Starglass

olam. But I wasn’t allowed. If there’s one thing that I learned from the Children of Abel, it was that happiness was fleeting—my happiness most of all.

* * *

I tried to escape the Children of Abel, but I couldn’t. No matter how I tried to push them into the back of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to forget it, the truth was that the world around me had changed. One night after dinner a knock came on the Stones’ front door. Mara was hunched over her research at the galley table. I was helping Artemis clear the plates, scraping the food off their dented surfaces and into the composter, dropping them into the sink and letting the murky water run over them. When knuckles sounded against the front door, Artemis spun on her heel, her dark braids flying behind her.

“I’ll get it! I’ll get it!” she exclaimed. She was at that age when the idea of visitors was thrilling.

But when she answered, she stood there frozen for a moment in the open doorway, blocking my view.

“It’s the . . . librarian?” she said, her perplexed voice lifting at the end. “And the new clock keeper?”

From outside I heard a loose, familiar laugh. Koen’s laugh. And then his voice came tumbling in with a gust of air. “We’re here to see Terra.”

I dropped a dish into the sink. It echoed against the steel sides.

Mara barely suppressed a smile as she rose from the table. Standing behind her daughter, her firm posture was somehow menacing despite her stature.

“Come in, gentlemen,” she said. “Make yourselves comfortable.” She put her hand down on Artemis’s shoulder, drawing her daughter away.

“Let’s go, Artie.” It was the first time I’d heard the little girl’s nickname, but Mara’s tone was more wary than fond. “We’ll go upstairs and let Terra talk to her . . .” A pause. Her eyes flickered over the men as they moved inside. Koen and Van were all bundled up, stamping the cold from their boots. Finally she concluded: “Friends.”

Artemis protested, but it didn’t do any good. Mara dragged the girl upstairs, leaving me alone with Koen and Van as the sink water dripped from my pruney hands.

“Close the door,” I said finally. “You’re letting all the cold in.”

For a moment Koen only stared at me, his hands deep down in his pockets. Then he let out a laugh. That strange, familiar bark of laughter, like he knew no other way to fill the silence. It hurt me to hear it, like a knife sliding down into my gut.

“Sorry!” He pressed the door closed with his hip. I exhaled. I thought that the long, slow release of air would still the way my heart was beating. It didn’t, but if the men noticed my barely concealed panic, they gave no indication. They only stood there, fat in layers of clothing, smiling at me.

“If you’re going to stay,” I said, “you can take off your coats.”

Before they could answer, I turned away from them. I thought if I kept my hands busy, then they wouldn’t see how I shook. I fetched three mugs, put a kettle on for tea, and then began to clear the table, still half- scattered with supper plates and Mara’s books. The men peeled off their layers, unwound their scarves from their throats. I could smell the cold rising up off them, and beneath that the musky scent of their bodies. Cedar wood and old pages. Dust and something else. I saw an image in my mind: their bodies pressed together in the forest. Ashamed at the thought and the strange, muddled way it made me feel, I sat down, with my hands in my lap.

“So what do you guys want?”

“What?” said Van. He pulled out a chair at the far end of the table and draped himself across it. “We’re not allowed to come visit our dear friend Terra?”

I glowered up at him.

“I came looking for you after the funeral,” Koen said. At first I could hardly hear him. He spoke in whispers. “First I went to your house, then your brother’s, then Rachel Federman’s. When someone told me you were staying with Mara Stone, I figured you didn’t want to be found.”

“Maybe I didn’t,” I said, not wanting to think about the deeper truth behind his words: that he’d looked for me. That I’d been on his mind. Koen stared down at his cold-chapped hands spread out on the tabletop.

“You’re still one of us, you know,” he whispered. I studied his face. It didn’t feel true, not anymore. If I’d ever held anything in common with the Children of Abel, it had disappeared that night in the dome.

“Look,” Van said. “We’re not here to see you for the pleasure of the experience. There’s something we need to talk to you about.”

I looked over at him. Koen did too, a sort of dread lurking beneath his eyes. But Van just glared at me, his arms crossed firmly over his chest.

“It’s time that you pay up on your promise. We need the foxglove.”

“No!” I cried, looking between them. “I can’t!”

“Can’t?” Van asked. “Or won’t? You wanted to be one of us, didn’t you? To do justice to your mother’s memory and the memory of your ancestors?”

“Van . . .,” Koen said, a warning in his voice. Van’s lip trembled, but he went on.

“You want liberty? This is how we achieve it. Not through meetings or whispered conversation but by taking action.”

I stared at them, my heart falling to pieces in my chest. But then there was a rustling on the stairwell and tittered laughter. I swung my gaze over to the librarian. “There are children here. That’s your rule, isn’t it? That we don’t involve children?”

Van glanced up the stairs. For a moment his mouth was a hard line. But at last his lips softened. He sighed.

“Fine,” he said. “But this isn’t over. Come on, Koen.”

Together they rushed to put on their coats and took harried steps toward the door.

Van went quickly, ducking out without another word. But Koen paused for a moment on the front steps, holding the door open. His brows were furrowed up so high that they disappeared beneath his bangs.

“I’m sorry, Terra,” he called. “I told him this was a bad idea.”

I went to the door. The air outside was sharp, and I could see how the blood was rising to Koen’s pale face.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. I didn’t have the strength left to spit the words. Koen nodded. Then he stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned toward the darkening street.

I shut the door behind him. As I finally went to fetch the kettle from the stove, I spotted movement on the stairwell. It was Apollo. He stood at the top of the stairs. His sister sat two steps below him. She was holding Pepper tight against her chest. Both watched me.

“Want some tea?” I asked cheerfully, and poured the three mugs full of steaming water.

23

Most mornings I took my time, milling through the crowded streets even after the clock bells rang out nine. It was the last luxury of mourning Mara still allowed me—or maybe she knew it wasn’t worth a fight, I don’t know. The day that the second probe was due was no exception, though the energy on the ship was different, jangly and electric. As I neared the lab buildings, I had to duck around white-coated specialists as they laughed and drank. They spilled right out the sliding doors, crowding the fields, trampling dead plants.

“It’s really crass, isn’t it?”

A voice reached out to me from across the path. It was Silvan Rafferty. He sat on the rail of the footbridge that led to the labs, idly swinging his legs. “Doesn’t take much to excite them.”

I frowned, reaching down to jostle the seeds in my pocket. “Well, sure,” I said. “The probe results are due today. Aren’t you excited?”

Silvan gave a shrug. Then he pushed off the rail. He landed with surprising grace—moved with it too. He swaggered toward me.

“Some might be excited by the mystery of Zehava.” His black eyes glinted as he spoke.