Starglass (17 page)

“Attaboy,” he said. “Good boy.”

I watched as Koen’s long fingers scratched the space between my cat’s shoulder blades. I could almost feel the words on my tongue, pooling there, taking shape. But it was difficult to make my vocal cords move. When I finally
did
speak, I was surprised to find that my question had nothing to do with kissing—nothing to do with Rachel’s suggestions to be direct.

“Did you always want to be a clock keeper, Koen?” I asked, then winced. Small talk—I was making small talk. With my
intended
.

“Actually, yeah.” He gave a breathy laugh. “I was curious about that kind of stuff as a kid. Not the clock tower. I didn’t care about that. But the seasons. And our sleep cycles. I thought that stuff was pretty interesting.”

“Really?” I watched as Pepper climbed up into his lap, kneading his paws against Koen’s trousers.

“Yeah. Do you remember our seventh year of school, when I always used to fall asleep in class?”

I cocked my head to the side. My memories of Koen were hazy. I sat near the middle, passing notes back and forth to Rachel. He must have been somewhere with his friends in the rows behind us. I knew he wasn’t one of the mean boys, who’d thrown stuff at us and called us names. But other than that I couldn’t remember him at all.

“Sure, I remember,” I lied. Koen lifted an eyebrow but went on anyway.

“I decided to stop taking my pills. I just wanted to see what would happen, really. It was weird. No matter what the light looked like in the dome, it was like the day
inside
me was getting shorter and shorter. Eventually, I was conking out around nineteen o’clock every day, right in the middle of supper. My parents got freaked out. They thought something was wrong with me. They dragged me to the doctors, even though I kept trying to tell them that I’d just been palming my pills.”

“So, like, the clock keeper’s job was a lifelong dream. Or snooze.”

Koen grinned. “You could say that. So what about you?”

I pulled idly at my sock. “Me?”

“Yeah. Why botany?”

“Mmm.”

I rose, feeling Koen watch me as I walked by him. My sketchbook was waiting for me on my bed. I hadn’t given up drawing, not entirely. But now every night before bed I pored over the pages, sketching plants, jotting notes. I did my best to capture everything that Mara taught me. Now every page was covered in names, labels, words in ancient languages. I passed it to Koen. He leafed through, laughing as Pepper rubbed his face against the spine. Meanwhile I braced myself, my hands gone cold. Would he belittle me like Abba always did?

But a smile just lit up his lips. “These are good,” he said, paging through them slowly. “Yeah, really good. You’re talented.”

I felt the corners of my own mouth gently rise. “You really think so?”

“Yeah. I love your use of color here. It really looks like twilight in the dome.” He swept his index finger over the blue I’d drawn against the treetops, and the faint line of gold that traced every skinny pine. I looked at him and felt a swell of pride. Koen was seeing what I’d seen. Koen
understood
.

“Thanks,” I said, my cheeks warming. “Before we got our assignments, I thought I might have been an artist. But the Council had other ideas.”

Koen scowled. “You know, it’s such
dreck
.”

It was like he had abruptly drained all the air out of the room. The atmosphere tasted different, somehow prickly. Koen cavalierly tossed the sketchbook down on top of my unmade bed. The pages splayed out like an open hand.

“What’s dreck?” I asked cautiously.

“That they make you be a botanist when you wanted to be an artist. I mean, I would have chosen my vocation either way. But it’s dreck that they chose it for you.”

“It’s not
so
bad,” I said, my eyebrows knitting up. A few months ago I would have been right there with Koen, complaining about the injustice of it all. But since Mara had taken me on our walk through the dome, we’d fallen into a sort of tentative peace. I’d begun to look
forward to my days in the lab. Sure, botany wasn’t as much fun as drawing, but it wasn’t all bad.

Koen sat straighter. There was something sharp about his expression, challenging. “You didn’t
choose
it. They took away your choice.”

“But I
like
my job. It’s not perfect, but I’m learning a lot, and—”

“It’s still not right. That they picked for you. Like they think you’re some sort of
child
.” Koen’s face was all scrunched up.

“You’re mad at me,” I said, speaking the words very slowly.

“No.” Koen’s response came quickly, but I didn’t believe it.

“You are. It’s something I’ve done. Does this . . . does this have something to do with Mar Jacobi?”
Is this why you won’t kiss me?
is what I wanted to ask. But I still couldn’t find the words.

Across my dark bedroom, the cat still purring on his lap, Koen pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t speak. I could hear my heart thundering in my chest.

“Come on,” I said—not angrily but with worry. I stepped closer to him, holding out my hand. I don’t know why. He wasn’t Rachel. He wasn’t there to link pinkies or reassure me. But maybe somewhere, in the back of my mind, I still hoped he would. “We’re going to be
married
. You can tell me what I’ve done wrong.”

“Nothing,” he whispered. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

I dropped my hand against my thigh. I should have just accepted it—believed him, believed that it would all be okay. But I couldn’t. I’d
spent my whole childhood trying to tiptoe around my father, afraid to even breathe wrong. I didn’t want to spend my marriage like that too.

“Liberty on Earth,” I whispered, as if the words were an oath—as if they could somehow miraculously make Koen forgive me. I didn’t expect him to answer, but then the strangest thing happened. I heard his voice come whispering back.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “I didn’t say anything.”

But his big brown eyes pressed into mine. We both knew the truth. He wrung his broad hands nervously, cracking the knuckles.

“Say it again,” he pressed.

I licked my lips. When I spoke, the words were even softer than before. “Liberty on Earth.”

“Liberty on Zehava,” he said.

For a moment, an interminable moment, Koen didn’t move. There was an animal sharpness about his gaze—his eyes were eager and alert.

“Tomorrow,” he said at last. “Meet me outside the starboard bakery. The one between the delicatessen and the china shop.”

“I know where you mean.” Momma had worked there. I’d spent my baby years sitting in my high chair in the back, watching as she worked her hands into the dough.

The corner of Koen’s mouth ticked up.

“Good,” he said. With that, he stood, dislodging Pepper from his
lap. The cat gave a meow of protest, but Koen ignored him. Instead he stepped close to the bed. He bent over and pressed a kiss into the part of my hair. I breathed in the cedar-struck perfume of him.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he murmured.

And then, before I could even open my eyes again, he was gone, leaving only a gap of cold in his absence.

T
he commerce district bustled after a long day’s work. Children spilled over the cobblestones, hefting books in their arms. Across the street a gaggle of laughing women tumbled out from one of the pubs. The air that drifted from the shops was heavy with smells: the salt-preserved odor of fish, the sweet scent of overripe fruit, and the all-too-familiar perfume of freshly baked bread. My stomach gave a rumble. I ran the flat of my hand over my gut, hoping to quiet it. I wasn’t here for food—couldn’t let myself be lulled into thinking this
was just another ordinary evening. After all, there was no telling when a member of the captain’s guard might come swaggering down the street.

The shops didn’t have names. But each one had its own insignia. Momma’s bakery bore a blue star above it. Half of the paint had flaked off, revealing the concrete below. But I would have recognized those seven points anywhere.

Koen stood below it, waving his arms at me.

“Terra!” he called. His wide, giddy smile surprised me. So did the way he reached out, grabbing my hand in his.

“Hello, Koen,” I said. I glanced down the street, hoping no one heard the way his voice rose above the crowd. But it was lost among the conversation and laughter. We looked like any other young couple, tending to their errands after a long day’s work.

Without another word Koen turned toward the bakery. He shouldered the door open and dragged me in past the threshold. I’d avoided the flour-scattered place since Momma had passed. I preferred the port bakery. Even if their bread was never as soft, the store held fewer tender memories.

But Koen didn’t give me time to absorb the familiar sight of the workers knotting bread into ropes. He dodged the crowd at the counter, ignoring how they shouted their orders to the counter girl. Instead he ducked inside a doorway at the rear of the shop. As I followed him I felt my hands tremble.

The corridor was dark, lit by a single flickering bulb.

“Where are we going?” I asked, my voice nothing more than a whisper. I’d put off my thoughts about Mar Jacobi for too long—I wanted to finally discover the secrets behind the words
Liberty on Earth.
But Koen didn’t seem to notice my excitement. He just held my fingers limply in his calloused hand and pulled me forward.

“You’ll see.”

Our footsteps echoed across the tile ground. Then Koen shoved his weight against one final door, and we were out in the open air again. At long last he let my fingers go. I dropped my head back, gazing upward.

We were in a back alleyway. Brick surrounded us on all sides. At the intrusion a flock of birds had flown upward, dashing from one painted window to the next. I could see the ceiling panels over us, hanging only a few meters above the tops of the shop buildings. The only exit was up, then, or back the way we’d come—and the door had just slammed shut behind me.

At the back of the alley stood Van Hofstadter. He was slumped against the brick. He didn’t even stand straight at the sight of us.

“Well, would you look at the lovebirds,” he said dryly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Koen wince.

“You said I could bring her,” he said.

“What was I supposed to say? She’s an adult now, a full citizen. I can’t stop you.”

Koen leaned over, whispering to me. “You can become one of us only after you turn sixteen. Children aren’t supposed to know about us.”

“Us?” I said faintly, glancing between the boys.

“The Children of Abel,” Koen said. And then he added, all in a rush: “Van told me that it’s from a story. A very old story. Somewhere on Earth there was a garden. The first men were cast out of it, two brothers among them. One was a shepherd. Abel. The other worked the land. That was his brother, Cain. Abel did his duty, just as we’ve followed the rule of the Council. But Cain was greedy. He wanted the flocks for himself, so he murdered his brother. Struck him down in the fields.”

I thought of Mar Jacobi, of how he’d fallen to the ground in a puddle of his own blood. I stuffed my hands down into my pockets.

“Be careful what you tell her,” Van admonished Koen. “I don’t trust her yet, and neither do our leaders. Benjamin might have had ideas about asking her to join up, but her father is no friend of Abel. There’s no telling if she’ll sell us out to the Council.”

“ ‘No friend of Abel,’ ” I echoed. “But my father believes in being a good citizen. It’s practically all he ever talks about.”

“There’s more than one way to be a good citizen,” Koen said, touching his hand to the back of his neck.

“Our leaders have demanded a tribute from you, Terra,” Van
said. “Proof that you can be trusted. There’s a book in your father’s possession. We’d like you to take it.”

“A book?” As far as I knew, Abba had never been much of a reader.

“It’s a journal,” Van said. “Very ancient. It belonged to one of the original passengers. It’s long been significant to us.”

“What would my father be doing with—”

Van lifted his hand. It cut through the cool air, clean and decisive. Slicing through my words. “That doesn’t matter. Bring it to me, and we’ll know that we can trust you.”

I felt a wave of heat crest inside me. Of course I could be trusted. If I knew anything, it was how to keep silent—how to be invisible, how to be nobody. I looked at Van, my gaze hardening.

“Fine,” I said hotly. “I’ll get you your book.”

I turned to leave, gesturing for Koen to follow. After giving Van a long, baleful look, he did. But as the heavy door swung on its hinges behind us, I heard Van’s sharp tenor come calling for me.

“I’ll believe it when I see it!” he said.

The door slammed shut behind me.

•  •  •

The next morning I opened my bedroom door a crack to let the cat out. Then I fell back into bed, the covers pulled up to my chin.

It wasn’t unusual for my father to leave before I did. He had bells to ring, a
talmid
to teach. And I’d long preferred to skip breakfast,
avoiding the clatter of dishes and my father’s silence and his burning gaze. He always looked at me like he expected something. Sometimes over oatmeal he’d ask me strained questions about Mara Stone. I dodged them. For sixteen years he’d ignored my life, my interests—ignored
me
. I had no intention of making friends now just because I was about to move out of our dreary home.

That morning I listened to him rattle around in the galley. There was the slam of the cupboards, the crash of pans, and the sound of water rushing fast. From my dark bedroom I listened to it slosh over the floor.

At last came the slam of the front door. I rose and left my unmade bed behind. The space between my bedroom and my father’s had never felt so huge before. I took a dozen silent steps, holding my breath.

As I stepped across the threshold of his room, I heard a rustle of sound behind me. I jumped, turning—but it was only Pepper, crouched at the top of the stairs with a catnip mouse held between his paws.