Starglass

been like this for years. And it’s never bothered you before. No, no, not until he makes a scene in the dome. In front of everyone. Embarrassing you.”

“That’s not it.”

“I’ve been living with this alone for four years now! And it’s only now, when I’m about to finally get out of it, that you care? Thanks. Thanks for nothing.”

Little Alyana cried and cried. But I turned away from them. Ronen didn’t answer me, though I heard him suck in a breath. Like he was trying to hold his anger in. Maybe he really was one of us—an angry person, like my father.

But when Ronen finally spoke, he didn’t sound angry at all. He only sounded sad. “Sorry, Terra,” he said.

Then I heard his footsteps, and the front door close behind him, and I was alone again—all alone—in the empty silence of our quarters.

15

Ronen was right. Over the next several days Abba’s mood grew even darker. He came home stinking of wine, grumbling his words. Sometimes he passed out in bed while twilight still rosied the dome ceiling. One night, after he’d skipped the supper I’d made to sleep alone upstairs, he barked my name from his bedroom. I stiffened, sure that he’d finally discovered that the paper-wrapped package had disappeared from Momma’s jewelry box. But when I went to the door, I saw that his closet remained shut. He sat on the edge of the bed, his shoulders slumped.

“Terra,” he said. I could hear the phlegm in his voice. His words seemed to burble up from it, sticky and hopeless. “Marry Koen. He’s a good boy. A clock keeper. Just like your old man.”

“I know,” I said doubtfully, hanging back. “I’ve already given him my consent.”

“Did you?” He swung his heavy head up toward me. His eyes were filmy, hazy, without understanding.

“Yes, Abba,” I said, my words coming out in a whisper. “You were there.”

“Huh,” Abba said, chuckling to himself. “So I was.”

He turned away from me and stared at the wall. I waited only a moment more before I rushed down the hall toward my room. After I closed the door behind me, shutting away the memory of my father’s stiff posture, his gray face, I pulled out my sketchbook. I fumbled with my pencils, scribbling purple flowers across a rolling field. Each green stalk was meant to sag with violet bells. They were foxglove plants, or were supposed to be, at least. I’d looked them up in one of Mara’s field guides. There hadn’t been much information. Only a diagram. Long stalks. Lozenge leaves. Purple bells, spotted white inside. And the ancient name for them: Digitalis purpurea.

Soon I’d shaded nearly the entire page over with purple pigment. I looked down at the frenzy of color, at my hand, red where I’d clutched the pencil too tight. Then I thrust the pencil against the wall and buried my face in my pillow.

* * *

Koen kept me distracted.

Now when we walked through the dome after work, we spoke in hushed tones about the rebellion. Koen told me what he thought of liberty—how, when we reached the surface of our new home, he hoped to find the sort of happiness his parents never had. We no longer held hands. Koen’s were too busy flitting through the air as he jabbered. And I didn’t even try to kiss him. He was always too red-faced, breathless, and antsy for that.

“On the surface,” he told me one night as we walked across the frost-blue pastures, “I’d like to have lots of kids. A whole gaggle of them. Because with the Council out of the way, we can have them make more than two down in the hatchery for us, right?”

“Right,” I agreed. “But why?”

“Because it’s too much pressure to have just one boy and one girl. I mean, look at your dad. He was so worried about whether you would be a specialist or not.”

I blushed, stuffing my hands into my pockets. I’d told Koen almost everything about my father—and what I hadn’t, Abba had covered for me.

“You really think it would help to have more than two?”

“Sure! It would spread that stuff around. And besides, I think I’d be good at it. Being a dad. I mean, Van’s kid loves me.”

I thought about the way that little Corban had beamed up at Koen, and I couldn’t help but give a nod of agreement.

“He does,” I said. I squinted, wondering whether Koen would have the same sort of relationship with our own children. But the thought felt somehow absurd. Even though we were supposed to have our first child within five years of marriage, I couldn’t imagine motherhood, for the life of me.

“So,” Koen said, “what do you want life to be like once the Children of Abel take over?”

He was talking too loudly again, and in such open air. I held a finger to my lips, shushing him. And then I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just hope we get more of a say in the way things work.”

“Like the job system?”

He was always harping on about that—about what a tragedy it was that I couldn’t spend all of my time drawing.

“I told you. I don’t mind Mara that much.”

“Speaking of . . .” Koen stopped his progress across the field. His hands were suddenly still—his expression dire. I braced myself. I knew what was coming.

“Van says they can’t move forward until they have the foxglove.”

“Move forward with what?” I demanded, my eyes searching the ceiling panels overhead. They were just beginning to go dark, the first feeble stars shining through. But the blue onset of night did nothing to deter Koen.

“I don’t know,” he said. But his hands darted out. His icy fingers enveloped mine. “All I know is that they need you. We need you, Terra.”

It wasn’t quite what I wanted to hear. I wanted Koen to tell me that he needed me, that his heart wouldn’t be sated until he pressed his lips to mine and pulled me down against the cold hard ground. But looking at his ruddy face and the determined expression that had tightened his mouth, I realized that this was as close as I was going to get.

“Okay, Koen,” I said, and gave his cold hands a squeeze. “I’ll try.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“Promise,” I agreed.

Koen threw an arm over my shoulders, drawing me close. Together, under the growing twilight, we moved across the frozen field.

* * *

My opportunity came only two weeks after we entered our new sun’s orbit. Mara had spent all afternoon sowing cold-hardy seeds in plates I’d filled with agar. I suppose the work had finally begun to wear on her. She stifled a yawn against the back of her wrinkled hand.

“I need to get myself coffee,” she announced, standing up. “Though I’m sure the real coffee we’ll plant on Zehava will be a major improvement. Hardly any caffeine in our dandelion brew.”

“There is no caffeine in dandelion brew,” I said. Mara laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

“Good! You’re learning!” Without another word she turned out of the lab and was gone, and for the first time I was alone under the buzzing lights.

It took a moment for that fact to settle in. Mara’s presence was a constant in the overcrowded lab, as expected as the tumbled seed trays and the worktables and the microscopes. Her absence left a strange gap of silence in her wake. I knew I had to take advantage now, before she returned and obliterated every chance I had