Phoebe North: Starbreak

But every morning I’d wake with guilt weighing down my mind. Not my guilt. His. He’d stayed too long. He was being selfish. He needed to go join her in the funerary fields. He needed . . . As I rose from my bed and dressed, readying myself for the day’s preparations, I felt him shutter himself from me. He needed to steel himself if he was finally going to fulfill his purpose and lay himself down beside his first mate.

Busy days, but long days. So very long. Because soon he’d join her in death. And I would be all alone.

Our final night. Everything was packed; the shuttles would be waiting for us in the morning. In total 872 citizens had made the decision to join us. A clear majority. They’d grown used to liberty, I suppose, and to the dream of open skies that had been promised to us. But more than two hundred citizens would remain behind. Council-born mostly, but a few others, too. Their first years would be lean—they’d have to get their population up if they were to support the ship’s basic functions. But looking at Silvan, his arm wrapped around Rachel’s slender waist as she lit a pair of electric candles and set them on their long table that night, I had faith that they would thrive.

With her hands cupped over her face, she said a prayer. Then she turned to all of us who had gathered there at Silvan’s family’s oak galley table. It was the finest table in the finest house in all of the districts. A guard was posted at either side of the door. This was the captain’s house now, and none would forget it. Especially not Silvan’s mother; she gazed up at him, dark eyes bright with pride. She didn’t know what I’d done to her husband either. I suppose it was better for her. Easier.

“Amen,” Rachel said. “Now, to begin the festive meal.”

She rushed off toward the kitchen. I went to help her. There was a turkey, freshly butchered; emerald vegetables; hard boiled eggs. And a loaf of knotty egg bread. My contribution. The recipe had been Momma’s. I’d found it as I packed that morning, tucked at the back of her ancestor’s book.

“Thank you,” Rachel said as I took the potato kugel from her and set in on the table. There were nearly twenty people gathered—her family, and his, and mine. Hannah and Ronen and Alyana. Mordecai and Mara Stone. Maybe they weren’t all my flesh and blood, but they were family nonetheless. Their boisterous voices rose up as Rachel went to carve the turkey in the galley.

I watched her. She wore another long skirt and blouse, but brighter now, reds and yellows. She still looked beautiful as she went to work, slicing the meat away from the breast, but so different from the girl I’d once known. Adult.

“I’ll miss you,” I said. She flashed her dark eyes up to me.

“I’ll miss you, too,” she said. Then paused, glancing over her shoulder. “Will you hand me that platter?”

“Sure.”

It was a night for good-byes, but it seemed that Rachel had no time for those. She carved the turkey and then carried it to the table. I lingered behind her, watching from the counter as she grabbed her glass and lifted it.

“Before we begin,” she said, “I’d like to say a few words over the wine.”

Everyone raised their glasses. I reached for the bottle that sat on the counter and raised it, too, sloshing the few centimeters of liquid at the bottom. I watched Rachel, ready to hear her wish us luck on our new home—ready for her to give us a chance to wish her luck on her long, long journey back. But instead she bowed her head and intoned, “Baruch atah Adonai elohaynu melech ha’olam boray pri ha’gafen.”

“Amen,” said Silvan, lifting his glass. The others faintly echoed back the word, though Mara seemed particularly confused by the recitation. Letting out a sigh, I lifted the bottle, said “Amen,” and drank the wine down. Then I watched Rachel and the way her smile glittered as she sat down at the table.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” she said. “Silvan, you say the blessing over the bread.”

Silvan looked up at her, his inky eyes sheepish. “I don’t remember how,” he said.

Her smile was gentle, patient. As if she were looking forward to the future they’d share together, during which he would learn this, and so many other things.

“I’ll help. Repeat after me: Baruch atah Adonai . . .”

Silvan, pink-cheeked, bowed his head. “Barach atah Adonai . . .”

As he spoke, Rachel’s eyes caught mine. I lifted my lips, but the smile tasted as bittersweet as the wine. She was right here with me, but she might as well have been thousands of kilometers away. Her heart, after all, was already promised to someone else.

That night, while I was preoccupied with the light and the laughter of Rachel’s feast, the boisterous conversation and the lingering farewell hugs, Vadix went completely silent.

I didn’t realize it until I lay down in my brother’s guest room bed one final time. The night was seamless black, without stars, without a moon, but that was nothing new. For sixteen years I’d faced those nights. Windowless bedrooms. Impenetrable dark. They were my companions, utterly ordinary. But what was unusual was the silence. Echoing and absolute. It was a quiet that seemed to swallow up my whole world.

Vadix? I asked, but no voice came thundering back inside my mind. My breath was suddenly shallow. Absent. I sat up in bed, tugging open the top button of my nightgown in a panic. Vadix!

Nothing. Nothing. No flowers turning their faces to the light. No vines to bolster me. When I closed my eyes, the only thing I saw was a dark cave wall streaked with limey water. I smelled metal and packed-down dirt where the perfume of life should have been. I heard silence where there should have been music. Felt pain where there should have been joy.

These were the funerary fields—underground caverns below even the winter caves, pungent with the odor of decay. Purple seedlings curled up from mounds. Some would swell into lavender flowers. Blossoms. Fruit. People . But the season was early, the light at the cave’s mouth feeble. There was no life there, not now.

He was down there somewhere, deep beneath the city. If I could have, I would have kicked back my covers, raced through Raza Ait with my hair unbound. I would have pulled him back toward the moonlight, to the place where the living still walked and worked, laughed and loved. But I was hours and hours away. There was nothing I could do. He was as good as gone if he wasn’t already. Swallowed by a darkness so much deeper than any I’d ever known, even on the ship.

I pulled Pepper against me. He let out a mewl of protest, but I didn’t care. I buried my face against his warm body, cried and cried and cried. It was my last night on the Asherah . The next day I’d take off for a new planet, a new life.

And I would be alone.

In the shuttle bay Hannah cried. She embraced her mother first, then her father, then her mother again, the tears streaming down her face. Even Ronen looked a little choked up as he bid them farewell, watching as they pressed kisses to Alyana’s fat baby cheeks. I stood off to the side, holding Pepper in his carrier. He scrambled and yowled, throwing his body against the bars.

I felt nothing.

As we made our way down through the air lock, my fingers were ice cold; my heart, numb. I hardly heard the pair of voices that called out for me. But then they came again, louder, rising over the sound of the departing crowds. Lifting my eyebrows, I turned. Rachel and Silvan rushed down the narrow walkway, elbowing past the gathered crowd.

“Terra! Terra!”

I put the carrier down on the metal grate, raised my arms, and accepted Rachel’s embrace. Silvan stood off to the side, watching us. She was weeping already, her face shining with tears.