work the oars?”
 
“Playing music,” she replied.
 
I frowned at this because she had brought no instruments with her. We selected a rowing boat and clambered inside. The attendant cast off a rope. I pulled on the oars and we glided towards the centre of the lake. A mist rose unexpectedly from the cool waters and it was so thick I could see nothing, not even Octavia who sat facing me on the wooden bench. I kept rowing.
 
The mist cleared and now I saw that she had a large drum between her knees and two thick drumsticks to beat it with.
 
At the same time I felt a coldness around my ankles.
 
I was shackled to my bench.
 
My chains rattled as I tugged at them.
 
“Don’t stop,” she said.
 
Then she began to beat the drum with powerful strokes. An instinct compelled me to take up the oars again and resume rowing. I rowed in time to her rhythm. Ahead of us another boat came into view, an easy target.
 
Octavia increased the tempo of her playing. Her toga slipped from her shoulders and I could almost taste her bare olive skin. Her perspiration glittered like jewels on her forehead and on her full lips, each droplet containing a tiny rainbow. I strained to pull the oars as hard as I possibly could.
 
“Ramming speed!”
 
Ah, that ram again. So boats at war were also born under the sign of Aries. That made a certain amount of sense. I saw that the enemy boat contained a businessman who was operating a laptop computer. He was being rowed by a man in the uniform of a chauffeur. We would sink them both.
 
It was early afternoon and the empire was thriving.
 
Beneath our boat I was aware of sunken vessels and broken computers and also the bones of other men, all entangled with weeds and kissed by fish. What sign are fish born under? I didn’t need to ask. The bones poked through holes in rotten wool cardigans and that was the important thing. Woollen clothes dyed a softly glowing golden colour in the vats of my nostalgia.
 
Taurus
 
“What sign do you think the minotaur is?”
 
This was an unexpected question from above. I turned my head and saw him three floors above, leaning out of his window. I was watering the flowers in their boxes on the balcony and I stood up slowly and stretched. Then I paid serious attention to the question and finally said, “Taurus.”
 
He nodded. It was the obvious answer, but his nod was ironic and it was clear he was disagreeing with me. It occurred to me that maybe the body of the minotaur and his head would have different birthdays and be born under two different signs, but I was in no mood for riddles and shrugged.
 
“Do you suppose he was attracted to women or cows?”
 
“I beg your pardon?”
 
“The minotaur! Were his amorous desires determined by his human mind or his bovine physicality? I can’t work it out.”
 
“You seem very interested in the details of his life.”
 
“Don’t be absurd, he never lived.”
 
“Yes, he was a myth only.”
 
“Nonetheless, he was born under the sign of Taurus.”
 
“But that’s what I said earlier.”
 
“Oh, did you? I misheard. I thought you said ‘torus’, which as we both know is a geometrical shape and not a zodiac sign.”
 
My neighbour was a joker, of this I was certain now. I wondered why we hadn’t interacted until this moment. I spend a lot of time on my balcony and he must have seen me there. I leaned on the railings and looked down on the city. The old alleys and narrow streets were like a maze. The thread that would lead a lost traveller out again was made from air, only the wind.
 
It was perfectly possible for the minotaur to have escaped the labyrinth by chance, from wandering at random, and in this case Theseus would have found it empty when he ventured inside, but for the sake of saving face his story wouldn’t change. Nobody could dispute that he slew the creature. Yet the monster was free, making his way in a world where he must always be alone.
 
No woman could want him, nor any cow. Never settling down, he would voyage to the edge of the known world and who can say what he would do when he reached it? Sit on his haunches and wait, I guess.
 
My neighbour had a man’s head, not that of a bull, so he couldn’t be the minotaur, as I briefly suspected when he asked me a third question, “Who does he support in a bullfight, the beast or the matador?” and I said, “The answer depends less on the fact he’s a hybrid than on his sense of justice.”
 
“Meaning what exactly?”
 
“Anyone with a sense of justice supports the bull.”
 
“I am his descendant, you see.”
 
“How is that feasible?”
 
“Somewhere on this remarkable planet of ours he must have met a woman with a cow’s head. Over many generations the bovine aspects weakened. All that remains is my unusual stomach. I don’t complain.”
 
Before I could raise an objection, he added wistfully:
 
“A shame I don’t exist.”
 
Gemini
 
They were twins and they went down the street arm in arm and I never saw either of them without the other. Absolutely identical in appearance, of course, but one was on roller skates and the other just wore ordinary shoes and had to run to keep up with her sister. I would sit at the cafe terrace and they would pass over my shadow, one rolling and the other loping, and I wasn’t sure whether to feel amused or disturbed. Not once did I attempt to speak to them. It would have felt dissolute. I merely sipped my coffee and watched them recede into the distance.
 
When I stood up from my seat later I noticed that my shadow had trouble freeing itself from the pavement, as if it had been pressed into the slabs, and it took a wrench of my shoulders to prise it loose This happened every time and I got into the habit of shrugging theatrically before departing the cafe and then setting off along a road that was at a tangent to the one the sisters had taken. If I didn’t shrug to unstick it, but just walked away, perhaps it would snap completely off at the point where it met my feet. I was reluctant to risk so odd an eventuality.
 
Yet there is probably no more effective way of keeping a favourite chair free at a cafe than by leaving one’s shadow alongside. Unlike a coat, nobody is going to steal the thing. But I couldn’t bear to forsake my shadow by neglecting to shrug, walking off alone, abandoning it like an elongated kitten that one has neither the time nor the patience for. As for damage to the shadow itself, yes I’m sure there was plenty of that, but it is difficult to see bruises on a totally dark object. In fact, what is a shadow but a nullity of substance, light and information?
 
As for the twins, I’m no expert at astrology but it was clear to me they were born under the sign of Gemini. They had a certain air about them that convinced me I was right on this point. I decided to research that constellation and so I discovered that the two brightest stars it contains are named Castor and Pollux, the twins of mythology who were born from an egg. Their mother was Leda and she laid the egg after Zeus visited and ravished her in the form of a swan. This actually told me very little about the two girls. But then I had an inspiration.
 
I was at home in my study. I dropped my pen and it rolled under the desk and my arm wasn’t long enough to retrieve it. I had no option but to move the desk and to my relief this proved an easy task. The desk was mounted on little wheels. It rolled across the floorboards smoothly, accelerating towards the open door and the stairs beyond. I had visions of it crashing down the steps and smashing itself to pieces. So I held onto it and ran next to it. We were just like twins hurrying along a street, the important one mounted on castors, and never mind the Pollux.
 
Cancer
 
Walking along the beach I understood that I had gone in a complete circle around the island. There were the footprints I had left behind when I set off. The tide hadn’t yet filled them. This meant the island was rather small, but I already knew this, didn’t I? I looked down at my bare feet and said:
 
“The prints are those of a man wearing sandals.”
 
But let’s not jump to conclusions.
 
If one jumps in any way whatsoever on a beach, the prints will be even harder to interpret the next time you see them. The fact I wasn’t wearing sandals now had little bearing on the issue. I might have worn them out on my circular walk, eroded them to nothing, exposing my toes shamelessly.
 
The obvious way of finding out for sure would be to follow these prints and keep them under close observation. My idea was that gradually they would change into the prints of a man with bare feet. The process would be interesting to observe. Sandals aren’t monstrous and neither are feet, but some midway stage might be dreadful, the prints would resemble those of a demon.
 
A beach demon in this subtropical paradise, this isolated speck of land lost upon a mighty ocean, this refuge of the shipwrecked sailor, the castaway passenger, the lost and battered stowaway on a cruise ship. We all know many legends of the sea. Beneath the waves lurk mermaids and monsters.
 
I followed the prints and in fact I matched them step for step, my bare feet fitting easily into the indentations. It seemed I was wearing invisible and intangible sandals, but there was no one to see this, and even witnesses wouldn’t have been able to form any important judgements about them.
 
As I went along, I found myself admiring the person who had made the prints in a totally objective way. There was no hint of narcissism in this appreciation. The man who made them was an abstract concept. I had forgotten my ego at some point on the sands of this second circumnavigation.
 
And yes, the prints began to change, to melt at the edges, to lose confidence in the certainty they were sandals. But they didn’t become more footlike. On the contrary I was dismayed to see them contract like pools of water draining through a hole in the world but smaller, until they were points.
 
There were more of them too. At last they left the beach and veered inland and so I followed them, walking sideways, almost scuttling, through the coconut palms and up the rocky slope of the extinct volcano at the very centre of the island. At the summit I sat on a black boulder to catch my breath.
 
A shipwrecked man must catch his own breath for every meal. The view was quite tremendous. It was shocking. The island was shaped exactly like a giant crab. It was threatening the ocean with its pincers. I looked at my reflection in the shiny obsidian and what I saw was a body without a sole.
 
Leo
 
“That’s a nice name, a name I have always liked. It is regal and strong and yet there’s something cute about it too. I imagine you like to be cuddled, especially at night. Too much cuddling and you will snarl and that will be amusing, because you won’t bite at all, just pretend to. To ruffle your hair must be fun also. When you are caught out in the rain and shake your head I bet the displaced droplets scatter far and wide. I could read a long book at night by the reflected shine from your perfectly white teeth. You are a wonderful person, I can tell this already.”
 
“Thanks for the compliments.”
 
“But you aren’t entirely happy with my words?”
 
“It’s not that, oh no.”
 
“You don’t have an issue with compliments?”
 
“None whatsoever.”
 
“Yet you wish I hadn’t spoken?”
 
“Only because I’m wondering if it’s entirely appropriate for my co-pilot to concern himself with such matters just before take-off. If you had waited until we were safely up in the air, I would think it less strange.”
 
“Apologies, captain.”
 
“Call me Leo...”
 
Just a routine flight, of course, and completely uneventful, up into the clouds and through them and over them. The aeroplane cast its shadow on the tops of banks of cumulus tufts and I watched it hurry across that snowfield in the sky, my face pressed against the cold glass of the tiny window, and I wondered what would happen if the shadow decided to fly somewhere else. Not to accompany us but to diverge and land in some other land. Would our passenger shadows disembark there or would they be unable to vacate their non-existent seats?
 
Around the shadow of our aeroplane was a perfectly circular rainbow that rippled and undulated over the irregularities in the surface of the clouds but never broke off and always kept pace. It was charming. We all know there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, gold as yellow and dangerous as a healthy lion, but this rainbow had no end. It was sealed all the way around. Then we left all the clouds behind and flew over the savanna and it was possible to see lions down there. They were the gold and they were the pots that gripped the gold.
 
Why was I flying to Africa at this time in my life? There is never a wrong time to do so, that’s the answer. The lion that the constellation Leo is named after had nothing to do with Africa. It lived in Nemea in Greece but originally fell from the moon. One must be very foolish and extremely tough to fall from the moon and land unscathed in a rocky country. But its fur was impenetrable. And now the aeroplane begins its long descent and we are falling not from the moon but sliding out of the blue, and Captain Leo is in full control, confident, majestic.
 
Virgo
 
The purity of the untouched man or woman.
 
We wonder if this is a dangerous condition. Avoiding life isn’t really purity but an amateurish rehearsal for death. The actors find it difficult to learn their lines. The old theatre is draughty and morosely decays.
 
A building with weeds on the outer sills of all the windows. But that doesn’t look too bad, to be honest, it gives the place a verdant charm. Some of the weeds are able to produce flowers that nod in the breeze.
 
At some point the wind chills itself seeking entrance.
 
It scrapes off its warmth in the cracks.
 
A leaner and meaner current of air remains to circulate horribly down the sagging passages of the vintage pile, that crumbling music hall where a drama society meets once a week to prepare for an opening night.
 
I help to set up and control the lights. I am a volunteer.
 
The play is a very old one.
 
It is about unsullied women forced to marry conquering warriors. It is one of the most ancient plays in existence. But none of us knows how to pronounce the name of its author correctly. On our lips Aeschylus trips. I narrow the beam of a spotlight and illuminate the mouth of the director.
 
“You need to put more feeling into it, more feeling.”
 
He fans dust with the script.
 
Glances are exchanged in a way that virginities can never be. Of all the plays the society might have chosen, why this one? A light modern comedy would have been a finer choice. There will be an audience anyway, of course, comprising the family and friends of the performers, just them.
 
There’s a hole in the ceiling directly above my head.
 
I look up and see the sky.
 
One of the magnifying lenses for the lights is resting by my side. I pick it up and hold it to my eye like an absurd monocle.
 
Indoors, but I am outside.
 
That’s how decayed the roof is, the tiles have peeled away, as if time is an uncut fingernail and the theatre is a tangerine. I see a star, a single point of light, and with a frown I wonder if it is really a star. Not all stars are stars. Some are planets that only look like stars. My eyesight is sharp.
 
It might even be an asteroid shining up there.
 
This is highly unlikely, I know, but not entirely impossible. There are at least two asteroids that on rare occasions might be seen through binoculars from the surface of our own world. Ceres and Vesta.
 
Both of them are named after goddesses.
 
I feel intensely aristocratic as I remain with my monocle in place and the director on the stage below rants his nonsense.
 
Vesta above me, her virgins below, the Vestal virgins.
 
But I am not at all like them.
 
I lower the lens to the floor, unbutton my shirt and take it off. I fling it at the hole in the ceiling and it passes through, caught by a gust like a sail. Off it goes on a most spontaneous flapping voyage, and I remain bare-chested in control of the lights, skin bristling, with no vest to cover the truth.
 
 
© Rhys Hughes 2025
 
This an excerpt from The Zodiacal Light, which is the first part of three from The Eleventh Commandment, a book of short fictions by Rhys Hughes, Recital Publishing 2025.