Phoebe North - Starbreak

“We did, but it was too late. The riots had already started.”

Silence stretched out, the only sound the wind stirring the camp’s white walls. I leaned forward, watching Hannah intently. “What happened down here? What happened to you?”

I touched my hand to her hairline, to the brown scab that split her forehead.

“It was awful,” Hannah said at last. She nudged at the hard earth with the toe of her boot. “Do you know what the locals call their world? Aur Evez. ‘The crowded land.’ The cities are packed, and the wilderness is filled with monsters , Terra. There’s no room for us here, and even if there were, the Ahadizhi—”

“Who?” asked Jachin, sitting forward on his log. Hannah pressed her lips into a wistful smile.

“The furry ones, with all the teeth. They’re carnivores. Hunters. They see us as no different from the animals outside. When we first reached the city after landing, we were hopeful. They ignored us initially. But then something changed. They attacked us. I thought we would be torn apart.”

“If it weren’t for the Xollu, we’d be dead. The tall ones? Travel in pairs? They’re scientists. Scholars. They saved us so that they could study us. But they still don’t understand.”

“Understand what?” Rebbe Davison prodded. Hannah only stared at him. Finally one of the crew members, a young man with dirt-darkened curls, answered for her.

“Animals,” he said. “They don’t understand animals. They’re not like us. It took us days to figure it out. The tall ones, the Xollu, they don’t eat at all. They seem to survive off water and sunbeams. They don’t even need to breathe. Even the Ahadizhi move like branches in the wind. They’re plants. That’s our theory, at least. The only thing that would explain it.”

We all went silent, staring into the fire. It fit with everything I’d noticed about the planet, the way that the vines tripped through the forests, the way that the hunters had moved, lithe and flexible but not breathing a single breath. And yet it was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.

“Plants?” said Rebbe Davison. “It can’t be. It just can’t.”

I thought of the boy, of his smooth, tender hands. Of his body, pressed beside mine, cool and fragrant. It seemed right. But it also sounded absurd. What would Mara Stone have to say about this?

“Good thing we brought a botanist,” Jachin said. His lips lifted wryly. It was supposed to be a joke.

But nobody laughed. Not even me.

When the sun began to fade through the tent’s walls, Hannah rose from the ground and took my hand in hers.

“Come with me!” she said. “All of you.”

The others scrambled to their feet, dusting off their dingy clothes. But Aleksandra didn’t like to be told what to do. She stayed where she was at the edge of the fire, scowling into it.

“Why?” she asked.

Hannah led us across the compound to where the tents shivered in the warm wind. Her smile was thin, a little ruthless. She wasn’t like the rebels, who fell into line so easily at the sight of their fearless leader. In fact she hardly seemed to have any tolerance for Aleksandra at all.

“Dinnertime,” was all she said.

With that, the gate clanged open. A gang of Ahadizhi came in, hefting a garishly painted cart behind them. They hummed as they worked, throwing down slabs of green, fatty meat. Though the sound was tuneless, meandering, I still had to fight the urge to drift close again. Even Aleksandra stood, watching them, a hungry intensity in her eyes.

But they ignored her, pushed the cart away, and left without so much as a growl.

The crew set upon the food like a pack of wild animals. Dipping their arms into the green puddles of blood, they sorted out the meat that was too slimy, too fetid, too old. Then they began to build a fire to cook it all down.

“When we first got here,” Hannah said, spearing a chunk of meat on a spit, “they didn’t seem to understand that we needed to eat at all. Then they started giving us food, but we had no way to cook it. We were sick, all of us, for days. I thought we’d die. Until their translator came in and suggested fire.”

“Translator?” I asked. Hannah didn’t seem to hear the eagerness in my voice. She only gave a small nod, hefting the meat over the smoking coals.

“He’s a Xollu, but he’s not like the rest of them. Honestly, we thought they all were nothing more than savages at first. Shouting at us and shoving us around. But then one afternoon he walked in. He held his hands up high, like this”—she lifted up her free palm to show me what she meant—“and he said, as clear as day, ‘Hel-lo.’ I think he’d been listening to us for ages.”

“He’s the one who told you,” I said, watching the flame char our dinner, wrapping it up in blue and orange and black, “all about the Ahadizhi and all of that? And the name of the planet? Aur Evez?”

“Yeah,” she said. She drew the spit out of the fire, tearing at the burning meat. Once I’d admired Hannah for her poise; she’d been the mannered daughter of two Council members, after all. Now so much of that had fallen way. She was only a person now, dirty, half-starved. She offered me a sliver of meat. I took it, chewed. “He’s almost nice to talk to. All of the Xollu seem curious—you’ll see, later. But he’s the only one who has a handle on Asheran. He’s friendly. Even if he’s, you know, different.”

I didn’t know. Still chewing, I shook my head. Hannah watched me, considering.

“They call him a lousk . The others, I mean. At first we thought it was his name.”

“But it’s not?”

“No.” Her lips pursed. “I’m not sure what it means. ‘Outcast,’ maybe. There’s something sad about him. Don’t take this the wrong way, but he almost reminds me of you. He seems to carry his sadness with him, like his heart has been shattered to bits.”

My heart was in my throat, pounding out a panicked beat. I thought of the boy, and his arms around me, and his fingers cold against my burning skin. I thought of the way I felt when I was dreaming, so happy that I was afraid the forests around me would be burned away by the force of my joy.

“What do you mean, ‘you’ll see, later’?” I asked, eager to change the subject before she heard the labored, frantic movements of my heart. Hannah shrugged her thin shoulders and tore off another strip of meat.

“They come every morning,” she said, “drag us away in groups to study us. I hate it. It makes me feel like an animal in a cage. We need to get out of here, Terra. They’ll never see us as people , only as lab specimens.” She wiped her mouth on the back of her sleeve and looked toward Aleksandra, who still stood over the fire, staring down into it as it burned.

“You know, I never liked her,” she said, cocking her thumb back, “but I’m glad she’s going to get us out of here.”

I bit down on my lip so hard that I tasted blood.

That night Ettie, Laurel, and I all piled into Hannah’s tent. It was so much warmer there than it was in the world outside the city gates. We stripped off our flight suits; Hannah handed me a dirt-stiff undershirt and a pair of shorts she’d worn on the day of the crash, to cover up my bare limbs. Even that was almost too much as we laid out our sleeping rolls and tucked ourselves in for the night. It was funny, to watch Hannah put a protective arm around Ettie. I guess she’d missed being a mother, all that nurturing gone to pot as she waited for rescue on the planet. Ettie seemed to be growing used to the treatment too—the grown-ups holding her, comforting her, protecting her from the savage world beyond. Which was how it should be, I thought. If we were going to survive here, we’d have to learn to be a true community, not just a collection of families with only gossip holding us together.