Starglass

I worked bread crumbs into the raw meat, mashing it all together with my hands. The rhythm of work felt almost soothing. For a moment I could believe that Momma was still alive, that she, instead of Hannah, stood at the counter kneading bread. But the tenuous peace was soon broken.

“How do you like your job so far?” Hannah asked.

I grunted, letting my hands fall still in the bowl of meat. “I don’t know,” I said. “How do you like your job?”

My brother stopped chopping carrots. “Terra!” he said, but Hannah just let out a laugh.

“Oh, it’s no big deal, Ro. It’s not like you loved your vocation when you were fifteen.”

“You didn’t?” I frowned, but he only stared down at the cutting board. Hannah sauntered over to him and scraped the cut carrots into a dented metal bowl. She let her fingers alight on his shoulder, then gave her eyelashes a flutter.

“Of course not. Your brother whined about it for months. It wasn’t until he started earning his wages that he seemed to see any use in it.”

Ronen’s shoulders lifted, tense. I watched as he squirmed under my gaze. I had never heard him complain about his job, but we hardly ever spoke back then. Not that we spoke much now, either.

“What about you?” I asked, turning to look at Hannah. She was stirring the carrots into the pan, her full lips pursed and thoughtful.

“What about me?”

“Do you love your job? Did the Council find you your true calling and all of that?” I regretted my words almost as soon as I said them. Hannah’s father was a Council member. I should have known better than to disparage his judgment. But she didn’t seem to care. She just shrugged.

“At first I hated it. Cartography, you know? What kind of job is that? I wanted to design clothes, like that rubbish uniform they gave you.” She nodded toward the long lab coat that hung from the chair. “But after a while I came to like my work. I’ll be one of the first humans to set foot on Zehava. That has to be worth something, right?”

“Sure,” I said softly. “I guess.”

“Don’t worry, Terra,” Hannah said, walking over. She took the bowl of ground lamb out from under my hands, leaving my greasy fingers frozen over the table. “You’ll come to like your job. It’s not easy for any of us at first.”

I was about to protest that it wasn’t true—that so far as I knew, Rachel had fallen into her new job duties just fine. And what about Silvan Rafferty? Surely taking on Captain Wolff’s mantle was no struggle for him. But before I could, our front door burst open again, and my father came clattering through.

His steps were clumsy, hard against the metal floor. He’d been drinking. But he wasn’t alone. Koen Maxwell stepped past him, setting a steadying hand on Abba’s arm.

“Easy, there,” Koen said. And then he lifted his soulful brown eyes, smiling at us. “Hello!”

I rushed over to the sink to wash my hands again, rubbing the sliver of tallowy soap between my palms. We all watched, silent for a moment, as Abba stumbled forward. He surveyed the scene.

“What’s all this about?” he growled.

Ronen and I exchanged a look, our eyebrows lifting in a wordless agreement. We’d keep out of Abba’s way, as we always did when he got like this. But Hannah didn’t know Abba like we did.

“Arran,” she said. “Come, sit. I’m making stuffed cabbage. Your favorite, isn’t it?”

My father grumbled something incomprehensible. He looked up at Koen, who stood by the door with his hands in his pockets. “You, boy. Get me my wine.”

Koen shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know where it is,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll get it.”

I crouched down beside the icebox to fetch Abba’s wine out of its hiding place. I tipped it into one of our glass tumblers, handing it off to my father.

“We had a hard day,” Koen offered. “We received some bad news from the Council.”

“Oh?” Hannah tilted her head to one side. Her black curls spilled against her collarbone. Then the frying pan gave a hiss, and she scraped her spatula hastily over it. My father drank down a mouthful of wine.

“Winter,” Abba grunted. “They’re moving us back to winter soon.”

We all went quiet at that.

“That can’t be right,” my brother protested. “Spring’s only just started.”

My father stared down into his sour wine, half gone already. He didn’t answer, but then, he didn’t have to. Hannah answered for him.

“Spring as we know it won’t exist on Zehava,” she said. “It’s too cold. The Council must want—”

“—to get us used to winter.” My father finished her sentence for her. Then he wiped his mouth against the hairy back of his hand. It left a purple stain there.

“When I was a boy,” he said, “they still gave us a few weeks of summer. They let us camp out in the atrium.”

None of us spoke—not even Hannah. She stood still over the stove, smoke drifting up into her face.

“Now no spring?” my father asked. And when he spoke again, his voice broke. “Who the hell wants to live on a planet without any spring?”

“No!” I said, slamming my fist against the counter. On the table Pepper jumped. The force behind my words surprised even me. “No, it’s not right.”

“Terra,” my father said, a dark warning in his voice. But I didn’t hear it. I slammed my fist against the counter again.

“It’s not right!” I said. I thought of Momma’s flowers, of the walks we’d taken through the dome on spring nights. I thought of the artificial sunlight and how it warmed our faces even as the nights turned to dusk. I thought of never feeling that again. “Why do they get to decide? It’s not right!”

“Enough!” Abba roared. He drained the tumbler in one gulp, then slammed it down against the table. He ambled to his feet, stumbling toward me. “I won’t listen to treasonous words under my roof!”

“But you said—” I began to protest, backing up until my spine pressed against the metal wall. I heard Ronen say my name in a low tone. He was warning me away from Abba, warning me about what waited for me if I continued down this path.

He didn’t have to. I knew the dangers. Before my father could lift a hand to me, I shoved past him. Then I shouldered by Koen, too, groping for the door handle.

“I’m out of here,” I said. “Enjoy your cabbage.”

I slammed the front door shut behind me.

* * *

I tumbled past our front gate, my footsteps brisk against the cobblestone. The twilight air was chilly. I crossed my arms tight over my chest to keep the wind away. Maybe my father had already turned the dials up in the clock tower’s control room, moving us toward autumn before we even knew what was happening. I wondered what the birds would do once the frost came in. They’d only just begun to lace their nests with downy feathers. Would their eggs hatch in the winter? Or would the baby birds freeze to death inside their brittle shells? I wondered if the Council even cared.

Liberty on Earth.

The words rang out in my mind. I wondered if this was what Mar Jacobi had died for—for spring and baby birds and the right to live our lives the way we wanted. In school we’d learned about the different forms of government. Democracies. Parliamentary republics. Military juntas. The names stuck out in my mind, but I could hardly recall what they meant. Something about voting, maybe. I’d memorized the definitions only long enough to pass our tests, then I’d quickly forgotten them.

Liberty on Zehava.

I knew the Council was meant to rule long past landing. After all, they’d been the ones to keep our little ship afloat these five hundred years, hadn’t they? Rebbe Davison always said you didn’t change horses midstream. Silvan and his cronies, Council sons all, had shared a hearty laugh. But I hadn’t understood. What would a horse be doing underwater?