Phoebe North - Starbreak

Stiffly I lay down in my bed. There was nothing to do but wait now—wait for our meeting in the school that night; wait for Vadix to make any headway with the senate. The lamp by my bedside table flickered so wildly that I would have never been able to even draw. So I folded my hands across my belly, closed my eyes, and let my mind stretch and stretch. Somewhere below, Vadix waited for me.

Where are you? I asked. His mental voice came swiftly back.

Home, of course . There was laughter in it, like it was some kind of joke. But I wasn’t laughing. I turned toward the gray wall, watching my silhouette appear, then disappear, then appear again as the light went on and off and on.

When I’m here, I began, it feels like you don’t even exist. Like you’re something I only dreamed up to keep from feeling lonely. Like I’ll be stuck up here forever, alone and in the dark.

A pause. Long, too long. In the city below, Vadix stared at his reflection in his bathroom mirror. He wore no shirt. His torso was bared to the open air. So many scars, small and white. Like a thousand comets, streaking their way through blue space mottled red by solar flares.

You don’t really feel that way?

Now it was my turn to fall silent. No. No, I don’t, I said finally. I’m only afraid.

Of what?

I closed my mind, thinking of the long road ahead. If I couldn’t convince the rebels to follow me, it was all lost. If  Vadix couldn’t convince the senate, it was all lost. If I couldn’t convince Silvan . . .

I’m afraid of failing.

In a house in a copper city on a planet far above me, Vadix gave the spigot a tug. He splashed water over his shoulders, his face, drinking it in through his pores. Then he sat down on the cold tile floor. He could still see his own reflection refracted in the dozens of tiny, opalescent tiles. It seemed broken, strange, as alien as I felt.

I’ve been thinking about what you said last night, he said. About life beyond the one you’ve always known. It was unusual, hearing those words in someone else’s mind.

Pepper came snuffling along my bedsheets. I reached out to him, pulling his soft body against mine. And held him close.

What do you mean?

I used to say the same thing. All the time. To Velsa. Vausi xodsak zhieselakh, xedsi zhieserak. “We must hope for a tomorrow better than the one that we know now.”

My cat purred, kneading his claws into the blanket. I buried my face in his fur. She had doubts about your plan? But I thought it was something that you dreamed together.

It was. He paused, leaning his shoulders back against the tiled wall. I could feel the cool bite against his skin. Eventually. I—I think sometimes I may have talked her into it. I said it was all for her, to build her a city big and beautiful and new, a place where our seedlings could spread long after our lives were over.

But?

But sometimes I fear I lied to myself. Lied to her. Perhaps it wasn’t about Velsa at all. Perhaps it was about me. My boredom here in Raza Ait. My line has roots here that stretch down deep, thousands of years walking these same streets, paired and safe. My ancestors stopped dreaming about the lands beyond the walls of the twelve cities generations ago. But from the moment I sprouted, I imagined new cities, sprawling in directions I cannot predict. A cupola new and shining, not cobwebbed by ancient cracks. I picture new Guardians, humming new tunes to themselves—tunes I haven’t yet translated but that my very soul understands.

I thought of the craggy, wild shape of the continents I’d once sketched in the margins of my notebook. I thought of my own desperation to leave this ship, this dome, this life that had been planned for me, where nothing was ever new or fresh or surprising. I thought of my father, all those times he told me to be dutiful, to be good , while inside, my temper burbled and roared. It wasn’t just that I’d been angry. It was that I knew there was more for me—somewhere, somehow. But so long as I was imprisoned by these walls, this glass, then I’d be nothing more than a shadow of an ordinary girl.

I used to think my only hope for a new and different life was one far from the land where I was sprouted, Vadix went on. But now I realize: you are new. You disrupt the balance of our city, yes. But you will transform the path ahead with your very presence. Once, I would have had no future ahead. I would have been a lousk, a walking specter. Dead already, if not in flesh then in spirit. Now . . .

Now?

Now I might have a future, too.

I bit my lip, holding the smile in. I wanted to ask him if this meant he was staying—staying with me, staying alive. But before I could respond, the door angled open. A clear bolt of light was cast down over my face, jagged and bright. I shielded my eyes with my wrist.

“Terra,” came my brother’s voice, low and urgent. “There’s someone here to see you.”

“Rebbe Davison?” I asked, sitting up straight. It must have been nearly nineteen o’clock. “I didn’t hear the bells.”

“Probably because the clock keeper is waiting with him. Van Hofstadter, too. Where are you going, Terra?”

I gazed at him. My eyes had adjusted by then. I could see him press the edge of his cheek against the doorjamb. He looked nervous—hesitant. But I couldn’t shield him from the Children of Abel. Not anymore.

“There’s a meeting. We’re gathering to discuss our plans for facing the Council.”

My brother watched as I stuffed my feet down into my boots and laced them. But he was silent.

“What is it, Ronen?” I asked, pulling the laces into bows.

“I’d like to come with you.”

I only let out a soft laugh at that, groping through the dim light for my old winter coat. My brother—Council husband, the contract-abiding man that my father always wished he himself could have been. But he cleared his throat, squaring his shoulders in the yellow hallway light.

“I mean it.”

I flashed up my gaze. Ronen’s eyes were hazel, just like my eyes. But when I gazed in the mirror, I saw that my own stare had hardened—gone flinty and sharp. My brother’s had a softness, a sadness. He might have been the older one, but I worried about him.

“You shouldn’t. It’s dangerous. If something happens to you, what will happen to Hannah and Alya?”

His lips parted. He glanced down the hall. But then he gave his head a shake, setting his jaw determinedly.

“I talked to Hannah. We’ve both agreed. We’ve changed our minds. There’s no use in hiding like her parents. What good is safety without freedom? A voice? The Council doesn’t care what we have to say. Silvan Rafferty won’t listen.” He paused, taking the time to cross his arms over his chest. “But you will, Terra. I know you will.”

I sighed as I buttoned up my coat. “Fine,” I said at last. As I walked down the stairs toward the galley, I spoke over my shoulder at him. “But you know that Abba’s gotta be turning in his grave right now.”

Ronen clomped down the stairs after me, laughing a little with every step.

“Good,” he said. “Let him.”

The old oak doors of the ship’s school were unpolished, and yet they shone in the evening light from the thousands of hands that had touched them on the way to class each day. Back then we’d been proud of our place here—buzzing from classroom to classroom like worker bees, happy to pollinate the world with the Council’s lies. Now we flocked to the school under the cover of uneasy night. Though the planet was radiant in the glass overhead, sparkling with the electricity of the twelve cities that sprawled out across the northern continent, our steps were heavy, fearful. Tonight, here, in the place where we’d all been inculcated into life on our ship, we would finally decide how to leave it behind.