Starbreak Read online

  I turned over on my stinking blankets. It was time I admitted the truth to myself. My dreams were nothing like Rachel’s dreams. And they weren’t like Koen’s, either. Both Koen and Rachel might have dreamed of boys, of kisses, of frantic flesh pressed to flesh. But their dreams had never invaded the waking world with such color or force. They never dreamed of constellations and then, only after, found those stars shining overhead. They never dreamed of boys who then walked into their lives, speaking foreign languages, their alien bodies fragrant as summer flowers. I really was different from the other Asherati. I was freakish. Weird.

  Aleksandra knew it. She’d seen that difference in me and sneered. But maybe my difference wasn’t only a weakness. Maybe it could be a strength, too. After all, it had gotten us down from that mountain. And it had stopped the Ahadizhi from slaughtering us. I knew things. Things that Aleksandra didn’t. Things that she could never, ever know.

  His body. His mouth. His name.

  “Vadix.”

  As I rose on shaking legs and pulled myself from the condensation-dusted tent, I saw Rebbe Davison break away from the others. He stood over me, staring into the fire—far enough away that it might have been coincidence or happenstance. When he spoke, it was out of the corner of his mouth.

  “This is dreck, all of it. She’s going to get us killed.”

  I watched her as she stood among them, proudly orating. Their eyes were wide at the prospect of freedom; smiles lifted their lips.

  “Look at her,” I said. “She’s their leader. She was born for it. They’d follow her off a cliff.”

  “Someone else could lead.”

  His words spilled out into the humid air with all the levity of lead. I turned to look up at him, though his gaze was still fixed forward into the fire.

  “What? Me?”

  “Yes, you. You were right—you know things about this planet that no one else does. I don’t understand it, but I know how powerful you are. Necessary.”

  I snorted. “Necessary? I’m not even a real botanist yet.”

  “With the right people behind you,” Rebbe Davison said, his voice dipping down low, “you could be whatever you want.”

  When I didn’t answer, Rebbe Davison bent over and tossed another log onto the fire. As the flames crackled and billowed, hiding us from the others, he flashed his gaze to me.

  “Just think about it,” he said, then rushed off to rejoin the others.

  I did. Me, a leader. I imagined myself dressed in wool, my shoulders squared, my hair combed straight. It was absurd. There had been days when I’d wanted to belong, to be swept up in the tide of the Children of Abel, to feel loved, supported, safe. But I’d never wanted power. I’d never even considered it.

  But he was right. My connection to the translator was a sort of power—a gift, unasked for, unearned.

  Vadix. Vadix, I said to myself, the name just as much a question as an invocation.

  Funny thing. In my head, I could have sworn I heard another voice come echoing back. Not the murmured, familiar sound of my own inner voice. But a strong tenor with a hint of music somewhere behind it.

  Terra?

  My eyes went wide. I stared into the flames, and waited.

  • • •

  Soon the Ahadizhi arrived again, brandishing their silver-handled prods. This time they grabbed the women. But we went willingly. Even Aleksandra rose from where she’d been crouched down for more than an hour, flicking her thick braid over her shoulder and lifting her chin up high as she stood. It was all part of her plan—comply for now so that the Asherati attack could catch the aliens off guard. Only Ettie hung back, hiding behind Rebbe Davison. Hannah bent low, putting her hands on her thighs.

  “They won’t hurt you, Ettie,” she said, though her own owlish expression had some fear behind it. “They just want to study you.”

  Ettie turned to me.

  “Aren’t you frightened?” she asked. But I was too busy scanning the scattered group of Xollu who had gathered around the gate. I didn’t see him there, not at first, but I felt him, a steady pull that began somewhere deep in my belly and then tugged upward, through my throat and solar plexus before drawing me out.

  “No,” I said at last, as an Ahadizhi spun a length of rope around and around my wrists. One word ran through my mind. Vadix. Vadix.

  Finally I found him—a flash of blue skin at the back of the crowd. I ambled forward, ignoring the sparking prods that stood in my way.

  Vadix, I thought, hard. And just like that he lifted his black eyes up. I studied his features, forcing myself to look at him—really look—for the first time.

  His body seemed as strange and boneless as the rest of them, moving with unnatural flexibility and grace. But there was something handsome about him too. He was tall and skinny, richly dressed in opalescent robes. The pleats and folds formed an oil slick of green, and they rippled with purple thread. The lips that murmured orders to the others—“Zhesedi ate!”—were thick and full. But serious. There wasn’t even the slightest hint of a smile behind them. When he flashed his teeth, it was only for a moment, and then away again, gone. Hannah was right. He carried his sadness with him. I could see it in the firm line of his jaw, in his studied movements. I imagined I saw it even in the endless depths of his eyes.

  Soon I stood in front of him.

  “Vadix,” I said, the words floating, strong and clear, between us, “I need to talk to you.”

  He tried to look away again, tried to deny it—deny me, deny us. I couldn’t let him. It was either this or go back to the ship’s dome. And I couldn’t do that—my body objected to the very idea.

  His fingers were moving as he spoke, but I caught his arm, holding one wrist in the cup of my bound hands. His deep blue skin was cold and smooth. There was none of the fine fur of my own skin, no wrinkles, no warmth of veins beneath. But there was something else. A jolt, raw and live. I hadn’t known fire before I’d come to Zehava, but I knew electricity—the danger of exposed wires in the damp dome, the blue-white light of a single spark.

  I startled back. He did too, his lozenge-shaped eyes gone huge and wild. My heart was frantic, thrumming in my chest as one of the Ahadizhi butted me with his prod and pushed me through the open gates.

  But I heard Vadix call out to the Ahadizhi grunt, his strong tenor voice lifting a smile to my lips.

  “Tatoum dauosoum daidd esedezhi dheseolo ut daosoez xaizu. Dauosoum zadix dheseolo, voze eseouu, aum daosoez zhiahaoloe!” He added, in Asheran, words that could be only for me, “Bring her to me.”

  12

  The building they took us to might have been a hospital, but it was nothing like the three-storied square of old brick we knew on the ship. The outside was a narrow tower of green metal that reached up and up toward the sparkling cupola, and it was dotted with a hundred gleaming windows of every possible hue. Between the round panels of glass, violet vines craned upward, coating the sills with their curling fingers. The building branched toward the top into separate compartments, looking as much like a tree as it did any inorganic structure. But we wouldn’t see the topmost towers—and we wouldn’t glimpse the city below through colored glass.

  Instead they took us into a basement. After the searing light of the afternoon, it was strange to step into a shadowed interior space again. The halls were painted white, and they sweat with copper-tinted condensation, leaving green streaks on the curved walls, and our mouths full of the taste of metal.

  The Ahadizhi led us down the corridor. Most of the women were silent. Laurel kept her head low, her curls shadowing her face. Hannah just set her jaw, like she was used to every insult the aliens could possibly offer. Ettie cried silently. But if Aleksandra was afraid, she refused to show it. In fact, she wasted no time in finding me. We walked shoulder to shoulder like old friends. But of course we both knew better.

  “I don’t know what you’re plotting,” she murmured, “but whatever it is, it won’t work.”

  At first her words did noth
ing to deter me. I walked with my shoulders squared. Then she leaned her arm into mine. From anyone else it would have been a fond, friendly gesture. But she pushed, hard.

  My heart pounded wildly as I tried to grab the cool, slick metal of the wall. But before I could answer her, an Ahadizhi nudged me with his stick, whistling a command.

  “Dhahare elez!”

  I staggered to my feet, groping at the sloping wall with my bound hands. As I hurried to catch up, I shouted out to her.

  “I’m not plotting anything!”

  “I saw you and Mordecai chatting,” she called back. “Remember who you are, Terra. A petty lackey, prone to fits of rage. We both know what you did to Mar Rafferty. Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

  I stopped where I stood, my mouth hanging open. I needed to say something, to strike her back, proving that I could be cunning and dangerous too.

  “I saw what happened in that field!” I called, but Aleksandra only flicked her braid over her shoulder with her bound hands and kept walking.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” was all she said.

  • • •

  But of course she did. I’d seen it, in that frost-covered cornfield, watched as red blood sank into the brown earth. Aleksandra was a killer. I was sure of that. And now she seemed intent on leading the rest of us toward destruction too. She glowered as the Ahadizhi separated us, shoving her into a cell. But there was nothing she could do, not yet.

  As I sat in my own narrow compartment, I smoothed out my hair with one hand, sat straight and tried to look like someone who hadn’t spent the last several days unwashed. Aleksandra’s words had only galvanized my anger and my fear into something hard, hot—useful. I would convince Vadix to help us. He would be swayed to our side. Unlike Aleksandra, I knew that without the help of the aliens, all hope would be lost. Not just for me, though my stomach clenched to think that I might have a long road ahead alone. But all of us—Hannah and Laurel, Rebbe Davison and Ettie, too.

  I shifted on the crinkly paper that covered the table, clutching my hands in my lap. My knuckles were veined with blue and yellow lines beneath the shadow of days of dirt. They weren’t very strong hands. I could think of only one day they’d served me well—the day I shook that poison into Mazdin Rafferty’s drink. But even that had been a tempestuous act. Nothing like that cool, calculated plot of Aleksandra’s, when she drew her mother into that field and slit her pale throat. How many years had she waited for that moment? How had she found that strength, that patience? It seemed to be eluding her now, as she snarled and hissed accusations. But it wasn’t as if my own heart were steady. It beat wildly, a series of staccato bursts. I drew in a breath and held it there. I needed to be calm, sane, if I was going to get the translator on my side.

  The door slid open. There was Vadix. His mouth formed a silent line. Beneath the bright light, his skin was as translucent as a jewel. His lips, slightly wet, parted. But he didn’t speak.

  “Vadix,” I said, testing his name against my tongue again. He flinched; it was a surprisingly human reaction.

  “How do you know this name?” he asked. His voice was high and clear—it made it that much easier to hear his offense.

  “I don’t know,” I said helplessly, lifting up my hands and dropping them against the paper. “You tell me—”

  “Terra.”

  He said my name. My name, two syllables so ripe they dripped juice down onto the metal ground below. It was almost enough to shake my resolve away, to make my hands dart out, lace his fingers in mine, and draw him close to me. But not quite. My hands were still in my lap, and he stayed frozen near the door of the little room. Not breathing at all.

  “This cannot be,” he said at last. “You are an animal. You are made out of meat.”

  Despite the gravity of the situation, I wanted to laugh at that. The absurdity pulled at my stomach, drawing all the air from it. But he seemed so serious. To him it was no laughing matter. His narrow earslits widened as he waited for my response.

  “They say you’re a plant,” I said. “Do you know how strange that is? A talking plant?”

  He shook his head. It was a very human thing to do. Maybe it was something he’d picked up from watching the shuttle crew over these last few weeks. From watching us.

  “There are no thinking animals here. When the Guardians found your people, they did not believe it. They thought them dinner.”

  “But not you?”

  “The Xollu do not partake of flesh.”

  My cheeks began to heat. It wasn’t until I pushed a tangle of hair back behind my burning ear that I realized he was talking about diet and not sex. In the wake of my embarrassment, I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Why have you brought us here?” I demanded at last. The words tumbled out, as sharp as an accusation. I winced at the sound of my own voice, but Vadix didn’t.

  “To study you. There is a Xollu pair, scientists. Ardex and Aile. They wish to see if there are any chemical differences between the human sexes, as there are among Xollu. The other females will have their bodies scanned today. Aile believes that despite your beastly nature, some females may have ethylene receptors—”

  “We’re not lab rats,” I said, but my words sounded dull—passionless. I knew that we would do the same if we were in their position. Shove them into cells, study them. Slice their skin down to slivers and hold them under a microscope, as I’d done to so many other plants, so many times before. Maybe we were more alike than I cared to admit.

  Vadix’s lips lifted, showing a thin line of teeth.

  “No. You are not. We are only trying to understand you. Your nature. The Ahadizhi, they have not believed that animals are capable of language, of logical thought.”

  “No?” I asked. “But they’ve heard us. They should know by now that we’re not just animals.”

  “Does the hunter believe that sounds a beast makes constitute more than growls and grunts? Of course not. But perhaps if we listened, we would find the beast believed differently.”

  “You’re a philosopher?”

  “No. I study the meaning behind words. Foreign words—foreign languages. Yours, for instance.”

  “Translator,” I said, angling my chin up. “Linguist. That’s what Hannah said.”

  Vadix nodded. “I study for many years in Aisak Ait. South of here, where the summer is longer. I learn to listen. But—”

  He reached a long finger up, touching his earslit. I watched him, wondering at the strange precision of the gesture.

  “But what?” I asked.

  “I understand more than I should. In the days after the first probe landed in Raza Ait, I was called to translate the glyphs atop it. It was easy, too easy. And then your shuttle crew arrived. I was summoned too. The words that spill from my lips? Too swift. I should not be able to speak to you so simply now.”

  I fell silent. The dreams—it had to be the dreams. They’d scattered knowledge through my mind too, images I should have never seen, words I shouldn’t have understood. But here we were.

  “Vadix—” I began, but, waving a three-fingered hand through the air, he cut me off.

  “No matter. The senate has grown weary of these experiments. You will not find yourself this ‘lab rat’ soon. They have asked me to call your ship’s botanist to the surface. She will speak to us, negotiate your people’s place on our world, if they might have any.”

  “Wait,” I said. My tongue felt suddenly heavy. “What?”

  “Your ship’s botanist. I have spoken to her myself, a ‘Mara Stone.’ She speaks to plants, does she not?”

  I brought my hands up over my mouth, smothering my shock. “Mara Stone?” I asked, through a web of fingers. “Vadix, she’s no diplomat.”

  “She is not?” He stood with his broad shoulders squared, his wide mouth firm. I saw then that he was stubborn—proud. He was the type of boy who didn’t like to be told he was wrong.

  “No,” I said carefully. “She studies plants. Whe
re we’re from, plants don’t talk.”

  A pause, a long one. Hurt and confusion bruised his full mouth. “No?”

  “No. Mara Stone is my teacher, and she—well, she’s not even very good at talking to people.”

  “She is a scholar, then? A scientist? Surely it will be fine.”

  I thought of my haughty little teacher, the diminutive woman with the crooked nose who liked to taunt and tease. And I cringed at the memory. But before I could warn Vadix, the door behind him shivered open, revealing a stern-faced Xollu.

  “Sale xaullek esedh, dora zhiosouek.”

  “Ehed sale!” he shouted back. “Vaulix aum xaullek razi.”

  The door closed. He turned back to me.

  “What did she say?” I asked

  “She said that the sproutling—a girl, I believe you call it? Her scans were quite unusual. High concentrations of phytodistress receptors. It is quite unusual, unlike anything they have seen in man.”

  “Phytodistress receptors? Like plants use to communicate damage?”

  The way his mouth opened was almost like a smile. It did something to me, for all that his lips were too wide and too full of far too many teeth. My belly and rib cage swelled with warmth. Yet he began to turn toward the door. “Yes. You understand. I should go translate for them before—”

  “Wait!”

  I reached out, setting my hand on his slender wrist. We both flinched at the spark that flew between us, but this time neither of us drew away.

  “Vadix,” I said, my voice low. Passionate. “You asked them to bring me to you because I knew your name. I shouldn’t know your name. I shouldn’t know anything about you. And you shouldn’t know anything about me, either.”

  For a moment the light that flashed at the back of his coal eyes was gentle. I felt certain he would bend his head down, press his lips to mine. My heart was beating very fast. But then he pulled his smooth wrist out from my fingers’ grasp.

  “Phytodistress receptors. The sproutling has them. You are young, are you not? Perhaps it is nothing special.”