by Karen Bao
ALSO BY KAREN BAO
Dove Arising
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
First published in the United States of America by Viking,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016
Copyright © 2016 by Karen Bao
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eBook ISBN 978-0-698-15278-6
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Bao, Karen.
Dove Exiled / Karen Bao.
304 pages
Sequel to: Dove arising.
Summary: After fleeing the Moon, fifteen-year-old Phaet Theta hides on Earth and plots how to rescue her siblings from the wrath of the Lunar government.
ISBN 978-0-451-46902-1 (hardcover)
[1. Science fiction. 2. Space colonies—Fiction. 3. Militia movements—Fiction.
4. Government, Resistance to—Fiction. 5. Moon—Fiction. 6. Youths’ writings.] I. Title.
PZ7.B229478Dp 2016
[Fic]—dc23
2015011676
Version_1
THIS ONE’S FOR MY BROTHER
Contents
Also by Karen Bao
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
PROLOGUE
MY MIND IS UNRAVELING, LIKE A knot being picked by agile, persistent hands. Deep in its center, I find threads of memories I forgot I had. One tug, and they loop me into images of the past.
Mom and Dad are here, livelier than they’ll ever be again. I wish I could see their faces better, but I’m only a meter tall.
“It’s about time, Phaet,” Dad says. He’s my giant. His hands can lift big rocks, but they’re always careful. He sets me on his lap. “Your little sister has a heartbeat now. Will you listen for me?”
I press my ear to Mom’s rounded belly, which is growing day by day. Ka-thump, ka-thump, goes her heart.
Bop, bop, bop! goes Anka’s.
“It’s so fast,” I tell Dad, and then bend down to listen more.
When I focus on the little heartbeat, I lose track of the big one. Mom’s. I concentrate hard, listening for the ka-thump, but it’s not there.
“Mommy? Is your heart okay?” I demand, crawling onto her lap to put my ear to her chest.
Her face is still. Peaceful, but still. I reach up to touch it. It’s chilly, like the metal of an Atrium security mirror.
“Mommy?” I’m not going to cry. I don’t want to make Dad worry. “Mommy?”
Screaming, I tumble off her lap. The tears start when I strike the floor—hard. Why didn’t Daddy catch me? He likes to lie on his back, balance me on his shins, hold my hands, and make me fly like a bird. Never has he let me fall.
“Daddy, Daddy, we have to help Mommy!” I cry.
No answer.
Crumpled on the ground, he doesn’t look like a giant anymore. Somehow, I know he’s not playing a game—ashes, ashes, we all fall down. I crawl to him and put my ear to his chest, just as he taught me. Can you hear the thump, Phaet? It keeps us all alive.
His heart, too, is silent.
Violet light shoots across the room, bounces off the walls, the mirrors, the bodies of my parents. Hits everything but me.
* * *
I open my eyes to the real world’s darkness.
“. . . Wes, get more morphine from downstairs!” It’s a woman’s voice, clear like a raindrop landing on a glass pane. “Hurry, she’s seeing things again!”
A pinch on the inside of my elbow, and I’m back in my childhood home. Sixty centimeters taller, eleven years older. The white walls are there; the smells of fruit rinds, green onion, and bleach; the little vacuum robot, Tinbie, shiny and new, both of his yellow eyes lit.
Maybe my family’s sleeping. I walk into my brother Cygnus’s bedroom, peer over the walls of his crib, and find nothing but a pile of white blankets. I run toward my parents’ room, hoping they’ll hold me close until this nightmare lifts.
But behind the door, there are no voices. Not a wrinkle in the bedsheets.
It’s quiet, as quiet as I’ve grown since they died.
Except for a small sound that reveals itself shyly, warily. A sound that’s scared to ask for my attention—a sound that I can’t ignore.
Bop, bop, bop.
1
Four months later
THE WINTERTIME SUN MAKES A SPECIAL APPEARANCE to welcome Garnet River into the world. She’s a squalling pink newborn itching to escape the arms of her mother, a freckled woman who looks weak from childbirth but delirious with joy. Garnet’s father, a broad-shouldered fisherman with fluffy blond hair, tickles the baby under her chin. Her resulting sneeze is little more than a squeak. Cocooned in purple blankets, she’s adorable—the roundest human being I’ve ever seen. Her cheeks are two half-moons, her chin a crescent.
There’s something hopeful about new life, whether it’s a seedling in the Lunar greenhouses or a yowling Earthbound baby. Garnet has every right to fuss—the movements keep her blood circulating, keep her warm. The stratus clouds that usually blanket Saint Oda may have lifted for today, but the cold hasn’t.
All of the island community’s citizens have gathered in the Overhang, their outdoor auditorium scooped out of the side of a mountain. There’s a small platform at the far end, and beyond that lies the ocean. The stone floor slopes upward away from the stage, and a high ceiling shelters the auditorium from the elements. To the side, a disused off-white lighthouse casts its shadow across a thin sliver of the stage.
Eiders circle overhead, cawing. The birds’ white wings are tipped with black; the color also appears on their foreheads and around their eyes. Their bills glint silver in the sun. Some birds dip down from the endless sky, fly low, and weave between glass orbs filled with seawater, which hang from the ceiling on hempen ropes around the room’s perimeter. Though
they’re dull by day, the bioluminescent bacteria within them cast haunting blue light after sundown.
On the stage, First Priest Luciana Pinto lays a comforting hand on baby Garnet’s forehead, calming her. Saint Oda’s leader has a broad nose, wide-set eyes, and medium-brown skin that seems to glow. Even though Pinto’s back is stooped from osteoporosis, the top of her head, covered in curly gray hair, hovers at least a meter and three-quarters off the ground.
“God is closest to our children,” she says to the audience. She doesn’t have a microphone, but her voice carries fifty meters to where I’m standing, slightly beyond the middle of the stone auditorium. The Odans constructed their gathering place to refract and amplify sound waves, so noises from the stage bend upward and outward. “He weaves a part of his spirit into every living thing before its birth. And so the youngest among us have most recently received his blessing.”
“Amen,” says the congregation. I move my lips but don’t make a sound. Odan services make me uncomfortable, since I’m breaking rules from my old life just by listening. On the Lunar Bases, the Committee outlawed religion because it would supposedly counter scientific objectivity. I’d love to believe in the Odans’ harmonious vision of the world, with its God who gives a bit of himself to every organism. I’d be happier. But it only takes one counterexample to disprove any theory, and I’ve come across several.
If God is good, and there’s a part of him in all living things, why are the Committee members evil? If God is powerful, why couldn’t he stop them from killing my mother? And why won’t he drain away my grief? Sometimes, so much sorrow clogs my body that my tears can’t flow. I want the Committee—all six faceless murderers—to suffer as I have, as the Lunar people have. To experience hunger so complete that the pangs no longer register; to weather the pain of electric shocks and laser fire. To lose a loved one, if they’re still capable of loving anybody. What would their screams sound like?
My desires shock me, and they’d appall the Odans, for whom needlessly harming another of God’s creations is the greatest sin.
The only person who knows I’m not a believer is Wes, who’s standing on the other side of the Overhang with the rest of the men. His face is solemn and his eyes focus on Priest Pinto, but three fingers of his right hand toy with a loose string on his brown wool sweater, coiling it around and around. He saw the same things I did on the Moon—maybe even worse things—and now he seems out of touch with his countrymen’s beliefs too.
We keep our doubts to ourselves.
Priest Pinto raises her left hand. Three minuscule red dots—ladybugs—scurry across her palm. She rolls back the baby’s right sleeve. “Today, we accept this child as a citizen and a member of our congregation. With these three ladybirds”—the Odans’ name for the insects—“I join the divine in me and the city of Saint Oda to the divine in her. Let us welcome Garnet River into our midst.”
“Amen!” we chorus.
The three ladybugs scuttle from Priest Pinto’s hand to Garnet River’s. The baby squeals, delighted or simply tickled.
I smile, remembering the scratching of the insects’ feet on the crisp November day when the Odans accepted me as one of their own. It’s the happiest event in my recent memory. Wes’s grandmother, Nanna Zeffie, spoke on my behalf: “Our garden has become more fruitful than I’ve ever seen it. The lass does wonders for God’s greenest creations—he blesses the work of her hands.” Her speech, along with Wes’s goodwill, convinced the crowd to vote in my favor. Immigrants like me must receive majority approval from the congregation’s adults to become citizens. If they had rejected me, Saint Oda would’ve sent me away. All the other places I could have gone—floating cities, nomadic pirate ships, the wilderness—would have been hellish compared to this haven.
“Now let us pray,” says Priest Pinto.
I bow my head with the women around me.
“Lord, thank you for trusting us with this child. May she grow tall as a fir and sturdy as an oak. May she swim with the dolphin, fly with the eider, and run with the wolf. With your love, may she never find herself alone. Amen.”
“Amen,” the congregation says.
* * *
The ceremony complete, the Odans mill about, congratulate Garnet’s parents, drop off gifts for the baby girl, discuss the good omen of a birth on a sunny day. Men and women from the opposite halves of the hall mingle. By separating the sexes during religious proceedings, the Odans claim, they minimize distraction from God. It’s one of many bizarre practices that make me wish I had a digital encyclopedia on Earthbound cultures. Now, whenever I want information, I have to ask someone instead of looking it up on my handscreen, creating much undue social awkwardness.
I trail Wes’s older sister, Murray, as she moves through the crowd toward the River family. She and I made our own gift for Garnet; per Odan tradition, we’ll present it together.
Dozens of eyes follow Murray, though she’s unaware of it. She’s tall—if she so chose, she could stand directly behind me without surrendering her line of sight. Sunlight illuminates her tangled hair, the color of parched soil, and the scar, pink against her pale skin, that runs from the left side of her forehead through her drooping right eyelid. I never asked what maimed her. When I first regained consciousness and saw Murray bent over me, I yelped, but I figured that the fear would go away if we didn’t talk about it. Besides, asking would’ve been insensitive. Murray healed my laser burn–riddled arm, stuffing it full of herbs and salves, and stayed by my side for weeks. The least I can do is respect her privacy.
Lewis, her domesticated nightingale, perches on her left shoulder. He’s a brown bird the size of a fist, with a white breast and reddish tail feathers. Every few seconds, he ruffles his wings, tickling Murray’s cheek; she scratches his belly with one finger, and he chirps in delight. Pets are commonplace at Odan gatherings; today, several attendees carry falcons, frogs, or cats. At the back of the Overhang is an assortment of larger animals: dogs, cows, even horses. I can smell their damp stink from here, but no one else seems to notice or mind.
When we reach the young family, I try my best to smile.
“Fay and I made this for Garnet,” Murray says in her high, ringing voice. She holds out the hair clip she’s assembled. “Lewis helped too by shedding some feathers he didn’t need anymore.” The clip has two brown wing feathers on the sides and a longer, reddish tail feather in the center. A chain of pink seashells from clams, scallops, and snails dangles from the feathers’ quills.
“As for the shells,” Murray continues, “Fay and I picked up whatever caught our eyes during our walks on the shore.”
“Oh, this is lovely.” Willet turns the clip in her hands, admiring it from all angles. “Garnet’s going to wear it the moment she sprouts actual hair.” She strokes the white-blonde fuzz on her daughter’s head. “Aren’t you, my little duck?”
Garnet snuggles against Willet’s chest and lets out a snore.
“We’ll ask her again when she wakes up,” Garnet’s father, Larimer River, says with a chuckle. He and four of his brothers, all of whom have sunburnt skin and blond curls, supply and run Wes’s mother’s favorite fish stall in the marketplace. There’s a fifth brother, too, but he’s gone to the Moon as a spy, like Wes did. It’s odd, and sad, too, that several men from this beautiful city have had to leave it for the bases’ barren hallways.
“I remember when you stood here,” Larimer says to me, “for your own induction. How are the snowdrops?”
Earlier that day, Larimer approached me with his brothers and dropped four bulbs into my hand. “For you,” he said. “Snowdrops. They’ll flower in the winter when nothing else does. White against the white snow.”
I’ve buried the bulbs like secret treasure, and I’m waiting for the shoots to appear. To answer Larimer’s question, I shake my head and shrug.
“Lassie’s still got a frostbitten tongue,” Larimer teases m
e.
I shrug off his comment, because he’s only trying to make me open up. Since I’m new—and different—most Odans don’t yet know what to make of me.
But Murray doesn’t let Larimer off so easily. She puts a hand on my upper back and steps forward as if to shield me. “Keep mocking her and she’ll never thaw out.”
Her smile is just wide enough to mask any aggression she might be feeling. Did people poke fun at her appearance when she was younger? She’s hyperaware of anything that might be taken for a taunt directed at me, catching things even Umbriel, my best friend on the Moon, might’ve missed.
Facing me, Larimer’s wife shrugs. “Better not to say anything than sound like a nitwit.”
“You know you love nitwits, Willet.” Larimer plants a kiss on her cheek.
I give them a half grin, the most communication I can afford. Speaking more than a few words at a time would be dangerous. Wes tried to teach me how to talk like an Odan, playing with the pitch of every vowel before moving on to the next, but my efforts sounded like the clucking of the hens behind his house. My normal, consonant-heavy accent would trumpet my Lunar origins; the islanders here never forgot the invading Militia’s idiosyncratic speech, not in the nine years since the Lunars attacked, stealing grain, water, metals, and lives. We might be the only living things Odans detest, and we deserve it.
Months ago, Phaet the fugitive, a Lunar rebel’s daughter, was reborn Fay, a former engine room slave from Pacifia. Since I’m Asian, like more than half of Pacifia’s population, it made the most sense. Wes told the Odans that he made an emergency pit stop in Pacifia, got caught trespassing in classified locations, and was slated for execution; that I—Fay—helped him escape his jail cell, and he brought me to Saint Oda out of gratitude. While this city welcomes immigrants from all over the world—Priest Pinto’s family came here only fifty years ago, from South America—most Odans are Caucasian and can trace their families back generations on this soil.
Murray tugs on one of my silver-streaked pigtails, bringing me back to the present. “Snowdrops are your soul flower, Fay.” It’s strange to be associated with snow, something I’ve never seen. “You’ll see when they bloom. . . .”