Phoebe North - Starbreak

The botanist, he said. No, she has not arrived. But her shuttle should touch the planet shortly.

Good, I said. And then, silence. I wasn’t sure what to say.

You are not supposed to be here, he said at last, in the dreamforests.

Familiar vines dripped across the treetops and crept over the path, enveloping our ankles and toes. They didn’t seem to mind my presence here.

No? I asked. He shook his head: no.

It is the purview of the Xollu alone. Not even Ahadizhi come here. Our Guardians say they dream only of the hunt. Their dream lands are killing fields.

And what are your dream lands?

Vadix was serious at first, but then a shade of a smile lit the corner of his mouth. He held out a hand. A nearby tree stretched down, settling a fruit inside his palm. He picked it, and held it in his palm, caressing the fuzz that covered its tender flesh.

Fertile grounds. This is where we walk with our mates even when we cannot be with them in the flesh. Over short nights and long winters. Our scripture says the god and goddess made this place for us. It is where our souls live before we sprout, and where we return when we die. This is why, when we close our eyes at night, we feel ourselves returning to familiar lands. Because we are. Dreamforests. Ahar Taiza.

I held out my own hand. A nearby tree wrapped a branch around it, encircling my wrist like a bracelet. Our dreams aren’t like this, I said. The things we see and learn and do in them aren’t real. I don’t understand how this works.

Vadix dropped the fruit. Where it settled in the rich black earth, a dozen seedlings sprouted and grew, all while we watched.

How does your dreaming work? he asked.

I don’t know, I said. I felt myself blush at my own ignorance. Electricity and synapses, I guess.

For us, it is the same. Electricity and synapses. One guesses . He smiled then, the toothiest of possible grins. A joke. He’d told a joke. But he didn’t give me time to get over the shock of the strange sight of sunshine in his endlessly dark eyes. When the Xollu still clung to caves, we had no words. We spoke with our minds. Chemical connections, hormonal. But we are limited. We speak only to our mates. From the first moment we are sprouted, we walk together, aware of another’s thoughts as we are our own. This is why we walk the dreamforests. First as sprouts, going hand in hand. Friends. Doing all things together, until we are grown. Living and breathing and mating and thinking. Electricity and synapses. Chemical. Eternal. Shared.

Vadix told me all of this, standing before me, blue and bare. He wasn’t like the other Xollu, nor the plants that swirled around us. The fruit that moldered on the forest floor was ruby red. The vines that wrapped my arm? Red too. But he was blue. Different.

You’re alone, I said. And just like that, the smile was gone, vanished as if it had never really been there at all.

Yes, he said. I am alone. And you are not supposed to be here.

Just like that, the forests were gone, and I was pulled into the ocean of blackest sleep.

I woke to raucous shouts, the sound of rough voices lifting up through the muggy air. Pulling myself from my sleeping roll, I parted the dingy flap to step into the bright light of day. Before the fire, silhouetted against the camp’s white walls, Aleksandra’s small army of recruits practiced. I stood watching as they thrust their spears into the air over and over again. Even Ettie, who made clumsy movements with a weapon ill-balanced for her small body, jabbed that whittled-down stick and let out a shout: “Yah!”

But Aleksandra wasn’t among them. She leaned her weight on her spear, listening as Rebbe Davison screamed until his ears turned red.

“She’s only a child! You will not endanger her!”

The captain’s daughter remained calm in the face of his anger. “We can’t leave her here, Mordecai.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing!”

Aleksandra walked toward Ettie, setting a hand on the child’s small shoulder. “We all deserve a chance to protect ourselves.”

Rebbe Davison let out a sound of frustration, throwing both hands into their air. Stomping hard, he came toward me, and collapsed on a log in front of the fire. I sat beside him.

“Don’t you need to train?” I asked.

“I don’t fight unless I have to,” he said. Then he added, with a wince: “Aleksandra never had to be here. She should have been up there on that ship. All those years, watching and waiting. Just because we rushed down to the surface didn’t mean she needed to follow. And now she’s going to get a little girl killed just to get back to it. Maybe we’ll all die. It makes no difference to her.”

I didn’t know what to say. There was no sign of Vadix yet, and none of Mara Stone. I had no assurance that the translator would do as I asked, and if he didn’t, I’d be as vulnerable to Aleksandra’s decisions as anyone else.

Maybe more, I thought, watching as she thrust the spear through the air.

“Did you think about what I said?” asked Mordecai, casting his gaze sidelong at me. He didn’t look at me, not directly. His words were merely a low murmur. “I’ll support you if you want to take up the mantle.”

“Why me?” I whispered swiftly in response. “Why not you?”

My teacher let out a low laugh. “I decided a long time ago that I’m a scholar, not a leader.”

“And you want me to lead?” I asked, dry laughter seeping into my own voice. “Of course I want to get us out of here safely. I want to find a way for us to settle here too. But I’m no leader, Rebbe Davison. I’m clumsy, awkward. I’m always late. Can hardly keep a secret. I mean, look at Aleksandra. She was born to lead.”

We watched her pause in her thrusts to show Ettie the proper way to hold her spear. The way she gripped it suggested deftness that went beyond competency. I wondered, for a moment, how many men and women Aleksandra had taught to kill. She’d been a leader for the guard once, after all. But my old teacher only let out a snort of laughter.

“She does look like she knows what she’s doing, doesn’t she? That’s always been her trick. Her mother’s, too. Don’t show any fears or doubts and the people will follow. You could learn that too, Terra. I’ve known you since you were a toddler. You’re bright. You learn easily. But more important, you’re a good person. I know dozens of rebels. But none I trust more to put the peoples’ needs first.”

I looked down at the toes of my flight boots. They were scuffed from our long journey, my feet inside blistered and dirty. Rebbe Davison didn’t know what I had done, the violence I’d wrought on that night in the Rafferty’s quarters. I was a vengeful killer, blood on my hands. No better than Aleksandra, certainly. And probably much worse.

“I don’t think so,” I began. “I’m not like her, not in the ways that matter.”

As if to underscore that point, Aleksandra spun toward us, thrusting her spear through the air. There was a flash of brown, a high-pitched whistle, and then an echoing thud. The spear missed us, but narrowly, or perhaps it had fallen precisely where she intended. It jutted out of the log between our hips, swaying between us from the force of impact.

When we finally turned our wide eyes forward, it was to the sight of Aleksandra walking square-shouldered toward us. Behind her the others paused in their lesson. They couldn’t hide the shock that left their mouths open and gaping.

“Aren’t you two going to join us?” she asked, false sweetness lacing her voice. But I knew better. Aleksandra wasn’t sweet. She was anything but. For a moment I tasted my heart in my mouth; I worried she might walk straight through the fire to reach us. But she only stopped at the circle’s edge, resting her boot against one of the taller stones.