Starbreak (12 page)

I bit down on my lip so hard that I tasted blood.

•  •  •

That night Ettie, Laurel, and I all piled into Hannah’s tent. It was so much warmer there than it was in the world outside the city gates. We stripped off our flight suits; Hannah handed me a dirt-stiff undershirt and a pair of shorts she’d worn on the day of the crash, to cover up my bare limbs. Even that was almost too much as we laid out our sleeping rolls and tucked ourselves in for the night. It was funny, to watch Hannah put a protective arm around Ettie. I guess she’d missed being a mother, all that nurturing gone to pot as she waited for rescue on the planet. Ettie seemed to be growing used to the treatment too—the grown-ups holding her, comforting her, protecting her from the savage world beyond. Which was how it should be, I thought. If we were going to survive here, we’d have to learn to be a true community, not just a collection of families with only gossip holding us together.

Together they tumbled toward sleep almost immediately. But not me, and not Laurel. She’d hardly spoken since the beast had struck
Deklan down. Now her eyes were like two shining stones in the darkness. They gleamed like glass, polished, sharp. After a moment, both of us tucked down inside our sleep sacks, she began to cry, letting out tiny gasps of breath.

“Laurel,” I whispered. I reached a hand out, offering it to her. She stared ahead. At last she put her clammy hand in mine.

“I can’t believe that he’s gone, Terra. We were always friends. For as long as I can remember.”

I remembered too. The pair of them, holding hands in school, walking together, laughing and joking, long before the rest of us had discovered what boys were for. His friends had been cruel ones, jeering, teasing. But I’d never heard him say a truly unkind word to Laurel.

“You loved him,” I said.

“Of course I did.” Her answer was quick—almost defensive, as if the suggestion otherwise offended her. And then the heat dripped away from her words, and she was crying again, worse this time. “Of course I did.”

I did the only thing I could. I held her. We’d never been friends, not really. Before that day in the library, I knew almost nothing about her life outside of school. But we were the same now, the two of us. Not only because we’d been through so much together—the rebellion and the riots, the crash and our long journey south—but because we’d both lost people we’d cared about. It was like a scar that we both
wore, a secret sigil that made us different from everyone else.

As I clutched Laurel to me, rubbing her heaving shoulders, I thought of Hannah’s words about the translator. She’d said he was like me—that he carried his broken heart with him wherever he went. I wondered if he’d lost someone too.

“Terra?” Laurel asked, her voice coming, shaky and weak, through tears. She pulled away from me, leaving a soggy gap in her wake.

“Yeah?” I whispered back.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this. How I’m going to live on without him.”

I let out a long, low sigh. As I pressed my head against the cold ground, I thought back to Abba. Since his death I’d learned a lot about survival. About living on—the very thing that he’d never been able to do. What would I have told him if I could have?

“At first it will be hard. Almost impossible. You’ll wake up and feel like Deklan’s been pulled from you and all that’s left is his silhouette inside your body. It will be with you all the time. Every breath you take will be a reminder that he’s not here and breathing anymore. People will try to tell you things to make you feel better, but it will only make it worse. ‘It’s so sad,’ they’ll say, and you won’t be able to tell if they miss him because of
him
or because their grief will make them look noble. Sometimes it will feel like they’re trying to steal
your
grief, your story.

“But you’ll keep breathing, and you’ll keep living. And one day you’ll be sitting down at breakfast or talking to a friend and you’ll stop. The blood will drain from your fingertips, and you’ll go so pale, because you’ll realize that it’s been hours since you last thought about him. Maybe even days. His loss will always be with you. You won’t forget. But time will move on and it’ll get easier, and easier until one day it’s just something that’s always been there. A part of you, but not all of you. Not anymore.”

She didn’t say anything. A warm breeze stirred the cotton walls. I looked up at the dark shadows in the corners of the tent.

“It’ll surprise you,” I said at last. “You’ll be changed by his death, sure. When something like this happens, it blows your world apart. But in a way, when you patch your world back together, it’ll be stronger than it was.
You
will be stronger than you were. I promise, Laurel. Really. You’ll be okay.”

There was another hiccuped breath. At last, in a small, sad voice, she said, “Thanks, Terra.”

She turned her back toward me, and I, too, turned away.

I didn’t know if what I said helped her. I hoped it did, as she stumbled toward sleep that night. What I did know was that my own heart was heavy, my mind leaden with doubt as I pulled the covers over my head and retreated into the dark.

•  •  •

He waited for me in our usual place, in the leaves and vines that formed a bed in the warm black earth. Maybe I should have gone to him with questions. Maybe I should have asked him where he slept in the city that night, what sort of person he was, if he really was a
plant
. But, as always, my heart was impetuous. It wanted what it wanted. It didn’t want to think things through, didn’t want to ask questions or talk.

I wanted him. His mouth, his hands. As soon as I saw him, broad in shoulder, narrow in waist, and familiar, utterly familiar, I pulled him down against me. I felt the cool caress of his skin and the relief it offered. I
wanted
him. I made that clear.

His response was laughter, or something like it. He didn’t tumble away, but he did look at me. His black-eyed gaze was steady; each eye held the very same promise—deep, and even, and true.

I’m here. I’m here,
I said, hardly able to keep my excitement in. Looking in those lozenge-shaped eyes, I had the strangest sense of import. My ancestors had fled a dying planet. They’d traveled five hundred years. They’d lived and died all so I could be here with
him
, us tumbling our bodies in a bed of violet leaves. It made me giddy to think about it. I let loose peals of laughter too. Or something like it.

His fingers wrapped around my wrist like a vine. He watched me for a long time, smiling at first. But then that smile faded; his wide lips pressed together, hiding his rows of tiny teeth. That’s when I felt it for
the first time—the pain inside him. Worse than
anything
that I’d ever known. Worse, I think, than what Laurel felt that night. Worse than even the pain that had driven my father to fritter his life away. It made me want to cut myself open, to spill my guts out on the open ground. It made me feel halfway crazy. It was a desperate and ugly sensation; I found myself scrambling to get away. Not because I thought it was his
fault
. Of course not. Only because it hurt too much to stay there, his body aching on top of me.

I sat up in the soggy leaves, staring at him. He made himself small, drawing his knees to his chest.

I wanted to ask him questions. I wanted to demand answers—who did that to you, made you broken and jagged, strange? But this wasn’t a night for questions. It was a night for touching, a night for feeling. I wrapped my arms around him. And even though he was stiff against me, cold to my touch, I ran my warm fingers over his shoulders, his arms. I touched him—his long fingers in triplicate, the smooth palm that had no life line at all. I knew I couldn’t heal the fissure in him. The pain was too cutting, too ancient, too true. But I could try. I figured it could never hurt to try.

I’m here,
I said again, rocking him against my body. His posture finally softened. He touched a hand to my face, feeling my eyelashes flutter against his hand.
I’m here. I’m here
.

M
orning was bright and muggy. I woke to sweaty limbs, a parched throat, and a strange, sad sensation deep in my belly—but I couldn’t name it, couldn’t quite pin it down. I put on my flight boots, pulled myself out of the tent, and went to the fire, where the others were already gathered. They talked in low tones, turning skittish glances left and right as if they were waiting for something. What, I couldn’t be sure.

Laurel sat stooped over a log, eating a fist of burned meat. Her face
was still puffy from the night spent crying, but it was no longer slick with tears. She glanced up at me and gave a weak smile. I wriggled my fingers back, then went to the stack of supplies the shuttle crew had stacked up just past the fire pit, hoping to find even a small ration of fresh water.

They’d lined the jugs up all in a row. Half were from the shuttles—the tempered polyglass that had been crafted by our ancestors and filled by a fleet of old women in preparation for our journey. The other half were of a foreign design. Their shapes reminded me of the curling flasks Mara Stone used in her research. Their bottoms were sturdy, but the necks looped and twisted. Each was corked with a plug of bright green wax. Some had been punctured, drained. But I found one still three quarters full. I jammed my thumb into the seal, breaking it—and leaving a ring of dirt around the glass lip. I didn’t even care. I held the mouth to my mouth, and drank and drank. It might have been alien water, but it was clean. Cold. Healing.

I was standing there, my head cast back, a bottle shaped like a swollen gourd pressed to my lips and the water dripping down my chin, when the gate at the front of the camp gave a great shudder. I turned, my stringy hair catching on my still-dripping mouth. It was through the blond veil of hair that I saw a line of Ahadizhi filter in. I understood then why the others had seemed so apprehensive. The Ahadizhi grabbed on to them with three-fingered arms, prodding
them with their weapons. The whole camp was filled with flashes of light, sparks. Ettie let out a cry. It seemed to rise up over the cacophony of electricity. I dropped the bottle against the hard-packed dirt and went running, grabbing her by either shoulder before one of the Ahadizhi could do the same.

“Go hide,” I told her, pushing her toward the tents. She scrambled forward, her hair a dark streak behind her. I watched her tuck herself into one of the rear tents and zip up the flap behind her. When I turned back, it was to a new sight.

The Xollu. They walked two abreast, skirting the edges of the camp. Their eyes were black holes bored into their smooth-skinned faces. But there was a flash of curiosity there too. They seemed to be appraising us, looking us up and down like we were animals being judged fit for slaughter.

The Xollu didn’t take everyone. One by one they appraised us, touching their smooth fingers to our chins. I saw them give Jachin’s scraggly beard a tug before they shoved him off with the other stubble-cheeked men. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Laurel and Hannah and Aleksandra, I watched as the Ahadizhi dragged the men forward and through the open gates. That’s when I spotted him. The translator. He stood at the gate’s edge, speaking in low tones to a Xollu pair beside him.

He was tall and lean. Though his shoulders were broad beneath his
tunic, his waist was narrow. He was a Xollu, most definitely, in body and eye and tooth. But his flesh was a deeper shade than the rest of them. Indigo. That had been the name of my favorite pencil in the set my momma had given me years and years before. He matched it perfectly, whereas the others were mulberry and carmine and poppy. He alone was bright, bright blue.

I knew that color, knew how it would look over the pale slick of my belly. From a dozen meters away I knew how his body smelled, and even tasted. It was so strange to see him standing there, lips lifted to reveal a row of tiny needle teeth. The others were afraid, but not him. He put his hand on Rebbe Davison’s shoulder, stopping him. He said something I couldn’t hear, and Rebbe Davison responded meekly, tapping his hand against his own chest.

I needed to stop the translator, needed to get him to draw those night-dark eyes to mine. There had to be words that would turn his head toward me, that would compel him to bridge the gap between our bodies—meters and meters, entirely too many. I groped for syllables, sounds, reaching back through dreams. My lips found the name almost without thinking. Vadix. Vadix. I whispered it twice, tasting it.

Was that his name? He’d never told me, but somehow I knew. And now, having realized it, I couldn’t hold the knowledge in any longer. Maybe I should have plotted, waiting for the perfect moment to take
him aside and whisper it into his earslits. But what if that chance never came? I had to stop him—and fast, before the moment passed.

“Vadix! Vadix!” I called. “It’s me, Terra! Vadix!”

I know he heard me—the long slits along the side of his face opened at the sound of my voice. But he was the last one to lift his head. When he did, his black eyes were less like glass and more like stone. Hard and solid, letting none of the day’s weak light through. What did he see when he glanced up? A dirty girl, dressed in someone else’s stained undershirt, waving her fingers through the open air? A fool? An animal?

Whatever he saw, it didn’t matter. He put his three-fingered hand on Rebbe Davison’s shoulder and pushed him through the open gate. Then he turned his back on me. He walked out of our camp without a single glance back. I called his name out one final time, but the syllables died on the muggy air.

In the awkward silence that followed, the Ahadizhi led the rest of the men out. The Xollu trailed after, their expressions grave as they clutched at one another. The gate slammed, and I fell down on one of the fire pit logs, my posture slumped, my shoulders sagging.

But the others didn’t drift away. In fact, both Hannah and Aleksandra stood over me, looking equally perplexed. Maybe Aleksandra wanted to threaten me, to question my gall. But Hannah spoke first. There was weak laughter on her voice, but a question, too.