Defy the Dark (15 page)

Berthe could not tell her mother that Stephen liked to eat people. She could not tell the people who loved her best in the world what she had become.

But she wasn't like Stephen. She was going to grow up, and maybe that meant becoming a little less scared. Maybe by the time she was ready to go to college, she could tell them. Maybe she could think about telling her friends.

Leela and Natalie assumed Stephen was Berthe's boyfriend, that he was a little weird but nice, that he and Berthe fit, though being at opposite ends of some spectrum. Her parents clearly thought so as well. They all thought they knew what was going on.

They knew nothing about his weird staring and wonderful rescue in the coffee shop, or his silent presence in the woods. And Berthe knew nothing about romance.

He liked her, she thought. But he never did or said anything like that: he was the boy who had quietly left his home to spare his family, who did not talk to other people at all, who kept hidden.

Berthe rather self-consciously wore a T-shirt that said
TOO LONG, DIDN'T READ
she'd bought, because it made her think of Stephen and also said something about herself, on the night of the next full moon.

It made Stephen smile his small, crooked smile as he opened the door, but he didn't comment on it. She didn't know what she was supposed to do if he didn't say anything: Stephen always knew the right thing to say.

“See you in the morning,” she told him, for want of anything better, and smiled back.

She took off her shirt in his hall, folding it neatly, took off the rest of her clothes as well and realized for the first time that he could probably hear her getting undressed. She went into his bedroom with her cheeks burning.

Stephen always made the bed, even though he knew she was going to wreck it. Berthe went and lay down on it, felt the cool material of his pillow against her face, and concentrated on that scrap of comfort through the pain.

When she woke up, there were more scars on the walls, but she had not ripped the mattress apart this time. It still looked as if there had been a beast inside the room, but just a little more controlled this time.

She dressed slowly, getting comfortable with being back in her own skin, went downstairs, and opened the door to find her tea on the table beside her cookie, her Stephen in the corner shutting his book as soon as he saw her.

He had reached out when they met, she thought, taken steps with her she could not have taken alone. She could do that now, when he might be paralyzed from being in hiding, from years and years in the dark.

Berthe crossed the floor, and the sunlight was no bar to her. She approached Stephen and he rose politely to meet her approach, and she did not try to say the right thing.

She took his face in her hands and kissed him. He moved in toward her at once, a little awkward and seeming so glad, and she was so glad, too. It felt like a different kind of moonlight moving through her and changing her.

He was a little shorter than she was now, and he hadn't been a few months ago. She was growing up, and he was not. This moment, his narrow chest against hers, could not be kept. She smiled against his mouth: a little sweetness in the cup of her life and his, having this moment and the next, and being unafraid of change.

“I was wondering,” Berthe said, soft as her own breath. “What are you doing tonight?”

Beth Revis

Night Swimming

W
e don't have “night” on a generational spaceship. The solar lamp in the roof of the Feeder Level goes dark, but it's no more night than the clouds painted on the metal ceiling are sky.

Nevertheless, everything important that has ever happened to me has happened at “night.”

 

F
or once, Harley isn't painting. I lean over his shoulder—he's doing some sort of math, never my strong point. Never Harley's, either.

“What are you doing?”

“Shut up,” he says genially.

“What is he doing?” I ask Kayleigh. She shrugs and returns to the digital membrane screen she's reading. Math
is
her specialty, but she's reading scientific articles on physics and propulsion. Probably something to do with whatever crazy invention she's going to work on next.

I resign myself to silence, staring out the window. No one else is in the common room of the Ward. The others have long since gone to their rooms. The solar lamp will be covered soon, washing the Feeder Level of the ship
Godspeed
in darkness for exactly eight hours, the precise amount of time we are allotted to sleep. My mind plays with words—
darkness
,
sleep
,
night-that's-not-night
—maybe I can form them into a poem or some song lyrics later. It has been a while since I've written anything new, and the urge to create itches me from the inside.

But I can't think of anything now.

Instead, my mind is filled with the words Doc gave us when it was time for our meds. The blue-and-white pill stuck in my throat as Doc entered the common room. Even the nurses stiffened. We never know what to expect from Doc, but none of us thought that his announcement would be that the Elder of the ship, the boy who will one day grow up to become the leader of us all, was moving into the Ward.

We all know what Elder looks like: thirteen years old, scrawny, with a hollow expression in his eyes and sickening devotion to Eldest, the current leader. Eldest is a kind, old man . . . on the outside. We here at the Ward are loons, marked crazy almost since birth, as far away from normal people as possible. Eldest mostly ignores us, letting us fill up the Recorder Hall with art that no one cares about and spending our days being the only inefficient crew members as the ship crosses the universe.

But sometimes Eldest doesn't ignore us.

Only last year, Selene, a girl who sang beautifully, was sent away from the Ward. Doc was the one who led her out to the farms. He left her there to spend the rest of her life in dull labor, working on food production for the ship's crew. But I don't think any of us doubts that the order really came from Eldest. Selene had been determined a threat to productivity, someone whose art was deemed less valuable than manual work.

I swallow the lump in my throat. Selene wasn't a friend of mine, not exactly, but we spoke together. I miss her. I miss the sound of her, the way her voice could change the way I saw things.

It's not right, how Eldest silenced her.

The way he could silence any of us.

“Twenty-four thousand,” Harley says triumphantly, breaking my concentration, “and three hundred eighty-seven frexing days.”

“What's that?” Kayleigh asks without taking her eyes off the screen she's reading from.

“That is exactly how long it'll be before the ship lands.”

She looks up now. We both stare at Harley, gaping.

“Twenty-four
thousand
days?”

Harley repeats the whole number.

“We'll be so . . .
old
,” Kayleigh mutters.

“Just over eighty,” Harley replies. He sounds almost cheerful about it, but the days feel like stones in my stomach, weighing me down.

“Twenty-four thousand three hundred and eighty-seven days,” I repeat, unable to comprehend a number so large.

“Isn't it great?” Harley asks, jumping up and tossing the screen he's been working on to the chair.

“Great? That's forever away!” I snap back.

Harley shrugs.

I'm in the mood to pick a fight, but Kayleigh laughs, stopping me and my argumentative words. “He has a point. It's a long time from now—but it's not forever.”

Harley whistles as he meanders away, the sound drifting from the hall and wrapping around the common room for several moments before I hear his door close.

Aroo! Aroo!
The sirens blare from the ceiling: the solar lamp is going dark in a matter of minutes.

I stand up. “Come on,” I say to Kayleigh.

“Nah,” she answers, rolling her shoulders and letting the screen she's been reading drop down on the table beside her chair.

“Time for bed,” I say again, confused at her response.

Kayleigh stands languidly. “No it's not,” she says.

“But—” My eyes drift to the big windows that line one wall of the common room. There is light now, but once the shade descends, the entire level will be far darker.

“Just because it's ‘night' doesn't mean I have to go to bed,” Kayleigh says. She strolls over to the elevator.

“Where are you—”

“You can come,” she offers, pushing the button. “I don't care. I just don't want to be bossed around by some siren.”

 

B
y the time the elevator doors open, it's dark. Kayleigh walks out of the lobby of the Hospital with confidence though, not even slowing as she bounds down the steps and veers toward the path that leads to the garden.

“Where are we going?” I ask. It feels dangerous to be out here, even though there's no express rule against it. But often, on
Godspeed
, the most important rules are the unspoken ones.

“
I
am going to the pond,” Kayleigh says. “You can go wherever you like.”

She doesn't say this in a mean way: she means simply that she intends to spend this night on her own terms, and she won't stand in the way of me doing the same.

I follow her anyway. I would follow Kayleigh anywhere.

The path meanders through the garden, twisting chaotically around hydrangea bushes, hulking flowers, and a statue of the first Eldest. Kayleigh doesn't slow at all, but I start to feel my way around the path, hesitating before each footfall. I wonder how many times Kayleigh has left the Hospital at night, how often she has performed this one tiny form of rebellion against the darkness, against Eldest. Did she reveal her plans to me tonight because I happened to be there when she was ready to go, or had she wanted me to follow her into the dark?

By the time I reach the pond, Kayleigh's already in the water. Her pants and tunic lie in a heap on the soft ground—I can't see her clearly from here, but she must only be wearing her tank top and panties. My stomach twists at the thought. We have been living together since we were children; we've seen each other naked.

But Kayleigh's not a child anymore.

And neither am I.

I kick my moccasins off and roll up the cuffs of my trousers, but I don't dive into the water.

“Come on in!” Kayleigh calls. The water moves around her as she sweeps her arms through it, the sound almost musical.

I shake my head.

“Don't be a chutz!” she says, laughing self-consciously. She's more nervous to speak a dirty word than she is to defy the implied curfew and swim at night.

“I'm fine here,” I call back. I stand very still—so still that the koi fish nibble at my toes, their mouths tickling the edges of my feet. I try to stare through the water at their white and orange and gold and red bodies flitting between the roots of the lotus flowers, but my eyes drift up and out.

To Kayleigh.

She's ignoring me now, caught up in the act of swimming. She's always loved the water; Harley's nickname for her is Fish. She glides smoothly, her body lithe and filled with a grace that isn't present when she's dry. Her hair swirls around her. The koi, apparently accustomed to her presence, dare to dart close to her, their bright scales flashing next to her dark skin. She takes a deep breath and bends in half, kicking and swimming for the floor of the pond.

I count the seconds, waiting for her to resurface.

I'm about ready to dive in after her and drag her back up when her head bursts from the surface, water arching over her and splashing down. She's laughing gleefully, excited to be here, now.

And she is beautiful in this moment.

Her skin hidden in shadows, her body highlighted by the white tank top. She swims closer to me, still laughing at her own joke, and I notice the way her top moves with the motion of the water, pulling up and down, giving me tantalizing hints of what the cloth hides. When Kayleigh stands, the fabric sticks to her body, showing me every curve, filling my fantasy with details I'd not dared to think of.

“This,” she says, stepping past me and reaching for her tunic, “is why I swim at night. Because it's only here, now, that I can be free on this frexing ship.”

She dances away from me then, heading back to the Hospital or somewhere else, I don't know. I'm left with my feet in the water and fish nibbling my toes and the first important realization of my life:

I am in love with Kayleigh.

 

T
he next day, Elder comes.

Doc introduces him at med time, as the blue-and-white pills that are supposed to keep us sane are distributed by the nurses. Elder is tall—already taller than me—and lanky. He looks underfed and scared.

Doc pulls Elder aside and whispers to him privately, then hands him something small. I crane my head around the nurse in front of me, trying to see what it is.

A blue-and-white pill.

My eyes narrow. Interesting. So our future leader is just as crazy as we are. No wonder Eldest had him sent to the Ward.

I swallow my pill dry.

 

E
lder stands near the elevator, watching as people drift past him toward their rooms. Doc's given him a room near his office—no doubt to keep an eye on him—but Elder doesn't make a move to go to bed. His big eyes watch us, drinking in everything. It makes me uneasy. I can see how one day this boy will grow into his long arms and legs. I can see Eldest in him.

Eventually the room clears to just us—me and Kayleigh and Harley—and him.

“Right,” Kayleigh announces, cutting through the awkward silence. “Let's go.”

She jumps up and heads to the elevator.

“Where?” I ask. My eyes shoot to Harley, who's already following Kayleigh. I don't want to share night swimming with him, even though I have no claim to it. Or her.

Kayleigh shrugs. “Somewhere.”

The elevator doors slide open, and I bound across the common room to get to them in time. Elder watches me, motionless.

The elevator doors start to shut, but Kayleigh sticks her hand out to stop them. Harley leans forward. “Coming?” he asks Elder.

The kid's whole face lights up, and he rushes inside.

He's practically vibrating with joy as the elevator descends. I glower at him. When the doors open, he jumps out, skids to a halt, and waits for Kayleigh to step forward and show him where to go.

We all follow her—Elder bouncing beside her, Harley right beside him, and me in the back.

This was
our
time.

Something Kayleigh says makes the others laugh. I pick up my pace, eager to hear whatever it is she said. Harley grins back at me.

I shake my head, making the negative thoughts dispel. This was never
our
time. It was always
her
time, and she's free to include whoever she wants.

Kayleigh takes us down the path behind the Hospital and my heart sinks; despite my resolve to not be a chutz over this, I want to keep the water to just us. But instead of veering toward the pond, Kayleigh takes us to the Recorder Hall.

The Recorder Hall is a big brick building, one of the few buildings besides the Hospital and a few remote farmhouses on this side of the ship. Despite its size, only one person lives inside the Hall—Orion, the Recorder, who maintains all the records we have from Sol-Earth, and all the research we've done as we—and the generations before us—travel to the new Earth.

Aroo! Aroo!
The sirens startle us, making us all jump and then laugh at ourselves.

Elder pauses as Kayleigh strides forward.

“What?” she asks him. There is a challenge in her grin, and I can tell that Elder knows what her smile means: you can defy the dark, defy Eldest, and go with her through the night, or you can run back to the Hospital and never be invited out again.

“Nothing,” Elder says, running to catch up to her.

The solar lamp darkens just as Kayleigh puts her foot on the first step of the Recorder Hall.

Elder pauses again, though no one notices but me.

“Come on,” I say in an undertone. “What's the big deal? We're not forbidden to go outside in the dark.”

I can see the whites of Elder's eyes, huge and staring at me. We're not forbidden—but we're not allowed, either. An unspoken rule is still a rule, and Eldest would still look at us as if we had broken it. He would still punish us.

Elder's jaw sets, and he nods once. He turns on his heel and jumps up the stairs.

Kayleigh has already slipped into the entryway, a vast area at the front of the Hall lined with huge, wall-sized digital membrane screens. She slides her hand across one, bringing it to life. The light from the screen casts shadows behind her, barely illuminating the giant clay sculptures that hang from the ceiling: two globes to represent the two Earths, and a model spaceship flying between them.

Elder's eyes are on the ship: his future kingdom.

Mine are on the planet.

The planet is the only thing that gives us any hope. It's the only goal. All of this: Doc's rules, living in the Ward, hoping to slip past Eldest's notice for one more day so we can continue living as we like and not be forced to be productive members of the ship. . . . The only hope we have is to one day land on the new Earth.