Phoebe North - Starbreak

My stomach clenched. Rebbe Davison had once told me that Aleksandra’s mistake was in not dealing with the consequences of her actions. I guess these were my consequences—the heavy burden of my guilt, and Silvan and Rachel, lost to me forever.

“Yes, strange,” I said, but my voice came out as nothing more than a whisper.

I streamed out of the lift and straight into the darkness. Someone had broken the pasture fence; a flock of sheep had strayed down to the main path, and they bleated at my arrival. I pushed past their heavy bodies. I’d lose this soggy field soon—the silent clock tower where my father had once worked, and the ground where he rotted now. Would lose it all, the glass overhead, honeycombed, full of Zehava’s beautiful continents. Would lose my beautiful best friend, too. No, wouldn’t lose them. That wasn’t quite right. I’d given them all away, ignoring the fact that there was nothing left for us, nothing assured.

“Terra!” At last I stopped, turned. Mordecai ran toward me; my brother trailed behind. They both looked hopeful as they approached, their mouths stretched with stupid smiles. They’d waited for me—waited in the stuttering dark. “How did it go?”

“It was fine,” I croaked out painfully. “But we’re not. The ship. I gave him the ship.”

Without waiting for their response, I turned and hustled through the field again. It was Ronen who called out, amid a nest of laughter. I stopped again, frowning, to listen.

“What do we need a ship for?” he asked. “We have a whole damned planet!”

I looked back over my shoulder at my brother, my naive, sweet brother. He’d cast both arms upward, gesturing to the world above. I wondered at the shape of her as she slept in the darkness. I thought of all of our troubles ahead—the senate and their mandate, the beasts, the Ahadizhi in the south. But for the first time I gazed not to the sparkling continent up north but to her southern land, steeped in darkness. And I wondered if maybe, just maybe, Ronen might be right.

H umans as Guardians? It is an unlikely proposal.

Vadix sat on his doorstep in Raza Ait. He took in the sight of the dark grove. He watched the silhouettes of trees wavering before him. They reached and stretched, up and up and up toward the cupola above. But the stars were out that night, the glass shadowed by snow-heavy clouds. In a way I sat beside him in the doorway, my knee knocking his. But only in my mind. In flesh I was sprawled out in Ronen’s pitch-black guest room, Pepper stretched across my belly.

Unlikely, I said. I heard the baby bawling in the distance, the cat yawning on top of me. In Raza Ait I heard the wind blow. I couldn’t hear my own heart. Many things are unlikely. You are unlikely. I am unlikely. We—

I don’t speak from a lack of faith, zeze! In the dark of the night, Vadix laughed at me, but there was fear behind his laughter. You would face so many dangers. The beasts! You met one, did you not?

I did. I remembered Deklan’s body, gored straight through, the yellow horn dripping blood. I remembered mouths packed full of teeth. Savage, wild eyes.

Then you know the impossibility of this.

I ran my hand over Pepper’s knobby back. The cat had teeth, and claws that he loved to sharpen against the leg of my brother’s galley table. He was sweet, but sometimes dangerous, too, like when he slipped out an open door and returned dragging a squirrel by the scruff of its neck—its little belly already open and licked clean. I remembered the Ahadizhi vehicle that had swept up through the forest, a stream of color: red and gold, purple and green. And their intoxicating music lacing its refrain around my heart.

Tell me what happens in the winter, I said. When the Guardians are awake and you walk in the dreamforests.

Vadix stretched his long legs out, putting his slippered feet against the cold ground. He looked up, as if he could see the storm looming beyond the glass. But he couldn’t—the cupola was clouded with condensation, opaque as polished steel.

I have never seen it, he began. Of course, I have only ever slept through the long season. But I have read the accounts kept by our Guardians. They leave their work in the winter to defend our city—forming parties that hunt twice daily. The old and the young. The feeble and the strong. With their prods and knives and songs, they fell the beasts. So that we may be restored to life in spring and repair the damage done to our cities, so that we may all live in peace.

And what happens if they don’t?

Vadix closed his eyes. In his memory I could see the shadowed spaces where he retreated during the winter. The dank smell of cave was all around. But the mouth of that dim space was open, filled with light.

We are vulnerable. Without them we die. Our partnership dies. Our city dies. We have no industry. No ingenuity. We are just slender vines at the whim of tearing claws. We are impoverished. Defenseless. This is why the Xollu are afraid. We all know it, down to the root. Our essential weakness.

It was true. If I dug deep inside him, uncovering the parts of him he’d worked so hard to hide, I could see his fear. Taste it too. He was little more than a quivering child, flinching at every wind that passed. I shifted in bed, unseating Pepper. He stretched, then sank down again, tucking his black nose between his paws.

Could humans be taught to hunt?

I do not know. You are clever. But you are also prey. The Ahadizhi art raises desires in you. It is hypnotizing to you—tempting. I know. I have felt it in you. That day in the city, when you were almost lost to me.

I cast my head to the side. On my desk sat my sketchbook, scattered with pencils. I’m an artist too. Maybe I can learn to resist it — to be like them. There might even be others on the ship. People who can dance and sing, or play instruments. There hasn’t been much room in our lives for art, but maybe once we settle on the planet, there will be.

Vadix sounded hopeful—cautious but hopeful. Perhaps.

You need to ask them for me. You need to make this happen. Please, Vadix?

He didn’t answer, not right away. Instead he only sat back on his steps, turned his gaze up, and watched the snow begin to blanket the cupola.

That night I dreamed alone.

When was the last time that had happened? It must have been ages and ages ago, while the ship was still drifting through open space. Lately I’d become accustomed to meeting him at night. Even if we spoke without speaking, even if our minds were together more and more as the days went on, there were always moments of tumult, of darkness—moments that could only be healed by his touch. When we walked through the dreamforests together, I knew that I wasn’t alone, wrong and strange. I knew that I was understood. Strong. Beautiful. Solid. Real. His lips were a reminder that I was someone worth kissing; his arms an assurance that I was worth holding, too. I looked forward to our nights together. I craved them, like a hungry ghost, insatiable.

So on that night, when I stumbled through the dark corners of my own mind, I couldn’t help but feel unsettled. Where was he? He was supposed to be here, my support, my scaffolding. Cradling my hand in his hand and saying my name. Reminding me that I was still a living creature, not just some small scrap of memory left behind when my father died.

Abba. He was here in my dream, his voice echoing down the long hallway of the house where I grew up. I took ponderous steps down it; the hall seemed to stretch longer and longer. When I opened his bedroom door, I found him sitting on the bed. It was wrong, all wrong. He was dead, and nothing would ever change that. But then he smiled, and it didn’t matter. My Abba’s true smile, wide and gummy. It had been years since I’d seen him smile like that.