For Darkness Shows the Stars

by Diana Peterfreund

  Elliot weighed her words. “I think . . . I think if you mean what you say about wanting to be an explorer, that your wishes are valid. I think if you mean it, you should pursue it regardless of the actions of Captain Wentforth.” There. That was fair. And it was the most she could trust herself to say.

  “Thank you,” Olivia gushed. “Tatiana was telling me the other day what a fool I was being, and that everything I want is only because of him. And it is—but not in the way she supposes. Rather, being with him—or even near him—has taught me so much. It’s a new world out there. I can’t hide away on the estate. I can’t forget about it now that I’ve had a taste.”

  Elliot busied herself with setting out the last of the food. Part of her wanted to strangle Olivia, or jump off the cliff, or even just cry. But she couldn’t allow herself to do so, no more than she could allow herself any of the indulgences she was encouraging Olivia to take. Elliot would never forget Kai, nor the world of possibilities they’d once dreamed of. But she could never have it for herself, either.

  Kai was now busy teaching the Phoenixes their old game of cliffside chicken. He teetered on the very edge, arms outstretched, face upturned toward the sun. Something desperate and devilish woke inside Elliot. Now they had nothing, but once they’d had this. Once she’d given in every time. But she was older now. She’d taken bigger risks. Elliot stood, brushed off her knees, and joined him at the cliff’s edge. He could hate her now, he could resent her, he could never forgive her, but he would know what she’d become. She positioned her toes just a bit farther out than his and threw her arms out to the side.

  “Have you spent these four years practicing to beat me?” he whispered. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, but could not read the expression on his face. Was he joking? Teasing? Seeking to wound her again? He’d apologized today in front of the Posts. She’d thought it was to bury the hatchet with Gill and Dee. Was it to make amends with her as well?

  In the end, she kept her response neutral. “How do you know I didn’t used to let you win?”

  Kai wiggled his toes a bit farther out. Elliot copied him.

  “Enough is enough, you two,” said Andromeda, back on the blanket.

  Elliot felt wobbly, but she steeled herself and looked straight ahead at the horizon. Of course, it proved nothing. Her ability to stand on a cliff edge did not make her better than Kai. It did not make up for his words the previous evening, or his treatment of her for the past few weeks. It certainly didn’t make up for all the smiles he shared with Olivia, or all the rumors going around about them.

  But my, it felt good.

  “Wentforth,” Andromeda warned. Elliot didn’t dare turn around, or even look over at Kai. She couldn’t afford to lose her balance. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure step up next to him. Olivia.

  “This isn’t so bad,” the younger girl said. She leaned a bit from side to side, trying to find her balance as the wind tugged at her full skirts.

  Kai moved even farther out.

  “Malakai, quit it.” Andromeda’s tone had turned commanding. Elliot bit her lip. She could feel the abyss beneath her toes. She was already out as far as she dared. The wind picked up again, buffeting them all back, then pulling them forward. Olivia wavered. Kai remained firm. Elliot locked her knees and circled her arms to keep her balance.

  “Olivia,” said Horatio. “A step or two back, please.”

  Kai dropped his arms. He took a few steps back.

  Elliot sighed in relief.

  And then he leaped.

  Somewhere, Olivia was screaming. Somewhere, the wind still blew. Somewhere, the earth remained firm beneath her feet, but she might as well have been standing on smoke, for all she saw was Kai, bicycling his legs, arcing high, silhouetted against the sea and the sky, dark clothes, dark hair. . . . And as he fell, Elliot felt everything inside of her plummet, too.

  Then he landed, two feet firm on the rocky surface of the first tower.

  Again, Elliot could breathe. She reeled back from the edge.

  Olivia was sitting on the grass, gasping. Horatio had dropped his meat pie. Andromeda stood with her arms crossed over her chest and shook her head. “Show-off,” she cried to Kai across the water.

  “How did he do that?” Horatio asked. “He could have been killed.”

  Andromeda rolled her eyes. “There’s an updraft of air in between the towers, every so often. He just took advantage of it.”

  “Impossible,” Elliot said. Her ancestors had lived on this land for generations. No one had ever leaped across before.

  “Not really, Miss Elliot,” Donovan said quickly. “You just . . . learn to read these things, if you’re pilots like we are. We read the shape of the wind on the surface of the sea. Watch.”

  He, too, leaped. Over on the tower, Kai shouted in approval as Donovan landed beside him.

  Andromeda sighed. “Prideful, reckless show-offs. They’ll be the death of us, I swear.”

  “The death of themselves,” Horatio corrected.

  Elliot stared at the boys standing on the nearest tower. Kai met her eyes, then whirled around and took off for the next. Again, her heart dropped into her stomach, but a moment later she saw him land, hard, scrabbling against the scree that sat on the top of the tower of rock.

  There he was, on the land beyond the islands. There he was, the lord of his own four meters of rock.

  “Enough!” Andromeda shouted, as her brother followed Kai. “Don! Stop!” She stamped her foot in frustration. “Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?”

  Olivia clapped her hands with delight. “Oh, I must learn how to do it! To think that these towers were accessible all this time. We could have rebuilt the bridges long ago.”

  “They aren’t,” said Andromeda, frowning. “Not really. I mean—the conditions of the wind have to be just right, and you need really skilled pilots, like my brother and Wentforth to . . . read the currents. They’ll get stuck out there if they aren’t careful. They are being so foolish.”

  “Teach me!” Olivia insisted. She grabbed for Andromeda’s hands.

  Andromeda forced a laugh. “Not likely. Your brother would kill me.” She shook her head at the figures bouncing around out there. “This is ridiculously dangerous. Felicia will have their heads when she finds out.”

  Andromeda glared daggers at the boys out on the towers. She didn’t look worried about them. She looked angry.

  Kai had now jumped back to the closest tower, and stood with his face turned up into the blue.

  Elliot watched him, and Donovan. She watched them time their leaps. Were there really updrafts of wind helping to propel them? And if so, how in the world could they see them? The same wind that blew the waves a hundred meters down could not lift their bodies. She’d seen the power of wind back when her mother had used it to run the turbines in the Boatwright orchards. She’d used it herself to fly kites or sail Kai’s paper gliders. He’d been good at reading the winds, yes, but not able to fly himself.

  Andromeda was still explaining the complexities of the calculations involved in determining when one might jump, the subtleties of the observations, the amount of training that her brother and Kai had undergone to be able to do both in an instant, to gauge the distance, to leap . . .

  And all the while she was doing it, she was wringing her hands behind her back and casting nervous glances at the boys with her strange, crystalline eyes. The eyes she shared with her brother Donovan. The eyes, Elliot realized, that looked like blue-green versions of the ones Kai had finally let her see.

  All three of the Cloud Fleet captains had those eyes. Those strange, superior eyes that let Andromeda drive through the woods in the dark, that let Kai wander around the barn at night without a lantern, that let all three of them stand in the sanctuary and see insects instead of stars. Kai had known, even in the blackness, that she’d been standing in the whisper zone. And he wouldn’t look at her. Kai, who had once been able to communicate so much with a mere
glance—he would never let her see into his eyes. She thought it was because he was angry, but it was much worse. He was afraid she’d see it. And now she had.

  That wasn’t all. The jumps they were making—they weren’t merely improbable—they were impossible. As impossible as Donovan’s virtuoso performance on the fiddle. As impossible as Kai catching her when she fell off the horse on the beach, even though he’d been fifty meters away.

  Andromeda wasn’t scared that the boys would fall. She was scared that the Luddites on the cliff would see something they shouldn’t. Something that shouldn’t be possible at all. Something that had been impossible for generations, for the safety of the world.

  No.

  Kai.

  No, not her Kai.

  Elliot stared at Kai in horror. He was still dancing around on the ledge but he noticed her and froze. His arms dropped to his sides. Even across the gulf of years and distance, he could read her. His smile faded. His mouth opened.

  “I think I get it,” said Olivia. So did Elliot. “You mean like this?”

  Andromeda tried to grab at her, but even with her reflexes—her swift, inhuman, abhorrent reflexes—she was too late.

  Olivia jumped.

  Olivia fell.

  Twenty-three

  THE WIND HAD PICKED up, but the most it did was catch the edges of Olivia’s russet skirts, twisting them around her like a current in a bloody river. She slammed against the stone and bounced hard, once, twice, before her body caught on a ledge of the nearest tower, a few stories below the cliff’s edge.

  “Dear God,” Horatio shouted. “Olivia! Olivia!” He rushed to the edge of the cliff and looked down.

  Elliot ran to his side and drew him back. Olivia lay crumpled there, a flower crushed beneath a boot. “Careful,” she whispered. “Let the Fleet captains go.” After all, they could.

  Already, Kai was climbing down the side of the spire, feeling out handholds in the cracks. Already, Andromeda was rummaging through the boot of the sun-cart for a piece of rope. Up on the tower ledge, Donovan was shouting directions down to Kai, easily spotting then notifying him about footholds and loose stones.

  “She’s not moving!” Horatio cried. “She’s not moving!”

  Elliot wrapped her arms around her friend. “Shh. Don’t look.” She squeezed her eyes shut, her previous outrage all but forgotten in the moment. Please, Olivia, please. Don’t be dead.

  When she opened her eyes again, Kai had reached the girl. He held her head in his hands, and even from here, Elliot’s merely human eyes could see the red that stained his skin and the rocks beneath Olivia’s body. Andromeda returned to the cliff edge with her rope and tossed it, easily, to Donovan, who caught it just as easily. Their movements were the same as always—graceful as a cat’s, precise as a machine’s.

  It was horrifying.

  Below, Kai bent his face close to Olivia’s. “She’s breathing,” he shouted, and the words reverberated across the chasm. Horatio shuddered in relief. Donovan lowered the rope, which Kai tied to Olivia. With Donovan’s help, he climbed with her to the top of the tower.

  “Can you make it across while carrying her?” Andromeda called.

  Kai looked at Elliot as he answered. His tone was flat. “Yes.”

  Of course he could. He was a superhuman.

  “Don’t look,” Elliot said softly to Horatio. “Don’t watch this part.” She wished that she, too, could avoid it, but even if she didn’t watch, there was no denying that it was done. Kai jumped across to the cliff again, and this time he did it with a full-grown person in his arms. It was impossible. It should have been impossible.

  Oh, Kai, how could you?

  But there was no time, no time to even contemplate what had happened to the Cloud Fleet Posts. No time to do anything but offer a quick prayer that Horatio was too overcome by worry for his sister to think about the abomination before his eyes. Donovan leaped back to the mainland and they laid Olivia out on the grass. Andromeda wrapped bandages around her bleeding head. She was unconscious, but breathing. And every moment, she was losing more blood. Elliot felt her limbs for broken bones. Her leg was bent at a funny angle, and there was clearly something wrong with her collarbone, but the biggest damage by far was to her head. Elliot pressed cloths against the wound, hoping to slow the flow of blood.

  “We have to get her home,” Horatio said.

  “No,” said Elliot. “Take her to the Boatwright house. It’s closer, and Felicia Innovation can help her.” Indeed, Felicia might be the only one in two hundred kay who could. She’d known about their eyes that day in the cavern. What’s more, she’d apologized for taking away the wonder of the sanctuary’s stars. Felicia had been the one to do this to them. She’d doomed them all.

  Elliot looked up at Kai, who was standing over them, breathing hard. His glittery, inhuman eyes were wide with fear, but they widened even more at her words.

  “Felicia,” she repeated. There’d be time later to give in to her shock. “Perhaps it would be best to send one of the carts down there as quickly as possible. You can explain the situation and she can get ready. We’ll have to drive slowly with Olivia so as not to jostle her too much.”

  “Great idea,” Andromeda said. She turned to her brother. “Take Horatio and Wentforth and go. Elliot and I will take Olivia.”

  “I can’t leave my sister,” said Horatio.

  “The ride will be smoother with less weight,” said Andromeda. “I can drive it, and Elliot seems to have a handle on what Olivia needs, medically.”

  “I’ll drive Olivia and Elliot,” Kai blurted. Elliot cringed at the sound of her name in his mouth.

  “No.” Andromeda’s tone was firm. “You drive quickly. I drive carefully. Now go. Every second we waste might be her last.”

  Horatio seemed appeased by this, and they helped load the unconscious girl into the cart. Then the boys all piled into the second cart and took off. As Andromeda steered carefully down the path toward level ground, Elliot cradled Olivia’s head from the worst of the bumps.

  “That was smart,” said Elliot. “Sending Kai down first.” He’d bristled with energy he needed to race off.

  “Well, I’m smart,” Andromeda answered simply. After a moment, she spoke again. “Though you wouldn’t be able to tell it from my behavior today.”

  She didn’t, Elliot noticed, correct her about using Kai’s old name.

  The ride seemed to go on forever. Soon they lost sight of the boys’ cart, though Andromeda was still driving as fast as she dared. Now that Elliot knew the appalling truth, she marveled that she’d never noticed it before. She’d never suspected how Andromeda could have driven like a maniac through the woods the previous evening. She’d never wondered how it was that she could so skillfully steer around every dip in the path. Or if she had, she’d simply chalked it up to the Fleet’s skill as pilots.

  Elliot felt sick to her stomach. She wanted to scream, to leap out of the cart, but what good would that do? She could act like a model Luddite if she wanted, run away, denounce Andromeda then and there, and it wouldn’t help save Olivia’s life. Like it or not, she must not show anyone what she knew until the younger girl was safe. No matter how wrong it was, right now she needed these people to keep Olivia alive.

  After an age, they finally arrived at the Boatwright house. Felicia Innovation ran out to greet them. “Bring her inside, quickly,” she cried. “I have to see to her head. Are there any broken bones? Has she stirred at all?”

  Elliot answered the questions she could as Felicia got Olivia situated on a bed and began tending to her wounds. The Posts gathered around, their faces ashen. Horatio stood like a statue at the door.

  “Olivia,” he moaned. “Wake up, please. Please wake up.”

  Elliot went over to him and squeezed his hands. “She’ll be all right. Felicia will help her.” After all, the woman could work miracles.

  Dangerous ones.

  AT LAST THE BLOOD stopped seeping from Olivia’s head. At last Fel
icia set the final broken bone. At last the young girl’s breathing stabilized, and Felicia emerged from the sickroom and told Horatio that nothing more could be done, that they would have to wait to see if Olivia would wake up.

  The if seemed to break him all over again, and he buried his head in his hands.

  Both Elliot and Andromeda helped him to a chair. Donovan stoked the fire, and Kai stood, frozen, like he’d been ever since they’d arrived at the Boatwright house.

  “I can’t lose her,” Horatio said. “She’s the only family I have.”

  “Don’t say things like that.” Elliot stroked his arm. “She’s only asleep. We don’t know anything yet.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Andromeda. “I should have warned her. I shouldn’t have let her think she could make the jump.”

  “It’s my fault,” said Kai. “I shouldn’t have jumped at all. She never would have been tempted to try if she didn’t see me out there.”

  Horatio raised his head and forced a smile in Kai’s direction. “Look at us. You look like death, my friend, and I’m sure I do, too. We’ll never stop blaming ourselves. I guess that’s the price of love?”

  Kai’s abnormal eyes widened and Elliot nearly cried aloud. “I should go,” she blurted. “I’m of no use to anyone here.” She touched Horatio on the shoulder. “As long as you can spare me?”

  Horatio nodded. “I think I’ll be fine. The Innovations have offered me a room here so I can stay close to my sister tonight. Thank you, Elliot, for all your help today. Your quick thinking in bringing her here probably saved her life.”

  Elliot shook her head. “It was nothing at all.” She longed to be gone from this house, away from the Posts, whose odd eyes and precise movements now made her skin crawl. She needed to get her thoughts together. She needed to figure out what she was going to do next.

  “I’ll drive you back to the North estate,” said Kai.

  “No.”

  “I insist.” He stared at her, and this time Elliot was the one to turn away.