For Darkness Shows the Stars (18 page)

T
HE SUN-CARTS CHUGGED ALONG
now as they ascended the promontory at the northernmost tip of the island. The beaches on either side dwindled into nothingness against the sides of rocky cliffs. Ahead of them lay the point and the end of Elliot’s whole world—the end of the world entirely, as far as anyone knew.

And yet, one day soon, Kai would be sailing off into that nothingness. Elliot shivered suddenly. She’d worried about him for four years. How much more worry was in store for her now that she knew how far he planned to go? On the other hand, she reminded herself, what difference did it make? He’d been beyond the reach of her influence and ability to help him from the moment he’d left the North estate. He was gone for good either way.

They parked the carts near the very edge and spilled out onto the remaining tufts of dry winter grass. The sun was even stronger now, and Elliot unwound her scarf as the boys doffed their jackets and Olivia shed her heavy coat and began setting up the picnic. She’d brought a lot of leftovers from the party, Elliot noticed—fruit pies and meat pies and jars filled with hot apple cider.

“Let me help you,” Elliot said, and knelt next to her on the blanket. Olivia was unpacking with one eye on the boys, who were peering over the edge of the cliff face and pointing at the waves that crashed against the rocks and sent spray hurtling a hundred meters in the air.

Beyond the edge stood spindly spires of rock, a line of towers the wind and sea had left behind after carving out the more porous earth that had once formed a jagged spear out into the sea. In her grandfather’s time, there had been a bridge—a man-made one that stretched from tower to tower and formed a path out into the beyond. But it had long ago rotted away. Connections still existed between some of the spires, and others had tumbled into the sea. There was nothing at all that connected the mainland to the first stone tower, which stood about seven meters out in the abyss.

When she was younger, she and Kai had played a game, standing at the edge of the cliff and throwing their arms out to the breeze, letting it lift and buffet them until they grew timid and backed away. Elliot always lost. Even then, Kai had been fearless and she had been cautious—Luddite to the core.

A blast of salt-tinged wind shot up the cliff face and blew the boys backward. Horatio tripped and took a knee. Andromeda laughed.

“They should be careful,” said Elliot.

“They’re amazing!” Olivia exclaimed. “Not like anyone I’ve ever known. The whole Fleet—it seems somehow as if their lives are bigger, their spirits greater.”

Elliot chuckled in spite of herself. She supposed the Fleet could come across as superior, but wasn’t it warranted? A group of estate-born Posts with fortunes that made every Luddite she knew drool with envy? They
were
important. It was a refreshing change to get that impression from a Post, rather than her sister.

“And what they’re doing,” Olivia went on. “To go out as they do—to risk their lives to see if there’s anything at all left beyond these shores. That is the most worthy goal, isn’t it?”

“More worthy than feeding people?”

Olivia blushed. “No. Perhaps not. I know what our duty is. But I wish I wasn’t a Luddite, Elliot. I wish I could be an explorer, like them.”

Elliot refused to be mean to the younger girl. It wasn’t Olivia’s fault that she was in love with Kai. It wasn’t her fault that she was fourteen, and carefree, and still fantasized about a world where she could run away from her estate and go exploring with the bravest boy she’d ever met. Once, Elliot had done the same. Once, she’d believed she could, that one day she and Kai would sail away and find the world that everyone else had lost.

So now, she couldn’t resist asking Olivia, “What is stopping you?”

“My brother, I suppose.” She shrugged. “I don’t think Horatio would let me go live in a Post enclave, at least not for another few years.”

“Then do it in a few years,” Elliot replied, her tone growing short. She would
not
be cruel to Olivia. The girl was not to blame for Elliot’s situation, for her choices, for her heartbreak. Kai would hate Elliot even if Olivia Grove had never been born. “You’re free. Why shouldn’t you follow your heart’s desire?” Even if that desire included Kai.

“A few years,” Olivia mused. “That seems too long to wait for—” She stopped herself, then looked at Elliot. “You must think I’m very foolish. A little girl with a crush.”

Elliot weighed her words. “I think . . . I think if you mean what you say about wanting to be an explorer, that your wishes are valid. I think if you mean it, you should pursue it regardless of the actions of Captain Wentforth.” There. That was fair. And it was the most she could trust herself to say.

“Thank you,” Olivia gushed. “Tatiana was telling me the other day what a fool I was being, and that everything I want is only because of him. And it is—but not in the way she supposes. Rather, being with him—or even near him—has taught me so much. It’s a new world out there. I can’t hide away on the estate. I can’t forget about it now that I’ve had a taste.”

Elliot busied herself with setting out the last of the food. Part of her wanted to strangle Olivia, or jump off the cliff, or even just cry. But she couldn’t allow herself to do so, no more than she could allow herself any of the indulgences she was encouraging Olivia to take. Elliot would never forget Kai, nor the world of possibilities they’d once dreamed of. But she could never have it for herself, either.

Kai was now busy teaching the Phoenixes their old game of cliffside chicken. He teetered on the very edge, arms outstretched, face upturned toward the sun. Something desperate and devilish woke inside Elliot. Now they had nothing, but once they’d had this. Once she’d given in every time. But she was older now. She’d taken bigger risks. Elliot stood, brushed off her knees, and joined him at the cliff’s edge. He could hate her now, he could resent her, he could never forgive her, but he
would
know what she’d become. She positioned her toes just a bit farther out than his and threw her arms out to the side.

“Have you spent these four years practicing to beat me?” he whispered. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, but could not read the expression on his face. Was he joking? Teasing? Seeking to wound her again? He’d apologized today in front of the Posts. She’d thought it was to bury the hatchet with Gill and Dee. Was it to make amends with her as well?

In the end, she kept her response neutral. “How do you know I didn’t used to let you win?”

Kai wiggled his toes a bit farther out. Elliot copied him.

“Enough is enough, you two,” said Andromeda, back on the blanket.

Elliot felt wobbly, but she steeled herself and looked straight ahead at the horizon. Of course, it proved nothing. Her ability to stand on a cliff edge did not make her better than Kai. It did not make up for his words the previous evening, or his treatment of her for the past few weeks. It certainly didn’t make up for all the smiles he shared with Olivia, or all the rumors going around about them.

But my, it felt good.

“Wentforth,” Andromeda warned. Elliot didn’t dare turn around, or even look over at Kai. She couldn’t afford to lose her balance. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure step up next to him. Olivia.

“This isn’t so bad,” the younger girl said. She leaned a bit from side to side, trying to find her balance as the wind tugged at her full skirts.

Kai moved even farther out.

“Malakai, quit it.” Andromeda’s tone had turned commanding. Elliot bit her lip. She could feel the abyss beneath her toes. She was already out as far as she dared. The wind picked up again, buffeting them all back, then pulling them forward. Olivia wavered. Kai remained firm. Elliot locked her knees and circled her arms to keep her balance.

“Olivia,” said Horatio. “A step or two back, please.”

Kai dropped his arms. He took a few steps back.

Elliot sighed in relief.

And then he leaped.

Somewhere, Olivia was screaming. Somewhere, the wind still blew. Somewhere, the earth remained firm beneath her feet, but she might as well have been standing on smoke, for all she saw was Kai, bicycling his legs, arcing high, silhouetted against the sea and the sky, dark clothes, dark hair. . . . And as he fell, Elliot felt everything inside of her plummet, too.

Then he landed, two feet firm on the rocky surface of the first tower.

Again, Elliot could breathe. She reeled back from the edge.

Olivia was sitting on the grass, gasping. Horatio had dropped his meat pie. Andromeda stood with her arms crossed over her chest and shook her head. “Show-off,” she cried to Kai across the water.

“How did he do that?” Horatio asked. “He could have been killed.”

Andromeda rolled her eyes. “There’s an updraft of air in between the towers, every so often. He just took advantage of it.”

“Impossible,” Elliot said. Her ancestors had lived on this land for generations. No one had ever leaped across before.

“Not really, Miss Elliot,” Donovan said quickly. “You just . . . learn to read these things, if you’re pilots like we are. We read the shape of the wind on the surface of the sea. Watch.”

He, too, leaped. Over on the tower, Kai shouted in approval as Donovan landed beside him.

Andromeda sighed. “Prideful, reckless show-offs. They’ll be the death of us, I swear.”

“The death of themselves,” Horatio corrected.

Elliot stared at the boys standing on the nearest tower. Kai met her eyes, then whirled around and took off for the next. Again, her heart dropped into her stomach, but a moment later she saw him land, hard, scrabbling against the scree that sat on the top of the tower of rock.

There he was, on the land beyond the islands. There he was, the lord of his own four meters of rock.

“Enough!” Andromeda shouted, as her brother followed Kai. “Don! Stop!” She stamped her foot in frustration. “Do you have any idea how
dangerous
this is?”

Olivia clapped her hands with delight. “Oh, I must learn how to do it! To think that these towers were accessible all this time. We could have rebuilt the bridges long ago.”

“They aren’t,” said Andromeda, frowning. “Not really. I mean—the conditions of the wind have to be just right, and you need really skilled pilots, like my brother and Wentforth to . . . read the currents. They’ll get stuck out there if they aren’t careful. They are being so foolish.”

“Teach me!” Olivia insisted. She grabbed for Andromeda’s hands.

Andromeda forced a laugh. “Not likely. Your brother would kill me.” She shook her head at the figures bouncing around out there. “This is ridiculously dangerous. Felicia will have their heads when she finds out.”

Andromeda glared daggers at the boys out on the towers. She didn’t look worried about them. She looked angry.

Kai had now jumped back to the closest tower, and stood with his face turned up into the blue.

Elliot watched him, and Donovan. She watched them time their leaps. Were there really updrafts of wind helping to propel them? And if so, how in the world could they see them? The same wind that blew the waves a hundred meters down could not lift their bodies. She’d seen the power of wind back when her mother had used it to run the turbines in the Boatwright orchards. She’d used it herself to fly kites or sail Kai’s paper gliders. He’d been good at reading the winds, yes, but not able to fly himself.

Andromeda was still explaining the complexities of the calculations involved in determining when one might jump, the subtleties of the observations, the amount of training that her brother and Kai had undergone to be able to do both in an instant, to gauge the distance, to leap . . .

And all the while she was doing it, she was wringing her hands behind her back and casting nervous glances at the boys with her strange, crystalline eyes. The eyes she shared with her brother Donovan. The eyes, Elliot realized, that looked like blue-green versions of the ones Kai had finally let her see.

All three of the Cloud Fleet captains had those eyes. Those strange,
superior
eyes that let Andromeda drive through the woods in the dark, that let Kai wander around the barn at night without a lantern, that let all three of them stand in the sanctuary and see insects instead of stars. Kai had known, even in the blackness, that she’d been standing in the whisper zone. And he wouldn’t look at her. Kai, who had once been able to communicate so much with a mere glance—he would never let her see into his eyes. She thought it was because he was angry, but it was much worse. He was afraid she’d see it. And now she had.

That wasn’t all. The jumps they were making—they weren’t merely improbable—they were impossible. As impossible as Donovan’s virtuoso performance on the fiddle. As impossible as Kai catching her when she fell off the horse on the beach, even though he’d been fifty meters away.

Andromeda wasn’t scared that the boys would fall. She was scared that the Luddites on the cliff would see something they shouldn’t. Something that shouldn’t be possible at all. Something that had been impossible for generations, for the safety of the world.

No.