Ollie and the Starchaser

By Tanya Southey

Nanoo is Ollie’s beloved grandmother. She is not a typical gran who sits knitting scratchy jumpers and drinking tea; she’s an astronomer. She knows amazing things and can point out all the 
stars and their names. Nanoo discovered the planet Terenza a trillion light years away, in a galaxy east of the Moon. So when Nanoo di

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karen Mc Dermott
• Release date: Feb 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648762416

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Ollie

The wind was howling but Ollie did not worry about it. He could have seen the tree at the end of the garden lurch and bow to an unknown force as though praying to some weather god only it could see. But he was warm and comfortable.

It was pitch black outside but Ollie had not closed his curtains; he liked to sleep with them open. The family farm was large enough to fit a suburb of city houses on it, yet most of the time, even in the emptiness and with no one around for miles, Ollie did not feel alone. He lay in bed, his body calm and ready for rest, and gazed up at the clear Australian sky. There were no city lights to hide the stars, and by bedtime, the Southern Cross lay sleepily on its side just outside his window.

Ollie’s pillow hugged his slightly damp head as he waited for his grandmother ‘Nanoo’ to come and tell him a story. As a two-year-old, unable to say ‘Nanna’, he’d called her Nanoo and the nickname had stuck. It suited Nanoo to have an unusual name; she was not a usual gran who sat knitting scratchy jumpers and drinking tea. She was an astronomer. She knew amazing things. She could point out all the stars and knew their names. Nanoo discovered the planet Terenza a trillion light years away. It was impossible to get to but it was there. You could see it every night. Ollie wanted to hear the story of Starchaser and Terenza, the far away planet. Although he had heard the story often, it still warmed him the way a cup of hot chocolate did before bed.

Nanoo’s slippers shlooph, shlooph, shloophed down the hallway. Chloe, Ollie’s labrador, wagged her tail. It thumped on Ollie’s bed. Every night ended to the rhythm of the ‘shlooph, thump’ song. Chloe loved bedtime as much as Ollie; she lay at the bottom of his bed, and Nanoo patted her head while she told Ollie his bedtime story.

Nanoo’s bright blue eyes, spiky grey hair and cheeky grin made her more pixie-like than human. She was healthy and fit, and her skin was tanned from her excursions to the Outback. She promised Ollie that when he turned twelve she would take him on a trip. Ollie hoped that together they would discover another planet like Terenza.

Nanoo peeked into Ollie’s room. How about that story, Buster? Ollie loved it when Nanoo called him Buster. It was her special name for him. No one else called him that. She flopped onto his bed and asked, Where do I begin?

Long ago, in a gentle corner of the galaxy, on a tiny planet called Terenza, a little spark called Starchaser was born. He had the bluest eyes that absorbed the sky and feathery hair that curled like the sun around a sleeping cat. On Starchaser’s planet the grass was eternally green; it always looked freshly mowed and had no prickly bits in it. The sun dipped and danced but never set, and the moon waved and winked at the sun as it bobbed across the purple horizon. In the clear water, the fish swam in a line like silver beads strung on a bracelet, then disappeared behind the rocks.

Starchaser did as he pleased. There was no bedtime because the sun refused to set. He was never tired because every few hours a mischievous wind tickled his cheeks, flew up into his nose and filled him with energy. Starchaser would breathe it in and think, Ah, what will I do next?

Starchaser had a puppy, a Star-fordshire terrier called Buddy, with golden eyes and a lopsided doggy grin. Together they lay on the floor of his roofless house and gazed up at the galaxy. There was no need for a roof because the rain on Terenza, unlike on Earth, seeped out of the ground to water the plants and wash the streets. Star people would say, A mighty storm pushed through the ground today. There was a strong chance that the rumbling ground-thunder could sweep you off your feet if you were too slow leaping onto a waiting rain platform.

They imagined the places they could visit. Starchaser whispered long stories to Buddy about life on Orion’s Belt where they zoomed at the speed of light between the three stars. Or on Pluto where it was always dark and Plutonians slept for seventeen months before they awoke to debate whether they lived on a celestial snowball or not, and whether theirs was a planet or a dwarf planet. They stretched their purple bodies and ground star dust into fine powder, and consumed tasteless, stony-looking soup voraciously. Then they played something resembling soccer with a glue-covered air bubble. Exhausted, they would go back to bed for at least another month and dream strange dreams of a place covered in grass and trees. Starchaser loved the Universe but fantasised most about Earth. Earth was where he really wanted to go.

Nanoo looked at Ollie. His eyes were closing. You need to sleep, Buster. Ollie nodded. I’ll finish this story tomorrow, she said. She kissed Ollie on the head and said what she always said, I love you to the moon and back. I wish upon a star for you to grow up to be the boy you’re meant to be. Goodnight, Buster.

Goodnight Nanoo.

Chloe let out her relaxing goodnight sigh and the two drifted off to sleep as Nanoo switched off the light.

CHAPTER TWO

A Weekend with Nanoo

The school bus rumbled to a halt on the gravel. It crunched and heaved as it spat Ollie off, leaving him standing alone in a cloud of red dust. He walked down the driveway to his house, kicking a stone ahead of him. He wished he could kick school as far from him as possible. School was hard sometimes. The other boys teased him about the books he read or about dropping the ball in footy.

The sun seemed determined to melt Ollie into the sand. It prickled his skin as he dragged his feet and his bag. Every day, at exactly 3:30, like a detective on duty, Chloe lay waiting in the shade of a bush near the front door, scanning the driveway for clues. Her target was Ollie. When he appeared around the corner, she rushed up to meet him, wagging not just her tail but her whole body. Ollie pretended, each time, to be surprised. He bent his knees, opened his arms and waited for her to leap, whine and