by Karen Bao
“I believe I can take care of this.” Murray swoops in, loops her arm through mine, and forces a smile. She seems unusually intent on preventing me and Wes from spending time alone together. What’s she worried about? Social norms? Pleasing her parents? “There’s no such thing as too much fresh air.”
With that, she leads me back out into the cold.
5
AS MURRAY AND I WALK THROUGH THE garden behind the chicken coop, our arms remain entwined. It feels more like a restraint than an embrace.
She’s thought hard all day; I feel it in her faraway gaze. My left hand automatically worms under my right arm, as if to cover my handscreen’s now-defunct audio receptors. The old habit persists, even on Earth.
While I was in recovery, Wes disconnected my blood vessels from the handscreen’s wiring, and removed the Lunar Positioning System chip. Then he used stolen Medical Department supplies to induce my skin to heal over the wound, scarlessly. Without the handscreen, I’ll be dead to the Committee if I return to the Moon—no, when I return. At first I felt a gnawing sense of loss. My blood had pumped through the handscreen’s battery since I was five, allowing me to receive communications, play games, and introduce myself to others. But the device held me prisoner: Medical watched my vital signs, the Militia tracked my location, and government eavesdroppers listened to my most private conversations. Now I have freedom, and I’ve embraced it, though sometimes I still doubt it’s real.
“Here.” Murray’s holding out a currant roll, which she must have nicked from the table, and I think with a strange detachment that I haven’t eaten since noon. The bread’s not as soft as it was this morning, when Nanna Zeffie and I pulled the batch from the mud-brick oven, but it’s warm from Murray’s body heat.
I nibble. Lewis hops along the ground behind me, snapping up the crumbs I leave behind. Whenever I find a currant in the bread, I suck on it until the skin bursts. There’s sweet juice inside each one. Nanna Zeffie knows how to keep the currants from dehydrating.
Around Murray, Lewis, and me, bare branches reach toward the yellow Moon as if begging for light or love. They receive neither.
The forest must have been beautiful during the autumn, when, Murray tells me, leaves filled every twig. For each color you’ve seen in a fire, she said, there was a leaf to match. I wasn’t sure what she meant, because I’d only seen tiny blue flames in the Primary Chemistry labs, and leaves don’t turn blue. Because I slept until November came, I missed the fire in the treetops.
And all that time, Murray watched me sleep.
We pass a clump of green shoots; each has two or three long, straight leaves that extend toward the sky. They come up to our ankles now. My snowdrops, I think. They’ll flower soon.
Lewis lands in the middle of the patch, swallows a pebble as roughage for his gizzard, and takes off, calling loudly.
“I know I’m a bad role model,” Murray says, “but you shouldn’t let strong feelings lead you to make stupid decisions.”
She turns to me, a spark of concern in her intact eye. Her words, her every gesture, seem to warn against my plans for later tonight. But she wouldn’t know about those; she’s speaking about her own experiences. I remember her stunned face and her shaking hands as Tourmaline’s lights appeared in the distance.
“Why did you leave the Overhang so quickly?” I say.
Murray’s throat tightens. With the hand not holding mine, she absently rubs her locket between her fingers. “Tourmaline made me feel thirteen again. The world was splintering, and everything in it was dark and new.”
Silence falls. This time, it feels awkward. I swallow the last of the roll and dust off the bits of flour clinging to my fingertips. “Are you talking about the Lunars?”
“The demons? The one night they spent here, they killed us. Just to steal our things. They might have asked. We would have given them whatever we could spare.” Murray drops my arm and runs a finger down the scar across her eye. In the blue bacterial light, her old injury looks like a rocky lunar canyon. “They gave me this.”
Grief—for Wes’s sister, for this city—rises in my chest.
Murray fiddles with the locket’s clasp and wrenches it open. In the left half, shielded by a thin glass cover, is a black-and-white drawing of the girl whose painting hangs in the Carlyles’ dining room. On the right half, the glass has been smashed, the paper ripped, but I can make out the strong shoulders of a man in a black jacket. His face is a mystery.
“I grew up with her.” Murray gestures at the girl. “She didn’t say much, but she seemed to see and hear everything. The way she looked at me, I knew she understood me. You’re like that too. It made me like you the day we met.”
My heart hitches. She’s wrong—I hardly understand her at all.
Murray nods—half to herself and half to me. “Yes, you’re like Cassia—Cassia Murray.”
“What?” I blurt. Murray’s first name is this girl’s last name? That can’t be an accident.
“My birth name is Marina. I only started calling myself Murray after the raid.” Murray utters her next words in one breath. “Cassia was set free.” The Odan euphemism for death. “Her parents and brother left Saint Oda because they couldn’t bear to see reminders of her everywhere. Sometimes I wish I’d left with them.”
Murray hugs herself as if to keep out the cold, but it’s coming from inside her. Moving closer and rubbing the middle of her back, I calculate that Cassia couldn’t have been more than thirteen when she died.
“We were sitting on her back porch, talking and looking out at the blackberry patch, when the demons landed. Her family lived right outside the cave entrances, which was where the soldiers wanted to go. So they swept across the farm. We didn’t know what the stomping noises behind us were. . . .” A tear dribbles down Murray’s face, but she doesn’t wipe it away. “I didn’t do anything but watch.”
Stop remembering, if it makes you sad! But maybe talking about her trauma is cathartic, like letting air gush out of something that’s about to explode. Not everyone tries to hold it in like me.
“Cassia g-got shot. . . . She had blackberry juice on her lips. I screamed and screamed until a different soldier cut me with a shard from a clay pot.”
I wince, imagining the pain, and put my arms around her. Murray looks up at me, composure regained, voice eerily calm. “Before she did it, though, the soldier flipped up her visor so I could see her eyes. They were almost like yours, Fay. But she was dreadfully thin.” Murray shakes her head, smiling coldly. Her features seem to change shape as she cycles through emotions. “I still wonder how she had the strength in that arm to cut me and knock me unconscious. I must have looked dead to the world. No demons hurt me afterward.”
The soldier must have been new when the raid occurred; only a fresh Beetle would knock a girl out to prevent the team from killing her. It’s harder than leaving people to die, which doesn’t require looking into their eyes and acknowledging their humanity. Only someone soft, unhardened by months of dealing out cruelty, would make the effort. During my time in Militia, I found that the longer soldiers served, the less they valued others’ lives.
Murray squeezes the locket. “Sometimes, I wonder if she meant to kill me. But she didn’t. She made it so hard for me to see and be seen—for life. Is that any better?”
I wouldn’t know. I stare at Murray’s hands, feeling sadness and shame in equal measure. Her voice is pretty; so is her big heart. But because of her angry scar and permanently mismatched gaze, that beauty took me a long time to see.
Maybe the Lunar soldier didn’t know that Odan medicine, unlike ours, doesn’t include facial reconstruction and can’t erase a scar. Or maybe I’m making excuses.
The locket rotates beneath Murray’s fingers. The broken glass on the side opposite Cassia Murray’s picture reflects the pasty moonlight.
“Things returned to normal after we clean
ed up the demons’ mess—well, as normal as they could get, with Wes and the other five preparing to go to that . . . lair in the sky. I felt blessed to live in this city, where people were so different from the Lunar demons. I believed our faith would keep us kind. But I was naive.” Murray snaps the locket shut. “There are selfish Odans too.”
“Who?” I ask.
Murray clasps both hands around the locket, squeezing until they shake. “I don’t like remembering. Every time I mention his name, the memory of him gets stronger.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Not a problem.” She taps her foot. “Why do you lean on my brother so much? How can you be certain he won’t go somewhere far away and leave you alone and so awfully cold?”
I gape at her, bewildered. She and her parents have separated Wes and me at every opportunity; I don’t need her warnings about spending time with him when she doesn’t know any of our secrets.
Murray turns away from the blue light, and her face is just shadows on shadows. “I’m sorry. I’ve talked too much, haven’t I?”
“Don’t be sorry,” I say. “Better to say too much than nothing at all. After my dad died, I . . . I went mute for a year and a half.” I only spoke in my dreams after I lost Mom. But Murray heard all that.
“You talk now, though,” Murray points out. “Not much. But you talk.”
“When I was mute, people thought I was crazy.” Why am I telling Murray this? I’ve hardly discussed it with Umbriel, and he knew the most about me as a child. The answer comes to me in an instant: Because Murray’s experienced something similar.
“People thought I was crazy for a time too.” Murray’s laugh is more like a bark. “My parents and my brother were afraid I’d poison my sisters with my darkness. Wes spent every free moment with Emmy until he left. By then, she was five years old, and she could block me out. Jubilee was just three. She had a favorite lullaby—this one.”
And she begins to sing, to herself more than to me.
“Snowy trees and snowy seas,
Frozen you and frozen me.
One foot, two, two feet, three—
Snow and ice will set us free.”
The words, rendered in her clear, cold voice, induce in me a creeping sadness—the last line in particular. Chills run through me.
“How could you teach a toddler about death?” I ask. She threw her little sister into the shadows before she’d seen the sun; I couldn’t do that to my siblings—not intentionally.
“Those were some strange years for me, Fay,” Murray says. “My thoughts were completely outside my control. First, I denied what had happened; then I wanted to stop . . . existing. Then I wanted revenge.”
“But you’re not like that now,” I blurt, watching the composed young woman beside me.
“Back then, a different girl inhabited this body—not me. When she got angry, she attacked the people closest to her. With words on good days, with blows on bad days. Because she couldn’t strike the ones who’d actually hurt her—they were too far away. And this fiend-girl stayed with me until years later, when I told myself I’d outgrown the terrible memories, and put them out of mind’s reach—like you’d stash out-of-season clothes in a chest of drawers somewhere. But since Tourmaline docked, they’ve been spilling out again, all moth-eaten and foul.”
I think of all the experiences I’ve tried and failed to erase over the past few months. They bring me nightmares and tears, not rage—but is that any better? “Do you think the memories will ever disappear completely?” I say.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care to know.” She blinks at me—only one eye fully shuts. “I only want to make it through each day. Why should I wonder about a time that might never come?”
6
THREE HOURS LATER, I BREAK AND ENTER. I’ll get help for Cygnus tonight, and I don’t give two grits if Wes finds out. It won’t be enough, but it’s all I can manage.
The door leading to the basement, where Wes’s father and the Sanctuarists hold their meetings, is a piece of wood cut and painted to blend in with the stone floor. But it’s lighter. The hinge is located a third of the way down, forming a lever. I stomp on one end, and as the other pops up, I lift it and slide inside.
The spiral staircase is made of old wood, which sags and moans with every step I take. Every night, a Sanctuarist or two is on watch duty here. In the past, I’ve secretly accompanied Wes on a few of his shifts. But in the wake of today’s events, all two dozen young men are out patrolling and collecting material evidence of Tourmaline’s visit, leaving the room empty.
With the exception of the Sanctuarists’ meeting place, Saint Oda is devoid of digitization and electronics. Not a soul, except for the men in service and me, knows about the equipment in the Carlyles’ basement. There are exercise machines with beeping monitors, links to cameras that film the ocean from the hilltop, and a primitive but powerful computer. The Sanctuarists hide even the industrial-sized chemical battery that powers the equipment, driving the only electrical circuit in the city, and they maintain the levels of zinc and mercury ions themselves.
I park myself in front of the computer monitor mounted on the stone wall. On the upper left corner of the screen are six circular icons, each labeled with a Roman numeral; these must represent the Odan agents on their respective bases. To my disappointment, only IV and VI glow green; the rest are red. This means just two of the agents can send messages to the Odan machine at the moment, and neither of them is on Base I, where Cygnus is being held.
Last month, I pestered Wes about how he and the other Sanctuarists communicate with the spies on the Moon, and he showed me the basics. First, he records a voice message, which is coded into a radio wave, encrypted, and sent to a midpoint in the Alps. The ultraviolet beam travels to another midpoint on the Moon’s far side, then to any Sanctuarist on the Moon with a switched-on receiver. The receiver, usually a jailbroken HeRP, decrypts the message and plays the sound clip. The entire process takes only milliseconds, but it’s secure. Because the bases’ handscreen network uses longer-wavelength transmission, InfoTech’s surveillance equipment doesn’t detect the Sanctuarists’ messages. The two midpoints also ensure that even if detection occurs, the bases can only trace the lasers’ origin to useless terrain. As an added precaution, the Sanctuarists have landed prestigious jobs on their respective bases, affording them private offices in which to talk.
I’d leave a message for Micah on Base I, but what if he replied and one of the Sanctuarists on Saint Oda intercepted it? I’m hoping to keep tonight’s conversation—with whomever I manage to speak—as quiet as possible. To avoid accidental interception, I must talk to a Sanctuarist whose icon is green.
But Cygnus is not the only one in danger. My mental image of my brother’s tormented face melts into that of a helpless young girl’s. Anka, my little sister, could be facing any amount of abuse from the Militia—all alone. While I have the chance, I must ask the Base IV agent to watch over her. All I’ve heard from Wes is that the agent is new, a recent transfer from Base II who’s posing as a Psychology assistant and experimenting on “patients” in Shelter.
I’m wagering that this man—Lazarus Penny—is as kind as his countrymen and that, like them, he’ll want to protect people who can’t protect themselves. Hopefully, he’s spent enough time around Lunars to realize not all of us are evil; hopefully, too, he won’t hate me as soon as he learns of my nationality.
Will his humanity prevent him from turning me in to Wesley Sr.? If not, I could face deportation—or worse. But that would still be nothing compared to Anka’s vulnerability or Cygnus’s pain.
I tap the Base IV icon.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
After several long seconds, the computer beeps. The words Voice message received appear on the screen. I key in the six-digit code I watched Wes use to unlock messages.
“Wesley Juni
or? This is rather unanticipated. Your speech sounds . . . shriller than usual.”
Every soft sound that escapes this unseen man’s lips brims over with grace and fluidity. It’s lovely but elusive; listening to his voice is like trying to hold warm water in the palms of my hands.
“It became apparent after our last one-on-one communication that you preferred not to speak with me directly,” the Base IV agent continues shyly, as if unsure of himself. “I did not wish to disrespect that position if you still held it.”
End of message, reads the screen.
Does he have a problem with Wes? If the two of them have had a disagreement, it would be unwise to associate myself with the boy who brought me here—but Wes is so agreeable, and this man seems the same way. After all, they’re still teammates.
Pushing back my momentary hesitation, I square my shoulders and put my lips to the small perforations on the side of the screen.
“Have they hurt Anka Theta? Umbriel Phi?”
Lazarus’s reply does nothing to ease my worries. “Pardon me, young miss, but your identity seems to elude me. Without that information, I’m afraid, I cannot aid you in your endeavors.” He pauses, waiting for me to say something. When I don’t, he fills the silence: “I am, however, familiar with those personages of whom you speak. From your evident distress, may I conclude that you are personally bonded to them? Those unfortunate youths . . .”
“Yes,” I blurt. “Please, tell me anything you know.”
“Ah, I understand the situation now. Permit me to ask—might you be the alleged female engine room slave from Pacifia? Your appearance on Saint Oda coincided curiously with the flight of one Phaet Theta, criminal-ess extraordinaire, from the Moon.”
So, he knows who I am. The only good outcome of his quick reasoning is that he’s saved me some explaining. But at least he seems sympathetic. I must continue tugging at his heartstrings, and must humble myself. He seems like the kind of person who’d want to help a young woman begging for aid. Unfortunately, with my limited speaking skills, I’m not much of a beggar.