Starbreak (20 page)

I kissed every uncountable scar. There were so many of them that soon I was dizzy, desperate for air. He laced fingers through the
matted locks of my hair, drew me closer and closer still. I thought of the vines curling around one another in the forest, desperate to make their parts meet. I empathized. Why couldn’t we just have one body, one mind? It seemed to me a grave injustice that we had been born separate, different, that we had wasted so much time so far away from each other. That afternoon and into the deep golden evening, I endeavored to correct that. We would be one. Whole. Formidable. A new sort of creature.

The forest burned, but anyone who tells you that nothing is left in its wake has never felt what I’ve felt, has never seen the green promise of new growth turning up its head toward the sun—all in a darkened world of char and ash.

•  •  •

A funny thing happened that night, as we tumbled together and apart and together again. Our thoughts mingled, becoming one. I couldn’t tell you where I ended and he began. I wasn’t even sure whether we slept, tussling in the dreamforests, or whether we were awake, breathing, my heart pounding against his still chest. Mostly we spoke without speaking, without even words.

Love?
I would ask, the question merely a flash of color in the dawning darkness, and his answer came back surely and swiftly:
Love
. Vines blossoming in the forest, furling out in wild curlicues, color, and color, and life.

It was a crazy thing to ask—a crazy answer, too. We hardly knew each other. And the future was uncertain. There was no room for us here. No room, even, for me. In a rare moment of respite that night, I turned my face up, peeling back the covers. The ceiling overhead was made of glass, so clear it might as well have been transparent. We were near the heart of the city, not far from the senate where our day had begun. If we went any deeper, we’d be underground—heading toward the funerary fields and the caves where the Xollu slept their long winters away. I knew this but didn’t know it. I knew it because it was his life, his truth. But staring up at the leaves that crowded the edges of the glass, and the stars that twinkled far, far above, past the translucent cupola, I wondered what all of these things meant. The truth was, I wasn’t used to being
happy
, and certainly not for long. The sadness began drifting back almost as quickly as we’d chased it away.

The strange, familiar solitude washed over me. I pointed up at a star that was silver and still in the sky above. It looked familiar, and then I realized the difference. The other stars twinkled, filtered through the atmosphere. This star shone steadily, like the stars through the ship’s glass once had.

“What’s that?” I asked. Vadix turned to me, a plush round pillow wedged between his arm and face. He pressed his face into it, blinking slowly, smiling.

“This is your ship. What is her name?”

“Asherah.”

“Hmm,” he said.
“Ash-er-rahhh.”
He drew out the syllables, luxuriating in their foreign sound. But then his expression changed, weighted by his sadness. If there was one thing I was to learn about Vadix that night, it was that he wasn’t used to being happy either.

“I used to know not what name to curse. That star, burning steadily above. When it appeared weeks ago, our people flung out wild theories. It was a bad portent. It was a sign from the god and the goddess. It was a satellite, come to steal our technologies, sent by sinister . . .” A pause. His smile returned, wide, showing all those minuscule teeth. “Aliens.”

“I’m not an alien,” I said. I reached out, cupping my hand against his smooth cheek. “
You’re
an alien.”

“You are alien to this planet.”

“But not to you.” I drew close, pressing my lips against his. I think it surprised him, the warmth and wetness of my open mouth. But after a moment his cool body softened, leaning in. Our first kiss, gentle, tender—and as long as the night.

His round bed was the perfect size and shape for two long bodies. But I kept myself snuggled close to him. His half of the mattress was bowed beneath his weight—he’d spent too many nights in it alone. I let my fingers trace the scars over his shoulders. Some were old,
deep, and faded into his skin. But some were white, new, raw. For the hundredth time that night, I pressed my lips to one, tasting sweet sap. I wished I still believed that kisses could heal like I had when I was a child. But I knew better now. No kisses would heal this.

I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t make the words come to my lips. So I spoke without speaking, the way we had in dreams.

You did this to yourself, didn’t you?
I asked. I felt him shift so he could see me better. He was surprised, I think, to hear my voice so clear in his mind, but also pleased. This speech was as natural to him as breathing was to me.

I am a lousk,
he said, as if that explained it. I drew myself up, putting my hand flat against his chest. It seemed so strange against his skin, so solid.

I don’t know what that means.

“Every spring seedlings sprout from their parents’ bodies,” he said, slipping into real speech as easily as one slipped into a new set of clothes. “Thousands of them. The funerary fields are full of light and joy. From our first conscious moments we are paired. Those who are alone wither and die. They are the first
lousk.
But most survive, thrive in our crèches. Never lonely. Never wanting companionship. Best friends. At night we walk in the dreamforests together, where we are one body and thought and mind.”

“Bashert,”
I said. “Mate.”

Vadix nodded, the motion small and quick, his eyes still fixed fast on me.

“Zeze,”
he said. “That is our word for it. God and goddess willing, we live long, happy lives. Working. Mating. Praying. Learning. Until our
zeze
dies. Then we are a
lousk
.”

“Widower,” I said. “That’s what we call it. Abba—my father—he was alone after my mother died. A widower.”

His hand was utterly still on top of mine.

“Velsa,” he said at last. “Her name was Velsa. We were always different from the rest. Brave. Ambitious. We did not like how crowded our cities had become. We wished to settle the southern lands, to build a city there. But no northern Ahadizhi would stray that far from their sprouting fields to join us, and no Xollu has ever shared words with the Ahadizhi in the south. We knew we needed to broker peace if they were to be our Guardians, to keep us safe in the long winters when we sleep and the animals roam.”

“You wanted to make a new city. For you and her.”

I saw it in his mind’s eye: nights spent whispering to each other though they lay a thousand kilometers apart. They would build their own empire, new and beautiful. Because they were young and brave. They would settle new ground, something that the Xollu hadn’t done for centuries.

“Yes. We were foolish, proud. I would be the translator, speaking
the tongue of the southern Ahadizhi. She would learn diplomacy. I went to school in the south, in Aisak Ait. And she stayed here. They all said we were crazy, to live our young lives apart like
lousku
.”

He sat up, draping his arms around his knees. I wanted to touch him, to wrap my arms around him again and draw him close. But I knew better. It hurt too much. He was still too raw. “Velsa—Velsa died. There were riots when your people sent their first probe. The Xollu were afraid—the Ahadizhi determined to protect us from the danger. I did not see this. I was far, far away.”

I closed my eyes, remembering the days between the departure of the first probe and the news that the results had been lost. They’d been long, lonely days—and even darker nights. Until I saw him for the first time in the black of evening, drifting through my dreams. He must have lost her then, in the days before he was mine.

I could almost see it. The dust in the air. The crush of bodies. Velsa, on her way to her towering university in the south of the city. She and her friends had traced their favorite river, hoping to see the long painted boats whose multicolored flags flickered in the wind. But the pier was crowded and then there was a shout. Someone had found a strange machine in the water, with wide metal wings and eyes that blinked like beacons. It was covered in text, words no one could read.

But as the Ahadizhi dock workers began to pull the panels of the machine back, they smelled flesh on the air. Strange, alien odors in
every fingerprint that had been left on the metal hull. They bared their teeth—gripped their weapons. Double-bladed knives gleamed in the sunlight. The crowd pushed forward, closer to the scent of danger. Velsa found herself swept up in the tide of bodies.

If I pushed harder, deeper, I would find the truth myself, feel the pain of the dagger’s thrust and the rush of sweet sap down the front of her robe. But I knew it would hurt him to have those memories turned over again like dirt for a fresh planting. So I drew back.

I’m sorry,
I said silently, but I regretted that thought almost instantly. I’d heard those words said at Momma’s funeral and at Abba’s, and at least a hundred times in the dark days since. Once, I’d rolled my eyes, cracking awkward jokes and laughing.
Why?
I always said.
It’s not your fault
. I knew that my condolences were meager, nothing compared to the grief he felt. His sadness dragged me down too, like a boat that had sprung a leak and sank into the ocean. I was sorry, so sorry, and it wasn’t nearly enough.

When he spoke, it was as if every word came with great effort. “We never mated. I was fallow until tonight. There would have been no children. But on the day she died, I understood something I never had before then. How a
lousk
is not merely a rare shadow, fleeing to the funerary fields. He is possessed. He will tear his flesh with his fingers, cast his body down to the soil. I should have done this dozens of days ago. My dead, fallow body has wanted it—to be with her, to be together.”

He wants to kill himself,
I realized. Now it was my turn to harden beside him. My hands dropped down into the sheets. I watched him sitting there, his shoulders hunched up and still.

“It is the only thing left for a
lousk
to do,” he said. As if it were nothing, as if it were natural. I suppose for him it was. “But I saw something in the darkness. A face. The pale muzzle of an animal, with a mane of tangled gold. She wandered the dreamforests. I asked her for her name, but she did not answer me. Night after night I dream of her. She touched me, and I felt—”

“Whole,” I said, finishing his sentence for him.

“I was remiss,” he said, “In my duty to Velsa. I should have rushed home, laying my body down on top of hers. We should have been one. But I was curious. And then the senate came to me. There were glyphs on the machine, and recordings embedded in it. They knew I was gifted in foreign tongues. They asked me to translate. I did. It was easy—too easy. I studied many years in Aisak Ait, but never had a language slipped so freely from my lips. I knew things I shouldn’t have. Soon your shuttle crew stumbled through the gates of Raza Ait. There was violence again, fear at these foreign beasts. The senate asks me to speak to these animals. You, who have brought Velsa’s death. Broker a peace. They say I am the only one who can. I decide I will help them. Then I will be with Velsa, as I should. But I met you.”

I drew in a slow breath, pulling my legs up to my chest. Our
bodies were so different—his legs so much longer and leaner than my own. But somehow I managed to sit in a perfect mirror of him, my arms hugging my knees, my shoulders high.

“I didn’t expect you either,” I said. “But I’ve been dreaming about you for months and months.”

“Me too, since the night Velsa left me,” he admitted. “An animal girl, with a wild swirl of hair. Wrong, I thought it was wrong. I thought I was a freak.”

I smiled despite the heavy weight of the night. For all those months he’d felt just as strange and broken as I had. He let his violet tongue wet his full lips and went on.

“Then, after, every night since, without fail. There you are. Animal girl, hair the color of morning. I think, maybe this is what happens to
lousku
. They go mad. But here with you, I do not feel mad. I feel—what is the word?”

I reached out, wrapping my fingers around his.

Sane?

Yes, this,
he agreed. He drew my hand against his chest. I could feel the laughter there, weak but growing.
Not all sane. But a little sane.

I wanted to tell him that I felt that way too. Better when I was beside him. Less crazy. Less wrong. But I didn’t have to say it. As he pressed his lips to mine, a thousand blossoms turned their faces toward the light inside my mind.

•  •  •

Will you still do it?

The night had passed its darkest hour. Now the sky was turning dull gray at the corners. Soon the light would go green, then gold again, and the night would be over. There were so many stones still left unturned, so much about him I still didn’t know. I wanted more than a night. I was selfish. I wanted a lifetime.

“Taot?”

Vadix had tucked an arm over his head and gone still, utterly still. Without breath or heartbeat his sleep seemed as deep as death. It wasn’t until he jerked himself awake and turned toward me, black eyes shining, that I was at all reassured.

Will you still do it? Will you still go to the funerary fields?

I felt his cool body stiffen beside me. Though his long legs still touched mine, it felt like he was halfway across the galaxy. He spoke aloud, lonely words.

“It is my
nature
, Terra. This is how new life is made for my people. We live all our days together, sleep our winters away with our bodies tangled around the same stem. And then we return to the dreamforests, hand in hand.”

I felt my stomach clench. What crashed through me like white-licked waves wasn’t jealousy, though there might have been some shade of that. Mostly what I felt was the stormy churning of my own
desperate loneliness. I’d traveled so far, over hundreds of kilometers of cold, frozen ground. All on account of him, on account of the promise his body offered. My dreams had told me I wouldn’t be alone anymore, that I would be safe. My dreams told me that this strange boy could love me like I needed.