Phoebe North - Starbreak

Maybe I should have had a speech prepared. In the stories Rebbe Davison read us when we were young, there was always a speech. The young shepherd comes for the princess and tells his story. It may be that I am bewitched, or dreaming, for my adventure passes all belief. But I had no pretty words. I only pulled my tired body up the wide front steps, hung my head, and said:

“I came. You told me where to go, and I came. Here I am.”

Vadix’s response sounded choked, almost painful, like he didn’t want to force the words past the bounds of his scar-strewn torso. “You were in danger. I couldn’t bear to lose you. I will not survive such a loss again.”

I still avoided his eyes. It felt like something strange might happen if I met them, something beyond my control.

“You told me you didn’t want me,” I said. “You told me—”

“I was afraid. This has never happened. These bonds exist only for Xollu. Not Ahadizhi, much less a beast.”

I flinched at the word; he let out a thrum of sound. A sigh, or something like it.

“I do not understand your nature, Terra. It is as foreign to me as the nature of the Ahadizhi. They hunt too, but they are not all bad. They taste flesh. Have strange passions. But they are kind. Clever. Passionate. You are these things too. I am assured. Do not ask me why.”

His mouth quivered. I wanted to press my lips to his, to still them. But I didn’t, not yet. Did aliens even know how to kiss?

“All those dreams, for all those months,” I said, my chest fluttering. “At first I thought they were dreams like the other girls had. About boys, you know? But then I realized they were different . I felt—I felt like a freak, Vadix. Wrong.”

“Perhaps it is wrong.”

“It doesn’t feel wrong,” I blurted. And then my eyes met his. I could have clamped my hands over my mouth, taking my words back, holding them in. But I didn’t want to. Instead I watched him. He pressed his fearful lips together and was still for a long moment. Then he smiled. A slow, warm smile.

“No,” he agreed. “It does not feel wrong. It does not feel wrong at all.”

His words were small and simple, just as plain as any others. But they were all I needed. My heart open, my eyes open, too, I reached out for him.

He caught me. Our bodies touched. For the first time in the flesh, I felt right. Happy. Whole.

Sometimes it seems to me that there are two types of love. The first starts small—like a drop of pigment against a wrinkled page. At first it looks like nothing but a smudge of color, stark against white. But then you add to it: a laugh, a conversation, the way that he kisses you. One brushstroke after another. Like art it fills the paper slowly until the image is undeniable. On the ship most marriages worked out like that. As we grew older, we hoped for friendships that would slowly flower into something else—by then too world-weary to expect the passionate embraces that had been promised to us in stories and in dreams.

And that was the other love, the sort we whispered of in the school yard, bright as sex and twice as dangerous. A love that caught fire like a match in the darkness, ready to burn oxygen, our lungs, our lives. Bashert, bashert, we whispered, half afraid we would find it was someday true. Because it was a risk, wasn’t it? To love hot and ask questions later. We wanted it, but we didn’t want it. By the time I’d found Vadix, I was sixteen—old enough, really, to know better.

But sometimes you need a forest fire to clear the ground for new growth. Mara had taught me that long ago—a lesson she’d hoped I’d use on our new planet, though I don’t imagine that she ever meant it this way. Vadix and I stumbled back toward his bedroom, heading straight for the round bed at the center. He peeled my clothes off as we went, leaving one dirty layer after another in a pile on the floor. His hands were long, familiar. I found in them a thousand tender mercies. They graced bare skin, caressed my rib cage and my belly. Electricity arced and flickered between us. How could I have ever doubted my own worth? Because no matter what Abba had said—and Aleksandra, and Mazdin Rafferty, and so many others— he found me worthy, urging me to love and love and never leave.

I kissed every uncountable scar. There were so many of them that soon I was dizzy, desperate for air. He laced fingers through the matted locks of my hair, drew me closer and closer still. I thought of the vines curling around one another in the forest, desperate to make their parts meet. I empathized. Why couldn’t we just have one body, one mind? It seemed to me a grave injustice that we had been born separate, different, that we had wasted so much time so far away from each other. That afternoon and into the deep golden evening, I endeavored to correct that. We would be one. Whole. Formidable. A new sort of creature.

The forest burned, but anyone who tells you that nothing is left in its wake has never felt what I’ve felt, has never seen the green promise of new growth turning up its head toward the sun—all in a darkened world of char and ash.

A funny thing happened that night, as we tumbled together and apart and together again. Our thoughts mingled, becoming one. I couldn’t tell you where I ended and he began. I wasn’t even sure whether we slept, tussling in the dreamforests, or whether we were awake, breathing, my heart pounding against his still chest. Mostly we spoke without speaking, without even words.

Love? I would ask, the question merely a flash of color in the dawning darkness, and his answer came back surely and swiftly: Love . Vines blossoming in the forest, furling out in wild curlicues, color, and color, and life.

It was a crazy thing to ask—a crazy answer, too. We hardly knew each other. And the future was uncertain. There was no room for us here. No room, even, for me. In a rare moment of respite that night, I turned my face up, peeling back the covers. The ceiling overhead was made of glass, so clear it might as well have been transparent. We were near the heart of the city, not far from the senate where our day had begun. If we went any deeper, we’d be underground—heading toward the funerary fields and the caves where the Xollu slept their long winters away. I knew this but didn’t know it. I knew it because it was his life, his truth. But staring up at the leaves that crowded the edges of the glass, and the stars that twinkled far, far above, past the translucent cupola, I wondered what all of these things meant. The truth was, I wasn’t used to being happy , and certainly not for long. The sadness began drifting back almost as quickly as we’d chased it away.

The strange, familiar solitude washed over me. I pointed up at a star that was silver and still in the sky above. It looked familiar, and then I realized the difference. The other stars twinkled, filtered through the atmosphere. This star shone steadily, like the stars through the ship’s glass once had.

“What’s that?” I asked. Vadix turned to me, a plush round pillow wedged between his arm and face. He pressed his face into it, blinking slowly, smiling.

“This is your ship. What is her name?”

“Asherah.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Ash-er-rahhh.” He drew out the syllables, luxuriating in their foreign sound. But then his expression changed, weighted by his sadness. If there was one thing I was to learn about Vadix that night, it was that he wasn’t used to being happy either.

“I used to know not what name to curse. That star, burning steadily above. When it appeared weeks ago, our people flung out wild theories. It was a bad portent. It was a sign from the god and the goddess. It was a satellite, come to steal our technologies, sent by sinister . . .” A pause. His smile returned, wide, showing all those minuscule teeth. “Aliens.”