Phoebe North - Starbreak

“Okay, Raych,” I said, and forced a smile. “I’ll think about it. Promise.”

I stayed up late that night bent over my sketchbook, Pepper asleep across my ankles. My mind swirled around and around and around. Mazdin. Rachel. Earth—somewhere out there, dead as a ruin. No matter how deeply Rachel believed, I didn’t. Couldn’t. The science had been laid out too plainly for me in schoolbooks and in my lessons with Mara Stone. Again and again I’d been told of Earth’s destruction. The asteroid strike. The long, long winter. All her forests and trees, withering in the empty dark.

You are a skeptic?

All through dinner with Hannah and Ronen—meager rations six days expired, stretched thin between the three of us—Vadix had been quiet. He’d been occupied somewhere else, busy down on the planet below. In the hazy corners of my mind, I saw him standing outside the senate, speaking to whoever would listen. A lousk , standing alone in the senate pavilion, begging the gold-robed senators to consider his pleas. He probably looked like a madman. Maybe he was. But now, as my pencils made quick work across the page, I was glad to hear the gentle pressure of his voice in my mind.

I suppose. Are you? I answered.

In his big round bed in Raza Ait, he turned over, letting the light of three moons spill over his bare shoulders. He was quiet as he formulated his response.

I have always believed in the union of the god and the goddess. He led us out of the caves where we cowered away from the wrath of the winter and the savagery of the beasts. She spoke to the Ahadizhi for us at a time when few of us could speak. It is the foundation of our society, our world. I am a believer, yes.

If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel his assurance that there was a larger plan. It had sustained him during the many moons of separation from Velsa, and then later, on those interminable nights after her death. As he’d picked open his skin and watched it weep, he’d whispered prayers to the empty air:

Zaide airex ososh, airka theselizhi—

orrax aum airex velaz.

Saillu zhiosouum, saillu sauosoez ososh.

Zaide aille osooezhi ososh ut sauosoez orrax.

Zaide airex ososh, airka theselizhi, aum sauosoez zhiosouum.

I paused in my drawing, considering the sounds of the syllables. They were quiet, gentle, the sound of whispers among reeds. What does it mean, Vadix? I asked. I think he was surprised that I heard this memory, buried as deep as it was inside of him. But he knew that he was safe with me in the darkness of our minds. He translated swiftly, without any trouble.

In this hour of winterdark, we cry like the newly sprouted—

god and goddess, hear us.

We have walked together, and now we walk apart.

Give me strength to walk alone like you, my god, toward spring’s first light.

Give me the goddess’s voice, a song to sustain me, even as I sing without her.

I opened my eyes again, groping through my sheets for another pencil. I didn’t want to think about his solitude—how it was hard for him, even now, to lie in bed alone. But the steady, familiar rhythm of my pencil against paper soothed me. I layered red atop blue, a drop of blood in a stormy sea.

I wish I could believe like that. It must be comforting.

Under the glass ceiling a slow smile lifted his lips.

It is. But surely you must believe in something, Terra, if not in gods?

I picked up the black pencil, sketching in a pair of eyes. His eyes, filled with unimaginable secrets. Then I drew the soft line of his mouth.

I think . . . , I began, the words coming slowly. I think I believe that a new day will come tomorrow, like it has every day before it. Sometimes I hated it, you know? How time kept slipping away from me, taking me one day further from Momma, and Abba, too. And every day was just like the last one. The walls here felt like they were closing in on me sometimes. But then I remembered why those walls were here. Why I am here. My ancestors left our planet because they had hope for the future. They weren’t on this ship because they wanted to live here. They were on this ship so that someday I could live somewhere else. Someplace better.

I paused, looking down at the page. In my sketch Vadix stared back at me, his expression grave and uncertain. It had been easy to draw him, even if his body was thousands of kilometers below. I would never, ever forget.

I think that’s why I can’t abide by Rachel’s plan to return to Earth. If nothing else, I’ve always believed in the promise of Zehava. I still do, I think. Not because of you, or me, or us. But because of Momma and Abba and all the people before them. Everything they sacrificed. I have to hold on to that—on to hope for a new day tomorrow, and the day after.

I don’t think he knew what to say to that. So he simply said nothing, his mind tightly curled around mine—like we were two bodies in a bed, embracing each other. With a sigh I glanced down at the page. I wished he could be there with me, in flesh and not just in spirit.

I think he wanted to be with me, too—or to be closer at least, sitting beside me in bed, talking with words as well as thoughts. I felt him peeking through my eyes. It was a curious sensation, one that sent a shiver through me. He drew back, but it was too late. He’d already seen.

You made my image. You are an artist.

Even alone in my room I felt myself blush. I don’t know if I’d say that. It’s just something that I enjoy doing. It’s not—it’s not my job or anything.

His thoughts were deliberate. It does not matter. You are talented. Like an Ahadizhi. Such images could hypnotize even the wildest animal.

My blush only deepened. I pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. Oh, Vadix, I replied. You’re teasing me.

Perhaps , he said gently. Perhaps.

Mara told me once that old maps of Earth bore the images of dragons near the margins in those foreign countries where the cartographers had never dared to travel. On that workday, long past, I’d been wondering aloud about Zehava’s continents, her seas, and Mara said that all of that was nothing more than dragons we’d someday uncover—shapes that science couldn’t even imagine, not yet, not when the ship was so far out.

Uncovering dragons . That night, as we lay in our separate beds, I recalled the phrase. It seemed to be an apt name for what we were doing, peeling back layers of ourselves to expose foreign shapes, new lands, and strange continents. I felt like a cartographer as I sketched him inside my notebook. I drew his long limbs, his curves, and the bright contrast of his hand against my hip. I committed him to memory so that I would never, ever forget.

As if I ever could.

Of course we tumbled together that night, our bodies becoming one and whole in the depths of the dreamforests. Maybe it was frivolous of me to ignore the path ahead in favor of his body, his fingers, and the wet sweetness of his mouth. But I couldn’t help but lose myself in the violet space inside my mind. The days ahead were uncertain. There were so many problems. Silvan. Rachel. The senate below. Perhaps I should have been drawing plans, plotting strategy. Perhaps I was avoiding my troubles in favor of flesh, sweet and warm and good.

But deep in my belly I knew that this was nothing like my nights with Silvan. Back then lust was for forgetting all the pain and darkness of the future, and the stark, bone-deep solitude of the present. But now?