Under a Sky Full of Stars

My name is Eleanor.

I’ve been reborn — reborn back into 1977, on the very day the government announced the expansion of the national university entrance exam.

In my last life, my mother forced me to marry in my sister’s place: a lame, drunken mechanic from Yorkshire.

I used my own two hands to fix every bolt, every circuit board, and turned him from a wrecked repair shop into a tech millionaire during Europe’s economic boom.

But I never expected to be driven to death inside the very mansion I had built for myself.

My sister has been reborn too.

This time, she volunteered to marry that penniless mechanic herself, and pushed a different marriage onto me — to the most distinguished Captain in the county.

Later, my career only kept rising, while my sister ended up with a terminal illness.

I died on a November night, in the largest bedroom of a mansion my own hands had paid to build.

The windows were shut tight, the curtains drawn closed.

The fire burned steadily, but I still felt cold.

Victor wasn’t home — he was in Manchester, in the flat of a young woman from the marketing department.

At exactly nine o’clock, my daughter called, not to ask how I was, but only to ask whether I’d signed the papers transferring my shares to her brother yet.

She didn’t ask if I’d eaten.

I set the receiver down, sat quietly on the edge of the bed, and looked down at my own two hands.

The old calluses on my fingertips were still there, marks left by thousands of hours holding a soldering iron.

Twenty-three years earlier, these same hands had been stained with grease, trembling as they loosened bolts in the repair shop of Victor Thorne, a lame mechanic from Yorkshire.

My mother had married me off to him instead of Sylvia, because, as she put it, I “had nothing left to lose.”

And it was true — I had nothing left to lose.

I had only one thing: knowledge of circuits and components, knowledge that should have belonged to a twenty-year-old about to enter university, not to a bride sold off in marriage.

So I used it to fix that old generator, right on our wedding night, while Victor lay drunk and passed out.

Then I fixed the whole workshop.

Bit by bit, I turned that broken-down shop into an electronics company listed on the London exchange, right as Europe caught tech fever.

Victor grew rich because of me.

But he never once saw me as the woman who had saved his life — only as a tool that had outlived its use.

I sat there, thinking of that night twenty-three years ago, when I wore Sylvia’s ill-fitting wedding dress and walked the muddy village road to the church.

My sister had stood watching, relief plain on her face.

If I had chosen differently that day, maybe none of this would have happened.

My chest tightened, and the pain came slowly, as if my own body had simply grown tired of enduring one more day.

I called no one — because even if I had, no one would have come.

Before my eyes closed, one thought came to me with strange clarity: if there was a next life, I would never let it revolve around a man again.

I opened my eyes in a small room with a low ceiling, the damp smell of an old stone house in Yorkshire filling every breath.

The newspaper on the nightstand showed the date clearly: 14 March, 1977.

I was eighteen again, and the government had just announced the expansion of the national university entrance exam.

I remembered this exam very well, because in my last life I had passed it, had held the letter to Imperial College London in my own hands, before my mother tore it to pieces.

I sat up, my heart pounding, because I knew I still had a chance.

Just then, raised voices drifted up from the kitchen, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I went downstairs and found my mother — Mrs. Miller — standing across from Sylvia, hands on her hips.

“Say that again,” Mrs. Miller snapped. “You want to marry Victor Thorne? That lame drunk who runs the garage?”

Sylvia stood up straight, and there wasn’t a trace of hesitation in her eyes.

“That’s what I want,” Sylvia said. “As for the match with Captain Sterling, leave that one for Eleanor.”

I froze on the bottom step, and every fragment of memory from my past life clicked into place: Sylvia had married Captain Richard Sterling, been abused by him because of his post-traumatic stress, then had an affair, stolen, and died a wretched death.

And I had been forced to marry Victor, the man who later grew rich because of me, only to betray me until I died.

So Sylvia had been reborn too.

That calculating look in her eyes wasn’t the look of an ordinary sixteen-year-old — she already knew Victor would become rich.

She wanted to seize that fortune for herself, and so she was pushing the unhappy match — marriage to a soldier carrying deep psychological wounds — onto me.

I came down the rest of the stairs and stood between the two of them.

“I agree,” I said, my voice so calm it surprised even me.

Mrs. Miller spun toward me, unable to believe things could be settled so easily.

“You agree to marry Captain Sterling?”

“Yes,” I answered. “But I have one condition.”

“I’ll sit the university entrance exam. If I pass, you let me go study, and the wedding can wait.”

Mrs. Miller gave a scornful laugh, waving a hand as if shooing away a fly.

“Fine, sit your exam if you want. But don’t expect me to wait for you to finish school before I marry you off.”

I didn’t argue further, because I already knew she’d go back on her word eventually.

The only difference this time was that I had already worked out every next step in my head.

Sylvia watched me from the corner of the kitchen, a flicker of smugness in her eyes, certain she’d come out ahead.

I let her believe it.