Stardawn (4 page)

I like the way you talk about stories. History. Our past. Hesitant at first, like you were afraid that I would laugh at you. Have people laughed? Your friends, maybe, who work in the pubs and the fields and the labs? Well, they might not understand how silence can grow inside you like a seed. But I do. I’ve pounded my hands in dough, shuffled from one oven to the next, all the while thinking about the things you’ve told me.

On Earth, there was no Council. On Earth, there was sky, wide-open, a future as big as our hearts. On Earth, we could be free.

I’ve read the books you gave me. Travelogues. Novels. I like those, too. They’re nothing like the ones we read in school, written by Council decree. Those stories are all so
small
. So similar. How boys and girls fall in love and fall into place, just like their parents before them. Or else face ruin. Your books aren’t like that—they confound that story. I think my favorite was the one about the socialite and the kept man. Where do you think she went at the end of the story? Where was there to go when we didn’t have these walls?

I like the fact that you’ve got me thinking, of a life and a future that’s bigger than my own. Soon, I’ll be a worker—a wife, a mother, too. Soon, I’ll live the way the Council proscribes. But now I have something they cannot shape, thoughts and passions they cannot touch. It is mine, and mine alone, this love I have for you.

Yours,

Alyana

80th Day of Spring, 22 Years Till Landing

Benny,

You asked me how your mother has been treating me. The truth is, Miriam doesn’t talk to me much, not while we’re working. I follow her like a shadow, learning recipes through osmosis, or so it seems. Flour. Honey. Salt. Yeast to make it rise. All day, the voice in my head keeps a running list of temperatures and ingredients. Miriam doesn’t speak, but it’s her voice in my mind that reminds me of the right way to knead, pressing with the heel of my hand, turning the lump of dough over and over again until it turns into something else. Something new.

So I was surprised when, today, as we scrubbed down the counters after the morning rush, I saw her watching me. Not just a casual glance, either, the way a teacher would watch her talmid for any little mistake. No, this was a real, genuine stare. For a minute, she looked like you do when you turn some poetry over in your mind. The furrow between her eyebrows was deep. Then she caught herself, pushed her hair up and out of her face, and let out a laugh. I grinned too.

“Do I have flour on my nose?”

“Of course you do,” she said as I went to wipe it away. “But that’s not—”

Your mother hesitated. So I did too, my smile falling just a little.

“Not what?”

“Not why I was looking at you. You’re so much like her, you know.”

Her
. I didn’t have to ask to know who she meant. Her. Liora. Momme. Now, whatever remained of my smile just crumbled into a million pieces. The way your mother looked at me was too serious for my liking. Too terrible. I didn’t want to get caught between the two of them, but it already felt like I was all tangled up in whatever had happened, all those years ago.

“I’m not,” I said stubbornly, turning to take the tray of piroshki from the oven. Your mother rushed over to help me with the steaming sheet of metal. After we rested it on the countertop, she waved the heat away with one of the kitchen rags. “Momme has a temper. And her eyes are brown and her hair is curly.”

I listed these points flatly, as if Miriam didn’t already know everything there was to know about my mother. The springing curls over her ears. The way her nose wrinkled when she laughed. They’d been friends longer than I’d been alive. And yet I couldn’t help it—I rambled on.

“And my skin freckles in the summer, and hers—”

“Burns,” said Miriam. “When we were girls, she used to peel it off her shoulders in sheets. Sometimes I’d sit on her bed and help her. Her skin felt as hot as any oven.”

She was looking at me strangely; that crease on her forehead, the one like yours? Hadn’t smoothed one bit. I felt my own skin heat at the intensity of her gaze. It was only when I looked away that she did too. And laughed a little.

“Sometimes I feel like the fates have conspired to draw Liora and me together again,” Miriam said. “First you’re assigned to be
my
student. Then you and Benjamin—”

“Me and Benjamin
what
?” I angled up my chin, daring her to say it in a way that was more than just a tease: that she knew that I loved you. That you were mine, and I was yours. But I didn’t expect her answer, or the wistful smile that underscored it.

“He’s going to declare his intentions to you. He’s going to ask for your hand. He told us last week.”

I drew my hands to my mouth. Is it true, Benny? I know you’re not allowed to say—not according to custom, tradition, law; not until I turn sixteen. You’re a man, technically. And I’m a girl still. And we’ve only known each other a meager handful of weeks. But a lifetime, too. Sometimes I think we were stitched together, somehow, before we were even born. Your mother saw me standing there, trembling with shock, and shook her head.

“We should get the next batch of these in the oven,” she said. I was frozen for a moment longer, and then I nodded fast. It felt good to move, to work, to act like the whole conversation had never even happened. Momme and her sunburn. And you. . . .

I’m a girl still. But it’s just a technicality, and only for a little while longer. You know that in our hearts, you and I are the same. We’re made of the same
stuff
, aren’t we? I just want to know the truth, if you want me—if you want me to be yours until we’re both laid down to rest inside this ship.

I guess that’s my way of asking. Here, just between the two of us. When I turn sixteen, will you consent to giving me your hand? I’ve never wanted any other.

Yours,

Alyana

83rd Day of Spring, 22 Years Till Landing

Benny,

You left our quarters only a half hour ago. I can still taste your lips on mine, still feel the weight of your fingers against my fingers before you broke away and slipped out the front door.

I thought they were asleep. I know you did too. Otherwise you would have never spoken those words in your low, throaty purr. You would have kept your voice to a whisper. Your mother might have guessed at our secrets, but I know you understand discretion.

But they weren’t. Asleep, that is. As soon as I pressed the door closed behind you, leaning my forehead against the jamb, I heard footsteps creak the stairs.

“Alyana?” came Tateh’s voice. My breath caught in my throat. I spun, feeling my eyes go wide.

“Tateh, I—”

“Was there a
boy
here?”

I didn’t answer, only gazed guiltily toward my toes. I wanted to tell him that you weren’t a boy—that you were a man, with a vocation and ideals. You had a beard that came in thick and fast on the days you forgot to shave. But it wouldn’t have helped anything, so I just kept my mouth shut. Tateh sighed. He came down the stairs and went to the galley stove, setting a teakettle on one of the burners.

“Sit,” he commanded me.

So I went to the table and sat.

It was strange, to wait at the table for him now, after all these years. When I was a little girl and I couldn’t sleep, he used to take me from my bed, brew a cup of tea for each of us. Then we’d sit at the galley table and talk and laugh until sleep weighted my eyelids again. But I wasn’t a little girl anymore. Tateh readied the tea in silence. The smell of chamomile and licorice filled the galley.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked as he set the steaming mug in front of me. I stared down into it, feeling the water’s hot breath against my cheeks. My father let out a grunt.

“No,” he said. He pulled out a chair and sat beside me. Then he put his big paw of a hand on mine. It was heavy as a glove filled with concrete. It didn’t move. If it hadn’t been warm from the condensation in the air, I wouldn’t have guessed him to be alive. “You’ll be sixteen in two weeks. You have a vocation. Soon, you’ll be ready to take up quarters of your own. I’m glad you’ve fallen in love.”

His hand didn’t move on top of mine. Even his eyelashes were still.

“You are?”

“I never knew what love was, until we brought your brother home. Then you.”

I didn’t speak. We weren’t supposed to talk about it, how Tateh and Momme had never been in love. They were good citizens, decent parents. They did their jobs well. A friendship as strong as any tethered them together. But theirs wasn’t a romantic relationship. It never had been.

“So,” Tateh said. He gave my hand a squeeze, then drew his away. It wrapped around the mug and lifted it to his mouth. After he swallowed, he said, “Tell me about this young man.”

My cheeks warmed. I took a sip of tea too, to hide it. How could I ever describe you to my
father
? They said I was half his—half his genes, half his property, until I was grown. But I couldn’t be sure he’d understand how you and I had changed in the decades that had passed. All that had blossomed between us. How everything had come up
Benjamin
.

“He’s smart, Tateh. And passionate. You’d like him.”

“Passionate, eh?” My father arched his eyebrow. “Passionate . . . how, exactly?”

Oh, I’m sure you can imagine how I blushed more at that.

“He cares about our future. He cares what kind of lives we lead. He says we shouldn’t just settle for what the Council gives us. He wants us to make our own way, as best we can. The two of us, of course, but not just us. Everyone on the ship.”

Tateh rolled his jaw. But he didn’t look annoyed, not at all. In fact, he looked inordinately pleased.

“And what’s the name of this young iconoclast?”

The name tumbled from my lips without hesitation. After all, he wasn’t Momme. Surely he wouldn’t care.

“It’s Benjamin, Tateh. Benny Jacobi.”

I expected him to smile, for his eyes to twinkle like they used to when we were young. Do you remember how much he liked you, Benny? How he used to do that silly duck voice for you, the one that made you laugh
so much
? But my father didn’t crack a grin, or a joke. He just set his mug down on the table and looked at me gravely.

“Miriam’s boy? Alya, you know I’ll have to tell your mother.”

I clutched my cup in my hands, letting the heat burn me right through the porcelain.

“Well,” I said, and forced a smile, “she’ll find out soon enough either way. I’ve already asked him for his hand.”

Tateh stared.

“What?”

“Oh,” I said, waving a hand through the air, “I know it’s
technically
against the rules. But I’m nearly sixteen. And he’s old enough too. We’re going to be married, Tateh. As soon as we can. As soon as I turn sixteen.”

“Your mother—”

“What about her?” I stuck my lower lip stubbornly out. “Just because she and Miriam Jacobi had a fight doesn’t mean I can’t marry who I want. What, am I supposed to hold
her
grudges forever?”

“It wasn’t just a fight, Alya,” Tateh said. But I wasn’t hearing any of it. I’d been caught up too long in Momme’s drama. All these years, ignoring what you and I had shared as children. Treating you like a stranger. I think Tateh saw the tremble of my chin. I saw something change in
him
, gathering together like a cloud of fog under the dome ceiling.

“Lovers,” Tateh said firmly, the word so plain that I could not deny it. That’s when all my resolve—my firm lip, my stubbornness—melted away. With that single word, it felt as if the floor fell away beneath me, and then the metal below it, and then the walls of our entire ship, until I was floating freely out in empty space. “Miriam and Liora were lovers for more than a decade.”

“What do you mean?” I said, but it was a stupid question. Of course I knew what he meant. I closed my eyes, and
saw
it, Benny. How they used to walk along the streets arm in arm, How Momme’s lips brushed Miriam’s earlobes as she whispered, how Miriam laughed and laughed and how her laughter was like a million clock-tower bells ringing out all at once. How they might have kissed, like we kiss, full of hips and breasts and lips. How they might have laid down together, the two of them, in a bed of leaves in the dome when their children and their husbands weren’t looking. I wasn’t disgusted. How could I be? My mother had been
loved
once, like I am loved, like I had never before imagined her to be loved. I felt happy for her, even as the storm raged in my belly, even as Tateh talked on and on and I didn’t hear a word.

“So you understand?” he was saying. I shook the image from my mind, and forced my gaze back to my father. He still clutched his mug between his hands, holding on so tight I thought the ceramic might burst.

“Yes,” I said faintly. “It must have been hard for her.”

“You have no idea.”

My father pressed his mouth into a line; he wouldn’t say another word. Instead, he got up and spilled out the remainder of his tea into the sink. I guess he wasn’t thirsty, not anymore.

“Go to sleep, Alya,” he said, and kissed my hairline. Without waiting for me to follow, he trudged up the stairs—to where Momme waited, tucked beneath the covers in the bed they shared.

In the bed she would rather have shared with Miriam. Miriam, my teacher. Your mother. Her lover.

Lover. I feel my tongue form the syllables even now, as I write you this. They loved each other. In flesh. In heart. I know it now, see it so clearly in every breath of laughter and little word they shared. I see it in the way your mother looks at me, as if I’m some sort of ghost. Did you know, Benny? Have you always known? Did it make it strange when I first wrote to you? Did it cast a shade over our kisses—like it was merely something that fate had decided, like it was something out of your old books, and not our own hearts that planned our course?

Do you know why it ended?

Of course, it would have been forbidden. For two women to love like they did. But Momme is stubborn. She wouldn’t have let something so important fade without a fight. A fight. What was theirs about? After ten years or more of sharing kisses in the dark, they had an argument. And then were torn apart, until you and I and the Council’s plans conspired to stitch their lives back together.