The Star Dwellers

by David Estes

  Seeing her with the canteens reminds me of the hungry thirst in my throat. I finish with the soap and hand it to Tawni to use. She is already undressed and daintily steps into the pool, looking as graceful as a dancer, particularly when compared to my own clumsy entrance.

  I turn around and splash some more water on my face.

  “Where’d you get that scar on your back?” Tawni asks.

  Looking over my shoulder, trying to gaze at my back, I say, “What scar?”

  She moves closer, places a hand on my back, and I shiver, suddenly feeling cold. Her fingers linger somewhere near the center of my back, where I can’t possibly see, just below my undergarments. “Curious,” she says absently.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a crescent-shaped scar, small, but slightly raised off your skin. It looks like a recent scar…”

  “Maybe I got it in the tunnels somewhere—or from Rivet,” I say, but I know that’s not right—there would have been blood, and someone would have noticed the wound seeping through my tunic.

  “No, it’s not that fresh. Just looks like it’s from something that happened in the last few years. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looks just like…”

  I turn to face my friend, taking in her quizzical expression in an instant. “Like what?” I ask when she doesn’t finish her statement.

  “Nothing, I don’t know what I was thinking,” she says unconvincingly.

  “You were going to say ‘Tristan’s scar’, weren’t you?” I laugh. “You’re nuts, you know that?”

  She laughs high and musical. “And you’re not?”

  I grin at her and cup my hands, once more using them as a scoop to lift a portion of water to my face. As I open my mouth to receive the glorious liquid, I see Tawni’s face change from mirthful to one of confusion. It looks like she’s playing with something in her mouth, moving her tongue around, side to side. Her eyebrows are lowered. I plunge the water into my mouth, delighting in the slick feel as it slips over my tongue, down my gullet.

  “Ahh,” I murmur softly, just before Tawni grabs my arm. Her eyes are wide—she is scared. “What?” I say.

  “Spit it out!” Tawni shrieks. Now I am the confused one. “Spit it out!” she says again, reaching around and thumping me on the back.

  “I can’t,” I say over her shoulder. “I’ve already swallowed it.”

  Tawni releases me and says, “No, no, no, no…this is not good.”

  That’s when I taste it. Something’s not right about the water. Like Tawni, I make a face, swish some spit around in my mouth. Overall, the water was refreshing, delicious even, but the aftertaste is not good. The water is…. “Contaminated?” I say.

  Tawni nods slowly. “I think so.”

  Not good.

  As kids, all moon dwellers are taught to look for the signs of contaminated water. Strange coloring, frothy film on the top, a unique odor, strange taste: All are possible clues that the water is not good to drink. At home we used a testing agent every four hours to check our water. If the water turns blue when combined with the agent, it is okay. If it turns green or brown, your water is bad. Even if we had the stuff we needed to test the water, it is too late. We’ve drunk it.

  I peer into the water. It looks okay. No film, no discoloring, no malodor. The nasty aftertaste might just be a result of trace metals in the water, picked up somewhere along its winding path through the depths. I doubt we’re that lucky.

  “What do you think it is?” I ask. There are a lot of dangers associated with drinking bad water. In mild cases, you might just get a bad case of diarrhea or perhaps light vomiting, but there are many worse diseases and viruses that can be picked up, too. Like…

  “Bat Flu,” Tawni says.

  “What? No. I doubt it. Can’t be. Why do you think that?” Bat Flu is the worst of the worst. Infected bats release their infected droppings into a water source, which then becomes infected. The symptoms of Bat Flu are numerous and awful: severe stomach cramps; cold sweats and hot flashes in conjunction with high fever; mind-numbing headaches; relentless muscle aches; hallucinations; and in many cases, death. There was a mild outbreak at my school in Year Three. Four kids, a dog, and one of their parents got the Flu. The only one that survived was the dog.

  Tawni steps out of the water, leaving a trail of drips behind her. She picks up the flashlight and shines it across the pool. I follow the yellow light until it stops on the far wall, which is pockmarked with dozens of small caves. Bat caves. “That’s why,” she says.

  I feel a surge of bile in my throat as I see piles of dark bat poo littered at the tunnel mouths. Each time the bats emerge from the caves, they will knock the piles into the water with the flap of their wings. Evidently, they’re sleeping now—the caves are silent.

  I choke down the bitter, acidic taste in my mouth and say, “But this is a key watering hole for an inter-Realm thoroughfare. It’s even on the map.” My words don’t change anything. The water is likely contaminated. I don’t want to be in denial. I just need to deal with what has happened as best I can. My mother always told me to “face the truth with grim determination and a smile on your face.” I’m not sure about the smile. “Okay, let’s assume it’s contaminated. We need to vomit it out, Tawni. Now!”

  Without watching to see what Tawni does, I stick two fingers down my throat, gagging immediately, the stomach fire rising so fast I can barely get my hand out of my mouth before I spew all over myself. I retch, gag, cough twice, spit as much of the vile liquid from my mouth as possible. At my feet, my own vomit is floating around my ankles. At my side, Tawni is throwing up, too.

  Clenching my abs, I say, “We’re both going to get very sick. But we’ll get through it together.”

  “What do we do?” Tawni asks, her voice rising precariously high. Her lips are tight. I’m afraid she might lose it. Since I met her, Tawni has always been strong, even when her best friend was viciously murdered. But now she looks seriously freaked out. She must’ve seen firsthand what the Bat Flu can do to someone.

  “Who do you know that had the Flu?” I ask, stepping out of the bile-choked water, Tawni flitting out next to me. We are still filthy, but there’s not much we can do about it now.

  Tawni’s eyes flick to mine and then back to the water, to the bat droppings. “My cousin,” she says.

  “What happened?”

  “She passed.”

  “That’s not going to happen to us.”

  “It was awful.”

  “Tawni.”

  Her eyes dart back to mine and stick this time.

  “We’re going to be fine,” I say. “Stay with me.”

  Tawni’s steel-blue eyes get steelier, and then, after reaching a hardness level I’d never seen in them before, soften, returning to their soft blue. “Right. We’ll be okay,” she says, almost to herself.

  I take the soap from Tawni and chuck it, along with the two canteens, across the pool. They clatter off the far wall and plunk beneath the surface.

  “We should dry off with our dirty tunics and then chuck them away, too,” I say.

  Although it’s kind of gross soaking up the water with our filthy old clothes, we both do it because we have to. It’s the nature of things in our world. Out of necessity you have to do a lot of things you don’t want to do. I wonder if it was the same in the old world, before Armageddon, before Year Zero.

  When we are dry and our old clothes have been thrown into the foul water, we each don one of the fresh tunics from our packs. It feels good—the simple act of putting on clean clothes. It’s like a rebirth, a second chance, a new beginning. At least usually. This time neither of us wants to turn the page on our story. But like so many things in life, we have no choice.

  “How far to the Star Realm?” I ask.

  “We’re in the Star Realm now, technically.”

  “But how far to the first subchapter? Subchapter 30, right?”

  Tawni consults the map. “Yeah, first we’ll hit subchapter 30
. I’d say at least a twelve-hour hike if we move fast.”

  “We’ve got to make it in eight,” I say. “Just in case we have the Flu. First symptoms will come fast, perhaps in three hours or so. Worse symptoms after six hours. The very worst at around eight hours. So we have to move fast.”

  “What about water?” Tawni asks. Water will be a problem. We had to get rid of our contaminated canteens. We are already dehydrated.

  “Any more blue dots on that map of yours?”

  Tawni scans the page. “None in this section of the tunnel. There are blue dots all over the place in subchapter 30, but nothing between here and there.”

  “We’re just going to have to suck it up. Can you make it?” I don’t know if I can, but I will do everything in my power. I don’t want to die without at least trying to find my mom.

  “I don’t know,” Tawni answers honestly. I nod absently. “If I don’t make it, leave me and find your mom.”

  “I won’t leave you,” I say.

  Tawni opens her mouth, presumably to argue, but then snaps it shut and nods. She remembers who she’s dealing with. I’m not known for changing my mind.

  “Let’s go,” I say, shouldering my pack.

  Chapter Two

  Tristan

  “I’m just a guy,” I say.

  “And barely even one at that,” Roc adds, smirking. Sometimes I wonder why he’s my best friend.

  Mr. Rose shakes his head. “No, you’re more than that, Tristan, and you know it. You’re an idea.”

  “Yes, and you’re betrothed to my sister,” Elsey chimes in eagerly.

  I laugh, half because the notion of ideas and betrothals is ridiculous, and half because Adele’s ten-year-old sister is really growing on me. “I’ve just barely met your sister,” I say to Elsey.

  “I saw the way you looked at each other. You’re practically engaged.”

  I want to get off the subject because I feel embarrassed talking about Adele and me—whatever we are—in front of her father. Without looking him in the eye, I say, “What do you mean an idea?”

  “Like sliced bread?” Roc asks unhelpfully. “Because I’d say sliced bread is a way better idea than Tristy here.”

  Adele’s father chuckles and shakes his head again. “You two are worse than brothers.”

  “You haven’t met my brother, Mr. Rose,” I say grimly, automatically reaching up and touching the area under my eye. The last time I saw my fifteen-year-old brother, Killen, he and his cronies beat me senseless. My eye is still black and swollen.

  “It’s Ben.”

  “Right…Ben,” I say, still feeling weird about calling Adele’s father by his first name.

  “You’re more than just a guy because of who you are.” I raise a hand to object but Ben waves me off. “Hear me out. Just because you’re from up there”—he motions to the high rock ceiling above us—“doesn’t mean you are one of them. And that’s my whole point. Despite the fact that you’re the son of the President of the Tri-Realms, the chosen one, the next great leader of this world, you aren’t a tyrant. You don’t support your father’s politics, am I right?”

  I nod slowly, trying to understand where he’s going with all this. “But that just makes me an enemy to the government. I’m a thorn in their side—a criminal who must be brought to justice. I’m sure my brother has already told my father what I’ve done. They’ll be hunting me with everything they’ve got.”

  “We could dress you up like a woman and then they’d never find you,” Roc suggests. He’s being particularly unhelpful this morning.

  Ben ignores Roc and says, “You’re thinking about this all wrong. You’re an idea, Tristan. The idea that someone from the Sun Realm could be on the side of the people in the Lower Realms; the idea that someone from within the highest government ranks is helping the Moon and Star Realms; the idea that injustice will not go unpunished. If we can get the moon dwellers to believe in that idea, maybe, just maybe, we can unite the people.”

  I gotta hand it to this guy, he knows what to say to get the blood pumping. He is a born leader, and I’m just a guy. He should be the one leading a rebellion, not me. I’ll help, sure, but I don’t want to be the one. Ben is a big man, strong and capable. When I first met him—when Adele and I broke him out of prison—he looked haggard, his black hair and beard long and disheveled, his body strong but battered. After only just two days he is a new man. First he used my sword to trim his hair, cropping it medium length and getting it off his ears, and then to remove his beard, leaving a neat goatee as his only facial hair. Next, he got cleaned up in the subchapter 26 reservoir. When he was done, I barely recognized him, and probably wouldn’t have known him at all, if not for his piercing emerald-green eyes, the same eyes born by Adele.

  “I don’t think I’m the right—”

  “Yes—you are.”

  I can tell he’s not going to back down, and the last thing I want is to argue with Adele’s father. “What do you want me to do?”

  Ben smiles, as if he knew all along I’d listen to him. “For a start you need to meet with the Vice Presidents of the Moon Realm.”

  “There are dozens of them.”

  “We’ll start with one—one I know will listen. She’ll get the rest of them to one place for a meeting, and then you can work your magic.”

  “I have no magic.”

  “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

  I sigh. Before I left Adele, I told her I was willing to do whatever it takes to help her people, the moon dwellers. The time has come for me to keep that promise. “Okay,” I say.

  “You’ll be wonderful, I just know it!” Elsey says excitedly, clutching my arm. I flash her a smile, which doubles the size of her own smile. There are so many of Adele’s features in her face, and yet her temperament is so different. Elsey is bright, cheery, formal—a miniature woman. Adele is sarcastic, tough-minded, slightly solemn at times. I close my eyes and whisper a silent prayer for her safety.

  Roc is staring at me, the edges of his lips curled slightly in his classic I-know-what-you’re-thinking-and-I-think-you’re-a-dork smirk. His naturally brown skin makes him blend in with the brown rock of the cave wall behind him. I ignore him. “So where are we headed?” I ask.

  “The place where it all started,” Ben says, his eyes serious. “Subchapter 1 of the Moon Realm.”

  I’ve been there, of course, but I don’t really remember it. I’ve been everywhere as part of my duties as son of the President.

  “That’s the subchapter with that big fire parade, isn’t it?” Roc asks. Roc is better at geography and culture than I am.

  “Correct,” Ben says. “And the home to Theresa Morgan.”

  I lean my head back and close my eyes, trying to remember why that name sounds so familiar. Ahh, yes. Middle-aged woman, sharp as a tack, short red hair. “I remember her. Vice President Morgan. One of the few VPs who wasn’t a complete puppet. She negotiated hard—finally got my father to lower the taxes by a few percent. We even threw in some free boxes of medicine. I liked her.”

  “She’s a close friend of mine,” Ben says.

  I want to ask how he knows her, but I don’t think he’ll tell me. Behind his sparkling green eyes I sense there are fathomless mysteries.

  “I’m growing tired of this place, Father. It’s cold and dank in this cave. When shall we depart for subchapter 1?” Elsey’s head is cocked to the side and her nose is all scrunched up. I can’t help but smile.

  Roc mimics her facial expression and tone of voice. “Yes, Father. It’s cold…and dank. We must leave before all bounce has been removed from our step.”

  Elsey giggles and jumps up, trying to grab Roc, but he leaps out of the way, besting her with his agility and speed. He gets behind her, picks her up, and tickles her around the sides of her stomach. She giggles louder, desperately trying to pry Roc’s hands from her. Ben is chuckling heartily, his dark stubble throbbing up and down with each chortle.

  I laugh, too, but stop when Adel
e’s face flashes into my mind. She’s not laughing, not even smiling. Her face is serious, grim, straight-lipped, and heavy-eyed. Even in this form, her face makes my breath catch in my throat. I wonder whether I am seeing a memory, or whether my mind has invented the image of its own volition—or whether I am somehow seeing her across the miles, through rock and stone. If so, I feel bad. We are laughing and she is not.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asks, looking at me suddenly. His smile is gone too. I can still hear Elsey’s unfettered laughter, but it feels distant.

  I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”

  “I felt it, too,” he says.

  I nod. I’m not sure why I’ve been chosen to have such a powerful connection with Adele, but I’m glad for it. She’s changed my life. “I’m worried about her,” I admit.

  “Me, too,” Ben says. “But she’s strong, like her mother. She’ll be okay.”

  I find it odd that he compares Adele to her mom, particularly when referring to her strength. He seems so strong, and from what she’s told me, it was he who trained her to fight. There must be something I’m missing.

  I realize it’s quiet again in the cave we’ve been hiding out in. Roc and Elsey are once more sitting on the rock floor close to each other, panting from the exertion of their tickle fight, listening to my conversation with Ben.

  “Adele is okay, right, Father?” she asks.

  Since Adele left to start her journey to the Star Realm with Tawni, a full forty-eight hours have passed. We’ve spent it hiding out in a cave on the edge of subchapter 26, but Adele has likely spent the time marching through a tunnel potentially filled with sun, moon, and star dweller troops, any of whom could have easily mistaken her for the enemy.

  “She’s fine,” he says, and I take as much comfort from the confidence in his words as Elsey does. “And we can leave this cave right now—I think we’ve taken more than enough time to recover.”

  “Let’s leave this dreadful cave right now,” Roc says, once more imitating Elsey, which brings another scream and peal of laughter from her. She has really taken to him and I am glad. Although Roc gets on my nerves sometimes, he has such a good heart and has always made me laugh. I feel moisture in my eyes and I blink it away quickly, but not before he notices.