Stardawn (6 page)

Because we were selfish. Because we dared to love.

And yet . . . and yet . . .

And yet I can’t stop thinking of how you looked before. Before we knew all this, when we walked into the record’s office with our palms stuck together, sweaty from nerves. Your head was held high; your shoulders were squared. You wore a shirt in dark linen, a pair of freshly pressed pants. Your old leather boots were polished to a shine. You didn’t look rich, but you looked
fine
—handsome and proud. Your eyes gleamed as you looked toward the future, our future, together.

I wanted you. Even with both of our families crowded around us. My brother gazed at me, smirking, as if he knew what was in my heart. Your sister wore a grin that stretched from ear to ear. My mother and father stood, their arms locked together, united in their love for us, even if they never loved each other. And still, I wanted you. Wanted to kiss your stubble-strewn cheeks. Wanted to bruise my lips against yours. Wanted our lives and our love to begin in earnest. My desire was a bright white line cutting through me. My desire was a spark in the darkness. Electricity. Heat.

It’s not wrong. It can’t be wrong—what I feel for you, and what I know you feel for me. It was a mistake. It
has
to be. It must be. Tell me it doesn’t matter. Tell me you’ll still be mine! I’m crying so much as I write this. Do you see my tears? Know they’re for you, for us, for our future. Lost.

Yours,

Alyana

100th Day of Spring, 22 Years Till Landing

Benny,

I suppose by now you’ve heard the news.

I have asked Arran Fineberg for his hand. He said yes. Assuming that all goes well with the reading of our bloodlines, we will be wed in two weeks.

It was your mother’s idea. She came to me after work, after eight days spent soggy with tears, drew me to her, and rocked me in her arms. Then, as I dried my cheeks, she said to me, in a dulcet tone: “Find a good husband, Alya. A Council-loyal man. Before they make your match for you, or worse. Find a way to live on.”

When I hesitated, giving my head an uncertain shake, she hooked a finger beneath my chin.

“Yes. Do it. Find a way to live on. When your mother—”

And then it was Miriam’s turn to hesitate. She drew away from me, and busied herself with wiping down the flour-strewn counters. I could see, from her high, tight shoulders, that this was a painful story to tell.

“When your mother and I ended our affair, I lost myself to grief. One of my coworkers reported it to the old captain. He showed up one day, right at our shop door, the bell jingling above him like it was nothing. Like it was normal. ‘Come, walk with me, Citizen Jacobi,’ he said. And I did. To the hospital. There was a—a ward I’d never heard of. For the elderly and infirm and those who are of no use to the Council. He told me of their treatments. They send electricity through your veins. They cut out parts of your brain. They make you happy, and if they can’t, they lock you up. You must be useful to them. You have to resist the darkness or—”

She broke off again, her breath withering out into a whimper. I went to her, put a hand on her shoulder.

“And you say you’re not a rebel?” I asked. She looked at me in surprise. I only smiled.

I didn’t want her to be right. I don’t, still. But she is. What is there in this life for us besides compliance? The Council always wins in the end. Momme married Tateh. Your mother pulled herself up and acted like a good citizen, not a woman whose heart had been smashed into a million pieces. And I will marry Arran.

His eyes are dark, like yours. He gazes at me with love, as you once did. But he is nothing like you. His dreams are so small. So . . . simple. He tells me of the children we’ll have. A girl who will look like me. A son who will look like him. His parents are cruel to him, in word and deed and fist, and so he dreams of treating our own children better. He is full of tiny, tentative hopes. They are nothing like your ambitions, of overthrowing the Council, the captain, of taking over the ship for ourselves. But they feel possible. Palpable. Real. Today, we sat in the clock tower after his rebbe had gone home, looking out at the fields and talking.

“I’ll make a good life for you, Alyana. I will make sure that you are happy.”

He spoke stiffly, but with an earnest light in his eyes. I met them, and for the first time in days, I felt my chest swell with warmth. I don’t love him. Not yet. But I will learn to.

I hope you will find your own love. Some girl who will help you see that a good future is possible, despite all of this. You turn twenty in a year, and I hope you’ll listen. Before the Council forces your hand, your will. Before you have no say. If you ever loved me, if you ever cared, you’d do this. Find your own future. Make it a good one.

Yours,

Alyana

42nd Day of Winter, 22 Years Till Landing

Benjamin,

I am a married woman now. Please stop writing to me. As I’ve heard that you have declared your intentions to Zipporah Cohen, I will stop writing to you. I don’t want to cause your future spouse the same distress that Arran has experienced with every mail delivery. This will be my last letter.

In fact, if you have kept my letters, I ask that you now destroy them. Throw them out an airlock. Have them incinerated by a waste-treatment worker. I don’t care what you do with them. Just make sure that they’re gone.

Best,

Alyana Fineberg

16th Day of Autumn, 17 Years Till Landing

B,

I have carved a message for you in our old meeting place. Let me know when you receive it.

Yours,

A

25th Day of Autumn, 17 Years Till Landing

Benny,

You asked me why now, after all these years. Why return to you? Why take a knife from the kitchen I share with my husband and cleave
those
words into the bark of
that
tree? After all, weeks ago, if you’d stopped on the street to lift a hand at me, I would have pulled my son close to me, diverted my eyes, and hurried away. But that was before I learned the truth.

It came on an ordinary evening. I was washing the dishes, listening as Arran helped Ronen practice his letters. My son will start school next year, and he’s so eager to learn. Arran is a good teacher. Patient, always. Better than his father ever was, or ever hoped to be. Seeing them together, like a pair of identical young mallards, I have often felt excited about the day I’ll have my daughter, so I can see myself twinned in her. But then a knock came to the door, and my daydreams were diverted. I wiped the gray water from my hands, threw the kitchen towel over my shoulder, and went to answer it.

It was Momme. She held a book under her arms.

I don’t know if you’ve seen my mother in recent years. I hardly have, not since Tateh died. She’s grown hard. Bitter. And she hates Arran more than anything, so she rarely shadows my doorway. On those infrequent visits she makes when my husband is off ringing the bells, her face always surprises me. She’s no longer the raven-haired woman she once was, with fine, smooth skin. As she’s climbed through middle age, her hair has grown streaked with silver. The lines around her mouth are thick. She could cover the years with dye or makeup, but she won’t. And yet on this day, she looked young. Those brown eyes were very bright.

“Alya, I need to speak to you about something.”

Somehow I instantly knew what she must have meant. The Children of Abel. That strange band of freedom fighters whom I’d turned my back on years and years before.

I looked to Arran.

“Will you take Ronen upstairs please,
bashert
?”

Oh, he’s not my soul mate—has never been! But it makes him feel pleased when I call him that. He hefted our son onto his hip and climbed the stairs without another word.

Momme came inside, then closed the door behind her, shutting out the winter and the wind and all those listening ears. She helped herself to a seat at our galley table. My mother visits so rarely, and yet she looked very comfortable there, spread out at the table’s head.

“It took me years to find this,” she said, and she gave a tap to the book’s cover.
DAY JOURNAL
, it read, in wide letters of Old American.

“What is it?”

“It was my mother’s, and her mother’s before her. And back and back. I was supposed to give it to you years ago, before you were married. But I couldn’t find it. It was lost among your father’s things.”

She slid the book across the tabletop. I plucked it up, and lowered myself into a seat. Flipping through it, I saw the pages were full of a dense cursive, barely legible.

“It’s a journal, belonging to one of the ship’s original passengers. But it’s more than that. A document of rebellion. I never would have joined if—”

I held a finger to my lips, shushing her. Then I cast my gaze toward the stairs. Arran is a good, Council-loyal man. He has no time or patience for rebels, no matter how much patience he has for our son.

“Oh,” my mother said, and waved a hand through the air, “that’s not why I brought it to you anyway. I know you’re a lost cause. You and that husband of yours.”

“Why, then?” I asked, rubbing my palm over the smooth leather cover.

“The flyleaf,” she said. “Look at it.”

I cracked open the book again, careful this time. And looked.

Names. Written in a dozen different hands. They began with
Frances Cohen
and ended with
Liora Katz
. But as my gaze reached the bottom of the page, I heard a curious echo in my head. Words, from years and years before, being read out on the day our marriage was doomed.

Sylvia Katz née Stein, grandmother of Liora.

Now my gaze pressed frantically up. Momme’s mother was Yael. I knew that. I’d been weaned on my
bubbe’s
cooking. But her mother?

Not Stein. Not at all.

Sylvia Katz née Perlman.

“My grandmother died before I was born. Drowned, in the reservoirs. Or so they say. Mother always suspected that she was pushed. Council revenge,” Momme said. “Anyway, I only ever knew her as Gram. When they read her name, I didn’t question it. Not at first. Not until I remembered this book.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, and I didn’t. My hands felt cold, pinpricked. The book was suddenly a leaden weight in them. “There was a mistake, then? The record keepers made a mistake? The Council . . . ?”

“The Council lied,” came Momme’s swift response. “They lied, Alya.”

But I was already talking over her, shaking my head. “Lied? No, why would they . . . ?”

“Because they wanted to keep you and Benjamin Jacobi apart. They’ve long suspected his role with the Children of Abel. And you . . . well, you were so sweet back then. Impressionable. They wanted to keep you—”

“On a loyal path.”

I dropped the book. It hit the table with a muffled
thud
, but my hands remained frozen over the knife-marred wood.

“Alya?”

But I couldn’t answer her. Couldn’t find words, or even thoughts. After a moment, I gave my head a firm shake, rose from my seat, and showed my mother out.

“Thank you for coming, Momme,” I said in a hushed voice when she gazed at me in confusion. I needed to be alone, and fast. I needed to collect my thoughts.

When the door was closed behind her, I returned to my table and took up the book again. I stared at the name, written in bold block print:

SYLVIA KATZ (née PERLMAN)

Perlman. Not Stein. Perlman. No relationship to Jacob Stein at all, according to this. The truth began to sink into me, just as surely as a knife into bread.

We are not cousins. We are not even second cousins. Those feelings I’d experienced, years and years ago, of revulsion and shame and embarrassment, had been merely manufactured.

I was still staring down at that name in wonder when my son appeared at the stairs.

“Momma, can I have some juice?”

I went to him. Helped him. But I wasn’t really there in my galley that night. I was somewhere else.

I had made a life with Arran. I had made a
son
with him. He was kind to me, a good husband, and father, too, and yet . . .

And yet I’d never learned to love him. I’d only ever learned to fake it.

Because you were there at every turn, Benny. In my mind’s eye, I saw you smile at every life event, felt your arms around me, felt your lips touch mine. The handsome young librarian. The rebel, too. I have never, ever stopped loving you, even when I lost the will to fight for you.

I will never leave my husband. You will never leave your wife. We both know that, don’t we? It would be the kind thing to do, the right thing to do. But if we request divorces, both of us, the Council will
know
.

I think of the place your mother told me about that day, the hospital ward full of ruined citizens, people with parts of their brains cut out, or worse. I think of Sarai Katz, pushed into a reservoir. Because she was a rebel, like you. I think of my father—found dead of a heart attack in the ship’s engine rooms, or so they say. What was he doing there alone that night, Benny? Do you know? Does Momme?

I remember your mother’s fears for you, all those years ago. If we ask for too much, we risk our own lives, and our sanity. As Tateh and Sarai once did. As my mother does now. And as I looked at Ronen that day, sipping juice from a tumbler, kicking his legs out beneath him, I wondered if it might put him at risk too. And I love my son. I couldn’t bear the thought.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t fight. For you. For us. For Ronen’s future, and the future of my daughter, still unborn. By the time she’s married, we’ll have reached Zehava, and I want to know that when it’s time for her to love, she’ll be able to love whoever she wishes, and damn what the Council says. I want her to do what her mother never could, what her grandmother was denied. She’ll stand out in the fierce, fierce light of day, and be loved, and love. Free and open, without that veil of lies around her. A veil both of us know all too well, Benny. A veil we’ve worn for far too long.