Tangled Planet

by Kate Blair

  “You should rest,” Mom says.

  But I swing my legs off the bed. I need to know if the other carriages made it. If not, it’s my fault. I stand up, then grab on to the bed as the carriage suddenly lurches. It takes me a second to realize nothing has really moved. I’m just dizzy.

  Mom reaches for my arm. “Steady there.”

  “I’m okay. I have to see.”

  “You’ve got a fair bit of PainFree in you. You have to be careful.”

  Sabik is out of his bed, too. His injured hand is across his body, and he holds his good one out to me.

  “I’ll help.”

  Mom sighs. “Just a quick look. I need to gather injury reports, anyway. Then back to bed. We all need rest and time to recover from this.” Her voice trembles.

  I hug her. She holds me gently, but there’s an intensity in her grip. I know she’d be squeezing me tight if I weren’t injured. Her face is wet against my shoulder.

  “I almost lost you,” she whispers. “I almost lost you.”

  The world spins when I close my eyes. Mom doesn’t let go. I have to detach her arms as I step back, then take Sabik’s hand, grateful for his steadying influence.

  The door is open. The medics stumble down the stairs to the planet. Some are crying. Most are silent, clutching at one another. Sabik and I follow them into a cloudy Beta evening.

  We keep walking, both unsteady, careful in the muddy puddles as we move away from the murmuring medics, staring out at our new home, at the patchy gray skies as the last of the light drains away. The spent parachutes flap in the breeze behind the medcarriage.

  We’re on a slight rise. Circled around the main camp are the other carriages, their open doors squares of brightness dotting the twilight at regular intervals. I count them, quickly. Twenty. All accounted for. No smoldering wreckage. The streaks in the sky must be the spokes.

  There will be a lot to check tomorrow. The solar panels on the ecocarriages will be a priority. And I’ll need to check the functioning of the remaining generator cell, although without the shuttle flights we should be able to get by with solar power for a bit, if we make a few adjustments.

  Stop, Ursa.

  Leave your job for one night. Tomorrow we can get on with the business of staying alive. For now, it’s enough that we’re here, and we’re together.

  Sabik heads toward the tree line, still holding my hand. I follow, not asking where we’re going, just stepping carefully downhill between the trunks, feeling unsteady. There are lights making their way toward the carriages, through the woods. Linkcoms, no doubt. People trying to find out what happened. They must have seen us falling to Beta.

  But Sabik steers us away from them. It’s not far to the edge of the village, to the clearing. The log benches are set up around the bonfire. The tarp has been pulled off, but it’s not lit yet.

  Of course. There was going to be a bonfire tonight.

  Well, now is as good a time as any. I stride toward the heap of lumber, reaching into my back pocket. I pull out my blowtorch, adjust the settings to make the flame as large as possible, and point it at the wood. I’m not trying for atmosphere. I’m just starting a fire. The logs are blazing in seconds. Sabik and I slump down onto a bench together.

  There will be more accidents now, bodies in the graveyard.

  No. I won’t accept that. I’m an engineer. I can help. There are ways to make this planet safer. I’m going to find them. And I can adapt a landbike for Perseus, too.

  We watch the flames in silence. There are patterns in there. Shapes jumping and dancing. Figures in blue, red, orange, and yellow.

  “You know,” I say, “if we hooked up a thermoelectric generator to the fire pit, we could use it to supplement the solar panels until we get the hydroelectric dam working.”

  “I’m glad you’re down here, Ursa,” Sabik says.

  Sparks float out of the fire, twisting on the updrafts until they disappear. Unlike them, I’m permanently earthbound. But that’s okay right now. We’re together. We made it. Our little flame flickered its way through the dark of space. Now we’re a small fire, with room to grow. One day our fire may light this whole planet. Perhaps send out sparks to other worlds.

  Or maybe that’s the painkillers talking.

  Stars are coming out, pinpricks in the vastness of space. And I can kind of see it: why Alpha Earth and our ancestors sacrificed so much to get us here. They did it to do what I’m doing now.

  They did it to know there was more to life than the only world they’d ever known. They did it to look at the sky and dream of the fire of humanity illuminating the dark. Blazing across the universe.

  A few of the other colonists are joining us now. Clustering together on the other log benches. The murmur of conversation drifts across the clearing, the light dancing around us all.

  “What exactly happened?” Sabik asks, quietly. “With Astra, and the pulse gun blast?”

  I think for a moment. Try to find the words. But they won’t come. I’ve lost too much today. There’s too much grief waiting to come crashing down. “Can … can I explain it all later?”

  Sabik nods. He understands. But I’ll have a lot of questions to answer soon. I’ll have to tell Celeste about Astra. And I’ll be here for her and Beta. I’ll keep my promise to her mother. I’ll take care of them.

  More people are coming now, from the village and the other carriages. Gathering in the light of the bonfire, a warm beacon on this dark planet. Then the singing starts. A simple, mournful lullaby. Phoebe leads it.

  “For all we’ve lost, we’ll sing and weep …

  We need our rest, comfort of sleep …”

  I’ve never heard the song before. It’s just Phoebe’s clear voice at first. Then more join in around the fire as the refrain is repeated. I find myself swaying in time.

  Tomorrow we wake under foreign skies …

  Stretch our limbs, greet the new sunrise.

  This planet killed Maia. But she loved it. I remember her face, snowflakes in her eyelashes. “I’ll put Maia’s memory panel on her grave.”

  “That’s good,” Sabik says. “We need new traditions.”

  The flames crackle, jump, and spark. Dancing, growing, alive. Warming us, chasing away the cold, the wet, the dark.

  There’s a small gasp from Sabik. “Look.” He’s staring at the ground.

  I tilt forward to follow his gaze, my body kept straight by the chest guard.

  It’s a green plant, sticking out of the earth next to our log. An unlikely place for it to grow, but it makes sense. It’s sheltered from our boots by the log, and warmed by the fire.

  “I promised you flowers,” Sabik says.

  It’s not a flower yet. It’s a tiny white bud, no bigger than my smallest fingernail. Delicate, fragile, and closed. Sabik’s hand is next to mine on the rough bark of the log. Fingers almost touching.

  And right then, I know we’re going to make it.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  So many people helped me with this book. So many people to thank. I am sure I will forget people who deserve thanks, because I was bad at keeping notes. Sorry.

  I had great advice on countless revisions of this book. Thanks to all at Kidcrit, especially Valerie, Helen, Don, James, Judy and Wendy for your consistent help in the early drafts, and Marsha for setting it all up. Thanks to all at Online Writers Workshop who gave me feedback, and to C.C. Finley for picking the first two chapters as an Editor’s Choice. Also to The Literary Consultancy — Jane Adams for her report on this book and Aki Schilz for all her support. And of course thanks to Rebecca Swift, TLC’s founder, a wonderful champion of authors who died earlier this year.

  Thanks to all my amazing beta readers — Leah Bobet, Ian McIntyre, Pier Van Tijn, Lena Coakley, Anne Laurel Carter, Tanaz Bhathena, Tanis Rideout, Mel Mercer — without all of you and all the
fantastic advice you gave me, this book would be a much weaker version of itself. Thanks to Maya Davis for your excellent advice, insight, and the useful resources you provided. I hope my changes allow people to see my characters a little better, and see themselves in them.

  Thank you so much to Lydia Moëd, my lovely agent, who was so enthusiastic about this book right from the start, and really got it, and is a fab person to have in my corner. Thanks again to the wonderful team at DCB/Cormorant, particularly Barry Jowett, Bryan Jay Ibeas, Marc Côté, and Andrea Waters.

  And thanks, as always, to those members of my family who had yet another book foisted upon them. Jo, Mum, Dad, Matt — thank you for your patience and all you do to help me have more time to write.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Kate Blair is a native of Hayling Island, UK, and is now a Canadian citizen living in Toronto. Her first novel, Transferral, was a finalist for the Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award and the Saskatchewan Young Readers’ Choice Snow Willow Award, was longlisted for the Sunburst Award, and was a Canadian Children’s Book Centre Best Books for Kids and Teens Starred Selection. Transferral is currently being adapted for television.