Shadows Cast by Stars

worried pallor framing him. The sight of his frailty hits me in the gut.

His footsteps are heavy on the porch. He heaves the door open as if it weighs as much as the world itself and looks at both of us slowly, as if time is winding down. “Pack your things. Only what’s absolutely essential- clothes, food, tools.”

Paul makes for the tool shed. I dart upstairs and begin pulling things from drawers, my mind spinning as I try to decide what we need. Clothes. Needles. Thread. Soap. Underwear. Socks. Shoes. What else, what else? I run from room to room and back again, frantic, panicking at the idea that today, this very afternoon, we are leaving. What if we never come back?

When I finally come downstairs, I set the boxes next to a sack of potatoes and a duffel of tools. Will this be enough? What have I forgotten? What would my mother have taken, if she was here? The china? The curtains? The photograph of my grandparents? I don’t know, I just don’t know.

“Cass.”

I turn to find my father standing there, looking like he’s on the verge of tears.

“That’ll do, starshine,” he says. “Come into the kitchen.”

I follow him, and then wish I hadn’t. An array of surgical instruments is spread over the kitchen table. The woman from the truck stands at our sink, washing her hands. She doesn’t look up.

“Cassandra,” my father says, “this is Madda.”

I should acknowledge her, but I can’t. All I see are needles and scalpels, a neat row of silver. My throat’s so thick with fear that I can’t even ask what’s happening.

“Cass?” my father repeats. “You okay?”

Slowly, I raise my gaze to meet his. “What is going on?”

“Tell her,” the woman says. “The short version. We need to get this over with if we want to make the tide.”

“Plague,” my father says. “A new strain. Airborne, they think, because it’s jumped the quarantine grids.”

I close my eyes. In my mind, I see Paul’s raven circling our house. Is this what his vision was trying to tell us? My father is still speaking about the searches, how there aren’t enough full bloods in the Corridor, how the UA is now rounding up half-bloods, how we’re not safe. I hear him say these things, but what he’s really saying is we’re leaving. We’re leaving our home, the only home we’ve ever known, the one we’ve worked so hard to keep.

“You know what happens to the ones the searchers take,” he says.

I do. Every Other does. We die.

“Where are we going?” Paul asks. He’s standing just outside the kitchen, as scared as me, but at the same time practically shaking from excitement. He knows the answer to his question already. There is only one place to go.

“The Island,” my father says. To treaty lands. To the Band.

“We’re removing your chips,” Madda says as the kettle starts to whistle. “No chip, no way to track you. Besides, best you have nothing of the Corridor left on you. They don’t look kindly on that sort of thing on the Island.”

“I’ll go first,” I say, but Paul pushes past me, rolling up his sleeve, exposing the chip in his forearm that allows us to connect to the UA etherstream. He takes a seat at the table and offers up his arm like a sacrifice to the gods.

Neither of us makes a sound as Madda slices our skin and digs out the chip, but we’re both pale and shaking afterward. My father and Madda load the truck while we sit on the porch, wrapped in blankets, sipping at Madda’s flask of whiskey. I hate alcohol, but when the only thing to cut the pain is willow bark tea, even I will allow myself a sip-but just one. Paul cradles his bandaged arm close to him. I hold mine out to the wind, letting it cool the heat rising from the wound. Later we’ll both have scars. This is how they’ll know where we came from when we get to the Island, that we weren’t born there, that we weren’t raised native. The Band might open its arms wide to us now, but they’ll never, ever let us forget that we came from the Corridor first.

CHAPTER THREE

Paul and I ride in the back of the truck with our belongings. Our route takes us along roads that haven’t been used in years. Trees reach out toward us, snatching at my hair, at Paul’s arms, as my father drives over the potholes faster than he should, forcing us to cling to each other as much as to the truck. We are running, and every time I look up, I expect to see the sleek silver searchcraft bearing down on us.

Only a few Others taken by searchers have ever survived the rescue missions staged by the Band, and the tales they tell are harrowing-wards where row upon row of Others are hooked to harvesting machines to be drained of their blood. For some reason, the powers that be can’t manufacture a vaccine. We’re it. Our blood is injected into Plague victims, who cross their fingers and hope to survive. Sometimes they do; sometimes they don’t, but it works often enough that they keep using us, even though they can’t keep us alive.

But consider, the UA government says, the greater good. What is the loss of one when that person can help so many?

When my father finally stops the truck at the end of the road where a trail cuts into the brush, I allow myself to breathe. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe we can still go back. Maybe this has all been a mistake.

But the aching wound on my arm reminds me there is no going back. Removal of a chip without UA consent is punishable by law. Like it or not, we are now fugitives.

We work quickly, unloading our boxes and lugging them down to a sheltered cove where a weather-beaten herring skiff rests in the shallows. Madda hops into it, taking our belongings from us until there’s none left. She then begins the careful task of moving the stuff around, adjusting the boxes until she’s happy with the balance, leaving us with nothing to do but fret. I sit on a nearby rock, watching her work, wishing I had something to do with my hands. I’ve always known that belongings are expendable, that stories and memories are the true treasures we carry with us, but seeing what little we have loaded onto the boat leaves me feeling very poor. Paul stands beside me, his rifle resting in the crook of his arm, staring out across the expanse of ocean. I can sense he feels the same way.

It’s some time before my father returns. He took the truck deep into the forest to be reclaimed by the land, but not before draining the fuel tanks. Fuel is too precious to sacrifice, even to the earth.

No one speaks.

Silence is our talisman.

It takes time for the tide to rise, but once the skiff is floating we climb aboard. The sun descends behind the thunderheads hugging the western horizon. Behind us, to the east, mountains rear up, demanding that we return home. There is no coming back once you cross to the west, they say. We will remember that you abandoned us, and we will exact revenge if you return. Their peaks are blackened maws stretching skyward to snap at the stars. As fearsome as they are, I can’t help staring at them. This may be the last time I look at those mountains, those peaks I’ve looked up at every day of my life. I wish I could say good- bye, but even if I did, I don’t think the mountains would listen.

My father and Paul use oars to pole the skiff out into deeper water. It’s hard work. My father’s breath comes fast and heavy as he fights against the tide.

Once we’re far enough out for Madda to risk starting the motor, Paul takes a seat beside me on the cold metal hull, and reaches out to take my hand. He knows I don’t like the ocean. The first time spirit took me was while I was swimming not far from here. If it weren’t for Paul hauling me to the surface and dragging me back to the beach, I would still be there. Even though that day was years ago, when we were only six, I can’t shake the feeling that if I touch the water, I’ll be drawn back down into the shadows of the old cities below. They aren’t friendly, those places: Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Los Angeles. Their deaths were sudden and painful, shaken loose from the land by terrible earthquakes. Below, in the inky fathoms, they’re reaching toward me, raking the water with their gridiron hands.

One look at Paul tells me he remembers too. The buildings aren’t all that lurk below. The lost live amid the barnacles and sea wrack, and they, too, seek a new home. That day, when he swam into the dark water to save me, was the first time he encountered the lost. That was the price of my life, that Paul be haunted by those who