by Phoebe North
Her chest quivered as she spoke. I’d never seen her like this before. I’d seen her happy, and I’d seen her sad. I’d seen tears trickle down Rachel’s pretty face, and I’d seen her collapse into hysterical laughter. But I’d never heard her speak with such gravity. Her words sank into me like a rock dropped from a great height into silver water.
“It’s called Israel. Israel. And it’s out there somewhere. Silvan asked the Council scientists. They say that there’s a chance the Earth might be inhabitable by the time we return. There’s a chance it wasn’t destroyed at all! Can you imagine it? Coming home one thousand years after our ancestors left?”
I leaned over, hugging myself. “No, I can’t imagine it,” I said. And I couldn’t. Earth was dead. I’d read all about it in my schoolbooks, and in the journal I’d inherited through my mother’s line. Near the end days, there were riots there, too. Bombs. The religious waited in their enclaves for their gods to save them. I guess Rachel was no different, placing her trust in forces she could not see. She had faith. But my ancestor hadn’t been like that, and neither was I. Maybe it was genetic. Maybe I was too cynical, too hard. Whatever the reason, Rachel’s words didn’t comfort me. They only made my stomach clench.
“A chance,” I said. “You’d hang your children’s future on a chance.”
I bit down on my lip, peeling away the sun-scorched skin. Rachel reached out. She put her dark hand on mine.
“You don’t believe, do you?”
“No,” I said swiftly as I tasted blood. “No, I don’t.”
“It must be so sad for you, living a life without miracles. All alone in the world.”
I wasn’t alone. I had Vadix. But to Rachel his love didn’t count. It was too twisted, too depraved. When I only stared off into the dark corners of Ronen’s guest bedroom, she drew her hand back and forced a laugh.
“Look at us,” she said. “Fighting like old times.”
It was ridiculous. We’d hardly ever fought when we were young. No, the fights came later—with boys and secrets and adulthood, with choices that mattered. But I made myself smile at her. It was no use holding on to a life that had already passed me by.
“It’s not why I came, anyway,” she said, a wistful smile gracing her mouth. “I heard you were here, and I wanted to ask you to join us.”
“Me?” I went cold. I had so much to worry about already—the Asherati, and the senate and their decree, and Vadix far, far below. The last thing I needed was to worry about hurting Rachel’s feelings.
“I can’t return to Earth, Raych. I’ve been waiting my entire life to settle Zehava. We—we had a contract,” I said weakly, reaching for any strand I could grasp. “We were peaceful and compliant. In exchange the Council has to give us Zehava.”
“We can’t live on a planet that isn’t ours,” she said. I heard a curious echo in her voice. Smug. Self-assured. Silvan. “Liberty on Zehava—isn’t that what the rebels wanted? Well, it’s not going to happen. We land there, and we’ll be beholden to those creatures. We’ll be slaves. Is that what you want?”
“It wouldn’t be like that. The Xollu and the Ahadizhi—”
“The what?”
“The aliens. They’ve worked together for centuries—”
Millennia, Vadix gently corrected. But by then Rachel had turned away from me. I set my lips into a scowl.
“I didn’t come here to debate politics,” she said, her voice trembling. “You need to come to the bow. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Silvan doesn’t either.”
I thought of the poison—the look on Silvan’s father’s face on what was to be our wedding day. Sweat had trailed over his face in rivers, pasting his silver-scattered hair down against his head.
“If Silvan only knew—” I began, but shut up quick when Rachel turned back to face me.
“Just think about it,” she said, silencing me. She held out her hands one final time. I lifted mine, took hers. She said, “Tomorrow. Come tomorrow. Please, think about it. For me?”
Automatically my pinkie finger found hers. Wrapped itself around it. Squeezed tight. It would be the last time we’d ever do that, Rachel and me. I didn’t know it then, but I had my suspicions. I think she did too.
So I lied when I answered. It may not have been the truth, but it was a kindness. For my friend. For everything we had once shared.
“Okay, Raych,” I said, and forced a smile. “I’ll think about it. Promise.”
• • •
I stayed up late that night bent over my sketchbook, Pepper asleep across my ankles. My mind swirled around and around and around. Mazdin. Rachel. Earth—somewhere out there, dead as a ruin. No matter how deeply Rachel believed, I didn’t. Couldn’t. The science had been laid out too plainly for me in schoolbooks and in my lessons with Mara Stone. Again and again I’d been told of Earth’s destruction. The asteroid strike. The long, long winter. All her forests and trees, withering in the empty dark.
You are a skeptic?
All through dinner with Hannah and Ronen—meager rations six days expired, stretched thin between the three of us—Vadix had been quiet. He’d been occupied somewhere else, busy down on the planet below. In the hazy corners of my mind, I saw him standing outside the senate, speaking to whoever would listen. A lousk, standing alone in the senate pavilion, begging the gold-robed senators to consider his pleas. He probably looked like a madman. Maybe he was. But now, as my pencils made quick work across the page, I was glad to hear the gentle pressure of his voice in my mind.
I suppose. Are you? I answered.
In his big round bed in Raza Ait, he turned over, letting the light of three moons spill over his bare shoulders. He was quiet as he formulated his response.
I have always believed in the union of the god and the goddess. He led us out of the caves where we cowered away from the wrath of the winter and the savagery of the beasts. She spoke to the Ahadizhi for us at a time when few of us could speak. It is the foundation of our society, our world. I am a believer, yes.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel his assurance that there was a larger plan. It had sustained him during the many moons of separation from Velsa, and then later, on those interminable nights after her death. As he’d picked open his skin and watched it weep, he’d whispered prayers to the empty air:
Zaide airex ososh, airka theselizhi—
orrax aum airex velaz.
Saillu zhiosouum, saillu sauosoez ososh.
Zaide aille osooezhi ososh ut sauosoez orrax.
Zaide airex ososh, airka theselizhi, aum sauosoez zhiosouum.
I paused in my drawing, considering the sounds of the syllables. They were quiet, gentle, the sound of whispers among reeds. What does it mean, Vadix? I asked. I think he was surprised that I heard this memory, buried as deep as it was inside of him. But he knew that he was safe with me in the darkness of our minds. He translated swiftly, without any trouble.
In this hour of winterdark, we cry like the newly sprouted—
god and goddess, hear us.
We have walked together, and now we walk apart.
Give me strength to walk alone like you, my god, toward spring’s first light.
Give me the goddess’s voice, a song to sustain me, even as I sing without her.
I opened my eyes again, groping through my sheets for another pencil. I didn’t want to think about his solitude—how it was hard for him, even now, to lie in bed alone. But the steady, familiar rhythm of my pencil against paper soothed me. I layered red atop blue, a drop of blood in a stormy sea.
I wish I could believe like that. It must be comforting.
Under the glass ceiling a slow smile lifted his lips.
It is. But surely you must believe in something, Terra, if not in gods?
I picked up the black pencil, sketching in a pair of eyes. His eyes, filled with unimaginable secrets. Then I drew the soft line of his mouth.
I think . . . , I began, the words coming slowly. I think I believe that a new day
will come tomorrow, like it has every day before it. Sometimes I hated it, you know? How time kept slipping away from me, taking me one day further from Momma, and Abba, too. And every day was just like the last one. The walls here felt like they were closing in on me sometimes. But then I remembered why those walls were here. Why I am here. My ancestors left our planet because they had hope for the future. They weren’t on this ship because they wanted to live here. They were on this ship so that someday I could live somewhere else. Someplace better.
I paused, looking down at the page. In my sketch Vadix stared back at me, his expression grave and uncertain. It had been easy to draw him, even if his body was thousands of kilometers below. I would never, ever forget.
I think that’s why I can’t abide by Rachel’s plan to return to Earth. If nothing else, I’ve always believed in the promise of Zehava. I still do, I think. Not because of you, or me, or us. But because of Momma and Abba and all the people before them. Everything they sacrificed. I have to hold on to that—on to hope for a new day tomorrow, and the day after.
I don’t think he knew what to say to that. So he simply said nothing, his mind tightly curled around mine—like we were two bodies in a bed, embracing each other. With a sigh I glanced down at the page. I wished he could be there with me, in flesh and not just in spirit.
I think he wanted to be with me, too—or to be closer at least, sitting beside me in bed, talking with words as well as thoughts. I felt him peeking through my eyes. It was a curious sensation, one that sent a shiver through me. He drew back, but it was too late. He’d already seen.
You made my image. You are an artist.
Even alone in my room I felt myself blush. I don’t know if I’d say that. It’s just something that I enjoy doing. It’s not—it’s not my job or anything.
His thoughts were deliberate. It does not matter. You are talented. Like an Ahadizhi. Such images could hypnotize even the wildest animal.
My blush only deepened. I pushed a lock of hair behind my ear. Oh, Vadix, I replied. You’re teasing me.
Perhaps, he said gently. Perhaps.
• • •
Mara told me once that old maps of Earth bore the images of dragons near the margins in those foreign countries where the cartographers had never dared to travel. On that workday, long past, I’d been wondering aloud about Zehava’s continents, her seas, and Mara said that all of that was nothing more than dragons we’d someday uncover—shapes that science couldn’t even imagine, not yet, not when the ship was so far out.
Uncovering dragons. That night, as we lay in our separate beds, I recalled the phrase. It seemed to be an apt name for what we were doing, peeling back layers of ourselves to expose foreign shapes, new lands, and strange continents. I felt like a cartographer as I sketched him inside my notebook. I drew his long limbs, his curves, and the bright contrast of his hand against my hip. I committed him to memory so that I would never, ever forget.
As if I ever could.
Of course we tumbled together that night, our bodies becoming one and whole in the depths of the dreamforests. Maybe it was frivolous of me to ignore the path ahead in favor of his body, his fingers, and the wet sweetness of his mouth. But I couldn’t help but lose myself in the violet space inside my mind. The days ahead were uncertain. There were so many problems. Silvan. Rachel. The senate below. Perhaps I should have been drawing plans, plotting strategy. Perhaps I was avoiding my troubles in favor of flesh, sweet and warm and good.
But deep in my belly I knew that this was nothing like my nights with Silvan. Back then lust was for forgetting all the pain and darkness of the future, and the stark, bone-deep solitude of the present. But now?
In the recesses of our mind, inside the wild jungles of our shared sleep, his body healed mine. It bolstered me, made me whole. It was less a distraction and more a salve—and I knew I’d need my strength in the coming days.
In the darkness of the night, I woke in sweaty sheets, curling my body up like a crescent moon. Akku, or maybe Aire. I wasn’t sure which.
23
I woke early the next morning, rising swiftly in the impenetrable dark. Pepper mewled from his spot on the end of the bed. I buried my face in his dust-soft fur, snuggling him for just a moment before I made my way down the hall and toward the head. After days unwashed on Zehava, I don’t think I’d ever gladly forgo a shower again. Not even this one, with its rattling pipes and thin, brown stream of water. Funny how I’d never noticed before the way the ship’s water tasted. Dingy. Not quite clean. But I’d never known any better, and now I did. I soaped up my body quickly, rinsed quickly too. The lights flickered overhead, but I ignored it.
What will you do today? Vadix asked as I pulled on my clothes. It felt odd to wear my tired old linen pants and holey sweater again, but I thought it best to avoid the strange Xollu garb if I was going to be out today—among my people.
I’m going to go speak to Van Hofstadter. Spread the word about the meeting tonight.
But what about Silvan?
I remembered Silvan. Rumple-haired. Proud. I bit the inside of my cheek and tried to ignore how my stomach flip-flopped at his memory. I couldn’t trust him, not entirely—but there was nothing I could do about that, either.
Rebbe Davison said it can wait. We need to gather the Asherati. We need to plan.
All right, Vadix said, but I could hear the doubt that seeped from his mind to mine. I groped through the darkness for my boots, and swiftly changed the subject.
Do you have a plan today?
Yes, yes, he said hastily. I shall continue to petition the senators to let me speak before them on your behalf. But they are wary of your people and the strain you all would place on our cities. And I have combed the records dating back six centuries. It is quite unheard of that they might change their minds after making such a decree.
Unheard of. I stomped my feet down into my boots, one at a time, then tugged the laces tight.
They need to lift the banishment. Without that we have no chance.
I am aware, Vadix said, his voice wry in my head. I am trying. I fear that I am unable to advocate forcefully enough for your people. I will defend you until my body returns to soil, but—
Don’t you want me to be safe? You said it yourself!
Of course I do! But . . . His thoughts petered out. I hissed out a slow breath of air, letting my head hang down. There was no use getting angry—not at him. He was only trying to help. Besides, I needed to be even-headed on that chilly morning. Strong.
Thank you, I said, sending a wave of warmth across the kilometers of space. For all you’ve done so far. I pulled my left bootlaces into a bow and streamed down the stairs. I wasn’t sure if anyone on this ship went to work anymore, but if they did, I intended to catch Van Hofstadter before he left for the library. There was no time to linger. I put on my coat.
But as I drew the front flap across my body and slipped the buttons into place, I heard footsteps on the stairwell.
“Terra?” A sleep-drowsed voice called out. I turned. My brother stood on the steps, wearing my father’s bathrobe, looking down at me.
I wasn’t sure what to say. I lifted my chin, staring back. “Yeah?”
“It’s not even six yet. Where are you going?”
My hand rested on the doorknob. It was true; on any other day I would have slept in—finding solace in dreams well into the late morning. But how could I ever explain that to my brother? He came down another step, his wide feet bare against the metal.
“Out,” was all I said.
“Well,” he replied, giving his lips a sleepy smack, “don’t be gone too long. Hannah and I are going to the ship’s bow today to join her parents. We’d like you to come with us.”
“You want to return to Earth?”
Was it just the light, or did Ronen go a shade paler at the suggestion?
“No,” he said. “But I don’t think the rebels have a better plan.”
My coat still half buttoned, I marched
back across the galley. I stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at my brother. He was unshaven, a thick beard coming in over his chin. His eyes had sleepy circles beneath them—too many nights up late, tending to my young niece alone. When I’d moved in, it was to help him shoulder the burden of parenthood. To become the sort of family we’d never been for each other. But I’d run off, failing him in that.
“Wait, Ronen,” I said, my voice a whisper. It wasn’t until I said it that I knew the truth: I wanted my brother with me. There had been times when I’d resented him, and hated Hannah. Times when I hated both of them for leaving our home gutted and hollow in the wake of Momma’s death. But he was here now, and so was I. Maybe given enough time we could learn to be a proper family. I wanted a chance to try. “I’m working on something. A plan. Not returning to Earth. Something better.”
My brother watched me doubtfully. “Hannah told me you fell in love with a boy there. An alien.”
I put my hand on the newel post, touching the frigid metal. “He’s not an alien. I am. He was there first.”
Ronen watched with disbelief. I winced, turning my gaze away.
“Anyway,” I said, speaking to the dark corners of his galley, “this isn’t about him. It’s about us. Our future. Our people. It’s about tikkun olam.”
“Healing the world,” my brother said bleakly, his voice an echo of our father’s.
“Right. Our whole purpose here was to settle that planet. That’s how we were supposed to save humanity. It’s our duty, Ro. More than our jobs and our loyalty to the Council. More than being good husbands or wives or even parents. We’re supposed to ensure that the human race lives on, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t think running back to a dead planet will do it.”
A wisp of a smile tugged at my brother’s mouth, but he fought it. So I pushed just a little harder.
“C’mon. If we give up, what kind of legacy would that be? For Momma—for Abba, too? He worked his whole life for that. Do you really want it all to have been in vain?”