Starglass (10 page)

“Terra, wait up!”

I’d reached the end of our street by then. In the circle of light cast down from the corner streetlamp, I stopped and turned. Koen was rushing toward me, his dark hair tossing in the wind. It felt lately like wherever I went, there he was, following me like a lanky shadow.

“What do you want, Koen?” I asked. He came to stand breathlessly beside me. His cheeks were pink, though I couldn’t tell whether it was from the cold or because of how fast he’d been running. Or maybe he always looked like that—red cheeked and sheepish.

“I wanted to see if you were okay,” he said. I shoved my hair behind my ear so that I could better see his face—his strong jaw, his narrow nose, his pale skin, scattered with freckles.

“Sure,” I said. “I’m fine. Happens all the time. It’s nothing new.”

He smiled at me like I’d cracked a joke, but I hadn’t meant it to be funny. I turned toward the darkening street. The lights were coming
on in the town houses, and they cast mottled yellow squares down from the curtained windows.

“I don’t know why you keep coming home with him,” I said. “It’s not like it worked out so well the first time.”

Koen chuckled. “I come because your father asks me.” He waited a beat. His smile didn’t falter, not a centimeter. “I come because it beats going home.”

“Oh?” I asked, and turned my face up to him. Behind his grin I now saw the shadow of something else. But I couldn’t quite read it.

“Your dad is nothing compared to my parents. They’re at it all the time. It’s like I might as well be invisible.”

“Better invisible than a target,” I said. Koen only shook his head.

“You might think that, but I don’t.”

Koen was a full head taller than I was, almost as tall as Abba. But he was slender and gawky. He had big hands, big feet, a big, smiling mouth. I thought about the night before—about Mar Jacobi’s death and the way he’d cried out as he’d collapsed on the floor. I had the sudden urge to tell Koen about all of it, to let the weight of the secret spill from my lips. But I didn’t know how.

“Koen,” I said at last, dropping my voice to a murmur, “do you ever think about ‘liberty’?”

Koen’s coltish eyes darted left, then right before returning to me. “No,” he said, in a tone that I didn’t quite believe. “I don’t think
about that. All I think about is how I wish I could be normal.”

I dropped my gaze. My throat tightened, full of tears. I didn’t know why I ever tried to tell anybody anything. It was better to just keep it all locked inside, a secret.

“Oh,” I said.

I felt pressure across my back. Koen had rested his broad hand against my shoulder.

“I don’t know about you,” he said gently, turning me toward home, “but I’m starving. That stuffed cabbage sure would hit the spot right now.”

I forced a feeble smile to my lips. “Sure, Koen,” I said as we walked together. “Sounds great.”

•  •  •

Over the weeks that followed I tried to forget what had happened in the engine rooms—tried to wipe away the memory of a man’s throat and how it had torn open like paper, and how I had seen, and how I had done nothing. If  Van wanted me to be quiet, then I would. But the dark days sent my mind into a tailspin. Autumn set in, and there were hardly any green leaves to turn gold. Instead half-budded flowers browned and froze without blooming, and most of the fields that stretched out beneath the atrium dome lay fallow, with nothing to harvest. It was an autumn of root vegetables and pickled things and lots and lots of cabbage, and even though we all complained about it,
there was nothing to be done. This early winter was, of course, for our own good, for the good of the
Asherah
and her passengers.

Personally, I thought I deserved it. The frost. The meager meals. Hunger and cold were easy—sensations I could grapple with, so much simpler than guilt.

The mornings were frigid. I piled on layer after layer every morning before work. Long, holey undershorts, torn stockings, tall socks. That autumn I began to outgrow most of my old sweaters, so I went into my father’s room one day when he was working late and filched all of Momma’s cold-weather clothes. I hated to do it, but I wouldn’t begin to collect my wages until I turned sixteen, and I knew that it would be an argument if I asked. They all smelled like her, that strange mixture of soap and dusty flour, still, after all these years, and for that I almost couldn’t stand to wear them—covering her smell with my smell, washing the last trace of her away. My father must have noticed that I had replaced my old threadbare clothing with her better stuff, but the only acknowledgment was a long, blank look one morning at breakfast.

We spoke less and less. After dark my father disappeared to the pubs or into his room with a glass and a bottle. I avoided home as best I could. Every night, I took off for the dome. I stayed there until it was too dark to see, filling my sketchbook with rough images of the flowers that occupied my daylight hours. It was better outside, even
in the cold. Because within the gray walls of our quarters, silence had become a constant companion. It sat beside us at breakfast and laid itself down between me and Pepper late at night.

But not when Koen was around. He stopped by for supper at least once a week, filling the empty chasm of our lives with his broad-lipped smile, his awkward laughter, his questions for my father, his jokes for me. Abba was a different person when Koen was there. He sat straighter and spoke in a tone that was almost mild. He rarely angered, and when he did, it was only ever at me and quick to pass. But I did my best to give him few reasons to be mad. Usually, I just listened while he and Koen discussed their duties.

They talked about how to turn the seasons and how to transition us into the coming frost. The way they talked about it made it sound more like an art than a science. Like how a painter layers one color over another so that the depth contained in all that pigment can show through. I said that once over supper, blurted the words between bites of boiled potatoes. My father watched me for a moment, then calmly set down his fork.

“It’s nothing so soft as an art,” he said. I was surprised, too, by how
patient
he sounded. Like my old dad was back and ready to teach me all about being a proper Asherati. “We’re forcing our bodies—your body too, Terra—into new patterns. Why do you think we take these pills every day with supper?” He gestured to the little white dish of
capsules that sat on the edge of his plate. “You wouldn’t sleep otherwise. Humans weren’t made for twenty-seven-hour days, for forty-six-week years, with three seasons. Everything must be factored in. It’s no art.” He paused, eying me for a moment. “I’d think as Mara Stone’s
talmid
you’d know that. What’s that woman teaching you, anyway?”

It wasn’t a question I was meant to answer. He laughed at me, taking a hearty gulp of wine. But inside I recoiled. What had I learned from Mara so far, on all those days when she shipped me off to the greenhouses to keep me out of her hair? The names of plants, sure—I could identify a clipping of almost anything in the main greenhouse. But otherwise she hardly spoke to me, giving me only terse commands.

“Oh, I don’t know that it’s not an art,” Koen interjected. He was blushing fiercely, bright red mottling his throat and ears. But his wide gaze was sharp, challenging my father. I braced myself. It was the kind of thoughtless comment that always led to an argument for me—but my father tilted his bald head toward Koen, listening.

“W-with all due respect, sir,” he began, stammering at first, though his words grew firmer as he went on, “I think Terra was speaking metaphorically. And I think she meant it as a compliment. She’s not so far off, anyway, right? Like good art, our work is the sort that looks effortless if you don’t know any better. It’s part of the background of everyone’s lives. It doesn’t call attention to itself. To most of them I’m sure we’re nothing more than bell ringers. And frankly, I wouldn’t
have it any other way. Let them think less of us. If our work went around announcing itself, it would mean that we’d done something
wrong
.”

My father gave a sort of grunt of agreement. He stared down at his meal. I could feel the grin spread across my face.

“Thank you,” I mouthed soundlessly to Koen. His brown eyes shone.

•  •  •

Those days, no matter how cold the evenings got, I always took the long way home from the labs. Part of me could almost feel the engine rooms calling out to me—the dark, warm hallways that spiraled up, straight to home. But I knew now that the warmth was deceptive, a simple trick. The open sky of the dome was much safer. There, lit blue in the dimming light, the last of the fieldworkers wrestled with their plows, stopped, raised their hands to me in greeting. Once I would have resented that intrusion on my own peace and quiet. Now I was desperate for a friendly face. I smiled and waved.

Still, I moved fast through the pastures. The frigid air numbed my ears even through the curtain of my hair. I couldn’t feel my nose.
But at least I’m alive
, I told myself, grimacing. Thoughts of Mar Jacobi always slipped into my mind at the strangest times.

Over the half-bare branches that dotted the fields, the clock bells rang out. I wondered what Abba was teaching Koen and felt a jealous
wave at the thought. Mara hardly spoke to me, much less invited me for dinner.

I didn’t have to wonder for long. Koen’s voice called out to me over the soundless wind.

“Terra!”

I stopped, turned. As I saw the pale-faced boy who rushed toward me, I found myself smiling. Koen’s grin was almost obscenely broad over the knot of his scarf.

“Koen,” I said. “Hey.”

“Walking home?” he asked. “Mind some company?”

I shrugged. I didn’t mind. In fact, I felt a small, happy thrill at the thought of walking beside him, arm to arm. I was glad that our faces were both already red from cold. I didn’t want to embarrass myself.

“Not ringing the bells tonight?” I asked, groping for something to talk about as we started through the scrubby grass. The last of the chimes was just ringing out. Nineteen tolls for nineteen o’clock.

“Nah. I promised my parents I’d be home in time for dinner. You know, ‘as long as you’re under my roof’—that sort of thing.” Koen flashed his teeth at me. But I found myself frowning.

“Must be nice,” I mumbled, “that they care.”

Koen looked at me sidelong. “Terra,” he said, “your father cares.”

I let out a small white breath of laughter.

“Cares about me. Right. You see the way that he is.”

But Koen just gave his head a shake, tousling his shaggy hair.

“He talks about you all the time. I know he’s hard on you, but at least he
sees
you. My parents want me home tonight only because they’re having friends over for dinner. They act so damned
perfect
when strangers are around, but it’s an act. All they care about is how much they hate each other. I don’t know why they don’t just get divorced. I mean, I know it’s rare, and they’d have no one but old widows to marry. But it’s better to be alone than to be miserable all the time.”

I thought about my parents, about how they were before Momma got sick. When I was little, she giggled and blushed at him over dinner. He’d spin her around the room when she was cooking, and bring home flowers for her when he knew she was working late. And then I thought about the sounds I sometimes heard down the hall at night, and blushed.

“My father loved my mother. He said she was his
bashert
.” There were stories on the ship, stories of marriages so perfect that it was like being wedded to your second soul. That’s what my father always said he lost. His other half. “Maybe that’s the problem. He hasn’t been the same since she died. I mean, he’s always been strict. All about duty, about doing your job and
tikkun olam
and all of that. But he used to be nice sometimes. . . . He didn’t used to be like this.”

I felt a lump rising in my throat. I swallowed hard, cast my eyes down at the dark ground in front of us.

“Terra . . .” I was surprised to feel his hand touch my hand. He
pried my cold-numbed fingers straight, slipping his palm against mine. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

It was the first time I’d held a boy’s hand. I looked down at his fingers. They were narrow and long, prettier than mine. My nails were caked with dirt. His were clean and trimmed short. When I stopped in the path, his eyes were big with concern.

I saw something in those eyes. Not just flecks of gold, reflecting the growing starlight. I saw how he was open to me—how he wanted me to be happy, how he wanted me to be safe. I found the words tumbling from my lips before I could even stop them.

“I saw them kill Mar Jacobi. It wasn’t an accident. The captain’s guard. They killed him. They slit his throat. Down in the engine rooms. They—”

“Terra!” Koen pulled his hand from mine as though ashamed. I didn’t know why. There was no one here but sheep, and even they slept, hunkered down in their woolen winter coats. Koen gave his head a shake. When he spoke again, his voice was ragged.

“I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

He could have balled his hand into a fist and punched me in the gut. That would have hurt me less.

“I thought . . .,” I began. But the words petered out. I didn’t know
what
I’d thought. Koen watched me for a moment, his brows knitted up. At last his expression softened.

“Oh, Terra,” he said. “It’s all right.”

To my surprise he pulled me to him in a sudden embrace. He was much taller than me. My face was smashed into the itchy front of his heavy jacket. But it felt
good
to lean on him like that, to feel his heart beating through his clothes, to feel his arms around me.

“It’ll be okay,” he said again. “As long as you tell no one else, we’ll be safe.”

I found myself nodding. Desperately, frantically nodding. This was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? To trust Koen. To let him keep me safe.

Finally, satisfied, he let me go. His expression was different now—not open, like it once had been, but murky, inscrutable.