Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

Hah and Turrut snuck into her room in the passenger’s quarters while she rested and said they saw her head uncovered. They said her hair was black like mine and teased she was a bad spirit come up after me from the Earth. Maybe she come an’ snatch you away.

I cried and ran to find Iri, who brought me to Modrie Reller. That was the day they began dyeing my hair.

Modrie Reller tugs on a pair of hide gloves, the kind we use in the dyeworks.

“So soon?” I ask. They’ve only just dyed my hair three weeks ago. The Void black at my roots is no more than a thin line, unnoticeable unless you’re looking for it. I turn to Iri. Iri may be my great-grandfather’s widow, but she’s younger even than Modrie Reller, having been bound to my great-grandfather when she younger than I am now and he only a turn or two from death. She’s some like an older sister to me, telling the why of things in whispers when Modrie Reller’s back is turned. She levels her gaze at me but doesn’t speak. She flicks her eyes to Modrie Reller. Not now. Not in front of your stepmother.

“Kneel,” Modrie Reller says.

I do.

Only then does she continue. “This is your father’s order.” She pulls a dye tube wrapped in oilskin from deep in her pockets and twists off the cap. “This runend meet, he’s decreed you’re to be a bride.”

“A bride?” I try to keep my face calm.

“Right so.” Modrie Reller looks pointedly at my hair. “We don’t want the other crewes thinking something’s wrong with the Parastrata’s so girl.”

Iri smiles at me, kind. “Or passing off some palsied goats or brittle old plasticine in exchange for our Ava.”

I laugh, but nervously. A bride. I know from watching the girls who’ve gone before me that I ought to chirrup and gab at the news, or else flush pink and do a poor job of hiding my pleasure behind a demure smile. Instead all I feel is dizzy, like the gravity has failed. I’ve always known I would be a bride, and sometime around now, in my sixteenth turn. It’s the Mercies’ will, after all. But I was never one of those girls to play wedding when I was younger, like Nan, or run it over and over in my mind at night while I stared up at the bunk above me. Suddenly Jerej’s teasing weighs heavy on me. Has he known all this time?

“Who. . .” My throat sticks. I glance up and see Iri watching me close. “Who will it be?”

Modrie Reller shakes her head. “No knowing. A man from the Æther crewe, most likely. Your father was talking on how it’s time to reseal our trade contract with them. But don’t think on it. Your father and my Jerej will have it raveled.”

The Æther crewe. My heart skips a little faster. My friend Soli, my only friend in the whole Void beyond the Parastrata’s hull, and her birthbrother, Luck, both belong to the Æther. Soli and I met five turns past, when Æther Fortune brought all his wives and their smallones aboard our ship for trade talks.

The day they came aboard, Modrie Reller dragged me out of the kitchens and made me sit with my handloom in the sticky heat of the women’s quarters, where she and my great-grandfather’s widows were supposed to entertain the women of the Æther retinue. The whole room sweated in silence, perched on quilted floor pillows, fans flapping to stir the air. The men’s rowdy singing bled through the walls.

Modrie Reller pushed me down beside a dark-haired Æther girl with cocked-out ears and the same blue-veined, lucent shimmer to her skin all the spacefaring crewes shared after generations on generations hidden away from the sun—all except me, of course. I peeked over my loom at her as I pushed the thread tight with my shuttle. She was what I might look like if my hair grew out in its true shade, if I were taller and all the color had been bred out of my skin. Her clothes looked machine made, all the stitches tight and even. I watched as she wove a strand of the Æther crewe’s trademark red silk thread into her fabric.

She caught me staring and scowled. “What’re you looking on?”

I ducked my head and crouched over my own knobby weaving. “Nothing,” I said. “That’s some pretty, is all.”

“Oh,” she said, as if that were natural. “Right so.”

I swallowed and finished another row. I glanced at her again. “What’s your name?”

“Solidarity with the Stars.”

I blinked. “Come how?”

“Solidarity with the Stars,” she repeated, a bit of miff in her voice.

“Don’t you have a luckname?” I asked. On the Parastrata, all parents gave their children names that circled, so we could find our way if we were lost, they said.

“My name is a luckname,” she said.

“Isn’t.”

“Is,” she said, voice rising. “Don’t you know the Word? Where it says, Call to mind always what our ancestors desired; forget it not. That’s where it’s from.”

“Oh.” I picked at a thick snarl of wool. “It’s some long, isn’t it?”

“No,” Solidarity with the Stars said. “Least, not specially. We’re all named that way. My brother’s called Luck Be with Us on This Journey, only we call him Luck for short.”

We fell quiet again. Our shuttles knocked against the sides of our looms.

“You can call me Soli, if you want,” Solidarity with the Stars said, breaking the silence. “That’s how my brother calls me.”

She looked over and smiled, and it made me feel almost the same height. I smiled back.

“So, what’s yours?” she asked.

“My what?” I said.

“Your luckname.” She tilted her head and bugged out her eyes to show me she thought I was slow.

“Ava,” I said.

“Are you on Fixes?” Soli said. “I’m on Fixes.”

“No.” On the Parastrata, women stuck to what we knew, cooking, weaving, dyeing, mending, and growing children. Everything would come unraveled if we started fixing the ship. It’s only a step from fixing to flying, my father said. And then where would we be? You can’t nurse a baby and run a navigation program at the same time.

She must be lying, I decided. Trying to puff herself up. I pushed another thread tight.

“What duties are you on, then?” Soli bumped me with her elbow.

“Kitchens,” I said, and then wished I’d thought to lie. “Livestock, and sometimes dyeworks.” Modrie Reller made me work the vats once a deciturn so I wouldn’t forget what real labor was or where I could end up if I didn’t work hard at my other duties.

“My brother Luck’s on Livestock,” Soli said. “He says he likes it.” She wrinkled up her face, stuck out her tongue, and made a gagging noise.

I giggled, even though I didn’t mind Livestock duty so much myself. Me and Llell would whisper over boys while we collected eggs and mucked the stalls. She had eyes for Jerej, and neither of us understood yet how unlikely a pairing that would be.

Soli’s mother flicked her eyes up from her work and looked sharp at us. “Hssh.”

Soli and me bit our lips and went back to work. When her mother turned away, we grinned at each other over our frames.

From then to the end of the Æthers’ trade visit, we kept tight. Soli tried to talk Modrie Reller into putting her on Fixes while the Æthers were aboard, but my stepmother gave her a sour smile and said she didn’t think that could be managed. Soli ended up on Livestock with me and Llell instead.