Phoebe North: Starbreak

“What are they doing?” Ettie asked me.

“I’m not sure,” I answered, scrambling down after the others. When we’d made it down the sloping cliff side, I ran toward Jachin, though the sound of Ettie’s footsteps soon joined mine. “Jachin! Jachin!” I yelled.

He turned to me, eyebrows lifted.

“Hmm?” he asked, hefting his pack up high. I gestured toward the forest beside us, darker now that the vines had made their retreat.

“What do you make of this, biologist?”

“You’re the botanist,” he said, though there was something odd about his tone. False. “Haven’t observed much relevant to my own work, myself. No sign of birds, or insects. No scat, so no small animals.”

“Maybe that’s it,” I said as I peered into the dark, dense woods. I didn’t want to tell him what the boy had said—that there were animals here, and not only that. There were dangerous, deadly beasts . The thought was too frightening to bear. “If there aren’t any birds or insects, then there are no pollinators, right? Other than the wind. Maybe that explains the plants’ extreme motility. In order to pollinate they have to move themselves closer together.”

I was used to talking like this, spouting off theories to Mara and having her confirm or deny them for me. But Jachin wasn’t my teacher; he was a stranger. And a mostly very serious one, at that.

“I don’t know, Terra,” he said in a low voice. He waited for the others to walk past us, smiling tersely at Ettie as she jogged on ahead. Then he turned to me. “I don’t want to scare the child.”

“Scare her how?”

“All this talk about carnivorous trees is bad enough. And so soon after her grandfather’s death! My son is her age. Full of bluster, but still screams at night for his abba sometimes.”

“What happened to him?” I asked. It was hard to imagine this man, responsible and serious, leaving his children behind.

“The night of the riots I told my wife I was a Child of Abel.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him swallow hard, as though it hurt to push the words past his lips. “She kicked me out. Told me to stay away from them. So I did.”

I felt my stomach clench. Jachin’s children had an abba, one who cared for them, who wanted to see them live and grow in a world where they could flourish. And yet still they were alone. Like I’d once been. Like Ettie was now too.

At ten I’d still needed my momma. My father, too. I’d been terrified by the ghosts my brother said haunted the engine rooms at night, never mind the real, unseen dangers that lurked in the ship’s darkness. Now Ettie faced monsters stranger than any I’d ever glimpsed in nightmares. Beasts . All because I’d been in too much of a hurry to leave her on the Asherah . Queasy, I turned my gaze to Jachin.

“Tell me about the dangers,” I murmured, and though my voice was low, it was fierce, too. I needed to keep Ettie safe. He hesitated, surprised by the force of my words. Then he pointed to a ragged line that cut across a row of nearby trees, two meters up from where they were rooted in the black Zehavan earth.

“I study predators on the ship,” he said. “Which ones are necessary for pest control, which ones are safe. Those marks. They look like the markings of felines. They’ll rake their claws on trees to sharpen them and spread their scent.”

“Felines.” I smiled, thinking of the tomcat who still waited for me in my brother’s quarters on the ship. “So I was wrong. Maybe there are house cats here—”

“Terra!” Jachin said, his voice suddenly as sharp as broken glass. “I don’t mean tabby cats. There are other felines, ones we’ve never seen fit to awaken. Panthers and mountain lions and tigers. Do you have a cat?”

“Yes,” I said. “Pepper. He’s—”

“Think of Pepper. Think of the way he acts when he smells a mouse, or when another tom walks by the window. Now imagine that he weighs, oh, say, three hundred fifty kilograms.”

I swallowed hard, thinking of the way Pepper sometimes dug his claws into me when I stroked his stomach wrong—kicking out his back feet, leaving long marks raking my forearms.

“Maybe the plants don’t move for pollination,” I said. “Or not only that. In the greenhouses we had a touch-me-not. Mimosa pudica. Mara showed me how if you let your fingers grace its leaves, it shrinks back, hiding. From animals who might eat it.”

I was doing it again. Rambling, musing aloud. But this time Jachin only nodded his head in agreement.

“There might not be pollinators here,” he said. “But I suspect there are predators.”

We didn’t tell the others about the dangers that lurked in the forests. Instead I kept my head down, watching my boots strike the earth as we made our way over the frozen ground. I was underdressed in my flight suit—the cold cut straight through, numbing my calves and thighs. But the rhythm of the walk kept me going, a straight line south toward the city.

Toward my boy.

We stopped near midday, when Epsilon Eridani was high in the sky. We’d reached an open plain coated with dense grass, gone blue from frost and trampled flat. I wondered if the others noticed as they set down their packs and squatted over the cold ground to eat, but apparently their attentions were elsewhere—Deklan trying to beg an extra handful of freeze-dried fruit off Laurel; Rebbe Davison arguing with Jachin about the place of religion in our colony to come. I was alone in my reflections, staring out into the forest with wary eyes. Or so I thought.

Because halfway through our meal I heard a shout. A child’s voice, distant, punctuated with laughter.

“Hey! Hey, look!”

Ettie. I whipped my head around, searching for her. I found her at the edge of the clearing, her hair a dark veil down her back.

Stay on the rocky pathway, the boy had said. Avoid the forests. But there she was, holding one hand out and open toward the darkness beyond. The others only watched at first, but I scrambled to my feet and raced toward her. When I reached the place where the grass grew spare and knotted with roots, I grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her skinny body around.

“What are you doing?”

She broke herself from my grip and staggered back. Her expression was pleasantly puzzled, not angry or upset.

“I wanted to see the forest. Look!”

She extended one hand again. I started to reach out to stop her, but by then the others had come to see what was the matter. I tamped down my fear until it was nothing but a slender lick of flame. And watched.

There was a vine that had tangled its way around the nearest black-barked tree. The vines’ leaves were a deep violet lined with veins the color of heliotrope, and they flickered as the plant began to unfurl its tendrils. How did it know that Ettie stood there, arm outstretched, her brave smile showing crooked teeth? It didn’t have eyes or ears. I reached back in my mind, trying to recall what Mara had taught me about sensory systems in plants. Meanwhile the coiling vine slithered down the nearest branch, reaching and stretching, until its leaves graced Ettie’s smooth, small hand.

“Ettie!” I cried. There was a chorus of murmurs from the others. Her impish grin grew wider and wider as the vine climbed her arm, knotting through her unbound hair. The movement was slow, strange—but beautiful. Like something from a dream.

“See, Terra?” she said, smiling faintly. “It’s okay!”

Beside me Rebbe Davison let out a chuckle. “The curiosity of a child,” he said. But Ettie wasn’t the only one who was curious. Deklan took a heavy step forward, reaching out his hand.