Last Star Burning

by Caitlin Sangster

  Everything about Tai-ge is still and controlled as he waits for the Sister on duty to buzz the door open. After a Watchman gave me a bloody nose for being out in the Second Quarter alone, Tai-ge always comes to walk me to and from tutoring sessions with his father.

  “Let’s go around the long way.” He edges me toward a side street that meanders between Third housing installations.

  “It’s faster to go straight across the marketplace . . . ,” I start.

  “There’s a new batch of soldiers all the way around the marketplace walls. They strung them up this afternoon.”

  “Oh.” I let him pull me down the bricked-in alleyway, away from the wall that separates the First laboratories and Second homesteads up the hill from the Thirds. I’m glad, actually, not to pass the City Center’s layered tile roof, just above the marketplace. After the episode with Peishan, I can’t face walking anywhere near the Traitor’s Arch—the place where they keep her.

  Everyone talks about how my mother left, how she infected me then ran straight to the Kamari general, whoever he is, and told him where we were so they could try to steal our Mantis. But no one explains why she came back. Why she murdered half the First Circle, all old men who were barely hanging on to life by the tips of their fingers as it was. They do, however, have videos of her arrest, of my father and sister as they were dragged out of our house while I was still waking up from SS. This video shows Mother lying in her bed of glass and tubes in front of the remaining Firsts of the Circle. Standing at their head is the Chairman. Highest of the Firsts, too wise to be in the labs anymore, now called to lead us in Yuan Zhiwei’s place. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him outside of paintings. No one beyond the Circle sees much of the Chairman or his family in person. The fact that he came himself to condemn Mother shows just how horrific her crimes were. Those few seconds of his face on the video seem like a doorway into another world, a place I’m not welcome, where I’m not even a person. He stands there under the towering hulk of Traitor’s Arch, one flick of his hand sending Mother to her fate.

  We all have to watch her at least once a year on the grainy community telescreens. The Chairman injects her with something as if she’s the princess in that stupid story she used to tell me at bedtime, pricked by the crooked spindle and sent into an endless sleep. Everyone in the City Center cheers as they hoist her glass box up to the top of the Arch, on display for all to see. She’s still there, eyes closed, kept in limbo between life and death, her every breath pumped in and out of her in crackling bursts.

  I have to blink away the thought, because it brings others. Real memories from after I woke up—not the ones manufactured from watching Mother’s last moments on a telescreen later—of standing before Traitor’s Arch, my face hot, and Aya so cold beside me when they finally let us leave our house. Of Father, white-faced and tired, waiting for the Circle to use Mother’s crimes to mark the rest of us.

  Tai-ge and I circle back behind the blocky factory housing units, the crumbling bricks pasted up and down with big character posters, probably written during the evening’s announcements, since most of them have to do with the current campaign to “destroy revisionists” and to “strike at both tigers and flies.” I stop looking when I find my own surname in smudged ink.

  They haven’t hung enemy soldiers up on the wall for months now. The City always leaves their heads bare so it’s easy to see they are from Kamar’s invading army, their odd-colored hair jarring. Blond, brown, coppery red. Vicious enemies now hanging limply against the bloodstained wall.

  The same Watchman from earlier in the week opens the barrier to let us onto the bridge. The Aihu River looks so beautiful when it is lit up for the night that I can’t find it in myself to be annoyed at him when he growls at me as I walk past. The reflections from the paper lanterns frolic across the slow roll of water as it flows under the bridge.

  “That guard’s all bark and no bite. A pleasant change.” Tai-ge smiles as he kicks a loose pebble over the side of the bridge and runs to watch it plop into the water. I join him at the rail, eyeing the tollhouse, where the Watchman is still glaring at us.

  UNITED TO STOP SLEEPING SICKNESS. The words painted on the old timbers of the bridge make my eyes dance away, back down to the water, where I don’t have to think.

  We watch ripples from the fallen stone snake out wider and wider, bending the reflected light from the bridge into swirls. The pinpoint light of a patroller blinks across the rushing surface of the river, but it looks oddly big. As though the light smoldering in the river couldn’t possibly belong to an aircraft so high up above us.

  “It’s almost dark,” I finally say, taking my eyes off the light and turning to Tai-ge. “Even you can’t charm your mother into letting me off if I’m late for reeducation with your father tonight.” But Tai-ge doesn’t look at me.

  “Tai-ge?”

  His eyes are still glued to the patroller’s reflection dancing across the surface of the dark water. We both look up, as if squinting at the light will force it to pass the way it’s supposed to instead of buzzing over us. The light grows brighter and brighter, larger, until I can hear the scream of its engines bearing down on us.

  Kamar.

  Tai-ge grabs my hand, dragging me toward solid ground, but the light in the sky falls, falls until all sound is blocked out, everything eclipsed by the bright flare of a bomb. My feet leave the ground and Tai-ge’s hand twists out of mine as I crash through the railing of the bridge. Splintered wood lashes across my arms and chest, tearing through the dark wool of my coat. I keep waiting for the cement-hard crash that will mean I’ve hit the water, but all I can feel is a high-pitched squeal that hums through me.

  When the impact finally comes, it seems as though I’ve been falling for hours. I sink in slow motion, the inferno of cavorting lights above the river’s surface diluted and weak in the watery darkness above me. Something clicks in my overloaded brain, and I start to fight the water as it sucks me deeper. Panic blossoms in my chest when my lungs begin burning, all the air crushed out of me and what seems like an impossible distance to the surface. I pull off my boots and unbutton my jacket, slipping out of its heavy embrace. Still, even frantic kicking does not speed up the funeral crawl toward open air. The light becomes brighter until it’s almost unbearable, and then I break through the surface, gasping in frozen lungfuls of air.

  Choking and sputtering, I flail for a few minutes until a chunk of wood bumps my head. I cling to it, coughing all the water out of my lungs before noticing the wood is painted red with one word: UNITED.

  The bridge is gone. Plumes of fire above my head blast me with heat, reflections igniting all around me in the water. Face pressed against the plank, I don’t look back at the bridge until I am far enough away to feel the cold again. Small, ant-like figures scurry back and forth, frantically attempting to quell the flames devouring the splintered remains of the bridge. The beams splay out like broken teeth. Where is Tai-ge? No matter how hard I squint into the bubbling mass of people, my friend’s fate remains a hard knot of terror in my chest.

  Large columns of smoke billow up from the flames. I can still see the lights of the attacking heli-plane in the sky getting smaller and smaller. On its way back to Kamar.

  I take a painful breath and start kicking my socked feet toward the shore. I need to find Tai-ge, to make sure he is safe. At least, that is my intention until my mind starts wandering with cold. I wonder if Sister Lei will call the Watch when I don’t show up for reeducation with the General. The thought sends me off into a fit of giggles. I can just imagine arriving on the orphanage doorstep, sopping wet, trying to explain to the angry Watchman from the bridge why I missed my lesson.

  I hazily realize that my fingers and toes are completely numb and that every kick toward the shore is getting weaker, slower. The curls of flame dancing on the bridge remind me of a troupe of fire dancers Tai-ge took me to see when I first started reeducation with his family.

  When I start to imagine myse
lf running through the flames in a pink leotard, my dream is interrupted by a soft thud. I am halfway off the board, not even kicking any longer, but by some chance of fate the pull of the river has sent my raft to shore. I know if I don’t get out of the water now, I might not get out at all. My limbs scream in protest, but my toes find the bottom and I manage to crawl out into some muddy grass.

  No one is close enough to call for help. The crowds of people forming around the bridge have become one big animal-like blur, not a face to be seen. A prickle of fear needles through the fuzz coating my brain as I watch the shadows slither closer. Did that thing get Tai-ge? Will it come for me next?

  The shadow thing will see me if I sit up, so I squirm down farther into the mud, clutching the board, not quite sure if it is still actively working to keep me alive. But hiding doesn’t work because my hands and feet are gone, and the huge black animal collapsing and trembling by the bridge sends two of its thousands of legs toward me. One wraps around my waist, lifting me high into the air while the other gags my mouth to stop my screaming. The slimy feelers wrap tighter and tighter around my ribs until I cannot breathe, and my vision goes black.

  CHAPTER 3

  HER VOICE IS SOFT IN my dream, the slow words familiar. “She could not wake, trapped by the spell. Asleep.” A bedtime story.

  I try to look at her, but my eyelids won’t open. They never do when I dream about the time I spent Asleep. Her hand brushes mine, and I want to grab it, to hold on to her, but my fingers won’t move, my voice won’t obey when I tell it to call out to her. My whole body is so still I might as well be dead, except I can hear her. I can feel her. I’m paralyzed, begging for my muscles to respond.

  “Sleep settled over the whole kingdom: the cook, the butcher, the guards. The horses and cows. Even the flies. Waiting for one brave enough to break the spell.”

  Frozen. Inside, I start to scream.

  The beautiful voice breaks. “I’m so sorry, little rose . . .” And then again, again. The painful words chime in my head, growing darker and darker as they twist around me. A monster’s growl that squeezes the breath from my lungs, claws sinking in because I cannot move, I cannot run. My eyes will not open. I have to escape, have to break away, but I am stuck. No one can hear my voice. No one will ever hear the screams trapped in my mouth.

  The world cracks apart, and I gasp, air slashing my lungs to shreds. My head feels as though it’s about to cave in, pressure from trying to open my eyes threatening to split skin and bone.

  I roll over and pain tears through my abdomen. A hands presses against my shoulder, as if the owner wants me to stay Asleep forever. Suddenly, all I can see are tentacles and a black creature squeezing me, the fallen timbers from the bridge burning all around me.

  “Sev? Sevvy?” a panicked voice cries. “Someone help!”

  The pressure against my head pushes harder until I realize it’s my hands covering my eyes, blocking out the light. Shaking, I draw my hands away from my face, my own whitewashed walls and ceiling too bright after the darkness of my nightmare. A face swims above me, familiar but I can’t place it. Terror floods over me as the person pins my shoulders against my pillow, threatening to steal my breath and fill my lungs, to leave me cold and still at the bottom of the river. Awake, to feel myself drowning forever.

  “Sevvy, please! I’m right here. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay. Please just calm down. . . .”

  The voice pours like honey into my ears, slowing everything down until I recognize Tai-ge’s face only inches from mine, lips drawn tight with fear.

  I’m not Asleep. Not trapped forever in my own body, waiting for the day the doctors say I’m lost. For them to burn me.

  Not enough room for burials inside the City walls.

  A nun bangs through the door. “Is she compulsing? Hold her still!”

  “No . . .” The word grates in my throat, catching with every wave of pain cascading up from my ribs. What happened to me? I remember walking with Tai-ge and fire and . . . something dark and alien all around me.

  The nun pulls my arm from my side, sending a jolt of pain through my middle. It’s Sister Shang, a syringe ready in hand.

  “No! I’m not having a compulsion.” My voice tears through my throat, barely coming out in a hoarse whisper. I try to relax my arm, knowing if I pull against her, the terror of sleep will return at the tip of her syringe. “But if you touch me with that needle, I think I can come up with a better compulsion than lying in bed. Like maybe cutting all your hair off and selling it to Wood Rats as a fire starter.” The joke rolls off my tongue, as if pretending that scavenging Outsiders are reasonable enough to trade with will drown out the sound of Mother’s hollow apologies still ringing in my ears.

  “I’d have to grow it out first. Or did you mean Tai-ge’s?” Sister Shang rubs her bald scalp as she pulls the syringe away from me. She’s one of the nuns I actually like, usually ready with a joke or an off-the-books snack for days when the factories don’t take normal human eating habits into consideration as they schedule orphan hours. “You should be a little more grateful, seeing as it was Tai-ge who found you half-drowned and dragged you to the medics. But if you aren’t set on shattering your windows and shaving poor passersby with the glass pieces, then you can take a more conventional dose of Mantis. You’re due.” She sticks a hand into her brown robe and holds out a packet, two green pills inside.

  I take them, holding them carefully in my palm as my breaths come in painful wheezes. What is wrong with me?

  Sister Shang watches me for a moment, as if to be sure I’m not about to cut Tai-ge’s nose off before leaving. The door squeaks as she walks out.

  “What happened?” I ask quietly, only now able to take in Tai-ge’s battered appearance. His arm is in a red mesh sling, a splint sticking out from underneath his hand, and shallow cuts line cheeks and jaw, as though he washed his face using a bowl of broken glass. That arm looks broken. How did he drag me anywhere with a broken arm? “Was it an SS bomb? Are you—”

  “I’m fine, Sevvy.” He sort of smiles, cradling his arm as he settles onto the other bed in my room. Peishan’s. It’s been stripped of sheets, bare mattress bending under him as he sits. “I haven’t fallen Asleep or tried to kill or maim anyone, members of the Watch excluded. You, however, have been unconscious for a day and a half and have at least two broken ribs. You scared me just now.”

  There’s a hint of question in his voice that I don’t care to answer. I lie very still in bed, every movement sending a jolt of pain through my abdomen, each one grasping at me like the tentacles and darkness from the waking nightmare at the bridge. The hallucination.

  I’ve never had a compulsion before, and he knows it. I don’t think that is what he means, though, and suddenly I’m worried I said something in the last throes of my dream or did something to alert him. I may never have had a compulsion, but SS has definitely done other things to my brain I don’t have the courage to explain. Compulsions make you believe things that aren’t true, dire things, horrible things. They don’t make you see things that aren’t there.

  The monster grabbing me at the bridge is not the first time I’ve seen the world warp around me, letting in monsters and ghosts that should not exist. I’m already like a piece of faulty machinery here in the City, gumming everything up. What would they do to me if they knew my mind was broken too?

  I can’t bring myself to tell Tai-ge. Not him or anyone else. I’ve never heard of any other SS victim actually hallucinating, confusing the darkness inside with the things going on right in front of them. It isn’t even what the First Circle would do if they found out that scares me most. What would Tai-ge think if he knew that I’m not just infected? That it’s worse than that.

  I change the subject. “I’ve been asleep for a day and a half? Has the canning shift officer come to drag me out in front of the Watch yet? Or is that what you meant by wanting to maim the Watch?”

  Tai-ge reaches for a tray balanced on the chest at the end o
f my bed and pulls it onto his lap, a bowl of cold rice, cooked cabbage, and what looks like canned peaches next to a glass of water. His fingers wrap around the glass, swirling it once before handing it to me and looking meaningfully at the Mantis pills still sitting on my palm. “I couldn’t find you that night. I was worried. . . .”

  I wait, something other than pain uncurling from under my ribs, my eyes locked on his face with an irrational hope that he’ll finish the sentence. But the door opens, and Tai-ge looks up, one of the other girls who lives on my floor freezing halfway into the room when she sees Tai-ge. “I was looking for Peishan. . . . Sorry.” She backs out, fear of interrupting a Red General’s son chasing her down the hall.

  Sighing, I take a sip of the water and swallow my pills.

  Tai-ge takes the glass back and sets it and the tray aside. “It took some arguing to get them to take you to a medic at all. And when the medic got a good look at you, I thought he was going to faint. I had to shove my stars in his face before he even let me put you down. He still might turn himself in for aiding Jiang Gui-hua’s daughter.”

  People stopped staring in the streets years ago, and even the Watch hardly notices me anymore. My long hair helps to hide it, but my face belongs to my mother, right down to the birthmark that spreads out from my ear to my cheek. Every comrade has her face branded in their memories along with a good dose of fear and disgust. I rub my cheek thoughtfully and wince at the sliced skin, realizing that my face must look a bit like Tai-ge’s right now. “He should have just finished me off. I bet Chairman Sun would have given him a medal. Or maybe a red uniform.”

  “He was an army medic, double stars and all. No shabby Third doctors for a celebrity like you, Sevvy.”