And why did Elliot care so much what she thought?
“I am glad to see the shipyard in operation again,” she added. “Especially for so worthwhile a project.” And she’d been dying to get a glimpse at the Fleet’s work. She’d only resisted because Kai had made it clear that, to him at least, she wasn’t welcome.
“I’m glad you approve,” said Felicia. “There are those Luddites who have no desire to reestablish contact with the rest of the world.”
“I have always wondered what else was out there.” She and Kai had spent years fantasizing about it.
They rode along the cliff that bordered the sea, and as a salty wind wound its way through her hair and swept across her face, Elliot began to breathe easier. Off to the west, the shallows glittered golden in the sunlight and gave way to a darker blue in the deeps.
The shipyard was situated at the northernmost bay of the island. Beyond it, the land rose steadily upward like the prow of a boat jutting into the sea. No buildings graced this high plain, and it wasn’t used for crops or pastures. Before the Reduction, the area had been reserved and off limits for development, and though the rest of the world had changed, this hadn’t. Back when the Boatwright estate had been fully functional, they didn’t need the land for their own food, and they derived all their extra income from shipbuilding. And now Elliot simply didn’t have enough resources to devote to working this steep piece of land. It remained lonely and wild, and beautiful—a testament to a history that even the Reduction could not obliterate. It had been through this portal that Elliot’s Boatwright ancestors had first come to these islands.
Whenever things got particularly bad on the estate, Elliot escaped to the cliffs to stand on the very edge, to stretch out her hands and feel the wind pulling at her, threatening to carry her away like she was nothing more than one of Kai’s gliders.
Today, however, she was weighed down, by her own thoughts as much as by the giant horse she rode. As they steered their mounts toward the narrow path that cut through the cliff to the shipyard, Elliot gave one last, longing look at the promontory, at its rocky sides and the towers of broken rock that stood beyond. At the water that circled around it, turquoise on the side of the sea, blue on the side of the ocean. They were too low to see now where the waters mixed, where the constant upswell of warm and cool sent swirling, ghostlike ribbons of sediment up from the depths and as far as the eye could see. When she was young, her mother had told her stories of the old days, when the bridges to the rock towers remained intact and the Boatwright family had revered the cliffs and promontory as a sacred spot, the way that the Norths honored their ancestors through the underground sanctuary. But though the Norths never thought back farther than the Reduction, the Boatwright line was older, and they chose to remember that part of their heritage, too.
She hadn’t been to the promontory in months. All summer, she’d been too busy with her experiment and trying to find a way to feed the estate. Then she’d been occupied with preparing for the Cloud Fleet’s arrival and the harvest. And now, since they’d come—she’d avoided her grandfather’s lands.
“Are you all right?” Felicia asked, as the horses picked their way down the narrow slice between the cliffs. “Should we have taken the supply route instead of the footpath?”
“I’m fine,” Elliot replied through gritted teeth. She should be a better horsewoman than this. Her father would find her an embarrassment. Felicia Innovation no doubt thought her pathetic.
“I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable back there,” Felicia said. “I have spent so much of my life caring for young people like you. It’s become a bit of a habit.”
Even when the young person in question is a Luddite, and not a homeless runaway Post. Elliot could finish that thought on her own.
“I would like us to be friends, if possible, Elliot,” Felicia said now, as the path ended on the shipyard beach. She stopped her horse and waited for Elliot to draw up beside her. “The Groves come to our house often for visits, but I’ve never seen you. I understand it might be difficult, to see a bunch of strangers have the run of your grandfather’s house—”
“No,” Elliot said. “That’s not difficult. I’m glad to see it filled with people again. I think he would be, too.” She’d been avoiding the Boatwright house because of Kai. But maybe it was time to stop. However much it hurt to be near him now, a stronger impulse prevailed.
Elliot wanted to hear Felicia’s thoughts on treatments for her grandfather. She wanted to know where the admiral planned to take this wonderful new ship of his. She wanted to hear more about life in the Post enclave. She wanted to know what Donovan and Andromeda and even Kai had seen on their travels. It had been weeks since he’d walked back into her life. She should be over the worst of the pain by now. And if avoidance wasn’t helping, then it was time to try a different method, before the Cloud Fleet finished their mission here and left, with Elliot none the wiser about their lives and their knowledge.
She still loved the man who called himself Malakai Wentforth. She knew that. But that didn’t matter, just as it hadn’t mattered four years ago. Then, she’d chosen to stay behind. But it didn’t mean she wasn’t curious. It didn’t mean she didn’t want to stand at the edge of the cliffs and stretch her face out toward the sea, toward a world she’d never be allowed to know.
FOUR YEARS AGO
Dear Kai,
Come back. Come back for me. I didn’t mean it. I’ve changed my mind. I can’t bear this, Kai. I can’t bear this farm, this life, this world without you.
You’ve only been gone a month, but it feels like a year. Tatiana lives to torture me. She brings up the Posts’ exodus from the Luddite estates at every possible juncture. And Ro misses you, too. She gives me a sad look whenever I go to see her, and I am alone. She doesn’t understand where you’ve gone. I think she’s afraid you have died.
I am afraid you have died. I hate not knowing where you are. If you’re safe, if you’re hungry, if you’re alone, if you’re afraid. I don’t know what risks you’ll take, or who you’ll meet. I don’t know if they’ll love you as I do. If they’ll protect you as I’ve failed to do. Tatiana revels in sharing with me horrible stories about what happens in the Post enclaves. I am sure they cannot all be as wicked as she says—after all, most of the runaway Posts just want better lives for themselves. But I spend my nights lying awake in my bed, praying that you do not let yourself be harmed.
I also pray that you still care for me. That one day you will understand why I made the choice I did. That one day, I will understand it better, too, for right now, I just hate myself for it. I know it’s right, but I didn’t know how hard it would be.
I wish there was a way to send you this letter, but I’m also glad there isn’t. Because then I would be weak enough to go through with what I’ve written above, to follow you wherever you’ve gone, and if I did, what would happen to the North estate and all the people who depend upon it for survival? So instead, I just turn this letter into another little glider to add to my collection.
I miss you. May God keep and protect you, wherever you are in this world.
Yours,
Elliot
Thirteen
THE WAREHOUSE OF THE shipyard was closed up tight, and Elliot wondered how the builders had enough light to work by. And yet, she could hear the sounds of industry as she approached—strange whirrings and high-pitched whines and the clank of metal upon metal. The horses trotted up the beach, and Felicia waved to a knot of figures standing outside the building. Elliot shaded her eyes from the sun and tried to identify them. The admiral, Donovan, and Kai.
As they grew closer, she could see even more. They held long sticks in their hands and were scratching figures into the sand as they spoke. She watched as Donovan spun away from the group and began pantomiming whatever point he was trying to make by marching out the space on the sand. Kai threw back his head and laughed, then delineated his own version. They seemed to be arguing some element of design. El
liot marveled as she observed the same quick, precise movements she was beginning to realize all the Fleet captains shared. She supposed it was the result of their training, or the months they spent steering their ships. Perhaps they got used to perfect control, like the movements of a musician or a surgeon. Beside them, though, the old admiral seemed almost clumsy.
Elliot and Felicia were almost upon them, when from within the warehouse there was a deafening crash. The walls of the building shook and the ground shuddered beneath them. The horses reared and Elliot clung tight to Pyrois’s neck, hoping to keep her seat. The horse bucked beneath her, and for a moment all was topsy-turvy and the air was rent with horsey screams. Elliot squeezed her eyes shut as her grip gave way, and she braced herself for the fall.
But it never came. She felt her hand sweep the sand, heard hooves hit the ground close to her head, and then two arms clamped around her waist and she was placed on her feet.
“You’re all right.” Kai’s voice in her ear, very close.
He’d touched her. He’d touched her. Her skin buzzed like a wire, and her chest and face grew warm. She brushed her hair from her eyes, but he’d already let go, snapping away with that same unnerving precision, marking the space between them as if with a ruler. She took an unsteady step toward him, and his hand shot out again to bolster her by the elbow, and to halt her approach.
“Careful.”
She blinked, willing herself not to reach for him like roots after water.
Beyond, the admiral had caught hold of Pyrois’s reins and was soothing him, while Donovan was even now rushing into the building halfway across the beach. Everything must have happened in a second or two. But how? Surely Kai had been too far away to catch her in midair. He was always fast, but still . . .
Felicia remained on her horse, and watched Elliot and Kai with a concerned look on her face.
“Can you stand on your own?” Kai asked her now.
She nodded and he instantly left her side and headed into the shipyard warehouse. The admiral had somehow already tied up Pyrois and gone into the building. Felicia dismounted, led her horse over to the hitching post, and gestured to Elliot to join her on the bench.
“Please sit, Elliot. That was a nasty fall.”
No, but it would have been had Kai not been there to catch her. How had he reached her in time? Had he been watching her much more closely than he’d let on?
“What happened inside?” she asked instead. “Is anyone hurt?”
As if on cue, Kai appeared at the doorway. “One of the hulls broke free from its suspension,” he announced. “No one was injured, but we’ve lost several days’ work.”
Felicia shook her head. “What a shame.”
“All things considered, the admiral thinks it best if we cancel our plans for the evening. We’ll probably work through the night.”
Through the night? “You must have a hundred sun-lamps!” Elliot exclaimed. Otherwise how in the world would they be able to work in that dark warehouse?
Neither Post replied at first. “Yes,” said Felicia at last. “And speaking of, I’ll send someone to fetch a sun-cart to take Miss Elliot home. I doubt she wants to try the horses again so soon, especially if she’s to lead the extra.”
Elliot folded her hands in her lap as Felicia entered the building. She figured Kai would follow, but he remained still, standing over her like a guard. His shadow fell across her lap, and she traced its edges with her hands. The places he’d touched her—her torso, her chest, her elbow—still tingled. His words still echoed in her ears. He hadn’t spoken to her directly since that night in the barn. She soaked up every syllable like it was rain on parched soil.
You’re all right.
Careful.
Can you stand on your own?
They were as clear to her in her mind as the words he spoke now. “Are you recovered?”
She looked up, but his face remained turned toward the sea. “I’m better, thank you.”
“If you are, then it’s best you try walking home, rather than wasting someone from the Fleet’s time by making them chauffeur you back.”
These words broke something inside her. Perhaps it was his touch, perhaps it was the fact that they were alone again, perhaps it was the way Felicia Innovation had spoken to her, like she at least wanted to be friends, or maybe it was the weeks she’d wasted hiding from these Posts because she was afraid of this very moment. But whatever it was, Elliot could not prevent the burst of laughter that escaped her lips.
Kai whirled around and his face was shadowed by the angle of the sun. Still, she knew his tone. Anger. “What’s so funny? That our project has been set back several days? That we’re stuck here longer? That you take a little spill from a horse and everyone wants to rearrange the world so you don’t suffer a moment of inconvenience?”
“No,” she said, and her voice was even. “That I would wait a month in agony just to hear you insult me. I’m a miserable girl indeed, don’t you think?”
He glared at her in stony silence, which only spurred her on. No more of this waiting and worrying. She might not deserve much from Kai, despite all the time she’d spent loving him, but she deserved this.
“I have gathered that you don’t want to reveal your origins to the Groves, or even to most of your friends, and that’s your choice, but I have a question for you. Andromeda knows, doesn’t she? She knows what happened?”
He said nothing.
“Please. I will tell you, and you will tell me, and then we can just go on ignoring each other afterward. Tatiana doesn’t know who you are, which is ridiculous to me. She’s as stupid as she’s ever been. I wanted to die, that day in the barn. Our Posts, of course, talk of nothing else, but they have no occasion to tell your friends if you don’t want it known on the Boatwright estate. They haven’t even bothered correcting my sister, not that she talks to many Posts outside the house servants like Mags and her maid. And Ro . . .” Here Elliot faltered, but only for a moment. “Every time I see Ro, she wonders why we haven’t come together.”
She thought she saw him flinch, but it was hard to tell in the light. She knew he visited Ro on his own. Did he get the same impression?
“Just tell me, so I can stop wondering if Andromeda’s contempt is for all Luddites, or for me alone.”
Kai was quiet, then said, “If you can stand on your own, it’s better that you walk back rather than making someone from the Fleet take you.”
Elliot rose, then swallowed the bile she tasted in her throat. “I have stood on my own for many years.”
He didn’t look away this time, and his eyes were like a stranger’s. “You’re not the only one.”
PART II
Icarus Also Flew
Anne did not wish for more of such looks and speeches. His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.
—JANE AUSTEN, PERSUASION
ONE YEAR AGO
Dear Kai,
I wish I knew where to send this letter. I wish I knew where you were, or how you’re doing. I am glad now that you’re gone, that you didn’t have to live through these past two years with me, that I didn’t have to worry about you alongside everyone else.
So many of the Posts are gone now—gone who knows where. If they meet you, I hope they will write and tell me, but I don’t expect it. After all, you have never written me. After leaving this place, I doubt many will have the slightest interest in sending back word, and most especially not to me.
I have failed them, Kai. I have failed them all. I cannot step into my mother’s shoes. I cannot keep the farm running. I can’t stop thinking of those first weeks after Mal died and we were trying to convince everyone you could follow in his footsteps as mechanic. I remember the all-nighters we pulled trying to keep all the machines in working order. Of course, that time we had each other.
Now I don’t feel like I have anyone.
And that’s why I’m sitting here, writing letters to nobody. You’ll never see these words,
but I can’t keep this to myself anymore. You are the person I’ve always told these things to. You’ve been gone for three years, and you’re still the only one I can trust. I sit in this room, surrounded by your letters and by even bigger secrets than those . . .
I made something, Kai. Something new.
The other Luddites would kill me if they knew. My father wouldn’t be able to protect me, but I doubt he’d want to. He believes in the protocols. Why don’t I feel terrified tonight? I’ve been terrified for so long—of how I was going to make it through the bad times, of how I was going to keep the farm going now that so many of the Posts have left, if I had any way to control what happened to me and those I love—to this place I love, despite everything.
I’ve been terrified for a year that I wouldn’t succeed. And now that I have . . . I’m not scared anymore. At least not tonight. I’m not scared that people will discover what I’ve done, because I know I did it for the right reasons. I’m not scared that we’ll all starve next winter, because I hold in my hands the instrument of our salvation.
And most of all, I’m no longer scared that I made the wrong choice three years ago. Whatever it meant for us, I know that I was meant to stay here. For them. For this wheat. For the future.
Even if I never see you again, I remain,
Yours,
Elliot
Fourteen
AS THE AUTUMN DREW to a close, bringing with it swifter sunsets and frigid days, Elliot was glad her duties kept her far, far away from the shipyard and Kai. He’d made his position clear at their last meeting. She saw no reason to try to speak to him again. But there was plenty of work to be done, especially since her father still hadn’t returned from visiting his Luddite friends down south. She had to prepare the Reduced barracks and the Post cottages for winter, she had to throw a harvest feast for all the laborers on the estate, and she had to make all arrangements for the food they’d be importing to tide them over to spring. Elliot found that sometimes a whole afternoon would pass without her thinking of Kai—much as it had been before he’d returned.
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