Phoebe North: Starbreak

I’m not sure how long we sat there in the snow, the winter sun bright and small overhead. Without the clock bells to toll the hour, it was impossible to tell. Might have been twenty minutes—might have been two hours. We hunkered down in silence, shivering. I guess we were all shocked from the crash. I know I couldn’t make words move past my mouth.

At last Deklan pulled himself to his feet. He stared down the mountain. Between a pair of boulders was a deep cleft, wide enough for a man to pass.

“Helllooooooo!” he called. His voice came echoing back a dozen times, folded over itself. When at last it died, he turned to us. “Nobody’s home.”

“It’s a big planet,” Rebbe Davison said.

It was. Stretching thousands of kilometers out in all directions. This wasn’t the ship, where there was no place to go, and anywhere you went was safe. This was Zehava, the wider world. The air was cool and biting, and there were no warm quarters waiting for us. I finally let go of Ettie’s hand and stumbled to my feet.

“We need a plan,” I said. “For the night at least. Otherwise we’ll freeze. I know I didn’t come all the way to this planet just to—” I broke off, thinking of the body smashed inside the shuttle, and how it had once been a man.

“There are supplies,” Laurel said, not noticing how I tripped over my words. “We’ve been stocking up the shuttles for months. Shelf-stable food. Water. A tent, and sleeping sacks.” She paused, as if she were afraid to go on.

“What else, Laurel?” Rebbe Davison prodded, in his placid teacher voice, the one that somehow always convinced one kid to snitch on another back when we were young. Laurel took a breath.

“Weapons,” she said. “And firestarter.”

“Fire?” Jachin asked. We all grew quiet again, thinking about it. On the ship open flames were forbidden. Our stoves were electric; our heaters electric too. Once a year a marshal came to make sure not a single spark would escape. We were taught from a very young age that fire was dangerous—that even the smallest flame could sear through the dome, eating all our trees, our crops, disrupting the delicate balance of breathable air. But we weren’t in the dome anymore. We were on Zehava, and the afternoon was cold, and bound to grow only colder.

We started toward the shuttle.

We were lucky. Though we’d lost a dozen or so packets of dry fruit and a few sleeping rolls down the mountainside, we were able to scrounge enough to make a small hill from our provisions. Rebbe Davison asked Ettie to count them, and she seemed glad for the distraction. Sniffling, she reported that there was one tent, nine sleep sacks, forty-seven dehydrated meals wrapped up in crinkly cellophane, eight rucksacks, three lighters, a canteen of fresh water for each of us, four mess kits, twelve sonic rifles, a small ax, nineteen packs of firestarter, and a dozen helmets.

“We should have been wearing those when we crashed,” Laurel said, staring down at the pile. “I can’t believe I forgot. What if the air here is toxic?”

I thought of the video I’d seen in the command center. My sister-in-law, Hannah, had worn no helmet. She had a trail of blood down her face, but she breathed. I drew my own breath deep into my lungs.

“The air seems fine to me,” I said. But Laurel only shook her head.

“There could be biological hazards. Diseases. And if we’d been wearing them—” She glanced back toward the shuttle, to the corner of smashed metal that we’d all avoided looking at. Deklan set his hand on her shoulder.

“It’s too late for that now,” he said softly. She collapsed into his arms. She didn’t cry, only let him rock her silently. She was lucky that she had him—strong arms, a soft shoulder. I thought about my boy, how he’d snatched his slender fingers away from mine at the slightest touch. Looking at Deklan and Laurel, I felt more alone than I ever had before.

Soon Rebbe Davison and Ettie surfaced from under the distant clump of trees. Each one held a pile of black sticks in their arms.

“I was going to chop down a tree,” Rebbe Davison said. “Like it says in the survival manuals in the library. But—” He hesitated, looking out at the silhouette of branches that shivered against the sky. When Ettie piped up, her own voice was awed despite the tears drying on her face.

“They moved! The trees moved! Like they could see us! Like they were people!”

We all stared at her. I suppose the others didn’t believe it, that trees could move of their own volition. Of course, on Earth the plants turned their faces toward the sun, unfurling blossoms in the early morning light. But that was different—automatic, instinctual. And slow, slow, slow.

But I’d known for months that plants could caress you, could wrap their arms around you like you, too, were made from cellulose and wood pulp.

“There are plants on Earth,” I offered when they turned to me with questioning eyes, “that move in response to stimuli. Carnivorous, mostly. Pitcher plants and flytraps—”

“Carnivorous?” Deklan asked, angling up his jaw. I hesitated. It was Jachin who answered for me.

“Flesh eating.”

Deklan’s eyes went wide. The corners of his mouth lifted, but I don’t think he found it funny. Alarming, maybe. He wore his smile like a shield. He took the bundle of sticks from Ettie’s arms.

“We’ll make do,” he said. He arranged them on the ground. I saw him glance back toward the fist of trees in the distance. The black clump waved at us like fingers thrust up through the crust of ice. Deklan shivered, but we all ignored it as we knelt by his side and helped him make a fire.

The flames that leaped out of the lighters were small, only tiny nubbins of orange light. But the firestarter caught the flames easily and spread them through the black twigs and sticks. First they smoldered, smoke rising, thick on the air. But soon the fire grew hypnotic, orange and dancing, blue at the base and then fading to white as it flickered into the open air. We gathered around it, warming our faces. At first Ettie hung back.

“It’s dangerous ,” she said, and then she looked pointedly at Rebbe Davison. “We learned that in school.”

I held out my hand to her.

“It’s okay,” I told her gently. “It will keep you warm. You want to be warm, right?”

She hung back a moment longer, chewing on her lip. Then, in a burst of energy, she plunged herself over the drifts and came to kneel beside me in the snow.

Rebbe Davison got us food. We boiled the packets of dried meat and dehydrated vegetables over the fire with a few splashes of our water.

“The water won’t last us long,” he said. “We’ll have to boil snow soon and hope . . .” He trailed off. Deklan was hard-eyed. He held one of the sonic rifles over his knees. He hadn’t let it go since we’d found them. Projectile weapons weren’t allowed on the ship—too risky, even for the captain’s guard. I guess it made him feel extra safe.

“Hope what?” he demanded. Rebbe Davison let out a small, desperate laugh.

“Hope there’s nothing in their water that will kill us.”

We were all quiet for a long time as we watched the water burble, as the fire beneath it burned. Rebbe Davison still held the pot out over the fire, but he used his free hand to veil his face.

“I can’t believe I did this,” he said at last. “I never drink. But I was drunk when I ran for the shuttle bay.”

Beside him Jachin let out a snort.

“Me too.”

Then Deklan and Laurel gazed at each other. In the firelight I saw her cheeks darken. He wore a wicked grin. “So were we.”

Then suddenly, strangely, we were all laughing—desperate, hysterical laughter, like it was the best joke that had ever been told. All of us except Ettie, of course. She frowned deeply, staring at the grown-ups like every single one of us had two heads each.