Starbreak Read online

  “It’s a beautiful dress,” she said, leaning close. “Did you and Silvan have a chance to say your vows?”

  I lifted my arms, letting Laurel raise the reams of silk over my head. It came off in a stream of gold. I didn’t want to think of Silvan, not now—didn’t want to consider the wounded look he’d given me when I said I wouldn’t be his bride. This day was about me and the alien boy. Not about Silvan Rafferty.

  “No,” I whispered. My voice came out hoarse, strange. “No, we didn’t.”

  I hefted the suit’s sleeves up over my naked shoulders, then groped for the zipper. The synthetic material felt warm and clammy over my skin. When I turned, it was to see Laurel smiling sympathetically as she handed me back the bolts of golden silk.

  “Good,” she said. “Who’d wanna be married to a Council member, anyway?”

  She left me standing there in the shadows as she took the pilot’s seat. I clutched that fine, stupid dress against my belly, watching as the men sat down and strapped themselves in. Mar Schneider tightened his granddaughter’s straps. His old eyes twinkled.

  “I never thought I’d see it,” he said. “A planet. Zehava. I’ve been dreaming about it since I was a child.”

  “Me too,” the girl agreed cheerfully, kicking out her legs in excitement. Then she turned to look at me. I still stood in the back of the shuttle, hidden in the dark shadows. “Are you excited?”

  I walked to the other side of the aisle, where an empty seat waited. I knew that it was crazy, this journey—and my choice of companions did little to calm my fears. A field-worker and a school teacher. An old man and a child. A specialist—who knew in what—and a pilot, too, but one who had never flown a shuttle before. Still, I had to hope that they’d get me to him, the boy whose skin smelled like flowers and tasted like ripe summer fruit.

  “Of course I am,” I said as I pulled the straps down over my shoulders. In the pilot’s seat Laurel reached up, flipping a switch. There was a roar, dull at first but growing. I gazed down at the silk that I still clutched. The dress was crumpled, stained from my race through the pastures. Ruined; it was ruined.

  My brother had bought me that dress, scrimping and saving every piece of gelt he could. He said it was what our father would have wanted. But our father wasn’t here now. What did it matter what Abba wanted? I stuffed the dress beneath my seat, kicking at the wide skirt and petticoat until it was all out of sight.

  The engine flared and our bodies were pressed back against the seats. I thought of Aleksandra, fumbling with the controls to the air lock doors. But I willed her memory away. Soon I would be free of her, of this ship, this life. The little girl looked over. Her smile was toothy, wide.

  “Don’t be scared,” she said. But I didn’t feel scared, not one bit.

  I felt exhilarated.

  • • •

  At first the trip was rocky. I shut my eyes, imagining our little shuttle bumping and bumbling down the intake port and leaving a white-hot trail behind it. Then the noise died down; the shuttle straightened. When I opened my eyes, I saw a black sky scattered with stars in the window past Laurel’s head. She moved her hands over the controls, lighting dials beneath her fingertips. I could see her face, gold and flickering in the light. Her smile was tentative, uncertain. I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

  “You know what you’re doing, right?” Deklan asked, setting his muddy boots up on the dash. He’d taken the copilot’s seat, but he didn’t seem to be helping her at all. He only frowned as she hesitated over the controls.

  “Of course I do,” she said. “Get your feet down. This isn’t your bedroom.”

  After a beat he did, letting them thump against the metal ground. Then he looked back over his shoulder, letting his eyebrow lift up as he turned to the men. I’d seen that look before, from Abba, from Ronen, from Silvan, too. Crazy woman, it meant, and it filled my belly with rage to see it. We were depending on Laurel—not just Deklan, but all of us. Who was he to fill her head with doubts?

  But Laurel was unperturbed. She pressed a button, then sat back. She finally nodded her curly head in satisfaction.

  “There. The course is set. We’ll arrive in eight point six hours.”

  “That long?” Deklan asked.

  Laurel glanced skyward. “How long did you think it would take?”

  “Your intended never was one for listening in school,” Rebbe Davison said. Laurel jumped a little. I think she’d forgotten that there was anyone but the two of them in the shuttle. But she smiled gratefully.

  “He’s not one for listening generally,” she agreed. Deklan glowered at her, but after a moment his hard mouth dissolved into a smile.

  “You got me, bashert.” Bashert. The word made my heart lurch in my chest. Deklan had already met his heart’s match. Maybe soon I would too. “I’ll be good and let you drive. Just wake me when it’s over.”

  He sat back in the seat, propping his arms up like he was getting ready for a nap. Laurel let out a bell of soft laughter.

  “Sleep tight,” she said.

  As Deklan closed his eyes, I looked at the black sky filling the window. There was a streak of white light in the distance, arcing toward the planet. But I thought perhaps I dreamed it—no one else seemed to notice. The others talked, making introductions, prattling on about the lives they’d just abandoned. The small-eyed specialist was called Jachin. A biologist, he’d left behind a wife who swore her allegiance to the Council even as chaos descended on the ship. But he wasn’t looking back. Instead he turned the discussion to the planet ahead. Who were the people who lived on it below? Would they welcome us?

  I thought of the video I’d seen in the ship’s command center just before the revolt. Only hours had passed, but it felt like a lifetime already. The men who’d held the shuttle crew hadn’t been like any men I’d known in my waking life. They were too tall, too thin. Their bodies bent in ways that should have seemed unnatural to me.

  But they didn’t. Every night for nearly six months now, I’d dreamed of a body like that—long and cool beside me, filling my nose and mouth and mind with the scent of a thousand different flowers. In my dreams I was naked, and when I wasn’t, he soon undressed me with his nimble, three-fingered hands. . . .

  His eyes were black, a pair of obsidian lozenges without a shred of light inside them. The men in the transmission had black eyes, too. But their gazes didn’t welcome me. In fact, the men in the transmission snarled as they forced the lost shuttle crew to parrot officious words.

  Mayday, Mayday. Zehava is inhabited. I repeat, Zehava is inhabited. . . .

  And yet I knew in the pit of my belly that my boy was real. He waited on that planet somewhere—the one that, just now, had only barely begun to come into view. I saw the delicate, curving lip of her oceans against the horizon, swirled with white from above. I saw the lights, winking, glinting. It was too dark to see the purple vegetation, but I knew that if I wanted to see Zehava’s forests and her vines, all I had to do was shut my eyes. It had always worked before.

  “Hey, lady,” the little girl said. I turned to look at her.

  “Mmm?”

  “What do you think the aliens are like?” she asked.

  “Alien,” I thought. What a funny word. We’re the strangers. They were the ones who lived here first.

  But I only smiled at the girl. “Real nice,” I told her. “They’ll be so happy to see you.”

  It wasn’t a lie, not entirely. But it was a precious, fragile hope, one that flew in the face of my sister-in-law’s words. In the video Hannah had been terrified. Send a recovery shuttle, she’d said. But I couldn’t believe it. I needed the boy, his long arms; his bright body, rank with pollen. I needed to believe that I was traveling toward something, that I was doing more than running away.

  • • •

  The others prattled and joked while the white noise of the engine whirred on and on. It had been a long day, too long. I’d been drunk and sober; terrified, and then calm again. Now my eye
lids felt impossibly heavy. My limbs felt heavy too. Soon I found myself nodding off, tumbling toward the forest of my dreams.

  It was the same as always, and yet the sight of it never failed to make me lose my breath. The lush landscape here wasn’t the muddled brown and green of the dome. It was purple: deep blue flowers, craning their blossoms up through the black soil; violet vines, curling toward the sun. And stranger still, it all moved, as though the plants weren’t just alive but knowing—sentient. One moment the trees would all glance up, staring into the white-gold sky. The next, they’d swivel their leaves to face me like I was a long-anticipated guest they couldn’t wait to welcome home.

  At first he was nothing more than a shadow, shifting listlessly in the wind and waiting for me. I saw only his shape, his narrow waist and broad shoulders. But then he started to come closer. His movements across the soft black ground were effortless. He didn’t so much stroll as glide. Soon he stood in front of me, his body smelling sweet as summer.

  I’m coming, I thought, though it was as if the words traveled through a veil of molasses. For some reason I felt unsure that they would reach him, that he would understand. Most nights we spoke with our bodies, not bothering with mouths or even thoughts. He stared up into the yellow sky.

  Coming?

  Yes, coming. I’ll be there soon.

  But his response wasn’t the one I’d hoped for. Instead of enveloping me with his arms, drawing me close so I could feel safe from the intrusions of the world beyond, he hung his head. His words came swiftly, easily, like he was used to speaking this way.

  No, no. You are not real. Cannot be . . .

  He might as well have punched me, sinking his fist into my solar plexus and snatching away all my breath.

  What do you mean? Of course I’m real. I’m right here! Just as real as you are.

  No— he began, but before he could finish that thought, I reached out, grabbing his hand in mine. I pressed it to my chest, let him feel the heart that beat frantically inside.

  Do you feel it? I asked. Do you? I’m here! I’m real!

  He snatched his hand away, cradling it against his body like it was a wounded bird. I wanted to reach for him again, to make everything between us right and safe. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know how.

  Behind us the forest was waiting for me, its branches cast back like a pair of open arms. I couldn’t make things better with the boy, not now, not when we still had so far to go. So I turned around and walked into the forest, into her vines, her purple light. She enveloped me, wrapping branches around my limbs, tangling her flowers through my hair. I let her. I thought I heard his voice, soft and strangled. But I paid it no mind. What was the point? He didn’t want me, not yet. But soon I would be there, standing in front of him, and he wouldn’t be able to deny me.

  I let myself get lost in the wild landscape of the Zehavan jungles.

  • • •

  I was jerked from the warm, smothering dark by turbulence.

  The planet filled the entirety of the glass ahead. In the morning light, clear waters sparkled. Sprawling forests were swirled with a thousand different shades of violet, crimson red, and the bluest ultramarine you could imagine. But something was wrong. The continents seemed to jiggle beneath us like old fingers, prone to tremors. I watched as Laurel wrestled with the controls, gripping the control stick, pulling hard.

  “No, no, no!” she was saying through gritted teeth. I turned to the little girl.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, but of course she didn’t know. Though her legs still swam in her too big flight suit, she’d pulled them up onto the seat. She held her arms high, shielding herself from whatever was to come next. Her grandfather had slung an arm over her to protect her. I turned the other way. Rebbe Davison sat in white-knuckled silence beside Jachin.

  He was my teacher, one of the smartest men on the ship. Surely he would tell me.

  His forehead was wrinkled. But his expression wasn’t like it had been during school when I tried his patience, stumbling in late day after day. Back then there had been a weary humor beneath his frown. Now there was only fear.

  “She entered the wrong coordinates,” he said softly, so soft at first that I almost couldn’t hear it above the engine’s roar. But Laurel did.

  “I’m only a talmid!” she shouted. “I was never supposed to do this alone!”

  In the seat beside her I saw Deklan reach out. He put his hand against the nape of her neck.

  “Not now!” She swiped at him, smacking his hand. He shrank back. I did too, my shoulders sinking into the bucket seat. After our long flight my armpits ached, sweaty from the straps. My legs felt somehow both numb and swollen in the flight suit’s boots. But none of that mattered now. What mattered was my heart and its hard, hysterical rhythm, and the dry, shallow wheeze of my breath.

  “The shuttles are meant to make a water landing.” Rebbe Davison’s words were murmured low. This time Laurel didn’t hear them. But I don’t think she was meant to. When I slid my gaze over, I saw that his gaze was firmly fixed on me. “We’re supposed to land on water.”

  I peered through the glass in front. We were coming in over the northern continent where drifts of winter snow dappled the purple landscape white. The wide gulf of water was to the south of us and shrinking fast from view. I saw the craggy landscape change—saw gray dunes and the deep shadows beneath them.

  Mountains. We were headed for the mountains. And from the way that the shuttle quavered as the peaks filled more and more of the glass, I knew we were about to crash.

  3

  I didn’t black out. In fact, everything seemed to slow down, as if the universe was trying to give me enough time to think, react, respond. I pressed my head back against the seat, clutching the armrests so hard that I thought they might break off in my fists. It felt as if all my blood were leaving my body, propelled out by the force of the fall to my extremities. The rest of me was left so cold that my teeth chattered. Or maybe they chattered from the vibrations. The whole shuttle shook as we ripped through the atmosphere. The men were talking, softly at first, a constant, urgent murmur. Then the shuttle banked sideways, and they were screaming, and the girl was screaming, and I was screaming too. Even Rebbe Davison screamed. I didn’t know he had it in him, but he did—a great bellow of a bass, low and rumbling.

  It’s funny; I’d spent years feeling disconnected from everybody around me, alone and sad. There were nights when I stared up into the sparkling blackness of my room and wondered why I was so wrong. And on some nights, the worst nights, especially after Abba died, I wondered if I wouldn’t be better off if I went away too. I didn’t know where I would go. I just thought it would be better if I were somewhere, anywhere but in my bedroom on that ship—and there was only one way out that I had ever seen.

  Now, as the metal walls of the shuttle screamed around me, as the other passengers screamed too, I realized how foolish it all was. I was too young to die. I wanted to see Zehava, and not just from behind jittering glass. I wanted to see Ronen’s baby grow up. I wanted to finally fall in love. But now that was all slipping away from me, just as surely as our shuttle slipped down and down through the atmosphere, hurtling toward the frozen ground.

  I didn’t black out. I didn’t even close my eyes. They were wide open as the window was swallowed up by white, as our limbs were lifted up, as weightless as balloons, for just a moment, a narrow moment before the shuttle slammed into Zehava.

  • • •

  I woke up without even remembering having fallen asleep. There was no forest, no vines, no boy. Just my aching body. I pried my eyelids painfully open, taking in the light. For a moment I wasn’t sure where I was. My arms were wrapped tight around me; my chest felt squeezed. When I turned my head, my neck protested—a bolt of pain traveled down it and into my spine. I let out a small gasp, wincing.

  “Terra? Are you okay?”

  Rebbe Davison knelt before me. Half his face was smeared with blood, but he was whole, hopeful. I
turned my head back and forth. The pain flared brightly again, then faded back.

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice shaking. “Yeah, I think I am.”

  “I’m going to unbuckle you, okay?”

  He smiled again, a gentle, familiar smile. I’d been so surprised when I’d found out that he was a rebel, though I guess I shouldn’t have been. Even Abba had said that Mordecai Davison was a real mensch. He seemed to be in it for the good of the people, because he truly thought it was right. Now he took his soft, kind hands and used them to unlatch my safety harness. I fell forward—when had the ground gotten so slanted?—but Rebbe Davison caught me, letting out a small laugh. I felt myself blush. I wasn’t a girl anymore, one who needed her teacher to hold her up. I tried to stand straight, though my knees still shook.

  “The girl,” I said, scanning the interior of the crumpled shuttle. One half of it had been sliced open during the impact. Snow spilled in, and there was broken glass, and blood. “Is she all right?”

  He hesitated, wavering on his feet.

  “We have her outside.”

  I followed him, stumbling over the jagged, broken edge of the shuttle door. But almost as soon as I stepped out beneath the open sky, I staggered back. It was huge above us, golden white and endless. It stretched from one end of the world—where a tangle of black, naked branches clung to the mountainside—all the way to the other. There it disappeared beneath a sparkling field of ice. It seemed too low, too close—then I realized why. There was no glass to keep it back. Only space, wide open and free.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  I jumped. It was Jachin—the rebel who had sat beside Rebbe Davison on the shuttle. His dark hair was curly. Now he ran broad fingers through it again and again.

  I stepped forward over the icy ground. Deklan was standing over Laurel, his gaze fiercely protective. Beside her sat the little girl. Their posture was the same—fetal, deflated. The girl held her hands over her face, her body shivering with tears. But they were both alive. That’s what mattered.