Unmade

by Amy Rose Capetta

“Take Lee,” Cade said. “I don’t want to be her. I don’t even want to be like her. But for good or bad, I need her. I need to shove all the closed-up things inside me open enough to let her in.”

  Mira sighed again, harder. Cade had definitely failed. And now her mind had been stretched out for too long. It started its normal, automatic reeling-in process. But this time, it stopped short.

  This time, Cade heard something new.

  And near. And unsure. Like a fingertip trembling strings for the first time. The notes thin and faint, the sort of organic, fascinating mess that comes with being new and eager and needing music to fill certain spaces.

  Mira-song.

  Cade opened her eyes. Mira was focused on her, breathing hard through her nose. Whatever terrible thing had turned Mira into a song-less girl was being undone while Cade watched.

  “You’re looking at me with your face all weird,” Mira said.

  “I thought you could read people.”

  Mira drummed her fingers and ducked her head, taking Cade in from a new angle. “Not this time.”

  The feeling was complicated, even to Cade. “I’m happy,” she said. “And scared.” She knew that Mira’s song had something to do with her, maybe a lot to do with her. What if she messed it up, or forced it into the wrong shape, or crushed it before it got started?

  Mira leaned all the way over the table, drawing Cade in so they met halfway. She whispered, like she had cracked open a secret and if she wasn’t careful, it would spill everywhere. “I’m happy-scared, too.”

  Cade looked down into the mirror of her green eyes, and when she blinked, Mira’s song leaped to meet her.

  A semicircle of survivors crowded around the dock that led to Ayumi’s shuttle. Cade almost passed them, but then she saw Lee coming through with an armful of supplies. Cade cut back, forced an opening in the crowd. “What’s this?”

  Ayumi stopped in the dock frame, her arms weighted with thick rolls of paper. “We’re getting ready.”

  “For the fleet?” Cade asked.

  “Even better.” Lee popped into the dock frame and slung an arm around Ayumi’s waist. Ayumi settled against Lee’s side in a comfortable way. It looked like they were done keeping their late-night makeouts to themselves.

  “We wanted to surprise you,” Ayumi said.

  Lee rubbed her hand from the curve of Ayumi’s waist to her stomach, and Cade was envy-bitten because she made it look so easy. “As soon as the ships are gathered and safe, we’re going to find a new home,” Lee said.

  “A place to live,” Ayumi corrected.

  Earth was the true home of the human race, according to Ayumi and all the Earth-Keepers who’d gone before her. Cade knew she wouldn’t hand the title over to a planet that hadn’t earned it.

  “There’s nowhere to take the people who came to this ship looking for refuge,” Ayumi said. The survivors around them shuffled out of their watching-state, and a few tried to cut in with questions. Ayumi plowed on, scattering uncomfortable truths as she went. “We’ll have thousands more on our hands soon, a whole fleet on our hands and nowhere to take them. I’ve been through all of the notes. And not just mine. The Earth-Keeper archives date back generations. I went through every notebook I have. I’ve extrapolated up, down, and sideways.” She handed Cade a scroll from her hoard. “This is the best we can do.”

  Cade unrolled the sheet and found a homemade chart, smudged with planets. A few of them had been circled. Lee and Ayumi tracked Cade’s face as she took in their choices. Uninhabited planets with foul conditions, systems and systems away.

  Cade’s friends needed her to approve, but she couldn’t.

  “Don’t leave yet,” she said. “I’m not done with Moon-White.” Cade pressed a hard look on Ayumi. She knew better than anyone that Cade’s music could hold off spacesick. It was a brighter hope than another desert planet, where they could look forward to death by exposure or nasty native species.

  Ayumi’s whisper drew a small circle around the three of them, cutting out the crowd. “The music is a good thing, Cade,” she said, “but it’s not enough.”

  That was code—it meant Ayumi was still glassing out. But Cade’s nerves took it the wrong way, twisting it into an insult to her music. Music had been Cade’s safety once; it had kept her filled up when she went hungry, tethered her to the world when it didn’t seem worth wasting another breath on.

  Cade tried to twist things another half turn, from insult to challenge.

  “Let me play,” Cade said. “A few songs.” She’d never had to beg before—her music had always been enough.

  Lee’s arm switched from Ayumi’s waist to a defensive perch on her shoulder. “You don’t like our plan?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  Cade hadn’t brought them all together just to watch Lee and Ayumi vanish into space for months, years. Or worse. She couldn’t lose them to the empty promise of a not-quite-home. She needed them here.

  Cade held out the map, but Lee wouldn’t take it back. Ayumi’s eyes were narrowed.

  “One song,” Cade said. “You’ll feel it.”

  As soon as Ayumi accepted the map, Cade rushed to the bedroom and grabbed Moon-White. Back in the main cabin, the survivors and crew half-circled and curved so that part of the room became a stage. Renna had changed the lighting so that Cade would be easy for everyone to see.

  A show. It looked, for all the universe, like a show. Some of Cade’s old fans even swirled through the audience. But Cade was distracted by the new quiet inside herself. By Lee and Ayumi with their heads bent, closing the small space between them. By her mother sitting in the corner.

  Still so unreachably far.

  Cade had promised the song to end all songs, but she had nowhere to start. She pummeled a standard opening on Moon-White, but the notes had no confidence. They wandered away from the melody. Defied the beat. Cade’s mind got in the way, and her worries insisted on coming along for the ride.

  What if she brought everyone together only to watch them all go spacesick, while Lee and Ayumi glared I-told-you-so’s? What if she let Lee and Ayumi run this mission only to lose them and whatever hope they had of finding a planet in one sour move? What if cutting off Xan like she had in the club made it so that Cade detached from his particles, from the good parts of entanglement, and she could go spacesick, too?

  Cade vamped again. She’d started the song so many times that it was long enough to end, but she had come too far to turn back.

  The crowd gave her no help. Cade had gotten used to an eager, too-willing audience, but the survivors were tired, confused, curled inside of hard shells. Cade tried to find a crew member, one point of concentration. Her mother, Lee, Ayumi, and Rennik were all half-gone. But Mira—Mira watched Cade from a cross-legged seat at the front, working so hard to listen that it looked like she might burst. Cade tried to play just for Mira. When she played for everyone she cared about, when she played to save the world, it felt like spreading her arms to hold the wind.

  The song picked a direction and stuck with it, the same winding of notes she kept coming back to, unraveling inside of her. Cade wondered, for the first time, if this was her song. She felt it more than heard it. It had a growing and easy shape inside her, the blurry lines and gentle colors of a land­­­scape.

  It felt new and old at the same time. Known and strange.

  Mira gasped, and Cade wondered if she could feel it. But when Cade checked the little girl’s green eyes, they were turned to the back of the room.

  There was a shuffle, and now everyone turned, pinned to a single woman who had broken the song to stand and walk toward Cade. Even the survivors who didn’t know that the woman was Cade’s gone-mother held themselves careful and quiet.

  One step, then another. The struggling steps of a deep sandstorm, or thick water, or a night the moon left untouched.

  Cade’s mother stopped at the edge of the crowd, shivering with effort.

  An old wish came back to Cade with
a new, painfully raw edge. She needed to know her mother’s name.

  “Hello,” Cade said.

  Her mother stared out of wavering, dim eyes.

  Cade had the strongest urge to reach past the wrinkles and the glass and pull her mother out. But Moon-White hung from her hand, and she couldn’t pick up the song where she’d left it. What other weapons did she have?

  Words. Cade had never been able to make them work like notes, arrange them in the right order and make people move to their meaning. But they were all she had now. Questions. She had so many questions. Would her mother be able to dream herself into a future where her daughter had grown up? Had her memories of Cade survived seventeen years in the dark valley of space? Did she even remember she had a daughter?

  So many questions, but Cade picked the most important one.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Cade thought she saw a flicker move across her mother’s face—recognition, or pain. Then it was gone, and Cade’s mother went with it.

  She collapsed, delicate as ash.

  Cade ran to her side, flashing a hand to her pulse points, inspecting to be sure she hadn’t hurt herself too much when she fell. People felt the shift that meant the show was over. There was no clapping, but Cade’s heart made up for the noise. She knew people were talking to her, but the blood in her ears walled her off.

  Cade had room for one pounding truth:

  Her mother had fought—was still fighting.

  Cade sent her mother to bed with Lee and Ayumi, to keep herself from prodding for hours and getting frustrated when the spacesick wouldn’t budge.

  As the audience drained, Cade sat down and did a thorough job of tuning Moon-White. She went through all the steps of the precise fiddle-dance that made the low E gutter, the high E shimmer, and everything in between ring just right. Cade felt balance restored.

  She finally turned to go, and found Rennik standing in the door to his room. There was none of the usual paper-shuffling. He stared right at her, and didn’t bother to make himself look busy.

  “What do you want?” Cade slung Moon-White across her chest, like armor. “Ask for it, or go.”

  Rennik stood tall against the perfect curve of the doorway. He brushed a glance down at his hands, then forced himself to look up. “Do you want to dance?”

  “Do I want to what?”

  “You asked me once, and I told you that it wasn’t the best time.”

  “And this is?” Cade got the feeling they didn’t have any best times left.

  “I was under the impression that it was selfish to think of what I wanted,” Rennik said. “The promises I made, to help the human race, I couldn’t put aside for something that only mattered to me. But as soon as you were gone, that night . . .” Cade wished he wouldn’t bring that night into whatever they were talking about. She wanted that night to curl up and die.

  But Rennik distracted her. To be specific, his hand distracted her, finding her wrist. “It didn’t matter only to me, did it?”

  “You get all knotted up in your honor,” Cade said. The guitar hung loose between them. Cade hadn’t noticed they were both stepping toward each other until there was almost no space left.

  Rennik asked again. “Is that a yes or a no?”

  This time, Cade didn’t have a bottle of ancient green alcohol to make her brave and ridiculous. She didn’t have near-death to sharpen what she wanted. She still wanted those things, and now she knew exactly how ripped open she would be when she didn’t get them.

  “We don’t have any music.” It was a thin excuse, but true—Cade couldn’t play Moon-White and dance at the same time. They’d worn down the batteries on Ayumi’s music-filled artifact.

  “Don’t worry.” Rennik touched a fingertip to his temple. “I have it here.”

  “Are you telling me you can hear thought-songs?” Cade asked. “Because that would have been helpful, you know, this entire time.”

  “No.” Rennik struggled a breath in, but it didn’t seem like he was at war with Cade, or even himself. He was looking for the right words, fighting down the wrong ones. “I’m telling you that I have a very good recall for every song you’ve ever played.”

  So he had been listening.

  Rennik waited, his blankness written over with a blunt fear. “Is the lack of answer all I need to know?”

  Cade had been brave for him, which always looked like reckless and foolish and broken when she failed. Rennik was being brave now. It called something good up from the place where Cade had tried to bury it.

  “Ask again,” she said.

  Rennik swallowed hard, and Cade could feel it in her own throat. “Do you want to dance?”

  She looked around the main cabin. “Not here.”

  Rennik nodded and led her to his room without another word. Cade shut the door behind them.

  When she turned, Rennik was standing in front of her. His eyes were soft, the double pupils catching light. Cade stepped closer, and Moon-White banged between them. He lifted the guitar with gentle hands, found a safe place for it, out of the way. He moved toward Cade, and they worked to fit each other’s angles, but it didn’t matter how they arranged themselves.

  This was going to be odd.

  The first steps were like walking—a soft, nowhere shuffle. Then Rennik’s hands tugged in a way that drew out certain beats, and cut other ones gasping short. Cade lost herself in the good of the moments when they moved together.

  And then she made the fantastic mistake of looking up. She faced the brown in Rennik’s eyes, balanced with the gray. His lips so close she felt the tug of his breath. Kissing has its own laws, its own gravity.

  “I can’t be this close and not kiss you,” Cade said.

  So she did.

  All of their other kisses had been cut off, but this one gained speed, until each press of his lips was a shock that spread, delivering heat to unexpected places.

  “Oh,” Cade said. “That’s new.”

  Rennik’s chest moved up and down with a silent laugh, so she kissed that, too—the spot where she felt air rise between them. Rennik’s hand caught the back of Cade’s neck. He brought her to his mouth, and kissed her until the air rubbed thin.

  “Wait,” Rennik said, pulling away. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Right now?” Cade asked, straining forward.

  “Always,” Rennik said, with a gentle laugh. “I like your company.”

  She sat back and studied him with a half scowl, but it only made him laugh harder. And then she was smiling. She couldn’t keep her hands away from Rennik as they talked—about the fleet, and what came next. What it would mean if they were together. She loved that word, together. It meant she could keep touching him like this. Her fingers ran the length of his arms. They brushed beneath his shirt at the waist, toying with the notion of more.

  Rennik pulled her back into his space, suddenly done with talking. Now Cade was glad for the conversation, because it deepened the kissing, and chased off the last of her fears.

  Cade tugged at the hem of her shirt.

  “Please,” Rennik said. “Let me.”

  Cade felt the worn cloth where it danced on her collarbone before lifting off. Air slid down her skin, and Rennik’s fingers followed. Cade got hasty about removing things—she was greedy for each new meeting of skin.

  And then Rennik had almost nothing on, and she had nothing. Naked. In his room. Again.

  Cade’s boldness drained.

  A slow blush uncurled from the roots of her chest. Rennik’s lips chased the heat around the bend of her neck. He pulled her waist, guided her onto the bed, and settled her on top of him. Once she was up there, she had no idea what to do. But there was something delicious in figuring it out, one deliberately planted kiss at a time.

  And then the kisses ran together. Their bodies started taking over. Cade’s hips surprised her, like they had when she was dancing. They made demands. They wanted him closer.

  She reached down, to take care of
the last piece of clothing that stood between them.

  Rennik stopped her hand.

  Trapped it, really, his fingers underlined by hers. He brought them to his mouth and kissed the tip of each.

  “There’s no hurry,” he said.

  Time stopped inside of Cade. But it didn’t stop anywhere else.

  “I don’t know,” Cade said. “The universe tells me otherwise.”

  “You sound like Gori.”

  Cade laughed, and the happiness of that sound pushed her to kiss new places. His smile-corner. The bridge of his nose.

  Cade crashed back to her bedroom in the morning, no more than a messy pulse. She had lost sleep for the first good reason in months.

  Chapter 16

  Cade woke up to a shining new fleet.

  Before she even got out of bed, she reached and felt the songs—clear and catching-bright as water beads.

  She tossed off the sheets, shook Lee and Ayumi awake, and took the chute at a wild pace.

  The control room bottled a new shine. Lights shone in front of the stars, near and touchable-bright. The yellow pierce of nav lights and the soft blue glow of other control rooms. The curved glint of light on the surfaces of ships.

  Hundreds of ships, mostly small—shuttles, cargo craft. And at the center of it, Everlast swam like some great, ancient creature, little ships clustered around. This was the fleet. The real, honest-to-universe, unscattered last hope of the human race.

  Renna sailed in and put them in the thick of it.

  “Would you look at that?” Lee asked. The points of ship-light doubled her freckles. “I mean . . .”

  Ayumi stepped up behind her, fitted her arms around Lee’s middle, and finished the sentence for her. “Snug.”

  “Really,” Lee said with a tear-choked laugh.

  “Holy snugging universe,” Ayumi said.

  Cade spun in the starglass. It felt like standing at the bottom of a canyon, staring up at the sharp rise of wonders all around. A group of survivors joined, looking shy about it but needing to see the fleet for themselves.