Stone in the Sky

by Cecil Castellucci

That was almost the truth.

  “What is she saying?” murmured through the crowd. They were all asking questions at the same time.

  “She doesn’t know anything,” the burned girl said to the crowd. “She’s not one of them. Move back. Leave her alone.”

  The crowd was clearly disappointed. They started to dissipate as much as they could in such cramped quarters.

  They went back to their business, and I felt relieved without their eyes on me. Large groups of Humans still made me feel uneasy, and this was the biggest that I’d seen since I began my journey. I nodded in thanks to the burned girl for making them go away.

  The two Imperium officers stuck close to me. As did the burned girl, who had stayed with the journey leader to make sure that I had space around me. With the crowd now mostly dispersed, I could finally breathe.

  “Ednette,” the journey leader said, pointing to herself.

  “Tula,” I said, giving her my name. The burned girl stepped closer to me. “What’s going on?”

  “They think you’re a Gome,” Ednette said.

  “What’s a Gome?”

  “Oh, I will kiss the pale blue dot. It’s just a stone in the sky. When I see the thread, the golden thread comes back through the stars. You know I’m going home, I’m going home.”

  I’d heard the burned girl’s song before.

  “It’s a myth we tell over meals. Going home. This is a sign,” she said pointing to my gold bracelet.

  “This?” I said shaking the gold Earth charm on the bracelet.

  “Fifty years ago, every wandering tribe tried to send a member back to Earth to plead our case. To get us home.”

  I nodded.

  “This kind of bracelet is what the Wanderers who manage to get back to Earth or their descendants are supposed to wear when they come back out here to help us find a way to go back home. Back to Earth,” Ednette said. “No one has ever seen one return, but we all know what the bracelet looks like. And what the answer is to our question.”

  “Couldn’t anyone make a bracelet like this?”

  “Why would they? And even if they did, they wouldn’t know the word.”

  “What is the word?” I asked.

  “It’s in the song,” Ednette said. “It’s what every planet is. A Stone in the Sky.”

  Els. Even though she was long dead, she was still a mystery. Could she have been a descendent of Wanderers? Maybe that’s what Caleb meant when he’d said that she’d had to fight tooth and nail to get off the streets and to the stars. Had she really gone to the stars to get the Wanderers home? I touched the gold Earth on my wrist. Perhaps I had misunderstood the reason for all of her horrible actions. Perhaps she had been on a mission that was bigger than her and her heart had gotten lost in the pursuit of her cause.

  “I’m not a Gome,” I said sadly.

  “No,” Ednette said. “You’re not, but you met one and that is the first time I’ve ever heard of one coming back out to space. That’s something. It means that some of ours actually made it back to Earth. You Earthlings always said that was impossible.”

  I regretted that Els hadn’t accomplished her mission to meet them and bring them hope. Perhaps she had thought she could get them to go to one of the colonies if she were tight with Brother Blue. But in her desperation to help, she might have gotten trapped in enforcing the new lie that he had set. I shuddered at how terrible it might have been for her to believe she was helping the Wanderers to go home and not know that she was actually sending her people to their death.

  I had tried to do what she could not. I had tried to help them. But I was trapped here along with them, could not lead myself home, much less them.

  “I never believed the Gomes actually existed,” Ednette said. “It was more a tale to keep our people moving and hopeful. Not that it matters anymore. We’re going to a colony now. We boarded this ship because we are looking for our lost. My husband was recruited six months ago. It’s not Earth, but maybe it will finally be a home. Our very own stone in the sky.”

  “But there are no Human colonies,” I said. “We’re headed toward death. That’s why I’m traveling. I’ve come to warn the Wanderers to stay away from the colonies.”

  “Are you trying to keep these new planets for yourself like you hoard Earth?” Ednette asked grabbing my arm.

  “No,” I said.

  “The Imperium Humans only take the young and the healthy. But traders, like these Hort have been searching for Humans. Telling us that they will take the old and the young to the colonies.”

  It had gotten worse then I thought. Any lowlife with a ship could pick up Humans and get a fee for transporting them to a colony.

  “There are no colonies,” I said, and this time it was my turn to grab her arm. “There is nothing there. Once the Humans arrive, they die there if they are not dead already.”

  “My husband is there,” she said. “Half my old tribe.”

  I yelled in frustration. How could I make them understand? Someone had to believe me.

  “They’re fooling you,” I said. “There is a very bad man who is tricking everyone. You’ll never settle there, just like you’ll never go back to Earth.”

  That got her listening. Earth was a way to ignite their passion.

  “Those planets have no resources. There is nothing there. No infrastructure. In order to settle you need things: grains, supplies, building instruments, medicine. I know because I was supposed to be a settler. If you go there you will only die there,” I said.

  “But I heard from other tribes, they do a census. They count us up. My husband.”

  “He’s dead,” I said.

  Ednette was wavering. She knew that her people had been lied to before.

  “What’s left of the Humans count as population when scanned from space,” I said. “Can’t you understand? We’re being sent there to cover up the fact that no one is there.”

  My voice cracked in desperation. I was telling the truth. Every cell in my body was buzzing with the truth. But the truth is meaningless unless it’s believed.

  “But those Humans with no story came with another group to go to the colonies,” Ednette said gesturing to the two Imperium officers still cowering in the corner.

  “But, remember Ednette, when they tried to leave, the Hort wouldn’t let them. Remember how they howled,” the burned girl said looking at Ednette. A look passed between them, as though this girl could read them in a way that Ednette could not.

  “Yes, daughter, you are correct. They did act strange. Go to them and get them to tell you what they know.”

  The burned girl left to talk to the two Imperium Humans. I could see that they shook their heads vehemently. I knew that they knew nothing.

  I grabbed at the chance of her growing recognition and repeated myself so that she would understand.

  “Wherever we’re going, there are no colonies. No resources. No life,” I said. “The Imperium conducts a census. They scan the planets for biomatter. Even dead matter counts. And we’ll be dead soon enough. We have to get off of this ship.”

  And then I saw it. Just as I was ready to give up I saw the glimmer of truth dawning on her face. A high price for Humans. Even cadavers.

  “There’s no way off of this ship,” Ednette said. “This cargo is closed.”

  The burned girl came back to us holding one of the Imperium by the collar. She was visibly upset.

  “What’s wrong, Elizabeth?” Ednette said.

  “Brother Blue,” she said, her voice high pitched. “He says the orders to round us up come directly from a man named Brother Blue.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” I said. “That’s the bad man.”

  “It’s true,” the Imperium officer said. She was pulling at her curly hair and talking fast as though telling the truth quickly would somehow get her out of here. “We were ordered to round up the young and healthy and bring them to hired transports like this one to go to different Earth colonies.”

  “We’re not kill
ing you. We’re helping you to settle. We’re getting you out of the sky to find homes,” the other officer said. He was tall and thin and had dark eyebrows that made his eyes look sunken.

  They were both convinced that they were telling the truth and that Brother Blue wasn’t lying.

  “There is a reason Brother Blue made sure that you never had to actually deliver the Humans to the colonies yourselves,” I said to them both. “Because there is nothing there.”

  “That’s not true. We’re trying to help you! I swear! We’re trying to help Earth!” the man said.

  “He only wants to help himself, to power. To resources. He doesn’t care about us. He kills people. He left me for dead on a space station after I found out that he’d sold all of the grain we were to use to start our colony on Beta Granade. And then he killed my mother and my sister by blowing up the ship to make sure it never got there.”

  The officer began shaking as the burned girl pulled the fabric tighter on her uniform collar so that she started to choke.

  “Elizabeth!” Ednette screamed.

  “There are colonies,” said the female officer. “I swear. I’ve heard Brother Blue talk about them. I’ve personally sent hundreds of Humans to Kuhn.”

  “We pay the transport captains with alin,” the man added.

  Now Brother Blue’s obsession with the alin made sense. He was making currency hand over fist in an unregulated way. It was enough to cover up his deceit.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “You all bought into his lies, just like I did once.”

  Elizabeth, the burned girl, let out a moan.

  “We’re already on our journey,” Ednette said, pulling Elizabeth off the officer and close to her. “Our fates are sealed.”

  “You’re on this trip with us,” I said to the officers. “And unless we do something, you’ll see what’s on those colonies with your own eyes right before you die along with us.”

  24

  The burned girl, Elizabeth, had stayed back with me as Ednette turned and went away, leaving with the Imperium officers; the man was now shaking.

  I was exhausted from my journey and from the adrenaline of being in this strange place and wanted to curl up to try to get some shuteye before I tried to figure out a way out of this mess. I didn’t want to stare at Elizabeth, but I couldn’t help it since she was staring so hard at me. When I looked back she didn’t shy away. She held my gaze. Then she moved and got up toward me. I immediately looked down, trying to show that I meant no offense. The last thing I needed was for her to pick a fight with me. When she stood close to me, I could feel her power. She was sinewy and muscled. She moved gracefully, with complete command. I knew that she could hurt me physically. I had made it through a first wave with these Humans; I just needed to make it through to the end.

  I looked back up at her.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t mean to stare. I’m just having some trouble falling asleep.”

  “It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt anymore. If you look at it long enough, people say that they don’t see it anymore. They just see me.”

  She cocked her head to the side and smiled.

  “Tula?” she then asked softly.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Is it really you?” The burned girl smiled wider, and it was a smile I knew. How did I know that smile? It was then that I looked past the disfiguring scar. It was Bitty, my sister. She was alive.

  I jumped up.

  “Bitty? Bitty!”

  I cupped her burned face with my hands, and I took her all in. Even her hand was burned. The skin was both soft and mottled. There were ridges of red and white and black ink. The landscape of her body was cratered. It hurt me to feel her skin as though I had been burned, too. Then we were hugging and crying, and I couldn’t believe that my sister was alive.

  “Mom?” I said looking behind her as though my mother would suddenly appear.

  Bitty shook her head.

  “Ednette called you daughter,” I said.

  “She’s the one who took care of me when I arrived. She taught me how to survive. I would be dead without her.”

  I felt glad that she had someone to care for her who was unlike me. I envied the fact that she had been with Humans. How much easier it would have been if I’d had a tribe to help me survive. When I looked back up, her tone had shifted and after the moment of excitement of being reunited after so many years, she seemed angry with me.

  “Bitty…” I said. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Only a few of us made it off the Prairie Rose. It was awful. As you can see.”

  “How did you escape?” I asked.

  “I made it to a life pod,” she said. “All those annoying drills you made me do saved me.”

  “Was it an accident or was it sabotage?”

  I realized that I didn’t know, and Bitty would have a better idea of it than I would. The Prairie Rose exploding had haunted me these past three years. It was this great unanswered question. Probably one I would never truly know the answer to. Things happened in space. Accidents happened. It just seemed that since Brother Blue was involved that it was unlikely that he didn’t have a hand in it.

  She looked at me, searching my face to see if I really believed that it could have been anything other than an accident.

  “Do you really think someone deliberately harmed the Prairie Rose?” she asked.

  “I think Brother Blue never wanted you all to make it to Beta Granade,” I said. “He tried to kill me.”

  Bitty slapped the wall with her hand as this information sank in.

  “I wanted to scream every time I heard his name again,” she said. “He never answered any of the petitions from the few survivors. I thought you were with him. I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t come for me.”

  All of a sudden her attitude shift toward me made sense. She thought that I had abandoned her. That she could think that I would know she was alive and ignore her was horrifying. I pulled her in again for a hug.

  “I wasn’t with him,” I said. “I found the grain loaded onto the dock, and when I confronted him … he beat me. He left me for dead on the Yertina Feray.”

  The look of betrayal that Bitty had in her face changed to one of sympathy. We both had our scars.

  “I had nothing. There were no Humans. I thought I was going mad. I was alone with only aliens for friends. I thought you were dead. I swear to you, Bitty, if I had known you were alive, I would have come for you.”

  I slipped my hand into hers.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  “The ship made its first skip, and it was fine. Then we made another skip, and the alarms went off. It was during the sleep cycle. I shot out of bed and to the life pods, but there was fire everywhere. I didn’t want to go through it but Mom was behind me and shoved me into the fire to get to the pod.”

  She swallowed at the memory. I could see tears in her eyes.

  “Go on,” I said. “I’m here now.” I had reverted back to being the big sister.

  “I was in so much pain that I didn’t see anything, just hands pulling me in and a blanket covering me up. We ejected from the ship but Mom wasn’t with me.”

  Now the tears were coming out of her freely. This strong young woman was like a little girl again as she relived the pain. I let her sob on my shoulder until she was ready to speak again.

  “We floated for a few days, just tumbling before we were picked up by a ship. Earth Gov wouldn’t let us go back home, and we couldn’t raise a signal from any colony. Eventually, we found a ship that had taken on some Wanderers, and the tribe adopted us.”

  “How many of you?”

  “Four,” Bitty said. “Only four kids in my pod. They’ve moved on to other tribes over time.”

  Four out of one hundred and sixty-seven. It seemed a miracle that anyone had escaped at all.

  “Ever since it happened, I’ve been with these Wanderers. At first I tried to convince them to get to Bet
a Granade. I was hoping that maybe some others had survived and that you were there. Maybe another ship had come to settle it.”

  “No one settled,” I said. “Those worlds are empty. Brother Blue charmed us out of all of our money and our dreams and then once he’d bled us dry, he disposed of us. We weren’t the first. If someone doesn’t stop him, we won’t be the last.”

  I hugged her again.

  “We’re not safe on this ship,” I said. “We have to get off of here.”

  It was good to have a sister again. If I never went back to the Yertina Feray or if I never found Caleb again, then at least I’d be with Bitty. I could bear it now. I could survive this. There was an elation to knowing that I had gotten something back that he had taken away from me.

  “I know one thing, Bitty. We are not going to die on a Hort ship at the hands of Brother Blue.”

  After all of those months of loneliness, I had something to live for. I had just found my sister, and it wasn’t so I could die with her. She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand, and just like that, the strong young woman I’d met earlier was back.

  “We’re getting out of here,” I said.

  “The Hort won’t open the cargo bay door except to dump more Humans in here,” she said having pulled herself together. “We’ve tried. It’s impossible.”

  “There’s always a way until there is none,” I said.

  “You think you can get us out of here?” Bitty asked.

  “If I have to die trying,” I said.

  “How?” she asked.

  “Hijack this ship and make it our own.”

  25

  Bitty led me through the cargo bay over to Ednette. When we were young, it was Bitty who followed me everywhere. And when we were on the Prairie Rose, I was the one who everyone knew. Here, I could see that like Ednette, Bitty commanded a certain kind of respect. If someone was in her way, they moved. I felt proud that she had survived in her own way; just as I had. She was a young leader and no longer a little girl.

  I wondered what our mother would think of us and how we had survived. She would have been proud, I think. Whatever grit she’d had to want to go out into space she’d passed on to us.