Modrie Reller tugs on a pair of hide gloves, the kind we use in the dyeworks.
“So soon?” I ask. They’ve only just dyed my hair three weeks ago. The Void black at my roots is no more than a thin line, unnoticeable unless you’re looking for it. I turn to Iri. Iri may be my great-grandfather’s widow, but she’s younger even than Modrie Reller, having been bound to my great-grandfather when she younger than I am now and he only a turn or two from death. She’s some like an older sister to me, telling the why of things in whispers when Modrie Reller’s back is turned. She levels her gaze at me but doesn’t speak. She flicks her eyes to Modrie Reller. Not now. Not in front of your stepmother.
“Kneel,” Modrie Reller says.
I do.
Only then does she continue. “This is your father’s order.” She pulls a dye tube wrapped in oilskin from deep in her pockets and twists off the cap. “This runend meet, he’s decreed you’re to be a bride.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER .2
“A bride?” I try to keep my face calm.
“Right so.” Modrie Reller looks pointedly at my hair. “We don’t want the other crewes thinking something’s wrong with the Parastrata’s so girl.”
Iri smiles at me, kind. “Or passing off some palsied goats or brittle old plasticine in exchange for our Ava.”
I laugh, but nervously. A bride. I know from watching the girls who’ve gone before me that I ought to chirrup and gab at the news, or else flush pink and do a poor job of hiding my pleasure behind a demure smile. Instead all I feel is dizzy, like the gravity has failed. I’ve always known I would be a bride, and sometime around now, in my sixteenth turn. It’s the Mercies’ will, after all. But I was never one of those girls to play wedding when I was younger, like Nan, or run it over and over in my mind at night while I stared up at the bunk above me. Suddenly Jerej’s teasing weighs heavy on me. Has he known all this time?
“Who. . .” My throat sticks. I glance up and see Iri watching me close. “Who will it be?”
Modrie Reller shakes her head. “No knowing. A man from the Æther crewe, most likely. Your father was talking on how it’s time to reseal our trade contract with them. But don’t think on it. Your father and my Jerej will have it raveled.”
The Æther crewe. My heart skips a little faster. My friend Soli, my only friend in the whole Void beyond the Parastrata’s hull, and her birthbrother, Luck, both belong to the Æther. Soli and I met five turns past, when Æther Fortune brought all his wives and their smallones aboard our ship for trade talks.
The day they came aboard, Modrie Reller dragged me out of the kitchens and made me sit with my handloom in the sticky heat of the women’s quarters, where she and my great-grandfather’s widows were supposed to entertain the women of the Æther retinue. The whole room sweated in silence, perched on quilted floor pillows, fans flapping to stir the air. The men’s rowdy singing bled through the walls.
Modrie Reller pushed me down beside a dark-haired Æther girl with cocked-out ears and the same blue-veined, lucent shimmer to her skin all the spacefaring crewes shared after generations on generations hidden away from the sun—all except me, of course. I peeked over my loom at her as I pushed the thread tight with my shuttle. She was what I might look like if my hair grew out in its true shade, if I were taller and all the color had been bred out of my skin. Her clothes looked machine made, all the stitches tight and even. I watched as she wove a strand of the Æther crewe’s trademark red silk thread into her fabric.
She caught me staring and scowled. “What’re you looking on?”
I ducked my head and crouched over my own knobby weaving. “Nothing,” I said. “That’s some pretty, is all.”
“Oh,” she said, as if that were natural. “Right so.”
I swallowed and finished another row. I glanced at her again. “What’s your name?”
“Solidarity with the Stars.”
I blinked. “Come how?”
“Solidarity with the Stars,” she repeated, a bit of miff in her voice.
“Don’t you have a luckname?” I asked. On the Parastrata, all parents gave their children names that circled, so we could find our way if we were lost, they said.
“My name is a luckname,” she said.
“Isn’t.”
“Is,” she said, voice rising. “Don’t you know the Word? Where it says, Call to mind always what our ancestors desired; forget it not. That’s where it’s from.”
“Oh.” I picked at a thick snarl of wool. “It’s some long, isn’t it?”
“No,” Solidarity with the Stars said. “Least, not specially. We’re all named that way. My brother’s called Luck Be with Us on This Journey, only we call him Luck for short.”
We fell quiet again. Our shuttles knocked against the sides of our looms.
“You can call me Soli, if you want,” Solidarity with the Stars said, breaking the silence. “That’s how my brother calls me.”
She looked over and smiled, and it made me feel almost the same height. I smiled back.
“So, what’s yours?” she asked.
“My what?” I said.
“Your luckname.” She tilted her head and bugged out her eyes to show me she thought I was slow.
“Ava,” I said.
“Are you on Fixes?” Soli said. “I’m on Fixes.”
“No.” On the Parastrata, women stuck to what we knew, cooking, weaving, dyeing, mending, and growing children. Everything would come unraveled if we started fixing the ship. It’s only a step from fixing to flying, my father said. And then where would we be? You can’t nurse a baby and run a navigation program at the same time.
She must be lying, I decided. Trying to puff herself up. I pushed another thread tight.
“What duties are you on, then?” Soli bumped me with her elbow.
“Kitchens,” I said, and then wished I’d thought to lie. “Livestock, and sometimes dyeworks.” Modrie Reller made me work the vats once a deciturn so I wouldn’t forget what real labor was or where I could end up if I didn’t work hard at my other duties.
“My brother Luck’s on Livestock,” Soli said. “He says he likes it.” She wrinkled up her face, stuck out her tongue, and made a gagging noise.
I giggled, even though I didn’t mind Livestock duty so much myself. Me and Llell would whisper over boys while we collected eggs and mucked the stalls. She had eyes for Jerej, and neither of us understood yet how unlikely a pairing that would be.
Soli’s mother flicked her eyes up from her work and looked sharp at us. “Hssh.”
Soli and me bit our lips and went back to work. When her mother turned away, we grinned at each other over our frames.
From then to the end of the Æthers’ trade visit, we kept tight. Soli tried to talk Modrie Reller into putting her on Fixes while the Æthers were aboard, but my stepmother gave her a sour smile and said she didn’t think that could be managed. Soli ended up on Livestock with me and Llell instead.
Which I’m glad of, because if she hadn’t, I never would have met Luck.
Soli, Llell, and me were coming around the corner into the livestock bay, milking pails banging against our knees, when I saw him, crouched beside one of our goats.
“Æther Luck, what’re you doing here?” Soli barked and tramped toward him. “Don’t you mind we switched duties?”
Llell and I exchanged a wide-eyed look—Did Soli just shout down her brother?—and hurried in her wake.
Luck shot to his feet. Bristles of hay still clung to the knees of his pants. He rose a half head taller than his sister, but blood flushed his cheeks at her tone. He hung his head so his dark bangs fell over his eyes. A quarter-full pail sat by the goat he’d been milking. My eyes went wide. It was Chinny, our most troublesome, hand-stamping goat. She’d broken one of Llell’s fingers once and always found a way to overturn her pail,
simply to spite whoever milked her.
Luck looked up and our eyes met. Blue like welding flame ringed his irises, growing darker as it moved in on his pupils, like the patches of deep ocean you see from close orbit. Nothing like the brown or muddy-green color we shared on the Parastrata. I knew I wasn’t supposed to look on him like that. I never would have looked, except I couldn’t help some of Soli’s Soliness rubbing off on me.
Chinny chose that exact moment to knock over the pail. Milk gushed around Luck’s shoes and swamped the hay.
“Damn!” Luck jumped back. I expected him to jerk Chinny’s lead and twist her long, floppy ear, which is what I’d been shown to do when the goats got nasty. Instead, he sighed and rubbed his forehead so his hair stuck up sideways. “You don’t have a coaxer, do you?”
I unhinged my gaze from his and looked down into the hay. “Right so,” I said. “But it’s always broke, and they say the fix isn’t in it.”
“Soli’ll fix it,” Luck said. “Won’t you, Soli?”
“I’ll take a look,” Soli agreed.
“But you’re . . . ,” I started to say.
Luck and Soli’s odd looks stopped me. Soli couldn’t really do fixes, could she?
My face went hot. “I mean, you’re a guest here.” I hadn’t truly believed Soli about her being on Fixes, but if her brother said so, maybe it was true.
“Plus, you’re a girl,” Llell butted in. “Girls can’t do fixes.”
“Can.” Soli crossed her arms and turned to me. “Show it to me.”
I led them to the back of the pens, clapping my hands to move the goats out of our way. Llell and me tried to keep our distance from Luck, but he walked so close his arm nearly brushed mine. I flipped up the lid of the junk locker, leaned inside, and rattled around until I brought up the coaxer, a foam-lined udder bowl sprouting brittle plastic tubes for milk. I handed it to Luck, and he tossed it to Soli.
“The regulator’s all bust.” I shot a nervous look at Llell. This was real now. What if someone came in and caught us with Luck, and doing fixes no less? I swallowed and looked back at Soli. “It either drips milk and takes forever, or it pulls too hard and burns out.”
“You have my fixers?” Soli asked Luck.
He unsnapped a vinyl pack from his belt and tossed it to her. “I wish you’d keep them. Their head Fix keeps talking on how slow I am.”
“It’s only till the meet’s over. Then you can go back to your precious sheep.” Soli popped open the pack and unrolled it across the top of the junk locker. Dozens of shiny silver readers and tools glistened in its pockets. Soli selected one with a power jack and an amp reader and snapped it into the coaxer’s line-in.
“This might take a minute, depending what’s wrong,” she said. She hopped up on the locker beside her tools and looked up at me. “I could show you the fix, if you want.”
“No.” Llell cut in. She shot a hard look at me and her voice went high. “I don’t think we should be here, Ava.”
I hesitated. They were all looking at me, Soli and Llell and Luck. The words snarled up in my throat, and all I could come up with was a high-pitched “Umm . . .”
Llell spun on her heel. “Hurry on, Ava. We’re leaving.”
Soli snorted and rolled her eyes. “What’re you afraid of?”
I paused, darting my eyes from my old friend to the new.
Llell turned back. “Ava.” It was one sharp word, but it said so much. Come here, and obey, and choose. I wasn’t so girl then, not yet, and because of my odd skin, Llell was the one stooping to be my friend.
I shook my head. “I’m staying,” I said quietly.
Llell’s eyes shot wide. “Come how?”
“I’m staying.”
Llell’s face crumpled, and then went hard and cold. “Right so.” She swept one last look at me and edged out of the bay. I chewed on my lower lip as I watched her go.
“You sure you don’t want to learn?” Soli raised an eyebrow at me.
I backed up a step. “No, no.”
Soli shrugged and set about prying the casing from the regulator.
“I should clean up Chinny’s mess,” I said.
“I’ll help you,” Luck said.
“Mmmn,” Soli agreed, already bent over her work.
“No.” I accidentally looked at Luck again and pushed my eyes down. This was going too far. “That’s not men’s work.”
A twitch of confusion passed Luck’s face. He frowned. “It is on the Æther. Besides, it’s my fault. I wasn’t s’posed to be on this duty firstways.”
“Please.” My voice rose. “Let me do it.”
I grabbed a pitchfork and a mucking brush and pushed my way through the goats. Chinny stood by herself near the gate, slowly chewing a mouthful of hay.
“Some bad matter, you.” I aimed a halfhearted kick at her. “Shoo.”
I started pitching the sopping hay into the big, boxy methane digester at the side of the paddock, studiously ignoring Luck. Modrie Reller said the methane digester would churn dung, old hay, and whatever else we slopped into it down to a tank in the ship’s guts, where it would rot away. Then the methane coming off the rot would turn to fuel for powering lights or raising the pneumatic lift, whatever the ship needed. A footstep scuffed behind me in the hay. I froze.
“Here.” Luck eased the brush from under my arm. “At least let me hold that while you’re clearing up.”
I nodded, face and arms hot, and went back to my work.
“Um . . .” Luck slapped the brush against his leg absentmindedly and looked up at the rafters, where a pair of sparrows nested. “How long’s the coaxer been bust, then?”
I hefted another forkful of wet hay into the digester’s mouth. “Half a turn.” My words came out a grunt.
“And your Fixes don’t have it up yet?”
“Nothing wrong with our Fixes.” I stopped pitching hay and glared at him. “It’s not Priority, is all.”
“I didn’t mean it bad.” He squatted next to me and pushed the mucking brush across the milk-damp floor. “Soli’ll have it up. Don’t worry.”
“Will you stop cleaning!” My voice came out shrill. I slapped a hand over my mouth.
Luck looked at me as if I’d bitten him.
I dropped my head and my voice. “I’m sorry. I mean, please, so, don’t trouble yourself with it.”
Luck laughed. “Did you just call me so?”
I nodded and peeked up.
“You’re some odd girl,” he said. “You’re the same age as Soli, right?”
I shrugged and nodded again.
“I’m only two turns older than you, then,” he said. “What’re you doing calling me so?”
I shook my head and wished a breach would open in the hull below me and suck me out into space. “I didn’t mean any harm.”
Luck started cleaning again. “All your crewe is odd.”
I let myself look on him. His bangs swung back and forth over his eyes as he scrubbed the floor. His shoulders tensed and rounded with the motion. A strange, light tickle lifted my stomach, and my ears fizzled, as if I’d come too near the engine’s electromagnet.
“Isn’t it the same on your ship?” I asked.
Luck snorted. “No.” He looked up and saw me watching him. “Well, some. Except we clean our own messes and Soli can be on Fixes.”
I sat cross-legged in the hay and straightened my skirt over my knees. I looked over at Soli, sitting on top of the junk locker, eyes narrowed in concentration. “I could never do that.”
“You could,” Luck said. “You’re on Livestock, right so?”
I nodded.
Luck went back to scrubbing. “Fixes is a lot like Livestock, except with less to muck and more figuring. You can do figuring, can’t you?”
I could count, sure, and even do some addings and takings away. But Modrie Reller always told me not to be proud and flaunt, especially not in front of men. I started to shake my head but caught Luck’s eye again. Something about how he was
talking to me, how he was looking at me and not past me made me want to step full into recklessness. I changed my shake into a slow nod.
Luck nodded with me. “You could do Fixes, then.”
“But you have to read, right so?”
Luck frowned. “Can’t you read?”
I hesitated. “Course,” I lied. It sounded like what he’d want to hear.
Luck smiled. “You’d be good as Soli after a turn or two.”
I put my hand on the hay between us and leaned forward, mouth open with the start of a question. Blood surged into Luck’s cheeks, brightening them as red as ther thread. Our eyes met again.
“It’s up.” Soli called. She wove through the goats, holding the coaxer aloft so its tubes didn’t drag the ground. “Who wants to try it?”
Luck and I both stood. He held Chinny still while I strapped the coaxer to her and bunched the tubes into the neck of a jug.
“Try knocking that over,” I said to the goat. She glared back at me.
I toggled the controls to green and flipped the regulator switch. The coaxer whirred to life. Chinny bleated unhappily at me, but she didn’t cry out in pain or give me the smug look I knew meant the coaxer wasn’t doing its job. Milk filled the tubes and trickled into the jar.
I clapped my hands. “It’s up!” I grabbed Soli and danced her around. “You did it!”
“Told you she’d have the fix,” Luck said, and grinned at his sister. He leaned over and slapped her on the back, the way I’d only ever seen men do with each other. Then he looked at me, and his blush crept back.
They stayed only a few more days while their father finished trade talks with my great-grandfather Harrah and our crewes sealed the agreement with a pair of marriages—two of our girls to two of their men. I let Soli show me a few fixes on the sly, ’specially some to do with the coaxer and the lift to the chicken coops, while Llell kept a cool distance.
I hardly saw Luck, except for across the room at meals, when the women stood waiting against the wall while the men ate. But he looked at me sometimes, twice at the weddings, and smiled at me once when he passed through the livestock bay with his father, on the way to inspect our copper bales. That was when I started daydreaming, in my slow moments waiting for bread to come out of the machine or lifting and agitating lengths of wool in the dye bath, about what it would be like to be Soli’s sister, to learn fixes and real figuring, to talk on things with Luck and wear neat-trimmed clothes every day.
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