A Million Suns

“So where is this painting?” Amy asks.

“Don’t know. It used to be on the wall.”

“Where?” Amy calls. She’s moved to the center of the room, examining the only wall that isn’t decorated with art.

“Over there, actually,” I say. I get to the end of the first row of Harley’s canvases and start in on the second. “Anyway, Orion told Harley that good paintings all have titles. Harley said he didn’t think paintings needed names, but Orion made a big deal out of it and called the painting—”

“Through the Looking Glass,” Amy says.

“Yeah.” I glance back at her. She’s bending in front of the blank wall, reading a tiny placard.

“Through the Looking Glass, Oil Painting by Harley, Feeder,” she reads. She turns back to me. “But where is it? There’s a hook here for the painting, but no painting.”

“It’s not here, either,” I say, pushing aside the stack of paintings.

“This must have been an important painting — it’s the only one that has a placard.”

Amy’s right. The rest of the room is a bit of a mess, but this blank wall is neat, clearly sectioned off. It’s obviously meant to be the center of attention, even if there’s nothing left to direct one’s attention to.

“Orion names the painting, he hangs it in the center of the room, he bothers to get a placard made that shows the title of the painting — this has to be the next clue he wanted us to find.” Her green eyes search mine, as if she could see Harley’s art in them.

I move to stand beside Amy, staring at the empty wall. “But where’s the painting?”

20 AMY

“WHO WOULD TAKE IT?” I ASK. “SOMEONE CLOSE TO HARLEY?”

“He didn’t have many friends. Me — Bartie, Victria.”

“One of them?”

Elder shakes his head. I believe him — Bartie’s too serious to think of stealing a painting, and while Victria would have no qualms about it, she’d pick a painting of Orion, not Kayleigh, judging by the sketch she stole from Harley’s room. “And I know Doc wouldn’t.”

I snort. No, Doc wouldn’t.

“Unless…”

“Yeah?” I ask.

“Harley’s parents might have… ”

For some reason, this surprises me. I didn’t really think of Harley having parents. He just… was. And while I know that the people living in the Ward were separated from the rest of the Feeders on purpose, it just didn’t occur to me that there was anything of Harley outside of the Hospital and the stars.

“Come on,” Elder says. “Let’s try it.”

In all my time on Godspeed, I don’t think I’ve ever actually walked the entire length of the ship. I’ve run it dozens of times — or at least, I did before the Phydus wore off — but I’ve never walked it.

We start down the same path we took to get to the rabbit fields. When we reach the fork in the road, we go left instead of up and over to the fields. I glance back — the fence has been repaired, and the entire area looks undisturbed. I can see a couple of rabbits, lazily hopping about, sniffing the ground where their owner lay dead just a few hours before.

“Tell me about the painting,” I say, desperately trying to replace the image in my mind of the rabbit girl’s death with anything else.

“It’s really frexing good,” Elder says. “But, I don’t know… weird, I guess. Usually Harley paints real-life things, but this one is… different. It’s a picture of Kayleigh right before she died.”

Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that the painting Harley did in memory of Kayleigh’s death is weird — after all, the only other surreal painting he did was of his own.

“Her death — it surprised us all. Of all of us, I always thought that it would be Harley… ”

“You thought Harley would kill himself?” I ask.

“He’d tried a couple of times. Once before Kayleigh. Twice after. Three times after,” he adds.

He’d forgotten the third attempt, the one that actually worked.

“Right after Kayleigh died,” Elder says, “Harley started that painting. I mean, right after she died — he began stretching the canvas the same day we found her body, painted through the night. Eventually, Doc drugged him with a med patch. Once he was asleep, I lifted the wet brush from his hand. His fingertips were dented from his grip.” Elder’s voice is far away.

Freshly hatched puffy yellow baby chicks cheep up at us as we pass them. The solar lamp is bright and straight above us, making our shadows disappear on the dusty path. The City is far enough in front of us that while I can see people bustling about, I can’t make out their faces, and the Recorder Hall and Hospital are far enough behind us that I don’t feel their beady stares. I lower the hood of my jacket and unwind the strip of cloth around my hair, relishing the cool air against my scalp.

Here, in this one small part of the ship, with no one here but Elder, I’m not afraid.

Elder plods along down the path, his eyes down and his face troubled. I know the way silence and secrets can eat at you from the inside.

I touch his elbow and he stops, startled.

“Tell me how she died,” I say.

21 ELDER

I WAS THIRTEEN AND STILL LIVED AT THE HOSPITAL. THE SHIP was going to land in 53 years and 147 days, and by that point, I would be the one to lead everyone off Godspeed and onto the new world. I’d been at the Hospital long enough to know that Harley was my best friend, that Doc was mostly okay, and that it would not be too long now before I would — finally — start my training as Elder.

Life was good.

Then.

Harley had dared me to climb the statue of the Plague Eldest that stood in the Hospital gardens. I hadn’t gotten past the pedestal, but he was hanging from the Plague Eldest’s benevolent left arm, gazing down the path to the pond near the back wall of the ship.

“Something big is floating in the water,” Harley said. He swung his body and released his grip, landing with a thud in the fake mulch beside me. He left a purple paint stain on the Plague Eldest’s elbow. “Let’s go see.”

Harley was taller than me and walked with longer strides. Even so, I was tempted to ask him to race. But Harley was also four years older than me, and racing was for children.

“Race ya,” Harley said, kicking up mulch as he leapt away. He looked over his shoulder, laughed, and almost tripped over a blooming hydrangea spilling out onto the path. Little blue petals went flying, whipping past my ankles before drifting to the ground.

I had almost caught up with Harley, was reaching for his shirt to jerk him back and throw him off course so I could speed past him—

— when he stopped cold.

Harley threw his arm out. It caught me in the chest, painfully, winding me and bringing me to a stop.

“What the frex was that for?” I gasped, bent over.

Harley didn’t say anything.

His face was sweating from the race, but underneath he was pale, giving him a deathly sheen. I turned from