Sing Down the Stars (The Celestine Series Book 1)

by L. J. Hatton

I glanced down, surprised to see that my blouse’s sleeves had charred. The lace had melted, and my arms were lined with the circuit path from the coat. I’d been so occupied with my ribs that memories of the coat’s searing my skin had dulled to background noise. The burns looked awful, though the damage was only cosmetic. I had no tingling in my fingers to suggest a more severe situation.

  “It’s not exactly modern medicine, but it can help,” the boy said.

  Once the dirt inside the pot was to his satisfaction, he raised his hands above it and held them there. Bits of topsoil began to bounce, first forming a tiny peak, then rolling down its sides. Something green split the peak, and in less than a minute, that empty pot was home to a spiky plant with spindly arms.

  The boy snapped off one of the tips and reached for my hand.

  “It’ll help,” he said. “I promise.”

  Tentatively, I stretched my hand out so that he could dab the piece of broken plant against the burnt patches above my wrist. It wept some sort of clear gel that cooled the burns.

  “Better?” he asked, before trying to proceed up my arm.

  I nodded, and he took that as approval.

  “You grew that,” I said.

  “I grow everything.” He shrugged and snapped off another bit of plant.

  I straightened up as best I could to get another look at the room in its entirety. Nearly every inch was covered in layers of green. In some places, there were plants hanging from the ceiling mingled with others pushing up off the rails. Vibrant ivies trailed the opposite wall, and while I couldn’t see to the bottom of the greenhouse from my vantage point, I could see how close the trees in the center came to scraping the ceiling. They had to have a massive root system, and I wondered if there was even a real floor down there, or if this space was built on flat dirt to allow the plants easy access.

  “You did all of this?”

  “It’s what I do—and it’s safe. Between the humidity and the leaf cover, they’ve pretty much given up on trying to watch what goes on in here. Even the warden leaves me alone.”

  “There’s a warden here?”

  “Warden Nye.” The boy nodded, adding another bit of leaf to his pile of discards. “This center is his new post.”

  Right . . . new post . . . pineapples . . . a party . . . a commissioner’s wife with her nose in how things are run . . .

  This was not good.

  “The warden’s the one who collared you?” I asked.

  “No collar—he doesn’t like them. Says they’re abominations that stunt a person’s natural progression. I couldn’t have built half of this collared. Most of it was experiment, and the rest was accident.”

  “But the dampers—” The restriction bands on his wrists shouldn’t allow him to grow a weed, much less create an indoor Eden all his own. “Don’t they work?”

  “These?” He twisted his wrists so that his sleeves fell back to expose the bands around them. “They’re more annoyance than anything. So long as I don’t act out, they leave me be. All finished.”

  Both of my arms were now shiny with the gel from his plant.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I haven’t crossed paths with many people who were willing to help me, lately.” And it was amazing how much weight dropped off my shoulders just from knowing there was a single person willing to try.

  The boy looked embarrassed, and unused to compliments. He turned away, taking the used remnants of his plant into his hand. I thought he was going to drop them into the dirt, to use for fertilizer as they decomposed, but his intent was nothing so usual. He took each shard and pressed it back to the leaf from which it had come. A thin line of gel formed, sealing the piece back to the whole, and by the time he was done with the last one, there was barely a ripple in the leaf’s surface to hint at what had happened.

  I’d never seen anyone like him who could take such miraculous things in stride.

  “I can wrap your ribs well enough to help them heal.” He wiped his hands on his jeans as he spoke, then tried to brush the jeans clean, too. “But, your clothes . . . I mean—” His entire face flushed red, all the way to the tops of his ears. “I don’t mean . . . Your clothes are too thick to wrap over. Are you wearing anything else?”

  A prisoner with the manners of a sheltered, high-town richie?

  “I wear underwear.”

  “Oh good,” he said, now looking at the floor with a spreading grin that still showed his embarrassment. “I’d have tried it with my eyes closed, but I’d probably end up wrapping your head.”

  “Don’t make me laugh; it hurts,” I said, fumbling with the bustle blouse.

  “Sorry. I was trying to distract you,” he said.

  “Maybe you should keep trying, because there’s no way I can reach the zipper with my ribs pulling every time I raise my arm halfway.”

  “Oh. Do you want me to . . . er . . .”

  “Just pretend we’re at a beach or something. It’s nothing but a bikini.”

  It wasn’t like I’d never faced possible humiliation in front of a stranger before. And I did need the ribs wrapped.

  Maybe I could pretend he was Jermay.

  “Besides, if you were feeling this pain, you wouldn’t care about the clothes,” I told him.

  He choked on a breath and made a terribly unconvincing cough out of it.

  “Arms up and stand still,” he warned. “Some of the bigger ones don’t always behave.”

  The boy stood up, looking toward the upper levels; he pulled his bottom lip into his teeth to give a shrill whistle that had all manner of green things overhead jumping at the call. Vines as thick as my leg uncurled, dropping into reach in long loops that never let go of their perch above us. Each one was strung with leaves a bit wider than the wrapping tape Evie used on me during performances. The vines circled snugly around my ribs, finally bringing relief to the ache.

  “Will you tell me your name?” I asked.

  “Birch,” he said, with another shallow shrug. “But I don’t think it’s my original name. The warden says I grew birch bark on everything when I was small. It stuck.”

  He’d been like this since he was small?

  “People call me Penn,” I told him, though I didn’t give him the reasons why. The last leaf tied itself off, and he released the vines back to their resting place.

  He helped me fix my shirt and trousers, though they wouldn’t zip all the way.

  “The warden never called you anything other than Penelope,” he said.

  I gasped again, which he took for a cry of pain and adjusted his hands. There were very few people who knew the name Penelope Roma, and all of them were family except for one: the warden whose offices I had just escaped. If this facility was his to supervise, then the coat hadn’t taken me far at all.

  “How’s it feel?” Birch asked.

  “Better,” I said, and the ribs were, but everything else . . . “Ugh.”

  Birch reached down to peel a strip of bark off a short tree that hadn’t been growing beside him a moment before.

  “Try chewing this,” he said, offering me the bark.

  “What is it?”

  Self-protective paranoia was making a comeback, now that I wasn’t so focused on pain. If this boy was on good enough terms with the warden that he was allowed free rein, then his helpfulness could be a farce. And I wasn’t in the habit of gnawing bits of wood on a stranger’s urging.

  “It helps with pain,” he explained.

  “I’ll manage,” I said, pulling up on the rail to stand. I didn’t get far before the limitations of having wrapped ribs became clear and I was back on my butt.

  Birch stripped off another piece of bark and stuck it in his own mouth.

  “It’s not poison,” he said. “Try it.”

  I put a tiny bit between my front teeth and nibbled on it. It tasted exactly
like I thought wood bark would taste.

  “Not like that.” He laughed at me. “Chew.”

  He bumped my hand with his, forcing more of the bark into my mouth. I used my back teeth to grind the wood into a pulpy mess. Once the initial woodiness was gone, it tasted like strangely textured gum.

  “It takes a while to feel the difference, but you’ll know when it’s working.”

  Birch stood and approached the hutch I’d used to hide from the guard. He flicked his wrist, and the walls pushed out, extending the interior. He jerked his thumb upward, and the roof rose. Other bits of greenery closed in around it to hide the shape from anyone who took only a casual glance.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You can’t stay out in the open.” The metal bottom of the box turned green, fluffing up with grass and moss for a mat. “The greenhouse is mine, but the patrols will still pop their heads in the door.”

  “I’ll be long gone before they have a chance,” I said.

  “You can’t leave. You can’t even walk.”

  I could tell he was trying to sound reasonable, but he came closer to pouting. The idea that I couldn’t walk was ridiculous. The presence of pain didn’t equate to weakness. Of course, Birch wouldn’t know that. He might know my name, but that didn’t mean his warden had told him what I was.

  “I can’t go out the way I came in,” I amended, “but I’ll find a way.”

  “You can’t just stroll out the door,” he insisted.

  “The voice on the radio told the guard he was due at the dock. All I have to do is get to the water.”

  Nim would help me as Anise and Evie had. I was certain of it.

  “How can you not know?” Birch’s entire posture changed, becoming more wary. He’d been toying with the piece of bark he’d used to prove the tree wasn’t poison, but now he tossed it aside.

  “Know what?”

  “Where we are.”

  “A Commission facility, same as any other. I’ve already escaped one.”

  “Oh, Penelope, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  It was an apologetic sort of statement, as though I’d bungled some basic skill with my ignorance.

  A bell rang through an intercom system mounted on the walls. There was one on every level of the greenhouse, giving the sound a peculiar depth. Birch’s mood changed again, turning darker.

  “Dinner bell,” he said. “Don’t leave. Promise you’ll be here when I get back. The dock isn’t what you think. Give me a chance to explain before you do anything foolish.”

  It was a lot to ask, no matter how much he’d helped me. Even if he was right, and staying here was best for me, what about my sisters and friends? What about Jermay? Birch didn’t know I had people counting on me.

  I must have stayed quiet too long because he shook my shoulders hard enough that I yelped.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you have to promise me. It’s important.”

  “Fine, I promise.”

  He didn’t know me well enough to wonder if I meant it.

  “Good. I shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours. The trees block the viewing lenses, but if you hear footsteps or an opening door, get back inside and pull the door shut behind you.” He jogged a few feet before turning to add, “If you’re hungry, there are some fruit trees behind the hutch, and the berry bushes are coming in.” Another few feet, and I heard: “I’m glad to finally meet you, Penelope Roma. I was beginning to think they’d invented you to torment me.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Birch was right about the tree bark. Nearly an hour after he left me, the pain tapered off until I could breathe without having to hold the rail for leverage. I even managed to get myself into a better position, with my legs hanging off the walkway so I could peer into the abyss, or count the levels above my head.

  There were nine.

  The facility was unlike anything I’d seen, even in my father’s sketches of things to come. I recognized some of his elements, but the construction lacked his stylistic markings. Whimsy had been replaced with steel and curves that looked like the cutting edge of a farmer’s scythe.

  Birch had been right about the fruit, too. I hadn’t checked the trees, because I didn’t fancy a climb through the hedge to get at them, but shiny clustered berries hung near my perch, close enough to pick at without moving. I ate them slowly, spacing them into a rudimentary clock. One that told me Birch had been gone too long for dinner.

  He could have been sidetracked—or worse, caught. At that very moment, it was possible that he was facing punishment for his transparent pineapple ruse. Or Birch’s ability to conceal his movements could have been a façade fostered by the resident warden to discourage Birch from taking precautions.

  If he’d been caught, then I was on my own, and so I was left with the unpleasant conundrum: honor my promise, or try to escape.

  I didn’t want to outright lie, but I’d left flexibility in my phrasing. I hadn’t said I wouldn’t plan an escape or leave the greenhouse at all. If I left, and got back quickly, everything would be fine.

  Besides, he’d promised to come back. If he didn’t keep his word, then why should I fret over mine?

  I pulled myself to my feet, bracing for the shift in my ribs, but while I could definitely feel pressure with every breath, it barely edged into pain.

  The double doors were each composed of a single beveled piece of metal, similar to the casting blanks my father used to shape the exoskeletons of his golems. They had no handles. I pressed against one, but it didn’t move. I placed my fingers near the outer edge of the door, feeling for the hinges, but there weren’t any.

  There had to be a hidden latch release or button.

  “I don’t suppose saying ‘please’ would make a difference?” I asked. “How about ‘open sesame’? I bet you’d open for my father, you stupid hunk of steel.”

  I hit the panel, and a jolt leapt from it to my palm before both doors opened along a track of rolling casters. This was getting very weird. I might believe that my father’s coat and the medallion he made for his sister could recognize me as Magnus Roma’s blood, but why would that matter to Commission technology?

  Outside, the hall was clear. The open levels stopped in favor of a single floor with bare walls marked by even gray lines that ran top to bottom. New panels had been tacked in place, but not yet painted. They were accompanied by blocked numbers, making the hall a ruler with too many marks. Number thirty-one belonged to the greenhouse.

  I headed toward the descending numbers, on the assumption that the count had begun at an external doorway. It seemed likely that the higher numbers would be in more sensitive areas, which would require the most personnel.

  On the other side of number fourteen, the walls turned uniform beige, and the rest of the tacking lines disappeared. New-paint vapors hung heavy in the air, mixed with the scent of cut wood. Workmen’s stations made of ladders and scaffolds lined both sides of the hall to the next corner, and on around it. Open tool containers sat neatly out of the way where the men using them had stopped their work to go to supper and home for the night. Hibernating creeper lights sat beside the tools, waiting to be activated when work resumed.

  In the distance, I heard voices from another hall. They weren’t close, and I couldn’t make out any of the words, but they blew my illusion that it was safe to be out on my own.

  I didn’t belong here. There was nothing uniform or beige about me, and I had no way to disguise my appearance. I was a carnie girl, full of color and glitter that couldn’t go unnoticed for long.

  “Four to the dock.” One of the intercoms crackled with a transmission. “Repeat: four to the dock. High-wind certified, only.” It sounded ridiculously loud in the empty hall.

  I turned around and took one carefully placed step on my toes, tensing with every crinkle of the papers that had been spread on
the floor to catch dripping paint. This time, the churning in my stomach had nothing to do with broken bones.

  I heard a door slam just around the corner, and another voice. Unlike the others, this one was coming my way.

  “It’s too high for gear,” the man said.

  My only course of escape was on the scaffolds. I dragged myself up the metal frame and onto the boards that the workmen had set out. I lay on my back, close enough to the ceiling that I put my hands flat against it, and held my muscles so tight they distracted me from the fact that my ribs were starting to thaw now that I’d left Birch’s magic tree bark behind.

  “Do you copy?” asked the man I hid from.

  “Passing nineteen, and headed your way,” came the answer from a crackling radio. “Warden says she can handle the winds.”

  She?

  The man said the word derisively, so she wasn’t someone of high standing, like a commissioner’s wife, or an officer or unnoticeable. But it was possible that she was someone considered less than nothing, like a hound. Possibly like my sisters . . .

  I slid sideways, taking advantage of the angles created by the scaffolding. I could look down, but it wasn’t likely that anyone looking up would see me. Whoever had spoken was directly underneath me.

  More footsteps signaled that whoever he was waiting on had arrived, but that person was shielded by the board’s edge as well.

  “Where’s the thing?” the first man asked as someone else approached.

  “She’s debugging the mixing room, and she’s not deaf, so watch the insults.” It was the man from the radio.

  Curious, I followed their voices on my hands and knees. We turned the corner, and I found I’d made another mistake. Tracking descending wall numbers hadn’t taken me toward the exit; I’d stumbled into a central hub.

  The corridor widened into a breezeway, with railings that protected panels full of curved glass windows. The one directly across from me stretched along the contour of the main room. Behind it, crude versions of my father’s creations toiled as automated personnel beneath a half-installed tangle of climber lights. Every few moments a conveyor moved. Heavy mixers turned inside clear, empty vats. Someone was testing the robots in preparation for whatever task they’d been designed to do.