by Phoebe North
“Might go faster if I helped you. It’s what Abba would have wanted. Near the end he kept asking where you were, you know.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. At last Silvan filled the silence for me.
“He said it was cancer, just like the one that killed your mother. Isn’t that strange?”
My stomach clenched. Rebbe Davison had once told me that Aleksandra’s mistake was in not dealing with the consequences of her actions. I guess these were my consequences—the heavy burden of my guilt, and Silvan and Rachel, lost to me forever.
“Yes, strange,” I said, but my voice came out as nothing more than a whisper.
• • •
I streamed out of the lift and straight into the darkness. Someone had broken the pasture fence; a flock of sheep had strayed down to the main path, and they bleated at my arrival. I pushed past their heavy bodies. I’d lose this soggy field soon—the silent clock tower where my father had once worked, and the ground where he rotted now. Would lose it all, the glass overhead, honeycombed, full of Zehava’s beautiful continents. Would lose my beautiful best friend, too. No, wouldn’t lose them. That wasn’t quite right. I’d given them all away, ignoring the fact that there was nothing left for us, nothing assured.
“Terra!” At last I stopped, turned. Mordecai ran toward me; my brother trailed behind. They both looked hopeful as they approached, their mouths stretched with stupid smiles. They’d waited for me—waited in the stuttering dark. “How did it go?”
“It was fine,” I croaked out painfully. “But we’re not. The ship. I gave him the ship.”
Without waiting for their response, I turned and hustled through the field again. It was Ronen who called out, amid a nest of laughter. I stopped again, frowning, to listen.
“What do we need a ship for?” he asked. “We have a whole damned planet!”
I looked back over my shoulder at my brother, my naive, sweet brother. He’d cast both arms upward, gesturing to the world above. I wondered at the shape of her as she slept in the darkness. I thought of all of our troubles ahead—the senate and their mandate, the beasts, the Ahadizhi in the south. But for the first time I gazed not to the sparkling continent up north but to her southern land, steeped in darkness. And I wondered if maybe, just maybe, Ronen might be right.
26
Humans as Guardians? It is an unlikely proposal.
Vadix sat on his doorstep in Raza Ait. He took in the sight of the dark grove. He watched the silhouettes of trees wavering before him. They reached and stretched, up and up and up toward the cupola above. But the stars were out that night, the glass shadowed by snow-heavy clouds. In a way I sat beside him in the doorway, my knee knocking his. But only in my mind. In flesh I was sprawled out in Ronen’s pitch-black guest room, Pepper stretched across my belly.
Unlikely, I said. I heard the baby bawling in the distance, the cat yawning on top of me. In Raza Ait I heard the wind blow. I couldn’t hear my own heart. Many things are unlikely. You are unlikely. I am unlikely. We—
I don’t speak from a lack of faith, zeze! In the dark of the night, Vadix laughed at me, but there was fear behind his laughter. You would face so many dangers. The beasts! You met one, did you not?
I did. I remembered Deklan’s body, gored straight through, the yellow horn dripping blood. I remembered mouths packed full of teeth. Savage, wild eyes.
Then you know the impossibility of this.
I ran my hand over Pepper’s knobby back. The cat had teeth, and claws that he loved to sharpen against the leg of my brother’s galley table. He was sweet, but sometimes dangerous, too, like when he slipped out an open door and returned dragging a squirrel by the scruff of its neck—its little belly already open and licked clean. I remembered the Ahadizhi vehicle that had swept up through the forest, a stream of color: red and gold, purple and green. And their intoxicating music lacing its refrain around my heart.
Tell me what happens in the winter, I said. When the Guardians are awake and you walk in the dreamforests.
Vadix stretched his long legs out, putting his slippered feet against the cold ground. He looked up, as if he could see the storm looming beyond the glass. But he couldn’t—the cupola was clouded with condensation, opaque as polished steel.
I have never seen it, he began. Of course, I have only ever slept through the long season. But I have read the accounts kept by our Guardians. They leave their work in the winter to defend our city—forming parties that hunt twice daily. The old and the young. The feeble and the strong. With their prods and knives and songs, they fell the beasts. So that we may be restored to life in spring and repair the damage done to our cities, so that we may all live in peace.
And what happens if they don’t?
Vadix closed his eyes. In his memory I could see the shadowed spaces where he retreated during the winter. The dank smell of cave was all around. But the mouth of that dim space was open, filled with light.
We are vulnerable. Without them we die. Our partnership dies. Our city dies. We have no industry. No ingenuity. We are just slender vines at the whim of tearing claws. We are impoverished. Defenseless. This is why the Xollu are afraid. We all know it, down to the root. Our essential weakness.
It was true. If I dug deep inside him, uncovering the parts of him he’d worked so hard to hide, I could see his fear. Taste it too. He was little more than a quivering child, flinching at every wind that passed. I shifted in bed, unseating Pepper. He stretched, then sank down again, tucking his black nose between his paws.
Could humans be taught to hunt?
I do not know. You are clever. But you are also prey. The Ahadizhi art raises desires in you. It is hypnotizing to you—tempting. I know. I have felt it in you. That day in the city, when you were almost lost to me.
I cast my head to the side. On my desk sat my sketchbook, scattered with pencils. I’m an artist too. Maybe I can learn to resist it—to be like them. There might even be others on the ship. People who can dance and sing, or play instruments. There hasn’t been much room in our lives for art, but maybe once we settle on the planet, there will be.
Vadix sounded hopeful—cautious but hopeful. Perhaps.
You need to ask them for me. You need to make this happen. Please, Vadix?
He didn’t answer, not right away. Instead he only sat back on his steps, turned his gaze up, and watched the snow begin to blanket the cupola.
• • •
That night I dreamed alone.
When was the last time that had happened? It must have been ages and ages ago, while the ship was still drifting through open space. Lately I’d become accustomed to meeting him at night. Even if we spoke without speaking, even if our minds were together more and more as the days went on, there were always moments of tumult, of darkness—moments that could only be healed by his touch. When we walked through the dreamforests together, I knew that I wasn’t alone, wrong and strange. I knew that I was understood. Strong. Beautiful. Solid. Real. His lips were a reminder that I was someone worth kissing; his arms an assurance that I was worth holding, too. I looked forward to our nights together. I craved them, like a hungry ghost, insatiable.
So on that night, when I stumbled through the dark corners of my own mind, I couldn’t help but feel unsettled. Where was he? He was supposed to be here, my support, my scaffolding. Cradling my hand in his hand and saying my name. Reminding me that I was still a living creature, not just some small scrap of memory left behind when my father died.
Abba. He was here in my dream, his voice echoing down the long hallway of the house where I grew up. I took ponderous steps down it; the hall seemed to stretch longer and longer. When I opened his bedroom door, I found him sitting on the bed. It was wrong, all wrong. He was dead, and nothing would ever change that. But then he smiled, and it didn’t matter. My Abba’s true smile, wide and gummy. It had been years since I’d seen him smile like that.
“I’ve been packing,” he said, turning to a basket full
of clothes beside him. I glanced down. There they were, those corduroy uniforms, each shoulder marked by a blue rank cord.
“For what?” I asked. I braced myself for bad news, that Abba, my strange, temperamental father, would take off with Silvan for the Earth again. But he only shook his head, letting out a chuckle that went on just a beat too long.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it?”
My father nodded his bald head. He lifted his index fingers, glancing between them. “It seems to me that there are two options. Zehava or death.”
That’s when I realized that he didn’t know. He didn’t remember dying up in those rafters—hung from the frayed piece of rope that was still knotted through ancient wood. I studied his features—the feather of hair surrounding his bald head, the single silver eyebrow hair that gnarled up out of the black ones, the pores along the side of his face, all ruddy from shaving. All these details that I had forgotten, the tiny markers that had once proved that he was a living, breathing man.
His eyelashes shivered. I wondered what would happen if I told him the truth, that he was dead, gone already. Would he be upset? Would he vanish, like smoke? In my dream my father had packed for a trip—seven pairs of identical trousers, identically folded, small scraps of paper, a pressed flower that had once been Momma’s. He didn’t want to die. Tonight he wanted to come with me, to finally achieve tikkun olam.
“I guess it’s Zehava, then,” I said, and pressed a kiss into his forehead. My father leaned into my lips’ touch. I got a strong whiff of him. Wine and cedar boards. Dust.
• • •
I woke with my body sopped with sweat, the sheets tangled around my torso.
“Vadix!” I called, out loud, until I heard my voice echo against the blackness and clamped a hand over my mouth. Afraid of waking the baby, I spoke silently instead.
Vadix, where are you? A pause, too long, so I added in a panic: Are you all right?
I waited a long time for him to answer. I pulled myself upright, feeling my heart pound right through my nightshirt. Touching a hand to my throat, I listened to myself breathe. What if he was gone? I thought of the inviting darkness of the funerary fields, the desire that urged him to join Velsa. But I shook that thought away. He was alive somewhere down there in the city. His compulsion to join Velsa wasn’t just a memory but a real, present wish, that indelible part of himself that never would be washed away.
Vadix! I chided, more firmly this time, and I felt his awareness slam into mine, hard. I closed my eyes against the dark, saw the gray fingers of light come dawning in the glass over Raza Ait. The whole city was like a bud, gently unfurling in the spring.
He stood on the senate steps, his shadow dim and long out in front of him. He was tired, so very tired; he hadn’t slept a single wink that night. That’s why we hadn’t roamed together through the forests. He’d never even gone to bed, much less succumbed to dreams.
And yet somehow, inexplicably, he was happy. I felt his mouth stretch from earslit to earslit, the air cold against the dozens of tiny blades that were his teeth. The emotion that filled his chest wasn’t heaviness or dread, or even his old, familiar friend solitude. It was something else, some small, giddy sliver of hope.
I have a gift for you, he said. He watched Xarki peek out over the shadows of the tallest buildings at the city’s edge. In the morning the skyline looked jagged and full. Even though it was still dark in Ronen’s guest bedroom, I found myself squinting, resisting the sun’s beams.
A gift?
I sat straighter in bed, kicking the blankets back. There was only one thing I wanted. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I wanted him, too, thousands of nights with him, time to grow old, to have our first fight, to sleep beside him as humanity put down roots on Aur Evez. But barring that? The only thing I really wanted was a home. A small patch of land all my own.
They’ve agreed to let us stay? I asked. But Vadix pulled back, smoothing his lips.
No. They’ve agreed to let you speak to the senate. A hearing. First thing tomorrow morning.
The senate. I’d only glimpsed it through the antechamber glass—rows upon rows of gold-robed Xollu, hundreds of Ahadizhi all talking at once. Me? Speak to them? I’d hardly been able to speak to my own people.
I—I can’t!
I will be with you, he said gently. They have agreed to let me translate for you. After what happened with Aleksandra, they will not hear anyone else. But I vouched for you. I told them of your character.
I grabbed my blankets in both fists, tugging at the soft fabric. This wasn’t what I’d expected, not at all. Vadix didn’t even try to hide his disappointment.
I did this for you! Your people! Your future and your safety. You will be the first animal to ever speak in the senate room. The first! I know your words will move them. He paused, feeling the warmth of the sun as it began to crown the sky overhead. They have done much to move me.
Even in the cool dark of the empty room, I felt my cheeks heat. Thank you, I said. I felt something rumble back in response. A tiny crackle of something—laughter.
Do not thank me yet, zeze. We have much work to do still.
27
Though I would be the only human allowed in the senate room, Vadix suggested I bring a team of advisers with me to Raza Ait. For me the choice was easy. That morning I’d board a shuttle with Mara Stone and with Mordecai. My teachers, who had taught me more in my years on the ship than anyone else. I couldn’t imagine departing again without them. We planned to travel alone, the three of us and a shuttle pilot. Vadix assured me that we needed no guards, and besides, they were occupied that morning. With their sonic rifles in hand, they gathered the children who roamed the streets of the ship and herded them toward their homes—accomplishing in a few hours what the Council had failed to do in days.
But we were surprised that morning when we went to board our shuttle and found someone waiting for us. Standing tall in white wool, the rank cord vibrant against his shoulder, was Silvan Rafferty.
“What are you doing here?” Mara demanded, her craggy voice hard. Silvan only put his hands on his hips.
“The peace you’re brokering concerns us, too. We need to divide the ship’s resources fairly. The Asherati need a say.”
It was the first time I realized that, after this, we would no longer be Asherati. We’d be something else—Zehavans. Colonists. Different. New. I put my hand on Mara’s shoulder and pulled her gently away.
“He’s right,” I said. “He’s their leader, and they deserve a voice too. He can come.”
“Are you sure, Terra?” Rebbe Davison asked. I looked at Silvan, at the proud, firm set of his jaw. And nodded.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
On the long journey over we tried to prepare him for what he’d find in Raza Ait. We told him about the copper city, domed against the impending winter. We told him about the beasts that roamed the mountainous wilds. Mara explained how the plants there were different from ours: motile rather than grounded; purple, not green. Silvan nodded. He seemed to understand. But for some reason he had trouble with the idea of the people there.
“Talking plants,” he said, snorting through the glass of his flight suit helmet. “It makes no sense. It has to be a joke. It just has to be.”
“It’s no joke,” Mara said peevishly. “And you’d better not go saying that around our hosts. Until they decide we can stay, we’re going to be guests on this planet, you know. We need to act graciously.”
Beneath the glass of his helmet I saw Silvan go a shade paler. I don’t think he’d ever been called out like that before, not by someone like Mara Stone. After a moment of visible discomfort—eyebrows knitted up, jaw tight—he relaxed and let out a burst of laughter.
“Fine! Though you’re one to talk about niceties, Mara Stone. ‘As hard as a rock,’ that’s what Abba always said about you. I can see that he was right. You do your job, and you do it well. We’ll be sad to lose a good special
ist like yourself. A fine worker. And a fine citizen.”
There was a gleam in his eye. And hers. She pursed her lips, but I couldn’t say she didn’t look at least a little flattered.
“Oh, come off it,” she said.
• • •
The workers had brought their boats in for the winter. The pier itself was blanketed in gray. If, once, the edge of their cloistered world had seemed open to me—ocean and sky, stretching on forever—that had been lost to the season. The world’s curving lip had disappeared behind a thicket of fog. Though it wasn’t snowing now, it might as well have been. That’s how dense the air seemed as we stepped out of the shuttle.
I couldn’t help but think that this was how it should have been from the beginning. Careful. Planned. Not the insane quest of a half-drunk girl, her heart full of fear and her mind running wild. Beneath my flight suit I wore the robes I’d borrowed from Vadix, their downy-soft fabric hugging my body tight. I may not have been dressed like a senator, but I hoped I looked like someone worthy of entering the senate chamber. My hair was combed, my eyes bright, even after eight hours of voyage through the silence of space. I’d put on makeup, returning to the ritual that I’d adopted during the era of my romance with Silvan Rafferty. It had been a comfort to me then; it was one now, too. And I needed everything I could get to calm my nerves that day. After all, I was about to see Vadix.
I knew he was there waiting for me. I could see the world through his gaze—the end of the long pier as he hustled down it through a rolling fog. In the murky distance he spotted a flash of light. Was it faint yellow sunlight against the water, or the gleam of a white hull, long preserved within the belly of our ship? I waved away Silvan’s hand, pulling myself out of the shuttle alone.
I’m here, I said. It’s me!
Vadix headed a pack of lesser senators, each one garbed in a silver shade that seemed to disappear into the cold of the world beyond. But he wore blue, vibrant and bright. It matched his skin, his hands, his lips, which parted at the sight of me.