by Phoebe North
I didn’t feel certain. I’d never been a leader before—never been good at keeping my own dreams safe, much less anyone else’s. But I had to believe it was true. Not just for Ettie, or the people up there on the ship. But for me, and Vadix, too.
“I promise,” I said, firmly, fiercely. Ettie only nodded. She drew her legs up to her, hugging her arms around them. Hannah gaped at me, doubt and confusion clear in her eyes. But I ignored it, ignored her. I leaned back in my seat, closed my eyes, and waited for the shuttle to take us home.
Winter, 1 Year, 1 Month After Landing
Life wasn’t easy for me back then.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not exactly a picnic now. We all know that, given the option, I never would have chosen this work. But I guess I never expected I’d have a choice. When I was a kid, I hoped so bad that the Council would leave me alone to do my art. But when they told me I was going to be a botanist, I let myself become resigned to that fate. It was what happened on our ship. People became plowmen, or carpenters, or librarians because the vocational counselors told them it was best. After all, they’d given us tests, conducted interviews, personality profiles, had private chats with our parents and teachers. Aptitude was what mattered. Passion never, ever figured into it.
I watch how life has changed, how now my people do the work that’s necessary and not just the work that someone else says they do best. It’s still not exactly a matter of choice—it’s merely what we need to do if we’re going to survive here. Just last week the western wall collapsed under snow cover. I was the one who made the announcement: we would all put down our daily labor so that we could attend to the damages. There was quite a bit of grumbling. Some of our people even tried to shirk their duties. But I stood my ground, and within two days the avalanche had been cleared. The cupola still has a crack—we won’t be able to repair that until summer—but you wouldn’t even know where it was if you didn’t already know where to look.
It’s times like these that I wish you were here with me. At first I wanted your support. How could I possibly do my job without you there bolstering me, believing in me? How could I ever tend to every single need of our precious community? Every time I had to speak to the citizens, my hands shook—my voice caught in my throat. I was a wreck. I suspect they all saw it; that’s probably why I had to work so hard to convince them. I wouldn’t be an easy sell either, if I were a grown man or woman and some seventeen-year-old girl were telling me what to do.
But lately I miss you for another reason. I miss you because I suspect you would be proud of me, of how I’ve learned to clutch my hands behind my back to keep them steady, and how to angle my chin up, speaking clearly and with strength even when I feel anything but strong. I’ve changed in these last few months. It’s not just that I’m taller, that I’ve grown muscular from the afternoon hunt. It’s that I’m braver than I ever thought I would be.
Because there were times in my life when I thought I was very, very weak. Back when Momma died, and then Abba . . . back when Koen Maxwell broke my heart, and then I broke Silvan Rafferty’s. But I think I was never quite so afraid as the day we returned to the ship. I thought it might be the ending. I didn’t realize that it was the start of everything—like a seed, just sprouted, ready to grow into the mightiest of trees.
PART THREE
THE SHIP
21
The air lock was empty upon our return. There were no crowds waiting for us, no family to greet us with open arms. Only dim lights that flickered on and off as we walked down the empty corridor. I hadn’t exactly expected a parade or banners to welcome us home, but some sign of life would have been a comfort. The air lock’s walls were as dark as a coffin. The path outside the craft was long and echoing. We shed our flight suits and made our way down the hallway, but cautiously. Mara Stone led the way.
“We need to be careful,” she said, bringing her hard voice down to a whisper. “There’s been violence since the riots. The Council hasn’t been able to contain it. Students roam the streets like packs of dogs, refusing to be tamed.”
I heard a whimper cut through the silence. Ettie reached up and grabbed Rebbe Davison’s hand. He touched the crown of her head.
“It’s all right,” he said, but from the look on his face, I could tell that he didn’t feel certain. So I squared my shoulders, standing tall.
“Have the shuttles been pillaged?” I asked. Mara gave her head a shake.
“I don’t believe the rebels realized what they contain. They were still fully stocked when I left two days ago,” she whispered.
“We’ll gather the sonic rifles from the shuttles. One for each of us. When we return to the districts, I want you to gather what remains of the guard and bring them down here to secure the rest of the weapons. We need to arm ourselves.”
“Arm ourselves,” Hannah said. Her voice was sharp, mired in confusion. She hadn’t seen the riots—didn’t know about the passions that lurked beneath the breast of every Asherati. “Is that really necessary? Silvan Rafferty’s a good Council boy. He wouldn’t harm us.”
Mara went to fetch our weapons, her steps brisk and officious against the narrow walkway.
“I taught Silvan myself,” Rebbe Davison told my sister-in-law, still clutching Ettie’s hand tight. “Since he was a boy, he’s been proud. Entitled, like many Council children. I hope you’re right, Hannah. I hope he won’t hurt us. But better safe than sorry.”
My brother’s wife hugged her arms around herself. She’d been a Council child herself once, dutifully following the Council’s laws. She’d never expected their safe, steady rule to be upended, and certainly not with such force.
Mara returned. She handed us one rifle each, all except for Ettie. She only clung to Rebbe Davison, her eyes owlish. She was too young for guns still—too young to face a shuttle crash or days out in the wilderness or the attack of a wild beast or the attempted escape from an alien city too. But she hadn’t had any choice. I held out my hand to her, wriggling my fingers.
“I’ll bring you home, Ettie.”
Her eyes widened. She flung herself at me, squeezing my fingers so tight, I thought they might fall off.
“I still wanna go back,” she whispered. My smile wavered. I thought of Vadix—down there in the city, hustling toward the towering senate building, his robes streaming after him. I wished I were standing beside him, preparing to fight my own battle. Instead of up here, fighting the Council. Again.
“I do too,” I said, prying my fingers away just long enough to flip the rifle’s safety off. “But we have business to see to. I need to go speak to Silvan, before he does something rash.”
But Rebbe Davison stepped forward, putting a hand on my rifle. He glanced toward the light of the main bay, feeble against all this darkness.
“Not yet. We should take tonight to sleep,” he said. “To be with our families. They must have been worried about us.” He paused, his gaze growing distant. “And I’ll want to break the news to Aleksandra’s family before I speak to her other advisers.”
Rebbe Davison winced, and I quickly realized why. Children. Aleksandra must have had a husband and children—a son and a daughter. I’d never imagined her as a wife, or a mother. But of course she must have been both. Like every Asherati woman, she would have had little choice in the matter.
“Do what you must,” I said, gazing down at his big, calloused hand still wrapped around my gun’s barrel. “But hurry. I need to see Silvan before—”
“Terra, these things take time,” Rebbe Davison cut in. “We need to see to it that the people are behind us first. We’ll call a meeting. Tomorrow night. Not in the library—the Council might be expecting that. The school. Nineteen o’clock.”
I gripped the gun, tight, pulling it away from his scarred hands. “A meeting. What good will a meeting do?”
“You can’t just march in there,” he said. “It could be dangerous. We need to wait. Plan. Aleksandra—”
“Aleksandra is dead,” I hi
ssed, as the others all turned away in the face of my words. I saw Jachin lift two fingers to his breast. Saluting his leader—even in death.
“I’ve been doing this longer than you,” Rebbe Davison said. His voice had gone chilly, stern. I clutched my gun against my breast, holding the cold metal tight. But then I exhaled, relenting.
“Fine.” I paused as the lights flickered above. “But you don’t know Silvan like I do, Rebbe.”
The corner of his mouth ticked up. “I know. But I know our people better than anyone else. Anyone left alive, at least.”
I gave my head a slow shake. “I hope you’re right,” I said.
• • •
At first we stuck together as we roamed through the streets, taking in the broken glass and the windows boarded up with rotting, reclaimed wood. Solar lights flickered, making the whole street jitter and shake like an ember dying in a fire pit. It wasn’t just that the world of the Asherah seemed meager after the splendor of Raza Ait; our society had, in fact, been crushed by the riots. Once, the lift would have opened to the bustling commerce district, where the perfume of food and wine, where the sight of fine silks and sturdy wools, would have greeted us. We would have heard the music of the barter, the clamor of a sale. Now there was only the smell of dust and the low, constant whistle of the wind—circulating from starboard to aft over and over again, stirring the bare winter branches, rattling the shutters that hung loose on their hinges.
The faint glow of light in the dome meant that it had to be near midday—close to the thirteenth hour, when, once, children and workers would have all tumbled toward the districts for lunch. Now there were only a few timid eyes that peeked out from behind the curtains of nearby stores, then hastily hid again when we turned toward them.
“Where do you live?” I asked Ettie.
“Starboard. Ninth Street, between the vegetable garden and the—” But before she could finish, Hannah pushed by us, her boot heels hitting the cobblestone hard.
“I need to get to the bow,” she said in a low, nervous voice. “Find Ronen and Alyana.”
But Mara Stone called out to her. “Not so fast, Giveret Fineberg.”
Hannah stopped on the path, her eyes flitting left and right as she did.
“What is it, Mara?” she asked impatiently. I think my sister-in-law was done with rebels—done with us. Ready to rejoin her family, her people.
“I stopped by your quarters after the riots. Thought after she made her escape from her nuptials, I might have found my talmid there.”
Hannah clutched the gun tight. I could read the questions in her eyes: Was Ronen all right? Had he survived the attacks? “And?”
“He’s waiting for you, both of you, in that dark little galley of yours. Suspect you’ll find him there, not with the Council folk.”
“He—” Hannah began, her features twisting. “He waited for me? But it’s dangerous! He should have been keeping Alya safe in the bow, not waiting for me!”
Mara gave a snort. “Best take that up with your husband, then.”
And with that, the botanist rested her gun on her shoulder and took off for the port districts. We watched her go, white lab coat disappearing in the early twilight.
“I can’t believe he’d do something so stupid,” Hannah said softly, shaking her head in Mara Stone’s wake.
“Ronen? Really? You can’t?” I asked, and couldn’t help but lift my lips in a wicked grin. Hannah glanced sharply at me at first. But then the smallest smile lit up her mouth too. She reached out and took Ettie’s free hand in hers.
“Come on, girls,” she said, glancing down the litter-clogged streets. Once, the cobblestone had been swept clean every night. Wood and metal and glass would have all been recycled, food thrown into the composters, not a single scrap wasted. Now boxes spilled out of the broken shop windows. What food hadn’t been pillaged had been left to rot. “Let’s get home before . . .”
She trailed off. The lights overhead flickered and blinked. There was laughter in the distance, eerie and echoing. We glanced at one another, eyebrows raised fearfully. Then, without another word, we hustled off.
• • •
As we walked through the starboard district, silent save for the beatings of our hearts, we passed Rachel Federman’s house. Once, it had been the prettiest on its block, her mother’s garden full of blossoming flowers, their front windows bright with embroidered curtains. Now the flowers were trampled, the curtains gone. In fact, the front door hung open, showing a gap of black space inside. I asked Hannah and Ettie to wait on the curb, and I headed up the front stoop.
Be cautious, a voice in my head warned. Not my voice. How strange to think he watched me even now, in this solitary moment, as the hairs on my scalp all stood up. But to be fair, if I closed my eyes, I saw him, too. He sat in the senate antechamber, arguing with a senator, pounding his long fingers down against the stone table over and over again.
“Rachel?” I called, pushing the door open. “Mar Federman? Giveret Federman? Hello?”
I peeked in, but in the murky daylight, all I saw were fine vases, smashed, and the walls, once covered in paintings and hangings, now stripped bare. I rushed back down the stairs, shaking my head to Hannah and Ettie.
“No one,” I said. “There’s no one there.”
Hannah’s answer came perhaps too quickly. I saw her give Ettie’s arm a tug as she hustled her down the street. “I’m sure she’s fine, Terra,” she said, looking pointedly toward Ettie. She didn’t want me to scare the girl. Fair enough—but Ettie had seen much scarier in the past seven days than an empty house full of pottery shards.
“I’m sure she is too,” I said quickly. Ettie shook her head. That’s when I knew the little girl didn’t believe it. I felt the possibility settle over me like winter’s first frost. What if something had happened to Rachel? I’d last seen her on her wedding day, just before she was to marry Koen Maxwell. Had their marriage been sealed? Had they made it out of the clock tower alive? I winced, trying to push the thought away.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” I said again, but this time the words were meant for me and no one else.
• • •
Ettie’s home, at least, was in better shape. Though the flower beds had been turned over for winter, a faint light still glowed in the front windows. This time it was my turn to wait on the curb while Hannah led Ettie up the stairwell. They knocked together, waited. At last the door opened a slender crack. It was an old woman—too old to be Ettie’s mother.
“Bubbeleh!” she cried, and scooped the girl up into her arms as though she were little more than a toddler. Hazy eyes pressed into Hannah.
“Where was she?” she asked, faint accusation ringing. But Ettie pulled back from her grandmother’s grip, her toes touching the concrete step again.
“I was on Aur Evez, Bubbe.”
“Aur Evez?”
“Zehava,” I said quickly. “Mar Schneider took her on one of the shuttles.” I braced myself, drawing in a breath. I’d never been the bearer of bad news before—and definitely nothing like this. But somehow Ettie’s grandmother knew without my saying. She drew a wrinkled hand to her mouth.
“Oh, Abraham,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. Her hand fell against her thigh and she let loose a ragged laugh. “He always said he was going to live to see that damned planet. Oh, I hope you’re happy, bashert.”
I didn’t know what to say, but then I didn’t have to say a word. Ettie answered for me.
“Don’t be sad, Bubbe. Please don’t be sad. We said the kaddish for him and everything.”
Giveret Schneider smoothed down her granddaughter’s hair. “I’ll do my best, Bubbeleh.”
“Besides,” Ettie said, “soon you’ll be able to say good-bye to him yourself. Terra says we’re going back there, so I can find my boy.”
“Your . . . your boy?”
“My bashert. The one I keep dreaming about. Hey.” Ettie glanced over her grandmother’s shoulder, into the warm lig
ht of the galley beyond. “Where’re Tateh and Mama?”
Ettie’s grandmother let out a long sigh. She glanced up at us—silent, grown-up conversation traveling through the artificial wind.
“We have a lot to talk about,” she told Ettie, leading her inside and closing the door behind her.
• • •
“Poor kid,” I said as we hustled down the empty street toward my brother Ronen’s house. I’d once been where Ettie was—small and scared and confused, no parents to guide me. And my dreams had offered no escape, only mounting darkness and confusion. Even if they gave temporary respite—me hidden away in the dreamforests, his body’s love soothing the parts of me that were wounded and raw—I’d wake up every morning and be all alone again in the universe. But Hannah didn’t understand. Of course, she’d never been there herself. As we walked, our heels striking the cobblestone sharply, she narrowed her gaze on me.
“Yeah,” she said. “Poor kid, and poor Terra, and that poor alien she ran off with.” She reached out, touching the silver folds of my Xollu robe. “Do you intend to tell me what happened down there?”
I stopped, standing in the yellow light cast down from a nearby streetlamp. It was so dark, despite the early hour. Hannah gazed expectantly at me.
She will not understand, Vadix warned. But this was Hannah—sweet, tender Hannah, my brother’s true love. She used to try to talk to me, to give me the advice I’d missed because my own mother had died. I had to try.
“You said it yourself,” I began, choosing each word carefully. “We’re the same, Vadix and me. We carry our sadness with us, and—”
“A crush, Terra? He’s not human.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s human or not,” I said. “He’s like me. More like me than anyone I’ve ever met on this ship!”
I indicated the solar lights, flickering overhead, the rattling tree branches, the concrete fronts of every identical town house.
“I wasn’t going to find anyone here. Look at me. You know it’s true.”