Starglass (13 page)

Koen didn’t speak for a moment. His thin lips were pressed flat, like he was turning something over in his mind. But I had no idea what.

“It’s despicable,” my father concluded.

I felt my heart squeeze out a labored beat. Mara hadn’t made these last few weeks easy—I’d spent enough time hating her myself. But for some reason a bright flame of protectiveness flared up inside me. I attracted enough of my father’s ire. I didn’t want anyone else to catch it, not even Mara.

“She does her job well,” I said, my words shaky but clear. “She really cares about the good of the colony, about doing all she can to ensure its success. Haven’t you always said that that’s a mitzvah?”

For a long time my father didn’t answer. Silence grew between us, intercepted only by the sounds of the celebrations that raged across the observation deck, and the bustle of the hatchery beyond—the shouts of the workers, the cries of new children. I didn’t look my father in the eye as he stared at me, but I didn’t move, either. I couldn’t speak or breathe. I didn’t want to risk inciting his wrath even further.

That’s when Koen slid his hand in against mine. His fingers were cool and dry against my clammy palm.

“Yes, sir,” he agreed. “You
have
said that. Our work as specialists
elevates us above ordinary workers. That would be true for Mara, too, wouldn’t it?”

My father didn’t answer. But he looked down at our interlocked hands. I saw a smirk, self-satisfied, lift his upper lip. Finally he looked toward the glass.

“It’s beginning,” was all he said. Hesitating only a moment, wiping my palm against my knee, I went to my father. His
talmid
followed, taking long, firm strides. There was a small crowd of people behind us—jovial workers, downing their wine rations together in celebration. But the three of us stood in solemn contrast. I saw our reflections in the glass: my father’s muscular figure; Koen, lanky and lean; and me, between them, looking gaunt and pale. Then my father indicated something below with the angle of his chin, and my vision shifted.

The new parents milled beneath the eggs. You could tell which couples had been through this before. They knew what to do. They knelt under the eggs, slicing them open with shining surgical tools and letting the infants coast out in floods of pink-streaked fluid.

I found my brother in the sea of blue cotton scrubs. Ronen bumbled behind the doctors. He hovered over Hannah. When he finally took the surgical knife in hand, he dropped it, and Hannah had to stop him from fumbling around on the floor to find it.

Instead she snatched the new tool right out of the hatchery worker’s fingers. Kneeling beneath the swollen egg, she sliced the artificial
womb open in one brisk motion. Ronen hardly made it over in time to help her catch the slippery child in his arms. Beside me, my father let out a hiss of air at the sight. Ronen held their daughter as Hannah wiped the blood from her nose with a clean rag. I felt a quick flash of joy, strong enough to tighten my throat as they leaned their heads in to take their first look at their baby, a little girl so wrinkled, she looked like a shelled walnut.

Maybe Koen was touched too. Maybe that’s why I felt the weight of his hand, sudden, heavy, against my lower back. A gesture didn’t mean anything, I told myself. But I couldn’t stop my spine from going stiff as I turned my attention to our reflections in the observation glass. Koen’s eyes were wide, showing no hint of tenderness—but his hand made slow, firm circles on the small of my back. Goose bumps lifted over my arms.

Then Ronen and Hannah burst through the door, their scrubs splattered with blood, and Koen’s hand fell like a deadweight. It left nothing but a gap of air at the back of my sweater. I pushed the memory of his palm from my mind. This was the time for me to do my duty as a sister: to embrace Ronen and to smile down at the little mewling girl in the tangle of blankets.

“We’ve named her Alyana,” Ronen said as Hannah set the baby in my father’s arms. My brother’s tone was hushed, tear racked. “To help us remember.”

I stared down at the baby. Up until this moment, I’d told myself I didn’t care a whit about what Ronen and Hannah were doing with their lives. I’d never really thought about how my niece would be a little person. But she was, with dark hair pasted down to her perfectly round head, and minuscule fingernails tipping each of her ten tiny fingers. I watched her let out a yawn as she nestled in against my father’s chest. Everyone laughed, and I found myself joining in. She was wrinkled and strange but somehow exquisitely formed—a whole, tiny human being.

But then I heard a murmur of sound. My father was speaking. Not to the child, not really. But to Momma.

“Alyana,” he said. “Our time here is nearly done. We’ve waited so long to be free of this ship. So, so long.”

He bent over and pressed a dry kiss to the baby’s forehead. Then he handed her to my brother.

“You’re a mensch, Ronen,” he said, squeezing his shoulder. “Without this child I would have never achieved
tikkun olam
.”

My father went to stand beside the glass, gazing through it solemnly. But I was the only one who watched him now. All other eyes were on Ronen, cradling the child. Hannah reached down and caressed her cheek. Then Hannah’s parents spilled through the double doors, raising their voices in greeting.

“Mazel tov!” They rushed over, laughing. “Congratulations!”
They bent in to see her, cooing and speaking in gibberish. Hannah’s face was streaked with happy tears. My brother turned to her and pressed kisses into her shining cheeks.

No one paid any attention to my father. He stared through the glass, holding his hands behind his back. As he murmured to himself, his breath fogged the pane. I was the only one who heard it, the only one who was listening.

“It’s almost over,
bashert
. Almost . . .”

I felt a knot rise in my throat. I knew then in the pit of my belly that Ronen could cling to his new family all he wanted. It didn’t change the rest of us. We were broken, damaged beyond repair.

But I didn’t have much time to think about that. Because Koen leaned into me again, a gentle smile playing across his lips.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he said. “If life works out like it should, she won’t even remember this ship.”

The baby’s tiny hands curved into helpless fists. “It seems like a heavy burden for her to carry,” I said at last. “All that hope poured into one tiny girl.”

That’s when Koen reached a hand out and drew me close, so that my shoulder was pressed to the warmth of his body. Close enough to smell him now. He was cedar and clean hair and the cool wind in the dome and something else, something I couldn’t quite name.

“That’s all right,” he said softly. “She doesn’t have to carry it alone.”

•  •  •

As I made my way through the streets that night, I watched the merchants pull down their shutters with gloved hands. Behind them store lights flickered off one by one. The sky went dim over the tops of the town houses, then black. Save for the streetlamps, the whole world was going dark.

Rachel’s shop was on the last street in the commerce district. From this side of the glass, it looked warm and bright, with a whole line of colorfully dressed mannequins posing in the windows. I stepped through the door into the carpeted interior. A bell jangled overhead.

“We’re closed,” came a familiar voice from back near the dressing rooms. I stuffed my hands down into the pockets of my mud-stained work pants, moving forward between racks. It seemed almost wrong to be here looking like I did—so rumpled amid all this clean new linen.

“Are you now?” I called. There was a pause. Rachel’s slender face and wild smile appeared from behind a row of jewel-toned frocks.

“Terra!” She let out a squeal, pushing through the rows of silk in her rush to greet me. The fabric rustled like leaves. “You came to visit!”

I leaned into her embrace, taking a long breath of the soapy, floral scent of her. Of course, these days the perfume of iron-rich soil followed me like a cloud. But she didn’t seem to care what I smelled
like. Rachel raked her long fingernails along my shoulder blades, then gave my arms a squeeze.

“What does that botanist have you
do
all day?” she asked, the space between her eyes crinkling. “You’re all . . . muscle!”

I pulled away, shrugging. I’d noticed how my limbs had grown leaner, how my pants fit me looser even as my body had stretched, outgrowing them, but I’d been too tired to pay much attention to it.

“Digging around in the dirt,” I said.

“I can tell,” she said. Then she took my hand and pulled me across the store. We passed racks of wedding dresses in every conceivable shade of gold. They reminded me of the season that was fading just beyond the shop door. She led me to the ring of chairs that sat outside the dressing room. We both sat—she leaning forward in her seat, looking eager, and me on the chair’s edge, precariously perched.

“So,” I began. It had been so long since we’d last spoken that it felt difficult to find our old rhythm. “Ronen’s child was hatched today.”

“Oh, mazel tov! They had their girl first, didn’t they?”

“They did.”

Rachel gestured toward the rear of the store, where clothing for children hung from miniature hangers.

“Have Hannah come by, won’t you? I’d love to help her pick out a few rompers.”

I studied Rachel’s face for a moment. She looked so happy, bright cheeked at the very thought of selecting a few items of baby clothes for my sister-in-law.

“You love your job, don’t you?” I asked. She let out a laugh of agreement.

“It’s so much fun to help people look their best. And I’m
good
at it. Sales are up more than forty percent from last year.” She hesitated, biting down on her bottom lip. “I’m not supposed to let anyone know, but I’ve done so well that they’ve started to give me a commission. Less than what I’ll be making when I turn sixteen, but some pocket gelt is nice, at least. Of course, a lot of it goes right back to the store.”

I could tell. She was dressed richly—in a long dress the color of violets. It was sewn from thin cotton, with buttons up the long sleeves and a plunging neckline that showed the dark skin over her collarbone. It was all
very
stylish.

“You look great, Raych,” I said, and meant it. “I’m sure Silvan just adores it.”

“Oh,” she said.
“Him.”
She waved her hand at me, as if Silvan Rafferty were little more than a trifle. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s still gorgeous. And I’m still planning on, you know, asking for his hand. But we’ve just been so
busy
lately.”

“Well,” I began. My lips edged up into a cunning smile. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time after you declare your intentions.”

“Of course!” she said, blushing. “Only a few more weeks!”

My only response was a muffled groan. I’d almost forgotten our impending birthday. At sixteen we’d be eligible to marry, able to declare our intentions to any adult man, to consent if one asked us for our hand. Rachel always said that our
real
lives would finally start when we turned sixteen. . . . I wasn’t entirely sure what she thought we’d been doing up till then. Not living, I guess.

“Terra!” Rachel chided. “You don’t want to be an old unmatched biddy, do you? And to have the Council pick your partner?”

“No, of course not,” I said, “but we
do
have two years. It’s not as if we need to declare our intentions right away.”

Rachel regarded me sternly. It was clear that she thought me half crazy. “Whatever you say.
I
can’t wait until my life with my
bashert
begins.”

The word stuck in my throat like a lump that kept me from swallowing. I couldn’t move past it.
Bashert, bashert.

“You really think you’re fated to marry Silvan?”

“Oh . . .” Rachel looked down, away from me. “Maybe not
fated
. But my mother says that she and Daddy learned to be each other’s true souls over time. I don’t know. I know you think it’s silly.”

It was an old argument between us. Rachel believed in all of that destiny stuff; I never had. Not before, at least.

But I found myself lowering my voice. The memory of a smooth,
printless hand ran through my mind. “No,” I said gravely. “It’s not silly. I—I sometimes hope . . .”

I clutched the sleeve of my coat with both hands, worrying the fabric. I didn’t want to tell Rachel about my dreams. For one thing, they were almost too embarrassing to contemplate. I felt so naked in them. Like I was being split open, skinned alive.

For another, for so many years my dreams had been about Silvan. Silvan, who belonged to Rachel.

But, to my relief, she just put a soothing hand on top of mine.

“We all want to find someone special, Terra. You don’t have to be embarrassed by it.”

Of course, she didn’t know that both of us dreamed about the same boy. I flattened my lips, forced a wistful smile. “No. I guess I don’t. It just feels so strange to even
hope
.”

“These hopes,” Rachel began, “are they about any particular boy? Do you have someone in mind?”

“Well,” I said, drawing out the syllable. I couldn’t tell her the truth. So I talked about the next-best thing. Koen. Koen was easier to contemplate. “There
is
a boy, actually. Maybe. I think.”

She looked almost hungry at the news. “Who?”

“My father’s
talmid
,” I said, feeling my face redden again. Rachel scrunched up her nose.

“Koen Maxwell? He’s kind of awkward, don’t you think?”

I thought about it—how Koen was always letting out loose bursts of laughter at exactly the wrong moment or how he pawed at his neck when my father asked him questions over the dinner table. But, to be honest, that was part of what I liked about him. He had a kind of nervous energy that was always spilling out, like he couldn’t quite contain it.

“He is,” I agreed. “But he’s got those gorgeous brown eyes.”

Rachel understood
that
. “And that
hair
,” she agreed. “So are you going to do anything about it?”