Starglass

me.

19

Down in the pasture funeral goers drifted like ghosts, looking gauzy and grave in their white cotton. They held hands. They sang. Some of them looked down at the wrapped body of my father and wondered why anyone would do such a thing. Perhaps a few of them understood. But they all cast down fistfuls of soil, frigid and dry from the frost, and then tried to stop themselves from wiping their palms against their trousers.

Or at least I assume that’s what happened. I didn’t see it.

Instead I lay on the cedar planks on the floor of the clock tower, staring up into the rafters as Koen rang the bells. The sound sank deep into my body, reverberating in my rib cage, making my molars vibrate. It almost hurt. But at least I felt something.

Gone, was all I thought. My father is gone. I will never see my father again.

But the air here smelled fragrant with the memory of him. I could remember sick days spent in the tower when he showed me the gears and cogs, when I sat in his lap, burying my face in the heavy corduroy of his uniform. Back then, when our faces were lit up amber from the dials, we were happy. I wasn’t afraid of him yet. I never rolled my eyes or bit the inside of my cheeks to stop myself from complaining. No. Back then I thought my father was the smartest man on the whole ship.

But now he was gone. Gone, gone, gone.

Koen stopped ringing the bells. From the floor I watched as he plucked splinters of rope from his work- reddened palms. He was wearing his uniform. Abba’s clothes, I thought, the lump in my throat thickening. But they fit him all wrong. The coat was both too loose and too short. The cuffs hardly covered his long arms.

He walked to the face of the big clock and bent at the waist. I watched as he peered out of the translucent amber glass.

“They’re setting him in the ground now,” he said, and then he turned his gaze to me. “Are you sure you don’t want to go say good-bye?”

I didn’t answer. I was sprawled there on the floor, my hands up near my head. When Koen put his palms on his knees, focusing his gaze on me, pressing for an answer, I only looked away.

“Okay. Okay,” he said.

I don’t know how long we stayed there, Koen leaning against the control panel, silent, and me on the floor. The words kept ringing through my mind, as sure as any bell.

Gone. Gone. My father is gone.

Finally I put my hands against the boards, felt the cold of the dusty wood beneath my fingers, and pushed myself up. When I stood, it was on uncertain feet. I staggered for a moment, put a hand to my head. My hair was a tangled mess beneath my hand, but I patted it down.

“Terra,” Koen said. He was watching me, afraid I was going to fall. “You can come to my house if you want. You know . . .” He hesitated. Something in his expression told me that he doubted himself. And when he spoke, I knew that he was right to. “I’d still have you as my wife. It’s . . . it’s what he wanted, isn’t it? To make sure you have someone to take care of you. I’ll take care of you.”

I stared at him. Once, I would have wanted nothing more than to hear those words, to know that Koen still wanted me to be a part of his life. But something had changed for me in the forest.

“Why?” I said at last. “Why are you so hung up on this marriage thing? You don’t even want me.”

He looked down at his trimmed nails, at the broad fingers that clutched at one another in front of his stomach. In a low tone he said, “I just want to be normal.”

My gut gave a lurch. It was too much for me then—the tears that racked the new clock keeper’s voice, the ones that seemed to tighten my own throat but still wouldn’t come. With a slow shake of my head, I staggered down the stairs. I took them one at a time, the rhythm plodding inside me.

Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone.

Koen followed. He kept his distance, but I could hear his feet on the steps behind me.

Gone. Gone.

We reached the open air. I sucked it in, letting the cold burn my lungs, letting the constant wind that cycled through the dome from fore to aft strike my face. I didn’t even bother to button my coat against it.

As we stepped into the pasture, I felt what must have been a thousand eyes turn to me. All those Asherati in their funerary whites. We were the only ones dressed in color. I was still in my work clothes. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to change. I wore my brown trousers, the hems torn around my heels, and one of Momma’s old unraveling sweaters, which was a deep pine green. Koen was in his clock keeper’s clothes. Abba’s clothes. Gone. Gone. I guess we attracted attention. We stepped out across the field.

As I moved through the crowd, I kept my head high. People murmured their consolations, but I didn’t look at anyone long enough to know who spoke to me or what they said. I didn’t stop when they began to reach out, touching their hands to my shoulders. I walked right through them.

“Terra!”

Koen’s voice reached out to me from somewhere in the thick of the crowd. He must have gotten lost in it. He must have lost me. I didn’t stop. People put their hands on my shoulders, my arms.

It was Captain Wolff who halted my progress across the field.

One moment I was marching forward. The next, the woman was in front of me, her silver hair sparkling in the artificial moonlight.

“Terra,” she said, gripping my hands in her hands. Inside I recoiled. I wanted to pull away, to snatch my hands back. But instead they just lay limply in her grasp. “The Council would like to extend to you their deepest apologies at the losses you’ve faced. Please feel free to come to me if you need anything.”

I tried to imagine it—pounding on Captain Wolff’s door in the middle of the night, crying on her shoulder as if she were my mother. Giving her every opportunity to plunge a knife into my back. I managed only a coarse syllable in answer—“Yeh”—and drew my hands away. Balling them into fists, as if the warm touch of my own palms would obliterate the sensation of Captain Wolff’s fingers, I stumbled away, looking only once over my shoulder to the crowd that watched me.

That’s when I spotted Silvan. He was standing off to the side, alone again, unguarded. With his arms crossed over his broad, white-clad chest, he gazed out into the foggy evening. Then he turned and looked over his shoulder at me. He squinted at me like he was trying to figure me out.

I stuffed my hands into my pockets again and hustled away.

My brother and Hannah managed to find me before I reached the pasture gate. Hannah clutched the baby to her chest. Even Alyana was dressed in white—a long gown of eyelet lace that looked clean against her peachy skin. Ronen grabbed me by the shoulder. I was surprised by the lines that deepened his features. Though he was barely twenty, he looked so old. And very much like my father.

Who is gone. Gone.

“You’re coming to our quarters, aren’t you?” His lips were pursed, worried. He still couldn’t bring himself to tell me what to do. Which meant that I didn’t have to agree to it, right? So I didn’t. I walked off through the field, my boots sinking into the mud.

20

Our quarters looked the same. The same doorjamb where Momma had marked our heights with a pencil. The same familiar galley counters, where she’d kneaded dough while Abba cooked. The table where Ronen and I had fought—where he’d brandished a fork at me and I’d stuck out my tongue—until Abba had slammed his hands