Starbreak

For Jordan, zeze, bashert, husband, of course, this is for you.

Winter, 10 Months After Landing

I’ve never kept a journal before.

Never thought about it. It’s not how my brain works, not really. I see colors, the ways that shadows mingle with the light. But words? I could take them or leave them, or so I always thought.

One of my ancestors kept a journal. All about how she arrived on the
Asherah,
how she came to live inside the ship’s dome. How she hated it there. She thought she was trapped inside the deepness of space. She could never forget it—how her freedoms had been taken from her, one by one, by the High Council.

Her journal was passed from hand to hand to hand among the women in my family. My grandmother gave it to my mother, and eventually it found its way to me. The leather cover shines from the oils of our fingers. The pages are falling out. But it’s an important reminder of where we’ve been before, and what we’ve lost.

I needed that. Without that book I never would have joined the rebellion on our ship. I never would have tried to escape either and taken off for the surface of Zehava when the riots broke out. I would have tried to force myself to be happy. I would have gone ahead and married Silvan Rafferty, a boy I didn’t love. All because it’s what normal girls did on our ship. They got married whether they loved their husbands or not. They didn’t think about how they were trapped. We
were all prisoners. Powerless, voiceless. I understood that only because centuries ago someone decided to write it all down. She told me with her words, her pen.

So when you suggested that I write my feelings down, I didn’t scoff. I might not be much of a writer. I’m better with a paintbrush. After my time spent with Mara Stone, I’m better with plants, too. (Don’t laugh. Please. I know you’re laughing. I don’t mean it like that!) But I know that maybe these words will help you understand me—not just my language but
me.

And so I figured that it was worth a shot.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, the shuttle . . .

O
n the night of the riots, I wasn’t the only one who ran for the shuttle bay.

As I pressed across the frozen pastures, my hands balled into fists, my feet bare against the cold ground, I was joined by throngs of people. Citizens, their gazes drunk-dizzy and crazed, spilled out from the districts and the fields, clamoring for the aft lift. That day—my wedding day, the day we arrived on Zehava—was supposed to be a festive one. The citizens had been saving up their
rations for weeks, stockpiling bottles of wine so they could drink from the first moment dawn cracked until the planet was stained black by the darkening night.

But the planet never went dark. Instead Zehava twinkled and glinted in the dome glass like a second sky. Lights. The northern continent was scattered with lights, clustered around the black oceans like gilt edging a page. Those lights could only mean one thing: people. There were people on
our
planet, the planet we’d journeyed five hundred years to find, the planet we’d been told would someday be our home.

Maybe they didn’t believe it, those citizens who ran by me, jostling and shoving one another. Maybe they were so drunk, they’d convinced themselves it wasn’t true. Zehava was theirs—their abbas had sung them songs about it; their mommas had told them about the good lives they’d live underneath the wide open sky. Maybe they thought the lights were something else, a trick of Mother Nature—phosphorescent algae or glowing rocks. Whatever the case, in their drunken fervor they’d convinced themselves that the path ahead would be easy. They’d take a shuttle down to the surface and find Zehava perfect and empty. It had been promised to them, after all.

I ran for a different reason, the pleats of my long golden gown clutched in my fists. Sure, I was just as starved as the rest of them. I
wanted Zehava too; the Goldilocks planet would be our better, more perfect home. But that night? I mostly just ran for my life. When I squeezed myself into the crowded lift, the smell of sweat and wine and bloodstained wool all around me, I gave one last look back. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought I saw her there. Aleksandra Wolff, leader of the Children of Abel. The captain’s daughter—a woman so powerful that she’d kept her family’s name for her own, defying all of the traditions of the ship. Her black braid swung behind her as she ran.

When the door shut behind me, I put my hands on my knees, panting. The air felt cold and sharp inside my lungs. I remembered the expression on Aleksandra’s face—wild, hungry. I’d seen the whole thing, standing frozen in that cornfield as Aleksandra held that silver rope of hair in her hand and drew the knife across her mother’s throat.

An old woman stood beside me in the lift. She touched her hand gently to my bare shoulder.

“Aren’t you happy?” she cried. She was hazy with drink. “The Council, fallen! Fallen at last!”

I winced. The lift was filled with people, too many people, as it plunged into the depths of the ship. They sang and chanted, pumping their fists, but I couldn’t hear their words. Instead I heard an echo—Captain Wolff’s voice coming back to me, just before she made that last, strangled sound.

They won’t follow you. Not after they’ve discovered that you killed your own mother.

Aleksandra had answered easily:
Good thing they won’t find out
. But I knew, I knew—and worst of all? Aleksandra had caught me listening. On her belt she carried a knife, still hot with her mother’s blood, sharp as a straight razor and twice as quick.

But I had somewhere to go. Zehava. The purple forests writhed and shifted in the corners of my memory. And I had someone waiting for me too. The boy—
my
boy—the one who’d haunted my dreams for months. He’d keep me safe from Aleksandra, and from the bodies that jostled me in their drunken fervor as they spilled from the lift. He’d be my home. My haven. My sanctuary.

He just didn’t know it yet.

I stumbled from the lift into the crowded shuttle bay.

•  •  •

Once, the bay had been closed to all but necessary personnel—shuttle pilots and their crews, the captain, the Council. But someone had cracked the lift’s control panel open. It trailed wires like a jumble of guts. When we arrived, the doors opened easily. Already the room was packed with people who elbowed one another, shouting. Most carried handcrafted weapons, table legs broken off or knives filched from their galley drawers. Someone had a shepherd’s crook they’d broken down into a splintered spear. I had to duck under it as I scrambled toward the air lock entrance.

At first I just stood there staring, my bare feet flat against the rusted floor. The air lock was open. Inside waited row upon row of shuttles, gleaming beneath the dim track lighting. We’d prepared for years for disembarking. In school Rebbe Davison had taken us through the necessary drills: meeting with our muster groups, filing in one group at a time. Of course, it had only ever been for practice. I’d only ever seen snatches of the air lock before—with its precarious walkway and its long tunnels that reached out into the universe beyond—just before the air lock shut.

I heard a familiar
ding
. When I glanced back, I saw the lift doors open again. Still more people spilled out. I was frozen, my dress in my hands. But then I saw a face in the crowd in the lift. Aleksandra, her pale features drawn, stood among the new group. I wondered if they knew that she was their leader. I hadn’t—it had been a secret, well kept. But now it seemed the news was spreading as quickly as a winter cold. Field-workers bowed their heads to whisper to specialists. Merchants lifted their eyes, squared their shoulders, and pressed two fingers to their hearts. They rushed toward her, flanking her on all sides. It give me time, but not much. I had to hurry as the people raised their weapons in salute. I pressed forward through the crowd, nearing the air lock door.

I’d almost reached it when I heard a familiar voice, touched with awe.

“Is that her, Deck? Is it true?”

I whipped my head up. There stood Laurel Selberlicht, her honey-brown eyes as bright as beacons. Deklan Levitt was beside her, one burly arm thrown over her shoulders. I’d known the pair my whole life; they’d been my classmates first, flirting during recess, passing notes to each other when Rebbe Davison’s back was turned. Later I’d grown used to seeing them in the shadowed library, to pressing my fingers to my heart in salute when we passed each other in the dome. He was a plowman; in one season his work had transformed him from a narrow reed of a boy into a well-muscled man. But Laurel was slight, willowy. Her shoulder still bore the rank cords she’d been given by the High Council. A silver twist of thread—a special color, reserved for shuttle pilots like her.

I didn’t even stop to think about it. I reached out and took her slender, cool hand in mine.

“Laurel,” I said. When she lifted her eyes, they went hazy. I could smell the wine on her breath. “Laurel, come with me. I need your help.”

“Sure, Terra,” she said, and though there was a note of confusion in her voice, she let me pull her through the crowd. But a gruff tenor called out to us. Deklan, his unruly eyebrows low.

“Hey, where are you taking her?”

We were almost at the air lock door when I looked back. He was following us, but he wasn’t alone. Two other rebels flanked him,
one on either side, their expressions mirroring his concern. One, familiar—Rebbe Davison, Mordecai, our teacher, his lush black curls threaded gray. The other, a stranger, small in stature, whose shoulder bore the blue knot of a specialist.

“It’s okay!” I called through the clamor, but I don’t think they heard me. The trio followed us, as close as magnets, as I pulled Laurel down past the air lock entrance and into the long, dim hallway.

“What’s going on, Terra?” she asked as we stopped on the narrow walkway. The air was cooler here, quieter. Few citizens had made it into the air lock. Only a pair of dark silhouettes could be seen in the distance, standing beside one of the waiting shuttles.

“You’ve trained as a pilot,” I said, narrowing my gaze on her. “You can get us to Zehava.”

“But we’re not supposed to leave until we receive word back from the shuttle crew.”

By now Deklan and his companions had reached us. He grabbed her to him, holding on tight—as if I were going to snatch her away. To be fair, I had already snatched her away once. If I wanted Laurel’s help, it seemed I’d need to convince Deklan, too.

“She’s trained all year for this, Deklan. She’s a strong, capable pilot. Don’t you want to see her fulfill her dreams?”

His expression shadowed with guilt. He looked down at Laurel, and I saw then the love that tethered them together. He was proud of
her vocation, of all she’d done with her life, no matter how much he hid that behind gruffness and bluster.

“Of course I do,” he said softly. Tucked beneath his arm, Laurel glowed. But she didn’t answer me, not yet. I glanced toward the figures behind them.

Rebbe Davison lurked there, his face clouded with concern. On a night when most of the ship’s population was alive with exuberant energy, he suddenly looked much older. I saw the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the deep frown circling his mouth.

“Rebbe Davison,” I said. “You taught us our muster drills, all the procedures for disembarking when we were young. Who gave you those orders?”

He paused—behind him the sound of the crowd swelled.

“The Council,” he said. “The curriculum always came from the Council.”

“And what was all this for,” I demanded, gesturing back toward the shuttle bay, packed with bodies, “if we’re going to stay under their thumbs? They’d want us to wait, I’m sure. But that planet is our inheritance. Not this ship!”

“She’s right,” Laurel said. I blinked back my surprise; I hadn’t expected agreement to come so quickly. Deklan held her tightly, but she squirmed away. “No, Deck. This is what I’ve been training for. I can
do this
. The planet is ours. Isn’t it?”