“Mara told you, didn’t she?” he asked, his tone a touch impatient. “We’ve sent two now. They nearly reach the surface, but then the signal goes out.”
“Yes,” I said dully, “she told me.”
But my mind went frantic at the thought. The Children of Abel were wrong—Captain Wolff hadn’t destroyed any probes. She’d been telling the truth. They’d been lost, truly lost. Silvan was the one who finally brought me back to myself, pointing down at the screen.
“What’s that?” he asked.
An image, black and white and occasionally crossed by a frenzy of static, was projected on a screen set deep into the podium. The quality was so low that I couldn’t make out the image at first—only a dim impression of faces, people.
“That’s the shuttle crew,” Captain Wolff said. Her voice was low. There was sadness in it. “There’s Hannah Fineberg. I’d recognize her anywhere. I watched her grow up. Every Launch Day, her family had dinner with mine.”
Through the static I saw Hannah’s face take shape. She was sitting in the corner of the screen. There was something dark—blood?—smeared over her forehead. I listened to Hannah’s voice as it came thinly through the tinny speaker. She was repeating the same words over and over again.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” she was saying. “Zehava is inhabited. I repeat, Zehava is inhabited.”
“No,” Silvan said. He pressed his hand against the glass, smearing away the dust. “I meant them.”
That’s when I saw them—people, standing behind Hannah and the rest of the crew. But there was something wrong with them. They were too tall, or too skinny, or something. The movement of their bodies just wasn’t right.
I saw my sister-in-law, the mother of my niece, my brother’s wife, turn to the crewman beside her. She spoke to him. Someone jostled her. A figure stood hovering over her shoulder.
“The inhabitants are demanding that we leave the surface. Please send a recovery shuttle. . . .”
Inhabitants. The three of us stared at the figures, trying to make them out. Their eyes were wide set and lozenge shaped and black, pitch black, not a single sliver of white in them.
I’d seen those eyes before. Eyes as dark and as endless as the space outside the ship. They visited me every night in dreams. He had settled down beside me, his cool skin as fragrant as a flower. He’d watched me, and I’d watched him, and we’d felt safe together—whole.
I saw Captain Wolff stroke her jaw with her gloved hand. “Our biologists have long known that there was a possibility of life on the surface. But we thought—”
I never got to learn what Captain Wolff thought. The sound of heavy footfalls against the metal floor interrupted her. Aleksandra had returned. Her boot heels clopped against the floor.
“Mother!” she called. “It’s worse than we feared. We’ve been unable to contain them. Perhaps they’ll listen to you.”
The captain nodded slowly. “We’ll deal with this later,” she said, tapping the dusty screen. She turned to her talmid, regarding him gravely. “Silvan, you stay out of the fray.”
Hannah’s voice lifted up from the speaker, contorted with pain.
“Please send a recovery shuttle. Please . . .”
Captain Wolff glanced down again. Her black eyes had gone huge at the sight of the screen. For the first time I realized that her gaze wasn’t cold, as I’d long thought. No, only proud. And now that pride had vanished behind her worry over Hannah, over her people.
“Wait!” I called, remembering Aleksandra’s threat. The captain turned to me, her gaze softening.
“The Asherati need me,” she said. The realization hit me like a slap. Captain Wolff didn’t see herself as apart from the rest of us because she hated us—but because she wanted to protect us, as a parent might. She gave me a small, tight smile. “Don’t worry, Terra. We’re almost to the surface. Soon you’ll be living the life your father always wanted for you.”
The thought of my father made me sway. It was all too much for me—my memories of Abba, Zehava, the wine. Hannah on the view screen, blood trailing over her face. And the people behind her. So strange, so familiar . . . As I tried to steady myself on my feet, Captain Wolff disappeared behind the sliding doors. For a long, gaping moment Silvan and I were left alone in the musty room.
“Are you all right, Terra?” Silvan asked, stepping close to me. I licked my lips, groping for words. But they didn’t come.
“I’m sorry,” he said. I felt the warmth of his breath on my ear, noted the effort it seemed to take for him to get the apology out. I didn’t think Silvan was a boy who apologized often. “I guess we won’t be married today. You do look beautiful. We’ll get married when this is all over, though. Right?”
I didn’t answer. Instead I turned, letting my eyes linger on the strong, stubbly line of his jaw. My gaze drifted down to his shoulder and rested on the violet threads all tangled with gold. He and Captain Wolff were the only citizens who wore those colors. Soon Silvan would be the only one.
Unless I did something.
“Silvan,” I said, my voice hushed, “stay here. Stay out of the fray.”
With that, I stepped out of my silky wedding shoes. I couldn’t run with them on. And I needed to hurry. I handed them to Silvan. He frowned at them—at me.
But there was no time for that. I took off running toward the lift.
“Terra!” I heard Silvan calling after me. “Terra!”
But I only slammed my hand against the panel, then stepped inside. The doors were already sliding closed when I shouted back. I don’t know if Silvan heard my hysterical, echoing words.
“She’s going to kill her!”
But I realized that it didn’t matter if he heard me. Not one bit.
He was behind me now, left alone in that dark room as the lift plunged down into the ship. It was as if the taut string that had held us together had finally been severed. I’d expected it to hurt, but it didn’t. It felt good. I knew then that I would never love him, that our marriage would never be sealed.
The doors slid open. What was revealed was nothing short of chaos. The stone pavilion around the lift was swarmed with citizens, who had descended upon the hospital and school and lab buildings in droves. They’d shattered every window, storming inside to liberate the computer terminals and gadgets and doodads from the oppression of their outlets. Only the library stood untouched, the stained glass dark and perfect in the evening light.
The crowd shifted and swayed around me like wheat stalks in a breeze. I waited until the crush of bodies parted—and then I surged forward.
The crowd stank of sweat and alcohol. Furious limbs surrounded me, jostling my body as I raced over the pavilion and toward the dome. At last my bare feet found the familiar cobblestone of the dome path. I jogged past the grain storage, barely noticing the people who poured out with arms piled high with ears of corn. Overhead, I knew that Zehava twinkled and shone—pinpricks of light illuminating the purple dark of her continents. I wanted nothing more than to stare up, to study the swirling blue oceans and the white clouds that passed over them. But there was no time for that. I ran forward.
At last I spotted a familiar face. Laurel Selberlicht. She and Deklan were running hand in hand across the green pasture before me. Each of them held sizable stones in their fists. Deklan’s hands were bloody. I couldn’t tell if the red that dripped from his knuckles was from his body or someone else’s. I watched, stunned, as they vaulted themselves over the pasture fence. They’d almost run right by me, but I shouted out to them.
“Laurel! Deklan! Have you seen Aleksandra Wolff?”
Laurel stopped, turning toward me. The frantic smile that had lit her lips fell. She lifted one hand—the one that was weighted by the stone—and pointed toward the desiccated fields.
“They say she took her mother there,” she said. I glanced doubtfully down between the rows of corn. Before I could answer, Deklan gave Laurel’s arm a tug and dragged her down the path.
I s
tood on the edge of the field, my hands balled into fists. The last time I’d run through the corn, I’d been with Koen. Back then my only worry had been getting him to press his lips to mine. Now I had bigger problems. Captain Wolff. Aleksandra. That knife she kept tied to her waist. My bare toes curled into the soil. I threw my weight back, readying myself.
And then I bolted forward.
Most years the rows would have been plowed under by now in preparation for the long, cold winter. This winter, our last on the ship, they’d been left high. I almost cursed myself to realize it—how the Council would have never left the cornfields in such a state if they’d truly intended for us to stay in the dome. A contingency plan—it had only ever been a contingency plan. Captain Wolff didn’t want to stay inside this dome any more than I did. Mara was wrong and Van was wrong and the Children of Abel were more wrong than any of them. How many little details had I ignored to believe the lies that Aleksandra had seeded among us so that she could put herself in a position of power?
The dry leaves rustled all around me, smothering every trace of noise beyond. There was no shouting. No sound of footfalls or glass shattering behind me. There was only my own breath and the papery-dry swishing of the stalks as I slipped through them.
And then, a voice. Captain Wolff’s voice. I’d heard it lift up over the gathered crowds a hundred times before. Now it was low, grave. I slowed to a stop.
“You can’t do this. Put the knife down, Alex.”
My chest still heaving from my sudden sprint, I turned toward the sound of their struggle. There was a rustle, and then I heard something heavy strike the frost-hard ground. I parted the leaves, peering forward. Aleksandra had wrapped her mother’s braid around her gloved fingers, forcing the captain down onto her knees. Captain Wolff lifted her scarred face to watch her daughter.
“They won’t follow you,” Captain Wolff said. “Not after they’ve discovered that you killed your own mother.”
“Good thing they won’t find out,” Aleksandra said. I saw her free hand flash down to her hip.
Move. Move, I told myself. I pushed forward through the corn, cupping my hands around my mouth, letting out a scream.
“No! Stop!”
But the sound of my voice was buried beneath Captain Wolff’s last gargled breath. Like a doll whose strings had been cut, she collapsed in the dirt. The last time this had happened, I’d taken off running. Now I just stood, frozen, staring down at her body. Her silver rope of hair lay twisted in an expanding pool of red.
Aleksandra didn’t see me, not at first. She was too busy wiping off the edge of her knife against her mother’s coat. I watched as she slid the blade down into her sheath. It fit neatly, as if it had never been disturbed at all.
Then she stood again, and her black eyes lifted. Once I’d thought that she was a younger, more beautiful version of her mother. But though her skin was indeed smooth and clear and without blemish, I now knew the truth.
“Oh, look,” she said, her hand moving toward her knife again. “A little bird. Better catch her before she sings.”
She took one step forward. Now I ran.
I ran harder and faster than I’d ever run before. My bare feet pounded against the cold soil; my breath came out in white bursts against the air. I could hear Aleksandra behind me, rattling the cornstalks as she passed. But I didn’t stop to think about that. I ran, and I ran, and I ran.
Soon I’d spilled out of the pastures. The cobblestones felt like ice against the soles of my feet. The path had grown crowded. I decided to use that to my advantage. I dodged between the bustling workers, who had lifted up their voices in a thudding chant. Hundreds of fists pumped the empty air—
“Stop the Council! Free Zehava! Stop the Council! Free Zehava!”
—but this time my own fingers remained firmly at my sides. I pushed through the crowd, stumbling out again only when I squeezed through the slats of the pasture fence.
Past the lambs, across the dewy soil, I ran. It wasn’t until I was halfway to the clock tower that I realized I had no place to go. The districts ahead were empty now. The people had taken to the fields, and they now followed Aleksandra, who would surely come for me soon. And I couldn’t very well return to Silvan, not after what I’d done to his father. I stumbled to a stop, searching the dome for an escape. But there was nowhere to go. I realized, for the first time, that the glass above might as well have been bars. And then my eyes reached up past the glass, and beyond.
Zehava. It sparkled under its triple moonlight like a whole new field of stars. Each point of light was a home, safe from the frantic bustle of the crowds around me. I stared up at Zehava, my mouth open. I hardly noticed the gaggle of teenagers who had spilled by me or how they wielded wrist-thick branches like clubs. My mind was on the people I’d seen on the screen up in that dusty command room. Not Hannah and the shuttle crew—the other ones, the strange ones. Tall and slender, their bodies had bent like reeds in the wind.
I knew a body like that one.
This dome held nothing but danger for me now. I’d forever be at the mercy of Aleksandra Wolff, the Children of Abel, their knives and clubs and fists. But I’d be safe on the surface below. I’d be safe on Zehava—safe in his arms.
I took off running again. Not toward the captain’s stateroom, where Silvan still waited for me, nor toward the clock tower, where Koen and Rachel had surely joined their hands already and said their vows. No, this time I plunged myself past it, through the trampled pasture and toward the districts beyond. There I’d take the rear lift down. The shuttles shone in the darkness. They offered my only escape.
“Wait for me,” I breathed into the cold air. “I’m coming.”
Summer, 460 YTL
Darling Terra,
The first time I ever saw the Asherah was on the shuttle over.
From far away it looks like an insect. A lightning bug. You’ve never seen one of those, have you? No, I don’t think they’re on the approved list of pollinators. Perhaps one of our descendants will know their light, but you’ll never catch one in the hollow space of your palms and watch it flicker on and off.
Like a lightning bug, the Asherah has a long, round body—and it’s lit up from inside, lit by the light of the forests and pastures and fields, by the life that stirs inside. The head is where the labs and the captain’s stateroom and the command center are. The insidious brain of our little ship. But the true light lies in its body, where the people live.
As I sailed beneath the Asherah in our shuttle, I felt a quiet awe come over me. She was shining and new then, but huge and silent and terrible, too. And resting there, in the dark stillness of space, she looked utterly and completely terrifying.
She’s never frightened you. You know her too well. You visited every twisted, hidden path. You sat on the shore of her bays and got sunburned by her UV lights, and you think she is the whole world. And for you, she is.
I’m an old woman now. You’ve asked me so many times why I’m unhappy, why I speak up against the Council, why I let your father argue with those gold-corded beasts at meetings. You tell me that every choice they’ve ever made has been for our survival. And you’re not wrong.
But know this: It’s the dream of the world beyond our ship that has kept me alive. Not only Earth—though every bone in my old body aches for her. But some other distant place, one that the Council can’t control. This thought of freedom, of a life without contracts or the net of glass above—this is what has sustained me.
Because someday, hundreds of years from now, one of our daughters will step outside for the first time—step into the air, the fresh, new air. And then she’ll turn around, just as I did in my shuttle. She’ll look back over her shoulder. And she’ll see her world fade into the dark behind her.
I saw the dying, ancient Earth. She’ll see the Asherah, her metal body darkened by hundreds of years of travel through the stars. And she’ll abandon it. Because the entire universe is waiting for her, massive and strange and aliv
e.
And full of hope.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following individuals get gold stars, love, and a thousand hugs:
Phyllis Ray Fineberg, my mother, who lent me her name for Terra’s. Without her passion for science fiction—Sundays watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, John Carter movie dates—or her help with my bad Yiddish, this book would not be here. Or it might, but it would not be very much fun.
My sister, Emily North, who shares a birthday and a star sign and also shared a childhood with me. You’re my favorite Capricorn. Thank you for being there.
My mother-in-law, Elayne Rudbart, my first and most fervent fan.
All the writers and early readers of this manuscript who offered both critiques and support: Patrick Artazu and Tarah Dunn; the Interrobangs—T. S. Tate, Jaimie Teekell, and Shannon Riffe; the ladies of YA Highway—Leila Austin, Lee Bross, Sumayyah Daud, Sarah Enni, Kristin Halbrook, Amanda Hannah, Kate Hart, Kody Keplinger, Steph Kuehn, Kristin Otts, Amy Lukavics, Emilia Plater, Veronica Roth, and Kaitlin Ward; and my dear, dear Bruisers—Douglas Beagley, Nicole Feldl, Wayne Helge, and Fran Wilde. Thanks for keeping me from going nuts, guys!
Special thanks to Kirsten Hubbard, who mentored me, helping me learn the ropes of this crazy YA book world; Rachel Hartman, brilliant belly dancer and book lover; and Sean Wills, who is just the best. Go make a thing, Sean. I’ll get coffee.
Kelly Lagor, who fixed my science, made it deeper, better, and more interesting. Every sci-fi writer should have their very own plant biologist.
My amazing agent, Michelle Andelman. From the moment you stumbled across that raw paragraph of this book, you’ve been its greatest advocate and defender. Thank you for loving Starglass before it was even done.
Rob Shields, for so perfectly capturing Terra’s sense of longing (and her sartorial choices). She—and Starglass—are so well-dressed thanks to your work.
My stellar team at Simon & Schuster: Lucy Ruth Cummins, Jenica Nasworthy, Karen Taschek, and Angela Zurlo. And especially Navah Wolfe, fellow geek, lover of Indian cuisine, and editor extraordinaire. Thank you for your tireless belief in this book and in my ability to make it better.
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