Starbreak Read online

  He spoke in a rush, like he was trying to convince himself. Trying to convince me. But he was wrong. I’d never met anyone who had dreams like mine—dreams of a crowded jungle, filled with vines, where flesh touched flesh across hundreds of kilometers. It was special. It had to be. I shook my head.

  “Please, Vadix. If I mean anything to you, let me speak to the senate with Mara Stone. My people are in danger. I’m in danger. If you don’t help us, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

  He stood there, his long, flexible limbs stiff. At last he answered.

  “They say that a Xollu is even hungrier than an Ahadizhi,” he said. “Not for meat. For knowledge.”

  “You want to know the truth as badly as I do,” I said in a low voice. “The truth about me, and you, and our dreams.”

  He didn’t deny it. But he didn’t agree, either.

  “I must go,” he said instead, and turning on his slender feet, he rushed out the door, and left me sitting there, on the crinkling paper, alone.

  • • •

  When they brought us back to the quarantine camp, the Ahadizhi had already delivered the day’s ration of meat. The shuttle crew worked in silence, sorting out the good from the bad, the rancid from the fresh. As they worked, Aleksandra sat on the edge of the fire pit and continued to detail her plan. From what I could hear, it involved fashioning weapons from the sticks they’d given us to roast our food, rushing the Ahadizhi when they returned the next morning to take the men, and fighting our way out of Raza Ait.

  I thought of the world beyond. The crowded city, filled with sharp-toothed hunters and delicate scholars, who would watch, fascinated and birdlike, as the Asherati were torn to pieces. It was dangerous, crazy, but aside from Rebbe Davison, their eyes were all bright—even Ettie’s—as Aleksandra gathered up the roasting sticks and set them to work sharpening the ends into points.

  I sat alone, turning my meeting with Vadix over and over again in my mind. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have expected this strange boy to listen to my pleas. But these circumstances weren’t normal. I knew him. Nothing else could explain the electricity of his touch, or the way he’d looked at me, his head angled down, his soft mouth open. Maybe he would listen to me. Maybe . . .

  “What did he do to you?”

  The log beneath me suddenly bent with the weight of another body. Laurel. Her expression was flat as she stared into the fire.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She sighed, and pushed her dingy curls away from her face. “We all heard you talking to the translator. Heard him asking for you.”

  I winced at the memory. Waving my arms at him, shouting, shoving to the front of the crowd. In my urgency I’d forgotten that there were others watching. Of course, my eager shouts hadn’t inspired confidence in Laurel. They’d been the childish cries of a girl, calling out for her boyfriend as he walked across the dome.

  “Nothing,” I said, ignoring how my cheeks had begun to heat. “We just talked.”

  “Oh,” Laurel said. Then, after a moment, she let out a small, humorless laugh. “I thought maybe he . . . I thought he touched you. You’ve been so quiet.”

  “Touched” me? I turned my head sharply, staring at Laurel. She’d been quiet too since we’d returned from the hospital. We all had—all except for Aleksandra.

  “Laurel?” I asked, reaching out and grabbing her by the arm. She flinched away from my hand, bending her fingers into a tight fist. “What did they do to you?”

  “Nothing!” she said, a high blush crawling over her cheeks, making her freckles nearly invisible. “It wasn’t like that. They just examined us, and put us in this tube. Scanned us. But I can’t stand being around them after what happened to Deklan. And it’s not even just that. There’s something about them. It makes my skin crawl. The way they move. It’s just not human, just not right. Sitting there in that little room, I just got more and more nauseated. And the smell of them . . .”

  I thought of the summer-sweet scent of Vadix as he stood beside me. An unconscious smile lifted my lips. But then I noticed her watching me, and I hardened my mouth into a frown.

  “What’s wrong with their smell?”

  “It’s just not human!”

  Laurel was right; they weren’t human beings, not at all. The people I had known all had the same odor—musky, like the recycled gray water on the ship. With our water rations and our hard work, few Asherati smelled like roses. Momma’s hands had been dusted by the odor of yeast and flour; Abba’s clothes had been perfumed by the cedar boards in the clock tower where he’d worked. Field-workers smelled like fresh-turned dirt. Granary workers like dust and corn silk. But I’d grown used to the smell of flowers. Their pollen stained my lab coats yellow, and the mossy scent of the greenhouses stuck to my trousers and hair. Vadix’s scent was like that, only amplified tenfold. Sweet, pungent, rich.

  “It’s not,” I finally agreed. “Because they’re not like us. And if we’re going to live here among them, then we have to get used to it.”

  “Among them,” she said, and shook her head. “But Aleksandra says that we can’t. She says that we need to get back to the ship and land the dome. She says it doesn’t matter what they want.”

  I glanced over at Aleksandra, at the way she brandished one of the hand-wrought spears and jabbed the air with it. Her body seemed so lithe, strong despite the trials of the past several days. If anyone could push their way out of the city, Aleksandra probably could.

  But it wasn’t going to work, I felt sure of that. It was too dangerous—would be too bloody.

  “It’s a terrible plan,” I said, turning back to Laurel and dropping my voice down low. “The city is full of aliens. You’ll die, Laurel.”

  She watched me impassively, her mouth a faint line.

  “We have weapons,” she said at last.

  “Sticks! They have knives and prods and who knows what else.”

  There was a long stretch of silence. We watched the other adults pick up their spears and skewer the air. Their movements were far less graceful than Aleksandra’s but just as forceful.

  “It’s our only way out of this place,” Laurel said at last. She lifted herself up from the log, then gestured overhead—to the white canopy, the city’s cupola, and to space, far, far beyond. “I just want to go home, Terra. There’s nothing for me here. Not without Deck.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I looked at her, swallowing hard to chase away the lump in my throat. I’d never convince her, not me, not after all that had happened. And besides, she didn’t even give me a chance. She only shook her head, once, twice, then went to join the others.

  I didn’t stick around to watch her pick up a spear. Instead I rose, and ducked inside my tent. Squeezing my eyes closed, I willed the whole world—Laurel, Aleksandra, the city, all of it—away.

  13

  He waited for me in the forest. Or maybe I waited for him. It wasn’t clear how the physics of this place worked. Sometimes I felt like the paths were familiar, an extension of the domed forests of my childhood but grown wild in the corners of my mind. Sometimes the paths felt new and strange and foreign—as foreign as his body, foreign as him. But there he was, at the center of them, and there I was, and we both hurried down the overcrowded paths toward each other, our bare feet slapping against the flattened soil as we drew near.

  But we stopped just short of touching. We watched each other, cautious, uncertain. Now that we’d seen each other in the flesh, how could we ever go back to that raw state where we tumbled together and I kissed him until I couldn’t tell where my mouth ended and his body began? When I’d believed him to be imaginary, it had been easy to draw him into my arms. But now that he was Vadix . . .

  Is Mara Stone here yet? I asked. His lips parted. He wet them again—a nervous tic. I was beginning to see so many, like how he touched his hand to his chest when he spoke, covering a wound that was buried deep under his translucent skin.

  The botanist, he said. No, she has
not arrived. But her shuttle should touch the planet shortly.

  Good, I said. And then, silence. I wasn’t sure what to say.

  You are not supposed to be here, he said at last, in the dreamforests.

  Familiar vines dripped across the treetops and crept over the path, enveloping our ankles and toes. They didn’t seem to mind my presence here.

  No? I asked. He shook his head: no.

  It is the purview of the Xollu alone. Not even Ahadizhi come here. Our Guardians say they dream only of the hunt. Their dream lands are killing fields.

  And what are your dream lands?

  Vadix was serious at first, but then a shade of a smile lit the corner of his mouth. He held out a hand. A nearby tree stretched down, settling a fruit inside his palm. He picked it, and held it in his palm, caressing the fuzz that covered its tender flesh.

  Fertile grounds. This is where we walk with our mates even when we cannot be with them in the flesh. Over short nights and long winters. Our scripture says the god and goddess made this place for us. It is where our souls live before we sprout, and where we return when we die. This is why, when we close our eyes at night, we feel ourselves returning to familiar lands. Because we are. Dreamforests. Ahar Taiza.

  I held out my own hand. A nearby tree wrapped a branch around it, encircling my wrist like a bracelet. Our dreams aren’t like this, I said. The things we see and learn and do in them aren’t real. I don’t understand how this works.

  Vadix dropped the fruit. Where it settled in the rich black earth, a dozen seedlings sprouted and grew, all while we watched.

  How does your dreaming work? he asked.

  I don’t know, I said. I felt myself blush at my own ignorance. Electricity and synapses, I guess.

  For us, it is the same. Electricity and synapses. One guesses. He smiled then, the toothiest of possible grins. A joke. He’d told a joke. But he didn’t give me time to get over the shock of the strange sight of sunshine in his endlessly dark eyes. When the Xollu still clung to caves, we had no words. We spoke with our minds. Chemical connections, hormonal. But we are limited. We speak only to our mates. From the first moment we are sprouted, we walk together, aware of another’s thoughts as we are our own. This is why we walk the dreamforests. First as sprouts, going hand in hand. Friends. Doing all things together, until we are grown. Living and breathing and mating and thinking. Electricity and synapses. Chemical. Eternal. Shared.

  Vadix told me all of this, standing before me, blue and bare. He wasn’t like the other Xollu, nor the plants that swirled around us. The fruit that moldered on the forest floor was ruby red. The vines that wrapped my arm? Red too. But he was blue. Different.

  You’re alone, I said. And just like that, the smile was gone, vanished as if it had never really been there at all.

  Yes, he said. I am alone. And you are not supposed to be here.

  Just like that, the forests were gone, and I was pulled into the ocean of blackest sleep.

  • • •

  I woke to raucous shouts, the sound of rough voices lifting up through the muggy air. Pulling myself from my sleeping roll, I parted the dingy flap to step into the bright light of day. Before the fire, silhouetted against the camp’s white walls, Aleksandra’s small army of recruits practiced. I stood watching as they thrust their spears into the air over and over again. Even Ettie, who made clumsy movements with a weapon ill-balanced for her small body, jabbed that whittled-down stick and let out a shout: “Yah!”

  But Aleksandra wasn’t among them. She leaned her weight on her spear, listening as Rebbe Davison screamed until his ears turned red.

  “She’s only a child! You will not endanger her!”

  The captain’s daughter remained calm in the face of his anger. “We can’t leave her here, Mordecai.”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s doing!”

  Aleksandra walked toward Ettie, setting a hand on the child’s small shoulder. “We all deserve a chance to protect ourselves.”

  Rebbe Davison let out a sound of frustration, throwing both hands into their air. Stomping hard, he came toward me, and collapsed on a log in front of the fire. I sat beside him.

  “Don’t you need to train?” I asked.

  “I don’t fight unless I have to,” he said. Then he added, with a wince: “Aleksandra never had to be here. She should have been up there on that ship. All those years, watching and waiting. Just because we rushed down to the surface didn’t mean she needed to follow. And now she’s going to get a little girl killed just to get back to it. Maybe we’ll all die. It makes no difference to her.”

  I didn’t know what to say. There was no sign of Vadix yet, and none of Mara Stone. I had no assurance that the translator would do as I asked, and if he didn’t, I’d be as vulnerable to Aleksandra’s decisions as anyone else.

  Maybe more, I thought, watching as she thrust the spear through the air.

  “Did you think about what I said?” asked Mordecai, casting his gaze sidelong at me. He didn’t look at me, not directly. His words were merely a low murmur. “I’ll support you if you want to take up the mantle.”

  “Why me?” I whispered swiftly in response. “Why not you?”

  My teacher let out a low laugh. “I decided a long time ago that I’m a scholar, not a leader.”

  “And you want me to lead?” I asked, dry laughter seeping into my own voice. “Of course I want to get us out of here safely. I want to find a way for us to settle here too. But I’m no leader, Rebbe Davison. I’m clumsy, awkward. I’m always late. Can hardly keep a secret. I mean, look at Aleksandra. She was born to lead.”

  We watched her pause in her thrusts to show Ettie the proper way to hold her spear. The way she gripped it suggested deftness that went beyond competency. I wondered, for a moment, how many men and women Aleksandra had taught to kill. She’d been a leader for the guard once, after all. But my old teacher only let out a snort of laughter.

  “She does look like she knows what she’s doing, doesn’t she? That’s always been her trick. Her mother’s, too. Don’t show any fears or doubts and the people will follow. You could learn that too, Terra. I’ve known you since you were a toddler. You’re bright. You learn easily. But more important, you’re a good person. I know dozens of rebels. But none I trust more to put the peoples’ needs first.”

  I looked down at the toes of my flight boots. They were scuffed from our long journey, my feet inside blistered and dirty. Rebbe Davison didn’t know what I had done, the violence I’d wrought on that night in the Rafferty’s quarters. I was a vengeful killer, blood on my hands. No better than Aleksandra, certainly. And probably much worse.

  “I don’t think so,” I began. “I’m not like her, not in the ways that matter.”

  As if to underscore that point, Aleksandra spun toward us, thrusting her spear through the air. There was a flash of brown, a high-pitched whistle, and then an echoing thud. The spear missed us, but narrowly, or perhaps it had fallen precisely where she intended. It jutted out of the log between our hips, swaying between us from the force of impact.

  When we finally turned our wide eyes forward, it was to the sight of Aleksandra walking square-shouldered toward us. Behind her the others paused in their lesson. They couldn’t hide the shock that left their mouths open and gaping.

  “Aren’t you two going to join us?” she asked, false sweetness lacing her voice. But I knew better. Aleksandra wasn’t sweet. She was anything but. For a moment I tasted my heart in my mouth; I worried she might walk straight through the fire to reach us. But she only stopped at the circle’s edge, resting her boot against one of the taller stones.

  “I think I’m going to sit this one out,” Rebbe Davison said, holding up both hands. Funny, I’d never noticed before how my teacher’s palms were calloused, knotty with scars. I’d known him all these years, but I knew so little about his life.

  “We’re in this together, Mordecai.” She didn’t even bother looking me in the eye. This wasn’t about me; it was abo
ut her and her old friend. But Rebbe Davison only shrugged.

  “I wasn’t—” he began, but his words were cut short. The camp gates swung open, and there stood Vadix, broad shouldered and swaying in the wake of those metal links.

  “Damn!” Aleksandra said. She had no spear now, no weapon to flash at him. She looked toward to her newly gathered army, but they all hesitated, every single one, clutching their spears to their chests. Finally, with a cry of impatience, Aleksandra’s hand reached into the open flap of her flight suit. I saw a glint of light catch on metal. Her knife. The Ahadizhi must have missed it when they frisked us at the city’s gates, wrenching our guns from our hands.

  “No!” I cried, rushing to my feet. “He’s here to help! Stop her!”

  My steps forward were clumsy, slow—too slow.

  But Rebbe Davison was faster.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him pull the spear from the log’s damp wood. He didn’t throw it at Aleksandra. He was too unschooled for that. But he ran toward her and took a mighty swing, striking her square in the back.

  There was a great burst of dust as she fell forward. She didn’t cry out. None of us did. There was only silence as her knife went spinning on the ground and landed at Vadix’s feet.

  “You!” Aleksandra roared as she pulled her body up. Rebbe Davison was frozen, the spear still pointed toward her. Weaponless now, Aleksandra wasn’t going to test him. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t wound him, not at all. “You idiot! You do what she says?”

  “He hasn’t harmed you.” Rebbe Davison spoke through gritted teeth. The translator only stood frozen, as calm as still water, at the camp’s open gate. “There’s no need to strike him down in cold blood.”

  “Cold blood,” Aleksandra said. She wiped the back of her hand against her mouth, where a trickle of red had appeared. “I’ll tell you about cold blood. That girl?”

  My hands went icy; my eyes went wide. I’d carried the burden of Mazdin Rafferty’s death with me across the Zehavan wilderness, but I’d never spoken of it aloud. Did the rebels already know what I’d done, or had Aleksandra kept her knowledge to herself? What would my teacher think of the news? Laurel? Ettie?