Phoebe North: Starbreak

I peered through the glass in front. We were coming in over the northern continent where drifts of winter snow dappled the purple landscape white. The wide gulf of water was to the south of us and shrinking fast from view. I saw the craggy landscape change—saw gray dunes and the deep shadows beneath them.

Mountains. We were headed for the mountains. And from the way that the shuttle quavered as the peaks filled more and more of the glass, I knew we were about to crash.

I didn’t black out. In fact, everything seemed to slow down, as if the universe was trying to give me enough time to think, react, respond. I pressed my head back against the seat, clutching the armrests so hard that I thought they might break off in my fists. It felt as if all my blood were leaving my body, propelled out by the force of the fall to my extremities. The rest of me was left so cold that my teeth chattered. Or maybe they chattered from the vibrations. The whole shuttle shook as we ripped through the atmosphere. The men were talking, softly at first, a constant, urgent murmur. Then the shuttle banked sideways, and they were screaming, and the girl was screaming, and I was screaming too. Even Rebbe Davison screamed. I didn’t know he had it in him, but he did—a great bellow of a bass, low and rumbling.

It’s funny; I’d spent years feeling disconnected from everybody around me, alone and sad. There were nights when I stared up into the sparkling blackness of my room and wondered why I was so wrong . And on some nights, the worst nights, especially after Abba died, I wondered if I wouldn’t be better off if I went away too. I didn’t know where I would go. I just thought it would be better if I were somewhere, anywhere but in my bedroom on that ship—and there was only one way out that I had ever seen.

Now, as the metal walls of the shuttle screamed around me, as the other passengers screamed too, I realized how foolish it all was. I was too young to die. I wanted to see Zehava, and not just from behind jittering glass. I wanted to see Ronen’s baby grow up. I wanted to finally fall in love. But now that was all slipping away from me, just as surely as our shuttle slipped down and down through the atmosphere, hurtling toward the frozen ground.

I didn’t black out. I didn’t even close my eyes. They were wide open as the window was swallowed up by white, as our limbs were lifted up, as weightless as balloons, for just a moment, a narrow moment before the shuttle slammed into Zehava.

I woke up without even remembering having fallen asleep. There was no forest, no vines, no boy. Just my aching body. I pried my eyelids painfully open, taking in the light. For a moment I wasn’t sure where I was. My arms were wrapped tight around me; my chest felt squeezed. When I turned my head, my neck protested—a bolt of pain traveled down it and into my spine. I let out a small gasp, wincing.

“Terra? Are you okay?”

Rebbe Davison knelt before me. Half his face was smeared with blood, but he was whole, hopeful. I turned my head back and forth. The pain flared brightly again, then faded back.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice shaking. “Yeah, I think I am.”

“I’m going to unbuckle you, okay?”

He smiled again, a gentle, familiar smile. I’d been so surprised when I’d found out that he was a rebel, though I guess I shouldn’t have been. Even Abba had said that Mordecai Davison was a real mensch. He seemed to be in it for the good of the people, because he truly thought it was right. Now he took his soft, kind hands and used them to unlatch my safety harness. I fell forward—when had the ground gotten so slanted?—but Rebbe Davison caught me, letting out a small laugh. I felt myself blush. I wasn’t a girl anymore, one who needed her teacher to hold her up. I tried to stand straight, though my knees still shook.

“The girl,” I said, scanning the interior of the crumpled shuttle. One half of it had been sliced open during the impact. Snow spilled in, and there was broken glass, and blood. “Is she all right?”

He hesitated, wavering on his feet.

“We have her outside.”

I followed him, stumbling over the jagged, broken edge of the shuttle door. But almost as soon as I stepped out beneath the open sky, I staggered back. It was huge above us, golden white and endless. It stretched from one end of the world—where a tangle of black, naked branches clung to the mountainside—all the way to the other. There it disappeared beneath a sparkling field of ice. It seemed too low, too close—then I realized why. There was no glass to keep it back. Only space, wide open and free.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

I jumped. It was Jachin—the rebel who had sat beside Rebbe Davison on the shuttle. His dark hair was curly. Now he ran broad fingers through it again and again.

I stepped forward over the icy ground. Deklan was standing over Laurel, his gaze fiercely protective. Beside her sat the little girl. Their posture was the same—fetal, deflated. The girl held her hands over her face, her body shivering with tears. But they were both alive. That’s what mattered.

“Where’s Mar Schneider?” I asked, turning back. Rebbe Davison still stood in the mouth of the shuttle, one boot up against the broken steel. His mouth fell open. He glanced behind him to the capsule, torn open behind us like a throat. That’s when I heard it—the girl let out a cry.

“Zayde!” she said.

I don’t know why, but my legs snapped to action, as if they were under the command of someone else. I scrambled past Rebbe Davison, ducking inside the shuttle. I peered left, toward the cockpit, where the window glass had shattered into a thousand glinting shards. And I turned right, where the storage container had fallen open, exploding its contents across the snow-slick floor. Then I saw it, the shock of red that seeped out beneath a curved overhang of metal. I shouldn’t have, but I knelt down and looked.

He was still strapped to his seat, his limbs dangling down. I saw hair. Silver wisps of hair. Then the white skull beneath them. And something else. His insides.

I’d seen bodies before—too many bodies. Momma’s, waxy and still in her hospital bed. Abba’s, dangling from the bedroom rafters. Benjamin Jacobi, and Captain Wolff, too. But even when I’d seen blood spill out from open throats, those deaths had been quick ones, and relatively clean. Not this. I turned and was sick in the corner. I puked until there was nothing left, until my stomach was just an empty hole.

When I was finished, I pulled myself out of the shuttle again. The light struck me dizzy after all those years spent in the dark of the dome. I collapsed in the snow beside Laurel and the girl. The child cried and cried, her face slick with tears. At first I was frozen, stunned. I’d made it to the planet, thoughtlessly pursuing my dreams, and now, because of me, an old man had died.

I looked down at the girl. She was narrow-shouldered. Young. Younger than I’d been when Momma died.

“Esther, are you okay?” I asked, at last pulling her name from my memory. Her eyes still fixed forward, she wiped her nose on the back of her flight suit sleeve.

“Ettie,” she said finally. Then she honked out a cry.

“Ettie,” I said, and then added, in case she’d forgotten: “I’m Terra. And I’ll keep you safe.”

I didn’t even consider the meaning of my words before I spoke. I’d never kept anyone safe before. I’d always been a loner—messy Terra Fineberg, looking out for herself and no one else. But I wanted to believe that it was possible. This girl, her hair all a tangle, was alone in this strange world—helpless.

But maybe not anymore. She drew in a shuddering breath. I drew her to me, and she tucked her face in against my shoulder, letting me hold her as if we were more than strangers.