Читать книгу The Seas of Distant Stars - Francesca G. Varela - Страница 6

Agapanthus hated the check-ups. She hated the cold click of the measuring band around her arms. She hated standing against the wall with a straight back while the scientist leaned forward, sniffing and sniffing, like he was about to sigh, only to never breathe the air out again. He scanned her with a cool blink of light to measure her height, her weight, her bone density. Then he nodded, and he looked into her eyes, pulling gently on the lower lids where her eyelashes hung down. Agapanthus stared at the scientist’s eyes as he did this; she thought it was fair to analyze him since he was analyzing her.

He had orange eyes. They were a dim, pooling, saturated orange, the same hue as the gauzy shadows encircling Aamsh and Jord, the homes of the Gods. Agapanthus breathed in. Her cheeks puffed with air.

“What’s that? What are you doing?” the scientist asked, pointing to her inflated cheeks. His voice was soothing; kind. “Now, turn to the side.”

She did, and, with an exhale, she stopped holding her breath. The scientist scanned her again. That was another thing she hated; the way the light pricked her, like spiked rocks scratching her arms, her thighs, her forehead. She half expected to see white streaks left behind, tattooed onto her. But when the scientist turned off the scanner, the itching dissipated, and her skin returned to its usual pale-pink.

“Alright, we’re all done here,” the scientist said. He pressed the button on the side of the stick.

Agapanthus licked her lips because the measuring light had dried them out. She waited for the scientist to rest his hand on her head, the manner in which all adults said hello and good-bye to each other. Sometimes adults did this with children, but rarely outside of the family. Yet, last time Agapanthus had visited, the scientist had done it—simply, casually, like he’d forgotten that she was a child and not an adult.

She hovered near the open doorway. “Bye, Feol Vatker,” she said to the scientist’s back.

He bent closer to the polished black countertop, huddling over the measuring stick and its data screen like a red-breasted-sper over its prey. Agapanthus lingered a moment longer. Would he do it? Was she an adult, today?

“See you next year, Agapanthus Caracynth,” he finally said. He tilted his eyes toward the soft skin of her shoes. “Take care.”

Her foster mother, Leera, stood outside, leaning against the wall, watching the open end of the breezeway where the red sunlight glowed.

“How did it go?” Her warm hand fell to Agapanthus’s scalp. Leera bent down so Agapanthus could reach her head as well. “I hope they’re not sending you back quite yet?” Leera led the way outside the building, onto the coarse ground.

“I really have to go back?” Agapanthus looked up at Leera’s thin cheeks; at her matte, red skin. “Can’t I just stay?”

“Oh, Aga,” Leera laughed. “I wish you could stay here with us. But when the Gods say you have to go back, you have to go back. And no one knows when that’ll be.”

They were silent.

“Maybe if you’re good they’ll let you stay until you’re an old woman.” Leera patted Agapanthus’s back. “It’s happened before. So say the Gods, I can only hope it happens again.” She held her outstretched hand in front of the twin stars, Aamsh and Jord, whose slow chase through the sky marked the passing of days. The home sun, Imn, shimmered steadily next to them, high above the rock-carved canyons. Imn burned half the sky with rich, purple-red light.

Agapanthus glared at the stars with an intensity she hoped Leera would find pious. It wasn’t hard to stare at them; Agapanthus often found herself watching their dim movements anyway— their wispy breath, like fire and water wrapped together, mesmerized her. What would it be like to stand on them? How did the Gods do it? How did they stand on those mounds of rolling fire? Did they have feet like stone? Were they shell-bearing, hiding within their coverings and floating over the flames? That seemed undignified, to Agapanthus, but also kind of fun. She wished she were a God, just to see what it was like. Or maybe just meeting one would be good enough.

But she would never say any of that out loud.

Instead she mimicked Leera’s prayer symbol, and held her own hand to the two stars.

An older woman walked toward them, across the scuffed place in the ground where everyone walked. Her breasts shook with each step, even wrapped tightly in her tunic dress. Leera quickly grasped Agapanthus’s wrist. She unfolded it from the prayer symbol and dropped it to her waist.

“You’re getting too old to be copying me, especially in prayer. Don’t forget where you’re from,” Leera whispered. “Don’t forget that these are not your Gods.”

“Then why do I have to do what they say?”

Leera’s wiry lips came together. As the old woman passed—her wide eyes unnaturally pink from vision-enhancement-lens surgery—the two women made eye contact and nodded. Agapanthus blinked at the rocky, red-brown soil.

When the old woman was behind them, Leera said, “I don’t expect you to understand. You’re not Deeyan.”

Nothing more was said during the walk home. Agapanthus ignored the stark, folded cliffs, beaming red against the darkness of the Waters. Usually she loved to take them in, and the heaviness of the sky, and the warm, dry wind as it caught her blonde hair by the roots; sneaking, sluggish, full; catapulting her long hair outward in all directions. But, for now, in the windy silence, she took big steps to keep up with Leera.

Agapanthus’s nose constricted with effort. She opened her mouth so she could breathe more easily. Even on short walks, her thighs burned along the insides, so much so that she imagined hydrothermal vents were magically popping out of the ground just to burn her. She had only seen a vent once, during the last Festival of the Underworld. It was on one of the other islands, just a pool of black water. The distant steam rising from it.

“This is what keeps us alive,”The guard standing next to the vent had said.

He bent down close to her. She remembered how he smelled like sweat, and, the vent, like dust.

The lights were on in the men’s side of the house. The women’s windows were dark, as black as the stone that framed the windows, and so were those of the children’s hall and the meeting hall connecting the two wings.

“Looks like we’re the first ones back,” Leera said. The door slid open as it recognized her body signature.

The white orbs high on the ceiling lit up. Leera and Agapanthus stepped inside. It felt, as always, surprisingly cold inside the thick walls. Geometric carvings patterned the crack between ceiling and floor. Leera swept into the next room, but Agapanthus stood in the front hall a moment. She tilted her neck to look at the recessed mural of the Waters, right above her head, ornately carved into the wall directly facing the door; each stroke was a tiny etch, the work of the ancestors who had first inhabited the house. The picture of small waves was flat and gray, but realistic in its illusion of movement. Agapanthus didn’t like the mural. She didn’t know why, but it wasn’t beautiful to her. It always looked dusty, even though it wasn’t, and that made her want to touch it and scrape her fingers against it to wipe away the powdery sheen. She wasn’t allowed to, though. Oh, no, of course not. It was too old—too precious—to soil with the hand-oils of an alien, or even a Deeyan— none of the women had ever touched it. Not even Grandmother Surla, and she was the oldest of all of them.

Agapanthus didn’t feel like following Leera around until the other women came home, when they would meet with the men to walk to the cafeteria. She was the only child living in the house, so she escaped to the children’s hall to be alone.

The floor was lined with animal skin. Agapanthus kneeled, and its softness embraced her bare knees. She dug out her storyteller from her chest in the corner. A deep, woman’s voice rose from the hand-held machine. Agapanthus stretched back on her bed of leathery-soft skins. It was the story of how the Gods brought the Deeyans to Deeyae. She listened to it often enough that she had memorized certain parts.

“The Water Planet was the first home of the Deeyans,” the recording and Agapanthus said in tandem. “There, they ate plants, and they climbed trees. They lived off the sun, not the hydrothermal vents.”

That was all Agapanthus knew about her home planet. There were more audiobooks with information about it; after all, most scientists exclusively studied the Water Planet and its inhabitants, at the request of the Gods. But neither Leera nor Pittick would buy them for her. They told her she was too young for that sort of thing, and the Gods may not like it. Besides, she would go back someday, and then all of her questions would be answered.

Her eyes began to close. The weight of the data-reading with the scientist came over her. She felt it in her limbs; every step, every turn, every motion she had made throughout the day pulled her down further into her bed.

When she sat up again, the storyteller had shut off automatically. She’d missed the end, where the Gods drop the first Deeyans on their new planet and the First Age begins. Agapanthus swallowed hard. Using all the strength in her thin arms, she pushed herself up. She needed to stay awake, or else she would miss the meal. She plodded toward the men’s wing through the other door in the hall.

There stood Pittick. As he smiled, his forehead wrinkled all the way up to his scalp, a red swath behind a veil of black hair.

“We’re leaving soon, Aga,” he said, tapping her on the head. “But first, come look at this.”

She followed her foster-father to the study room. Comfortable piles of blankets dotted the marbled floors. Aunt Imari’s husband, Uncle Sonlo, sat on one of them with his naked legs crossed. Both men carried the faint scent of the water creatures which they harvested. They managed the fisheries together.

“Hey, how did the visit go?” Uncle Sonlo asked her. He smiled, and his white teeth seemed to glow against his dark lips.

“Fine,” Agapanthus said.

“I can’t believe they still make all of you exchangers go there every year,” Uncle Sonlo said. “They must be busy, with all those test subjects. You’d think they would cut back a little. Don’t they have enough data yet?”

“They’ll never have enough data, Sonlo,” Pittick mumbled. He picked up a thick, crunchy-looking sphere. “Ah, here it is.” He squinted at her, smiling.

“What is it?”

“Take it.”

She pinched it lightly from his hand. It was bumpy, unmoving; like a strange, orange stone.

“It used to be a karap shell,” Pittick said. “I found it just underneath the boat, floating in a shallow area of the Waters. It’s not even molting season.”

“Good thing it’s not, or you’d be in trouble,” Uncle Sonlo said loudly.

“If it was molting season I wouldn’t have taken it.”

Pittick knelt in front of Agapanthus. Of everyone’s eyes, his were the yellowest, she thought. They were nothing like the orange scientist’s.

“This is very valuable. It’s breakable, and it’s rare, and it’s beautiful, too. If you were to buy one of these, it would cost a lot of money, more money than anyone has, except maybe the Contact.” He took the shell back from her and shook it in front of her nose. Agapanthus shuffled backward slightly.

Pittick continued, nodding as he spoke. “You have to get lucky and find one. And I did. And I want you to have it.”

Agapanthus nodded, too, mimicking the short pulses of his neck.

“But you have to promise me you’re not going to lose it. It’s worth a lot.”

“I promise.”

Pittick placed the shell back in her cupped hands.

“Why do you have to put so much pressure on her? Don’t give the shell to her if it’s that valuable,” Uncle Sonlo said as he stood up, stretching his thick arms in front of his chest. “She’s just a kid. You know she’s going to drop it or something.”

“No I won’t!”

“She’s responsible,” Pittick said lightly. His wide jaw settled into a smile. “I trust her.”

Agapanthus took big steps to her trunk in the children’s hall. She wanted to run there, but her legs were too tired. Sometimes, after a good long rest, she could run for short bursts, but then her muscles began to ache, and so did her spine, and her lungs. Even the bones in her neck seemed to tighten. Most of the time she preferred big strides instead of running.

She delicately nestled the shell next to her pile of folded clothes, along with the collection of pretty rocks she’d found out by the Waters. Now she had fifteen, counting the shell. It fit in perfectly with her collection. She only picked up rocks that were different; one was shaped like a triangle; one had a crack down the middle, exposing light-yellow sparkles on the inside; another was a purple so dark that it looked black unless she held it up to Imn.

“We’re leaving now, Aga!” Leera voice echoed through the hollow walls.

“Coming!” Agapanthus called back. She rushed out into the women’s hall. Aunt Imari, Grandmother Surla, and Great-Aunt Tayzaya waited there.

Aunt Imari rushed happily toward Agapanthus, her delicate hand ready to meet her head. “There’s my little one!” Imari’s sons had married off to different houses just before Agapanthus was adopted. It was a hard thing for a mother to have only boys, because they always left. Sometimes they even went to different islands, and then you could only see them at festivals. Leera had once told Agapanthus that this was why Imari was so kind toward her; she missed her own little ones.

“Hello there, Agapanthus,” Surla said. Grandmother Surla and her sister Tayzaya rarely offered their hands to Agapanthus. Today they simply smiled at her. Neither looked as old as they sounded. Their voices seemed to be the most aged part of them. Everything they said came out sounding feeble—at least compared to Leera and Imari’s warm, hefty voices.

Imari withdrew her palm from Agapanthus’s head. She walked outside without giving Agapanthus a chance to reciprocate.

Sonlo and Pittick were waiting, their backs turned to the bi-sloped house. Sonlo looked like a giant, compared to Pittick. They were the same height, but Uncle Sonlo’s body was just bigger—more bulky and laborious. Agapanthus liked Pittick’s smoothness better. She thought curvy muscles looked better than sharp-looking ones. Hopefully Pittick wouldn’t end up like Sonlo when he grew older. But, then again, older men usually looked more like Sonlo. He was a strange match for Imari. Her shoulders receded into her neck with smallness, meagerness, fragility. Sometimes Agapanthus wondered if something was wrong with her, but she was afraid to ask.

In a long line, the family headed toward the cafeteria. They walked along without speaking. Each footstep crunched against the gravelly dust.

Then a scream surged over the cliffs. Then another and another, building upon the echoes of the first, until they all blended together into a tunneling, quavering, mass. Grandmother Surla led the family in a slow succession toward the chanting. They walked expertly sideways over the unsteady, sloping ground. As they made it over the top of a red cliff, the Waters came into view. Agapanthus had come to think of the Waters as a person; a very old woman, her arms spread wide to encircle the center of Deeyae, and the warm sky above it, too, and all the Deeyans and the water beings and the Others and even the exchangers, like her. She wished she could speak to the Waters. Well, sometimes she did, while she practiced swimming along the shoreline; she muttered into the musky-tasting water while her lips were submerged. What she really wanted was for the Waters to say something back to her in a velvety, kind voice. Agapanthus, good things are in store for you, the Waters would say, oh so wisely, with each word unrolling like a slow, curling wave. Of course the Waters would be all-knowing; a future-seer. A goddess. To Agapanthus, the Waters were more godly than the Gods themselves.

A growing crowd hovered at the edge of the Waters, all dressed in sleeveless shifts made of thinly stretched leathers—some of better quality than others. Tayzaya and Imari drifted into the mass of people, but the others stayed back to survey them.

“Another coming-of-age attempt?” Leera said to Pittick, her gaze still latched onto the crowd and the dark expanse in front of them. “I don’t even see anyone out there. They must be pretty far.”

“I see them. Way, way out there.”

A man wearing a black-stone chain around his neck pushed his way from the crowd and lowered his head toward Surla. “Surla Caracynth,” he said in a deep, creased voice.

Grandmother Surla patted his nearly hairless scalp. “Akinan Pelloi.”

The man was tall enough that he could touch the top of Surla’s head without her even bending at the knees. Agapanthus recognized him; he was a member of the Council. He had only been added on two years ago. Everyone had been surprised; he’d come out of nowhere, some boat-builder from the other side of the island. But apparently the Gods had been happy with him, because the Contact called Akinan up during the yearly island-wide meeting, and he’d made the announcement right then and there.

“Do you think he’s going to make it?” Surla asked.

“Who is it, who’s swimming?” Leera stepped closer to Akinan.

Akinan coughed. “He’s the son of Lapars Rq,” he said. “And I think he is going to make it. He’s already halfway to Shre.”

“Do they have the boats ready over there?” Leera asked, her voice high, her fingers to her lips. “Did someone tell them?”

“I’m sure,” Akinan said. “He picked a bad time, though. Yes, the wind is calmer now, but it’s about meal time. He’s keeping everyone from the meal.”

“Maybe he was hoping everyone would be eating so they wouldn’t stand here and watch him,” Pittick said.

“If that’s what he wanted, then he was stupid about it.” Sonlo laughed with his shoulders. “He should’ve started after everyone was already inside eating.”

“As long as he makes it,” Leera said. “I always get so nervous.”

“I still remember your swim across, Leera,” Grandmother Surla said.

“I do too,” Pittick said. “That’s when I first saw you, it was right after the Festival of Imn, right as I was going to head home. You swam fastest of all the women that year. And remember the celebration after? I don’t think I’ve ever eaten more.”

“See—if Lapars’s kid does it today, we won’t have to worry about missing the meal. Maybe this is all a genius plan to get more food,” Uncle Sonlo said.

“We don’t have much in the stores,” Akinan said. He crossed his arms, and his necklace rattled. “And today was a slow hunting day. The celebration will have to wait until tomorrow, I think. If they can catch enough.”

“The kid probably won’t even care,” said Pittick. “He’ll be a man after this. That’s why he’s doing this. So his life can start.”

Agapanthus sat down in the dirt, stretching her legs in front of her. Her knees were too tired to continue standing. She imagined herself swimming like this boy; swimming like all children did to become adults—the flowing, transient Waters wrapped around her from all sides, floating, in space; blackness as she closed her eyes, as her arms flew in rhythm with her breath, like the water drums at festivals. Very few exchangers could make the long swim from their own island, Yeela, to the neighboring one, Shre. Some even drowned trying, because it was forbidden to help anyone attempting the rite of passage swim. All anyone could do was stand and watch.

The shore of Shre was clearly visible on the far side of the Waters. It appeared shaded; a dark, dark, red, like the dry skin on the bottom of someone’s foot. Well, not Agapanthus’s foot. A Deeyan foot. Unless, of course, Agapanthus walked barefoot through the dirt to “paint” her feet red. Even then, it wasn’t quite the right shade; the pink of her foot always broke through the dust—glaringly, shockingly, lifelessly.

Against the distant hump of the neighboring island, the swimmer dissolved. First he was there, a bare speck against the churning Waters, and then he was gone. The screams dissipated into muttering. Waves sloppily crested over the rocky shores. They sounded brittle, shattering ceaselessly.

“He’s out of the sight line now,” Leera said. “May the Gods watch him carefully.”

No one said anything back, they just swallowed, or adjusted themselves slightly, or shifted their weight, so Leera continued. “This is the worst part. That place between the islands. No one can see him from that side, and no one can see him from this side, so no one would know if he sunk. He would be completely alone, just slipping down into the belly of the Waters. Completely alone—”

“Oh Leera,” Grandmother Surla said. “No Deeyan has drowned in here for more than three-hundred years.”

“I know, but you just never know when it might happen again.”

“Really, Leera? Swimmers twice a year or so, and you’re still not over this nervous habit?” Uncle Sonlo raised his thin, black eyebrows.

“It’s because she saw her friend almost drown,” Grandmother Surla said. “At the Water Festival, many, many years ago. Roslg Boea. She was practicing for the rite of passage, and she lost her strength halfway through. Thank the all-watching Gods it was only a practice swim. There was a boat not too far from her. They saved her.”

“Why was she practicing at the Water Festival anyway?” Uncle Sonlo laughed.

“So no one would be paying attention,” Leera said.

“With all those boats in the Waters?” Uncle Sonlo shook his head. “Wait, so, what happened, though? Why didn’t she make it?”

“She was just a weak girl. Weak-bodied,” Grandmother Surla said. “Almost as weak as the aliens.”

“Surla.” Leera’s wide eyes fastened to her mother’s strict face. “Most people say ‘exchangers’ these days. You know that.” She glanced down at Agapanthus.

“Why are they ‘exchangers’ if we don’t send anyone over there? What’s the exchange?” Sonlo asked.

“We get their children, and they get honored on the Water Planet when they go back,” Pittick said. “We get them, they get respect.”

After listening to the adults for so long, Agapanthus had the sudden urge to jump into the crooked shoreline of the Waters. Not to test herself; just to swim; just to enjoy the cool brush of the breeze against her wet cheeks. Despite her tiredness, she seriously considered throwing off her clothes into a homely, dusty pile, and bowing gracefully—as gracefully as she could—into the blackness.

“I say we go ahead and eat,” Akinan said loudly. “It’s going to be a while.” He walked off into the crowd.

“I won’t argue with that,” Uncle Sonlo said.

“I’m going to stay and watch.” Leera clasped her hands in front of her stomach. “Aga, go tell Tayzaya and Imari it’s time for the meal.”

Agapanthus stared at her foster-mother, who watched her with unblinking fierceness. Leera really was beautiful; wide-statured, with wide cheeks and a high forehead and thin features. She seemed more skin than anything. Leera was like the edge of a cliff—red, solid, but ready to crumble.

Another wave of exhaustion came over Agapanthus. It felt like she had been asked to rise from the dead. To journey down the hill, into the quavering, warm-moist conglomeration of bodies, to fetch Great-Aunt Tayzaya and Aunt Imari, then to leap wide strides back to the cafeteria? Just getting to the cafeteria sounded impossible.

“But—” Agapanthus began.

“It’s okay, I’ll go,” Pittick said quickly. He lifted Agapanthus by the underarms, bringing her to her feet. His hands felt dry, scratchy from work. Agapanthus laughed.

“Go on with Surla.” Pittick stepped away. “Go on, get a head start. We’ll catch up.”

“Oh yes, you’ll catch up no problem,” Grandmother Surla said. She exhaled, and her eyelids clamped down roughly. They began walking. “You know, Agapanthus, I used to be fast, and strong. I was a good swimmer. I could hold my breath until I reached the bottom of the Waters. Not the deep water, but the shallows. Now look at me. I’m no faster than an alien.” She shook with muted laughter. “Sorry—‘exchanger’.”

The cafeteria was one of the few buildings on the island without the two-winged design. Instead, it was a large rectangle borne of the usual black stone. One room to butcher and prepare the food, and an open hall with skin-draped floors. Half the island sat there at the prescribed daily meal time. The room smelled like food already; metallic, blood-like.

Grandmother Surla and Agapanthus lined up at one of the two doorways where the preparers handed out stone bowls. The lines already stretched the length of the room, even though much of the crowd remained near the Waters.

In front of them stood a girl whose eyes were very far apart. Agapanthus often saw her running in the higher cliffs with some of the other children. They had spoken once, at one of the festivals—the Marriage Festival? Or was it the Water Festival? It was so long ago, Agapanthus could barely remember. The girl had come up to her, asked her something about why Agapanthus looked different. Agapanthus couldn’t remember what she’d said back. Had she pointed out the other exchangers in the crowd? Had she shuffled away without answering? Every festival and meeting and mealtime since then, Agapanthus had avoided this girl. What was her name, again? She reminded Agapanthus of one of the herded inner-island creatures, whose black-mirror eyes sat very far back on their heads.

“Looks like there’s not much, today, huh?” the girl turned and whispered hoarsely. Her smile revealed two missing teeth on both sides of her mouth.

“I can’t really tell from back here,” Agapanthus said. She glanced back at the entrance to look for Pittick and the others.

“The bowls are basically empty!” the girl said. She patted her thick mound of a stomach.

Agapanthus nodded, smiling gently. She didn’t know what to say.

“You hate me, don’t you?” the girl asked in a dull, flat tone.

“What?”

“We don’t run into each other that much, and it’s not like the island’s that big. You hide from me.”

“No. I just don’t look for you. I don’t even know you.” Agapanthus swallowed. “What was your name, again?”

“Geleria Serenop. You’re Agapanthus Caracynth.”

“How did you know that?”

“I have a better memory than you.” She held her flabby chin higher. Her red skin shone ashily under the lights. “But it’s not your fault. All Deeyans have better memories than your kind.”

Agapanthus held her breath. She nodded, her eyes to the floor. The smell of food, of heaps of raw animal flesh in the doorway beyond, disintegrating into the floor—blobby, flopping, dead—it made her suddenly uneasy. She licked her lips again and tilted her head to the side. She knew she had to say something back.

“Well at least I’m not fat.” Agpanthus paused as Geleria’s mouth tightened into a pinched circle. Yes. That was the right thing to say. “How did you get so chubby if we’re all eating the same amount? You must have something wrong with you to be so different from everyone else. Look around, who else is fat?”

Geleria glanced hurriedly across the room; at the seated figures, those waiting in line, the servers. Most people were squat, wide, and hefty, but toned. And the other children were usually thinnest of all.

“It’s still better than being a scrawny alien,” Geleria said. “A scrawny experiment-subject. I’d rather be dead than be one of you.”

“You could never be one of us, anyway. That’s impossible,” Agapanthus said, each word growing quieter. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Who cares?” Geleria locked eyes with her. “No wonder you don’t have any friends.” She turned around and stepped in front of her parents.

Agapanthus stared at their backs for a moment. She wanted to collapse to the floor and rest her head on her knees.

Grandmother Surla coughed. Agapanthus had forgotten she was there. “I wonder what’s taking them so long?” Grandmother Surla surveyed the crowd as she spoke. She paused. Her breath expounded wispily from her chest, and she swept her shoulder-length black hair away from her face. “Agapanthus. Don’t you play with the other children? You spend so much time out by the Waters. I thought you played with them there?”

Agapanthus thought of the mushy sand wrapping over her feet as she waded into the Waters. She thought of the coarse, rich smells, the dim heat of the red sun. She thought of the arching cliffs, heavy with dust, and the row of children running down them. Down the hill, down to the shadowed sea, down to the expanses above which Aamsh and Jord billowed. She thought of the clipping noise of ripples against rock. The slimy, black water plants stretching their stalks above the waterline. The other children, screaming down the opposite edge of the shore, yelling because there might be water creatures under their feet, racing each other as they swam to the distant fishing boats. She watched them and they never glanced her way. They knew she was there, they must, but they never looked at her.

“I go there to play in the Waters.”

“By yourself?” Surla finally met Agapanthus’s eyes. “Don’t they ever ask you to play?”

“Not usually.”

“Even the others like you?”

Agapanthus shook her head. She liked to think that she was left out because she wanted to be. They had invited her once, long ago; a mixed group of exchangers and Deeyans who liked to play chase. She’d declined because she wanted to hunt for pebbles. She told them she would join them the next day, but they never asked her again. That was her one chance, and she’d lost it.

“Well you need to fix that,” Surla said. “No use being anti-social at such a young age.”

They made it to Kopri Karia, one of the servers handing out the meal. All the servers and food preparers were required to shave their heads. On most it looked strange, but it made Kopri look regal. Her highly arched eyebrows looked both sharp and kind. She didn’t smile, but she nodded at them. Agapanthus clutched the cold bowl to her chest. Inside were small, filmy chunks of red-breasted-sper meat. Its rawness made it gelatinous—clear but bloody, freshly killed that day. Surla and Agapanthus sat on the floor.

“I don’t see anyone here,” Surla said. Her lips already shined from the blood of her first bite. “No Balia, or Fetru, or Lopor. Where is everyone?” She dug her fingers into the mass of food and brought some to her mouth. As she chewed, she said, “And where are Pittick and the others? Watching that swimmer, still?”

Agapanthus clenched her teeth together as she worked through her first bite. The food tasted better than it smelled. But, still, she wanted to run out of the lukewarm air of the cafeteria. Away from the saliva noises and the fragrant blood and the scattered words of mostly-strangers. The island wasn’t very big—in fact, it was one of the smallest—but there were still a lot of people she didn’t know.

Surla and Agapanthus both ate sloppily, and loudly. Agapanthus couldn’t remember spending this much time alone with Grandmother Surla. It made her nervous. She tried to focus on her food, but her gaze was drawn to the rustling clusters of people, the stragglers still procuring their food. She watched the door, too, hoping Leera or Pittick would save her from being alone with Surla.

Finally Pittick rushed in. He bounced to his knees, his white teeth barred as he breathed through his mouth.

“The food is losing its freshness,” Grandmother Surla said. “May the Gods tell me, what took so long?”

“They didn’t make it. Lapars’s son—” Pittick said, his words rushed and clattering together. “And Lapars, he went out and—”

Static pierced the speakers near the ceiling. Then the Contact’s steady voice poured through. “All residents of rightwards Yeela. At the shore.”

Grunts overtook the room as people stood. They adjusted their dresses away from their necks or down lower toward their knees, and left their bowls—stained, half-empty—on the floor. They scurried out into the redness. Once under the blushing sun, panic hit. Agapanthus could see it in their faces. Tight, pulled; yellow eyes flickering.

“His arm!” a woman said from deeper in the crowd.

“No, that happened in the water,” a man’s voice answered her.

Pittick sighed and continued pushing his way through. He nudged shoulders and ribcages gently, with just the tips of his fingernails; a light, tapping invitation to shift over.

“There she is,” Pittick muttered, and they were once again next to Leera, Tayzaya, and Imari.

Agapanthus stepped forward, head bent, assuming Leera and Aunt Imari would greet her. Neither of them did, because there, with his thick necklace of black stones, stood the Contact. Agapanthus could barely see him over the rows of people. She could see him only from the chin up. The rest of him was muffled by skin-clad backs and thin black hair.

He was young, for a Contact. The last Contact had been one-thousand years old when he died. Agapanthus still remembered his death festival well, even though she had been very young—she remembered his pale lips slightly parted, his stomach sunken down like an empty crevasse underneath his clothes. They carried his body up to the highest cliff. All members of the Council slid their hands under his frail body and carried it above their heads. Some of them, almost as old as the Contact had been, struggled to keep their arms from shaking. But it had to be done. He had to be left there so that, within moments, he could disappear. There was a feeling of static in the air, and then a low whomp. And then he was gone. By then the new Contact had mounted the cliff. He looked down upon his subjects and said something about hearing the glimmering voices of the Gods. That was how one got to be a Contact; the voices. From then on it was his duty to listen to them—the voices of the all-watching—to tell the island of Yeela how to live. It had been that way since the Awakening, and so, they said, it would be forever.

“Look here,” the Contact bellowed. “We know this isn’t right. We know it’s forbidden to aid those who are swimming the rite of passage. If they aren’t going to make it, then it’s their time to return to the Gods. It’s not our place to help them in that journey.” The Contact swallowed roughly. His soft-looking, hefty chest rose and fell. “In this case he was bitten by a water creature; we assume it to be a Ltran, by what the fishermen are saying.”

Pittick leaned in closer to Leera. “Can’t he hurry this up? Poor Lapars’s son is just sitting there bleeding.”

Leera grunted. “And look how pale Lapars looks, himself.”

Agapanthus fell to her knees. Through a forest of legs, she saw a boy on his side, his whole arm and stomach and neck slathered with burgundy, clotted blood; an older man, lips moving, eyes shut, desperately covering the wound with his palms.

The Contact slowly faced the twin stars. All remained silent, except the Waters and the wind.

“So say the Gods: It is their destiny to drown.” The Contact’s face became thinner as he spoke. Grimmer, and harder. But in the deep yellow of his eyes, Agapanthus thought she saw suppressed tears. Certainly there was sadness there.

“But why? That doesn’t do any good,” Agapanthus whispered to Leera. “Why would they—”

“It’s what the Gods want. And if that’s what they want, we don’t question it.”

A small, leather-wrapped boat was pulled to shore. The Contact helped heave Lapars and his unconscious son into its bowl-shaped center. Two members of the Council carried in large rocks. Then they paddled out with great speed, the Contact solemnly looking down, the Waters wisping by underneath him. When they stopped, still close enough to shore that Agapanthus could make out their startled faces, the Contact held up a rope of finely braided animal skin. Hunched over, he slipped it through a hole in the rock and tied it around Lapars’s ankles. The Council members stepped closer, their mouths weighted and creased. Everyone breathed heavily. The boat trembled as they helped push Lapars over the edge, into the immeasurable Waters. There was no struggle; almost no splash. He simply disappeared. Like he had never existed.

The son would be next. No one in Agapanthus’s family could even remember his name, yet he was going to die. Agapanthus tried to blink her tears away. No one else was crying. Her throat ached and her nostrils flared, and she tried so hard, as the second rope was tied, to withhold her chest-rattling sobs. She tried to think of good things, like swimming, like listening to stories, like walking with Leera and Pittick. But it didn’t work. And as they threw him down he flopped over sideways. A great splash of purple, of blood and water mixed, sprayed out from under the body. He was a body already. No longer a boy, no longer a living being. Just a lump of fleshly matter coursing through the depths. Lapars surely waited at the silty bottom. Through his barely open eyes, he would see his son drifting down, just the outline of him, the silhouette against the eternal presence of Imn high above, his hair fanning out around, his one arm dangling above his head, the other still streaming blood. And Lapars would feel that knot, that horrible knot, at his core—that he needed to do something, he needed to help his son. He would be crying without realizing it; the tears, of course, would blend right into the water. Then, finally, as his son hit down on the sand, too far away to hold, to touch, to say goodbye to, the water would enter his lungs.

Leera pulled Agapanthus into her arms. “It’s alright, Aga,” her hot breath said against Agapanthus’s hair. Leera kissed the top of her head. “It’s alright.”

Pittick joined in too. All three of them hugged each other, submerged in the hushed crowd. No one left to the meal, or to their homes. They stood and spoke softly to one another. The boat returned to shore much slower than it had left. The Contact drifted back up the cliffs without saying anything at all.

“This is—” Pittick said, “—this is tragedy.”

“Don’t say that, Pittick,” Leera answered. But she grasped them both in tighter, and, when they pulled away, she was the last to let go.

They walked home; through the buzzing silence, through the steady, sweet-warm glow of the inescapable sky, lit aloft by the home sun and the quiet meanderings of the God stars, which Agapanthus now hated—hated, hated, hated, with all her gut and her clenched jaw and all the strength she could pour into the limbs of her weak, young body.

Could the Gods sense this? Could they see or hear inside her mind—inside anyone’s mind—just as they could with the Contact? Was the Contact only special because he could sense their presence there, while all the others remained blind? She hated them. Suddenly she understood how the Others must feel. They were the ones living on the fringes of the frozen lands to the south and the great deserts to the north. Right on the very edge, next to the Waters. During the Awakening, the Gods had only spoken to Contacts living around the equator. The islanders. The Others were not the chosen people. They were primitive; they didn’t have access to the technology of the Gods. No; they still worshipped the old god, the single, fierce god of the underbelly of Deeyae, who they believed controlled the hydrothermal vents, and, thus, all life. But those who worshipped the Gods knew this was not true. They knew that They controlled everything from their high perch on Aamsh and Jord. Without them, the Deeyans would not exist, and all of Deeyae would crumble.

Agapanthus didn’t know whether the Others believed in the Gods. But how could they not? Their touch was everywhere—in the science labs, in the healing centers, in the portation center, in the exchange program headquarters, in the electricity, in every advanced device, every planet-transport machine, every light. But maybe the Others didn’t know about this evidence. Either way, she knew they must hate the idea of the Gods. The idea that the islanders were better than them. Superior, chosen, brilliant. Agapanthus had only seen the Others once, on the way to the Star Festival in the ice lands. They had passed their camp—animal-skin tents, round and low to the ground, and a small gathering area of stones where they probably sat and spoke of their underworld god. But the only Other in view was a young woman. All Agapanthus saw was the back of her head, right outside one of the tents. And then, she remembered, Great-Aunt Tayzaya said something, like, “Poor things.” And they had all gone on, farther and farther from the eternal sun of the equator, into the dark half of the planet. It was always night there; always. They wore special fur suits that covered every speck of skin and body except their eyes. Onward they had walked, over the strange, ticking, cracking ice that smelled of water and soil at once. It was so tiring that Pittick had to carry her in his arms. She fell asleep pressed against his chest. His warmth. When she opened her eyes they had arrived. And that was when she looked up; above them, the sky had melted from red to—to everything. A black sculpture painted with stars, with lights that bulged, and soared, and cascaded; that reflected on the unending ice fields until ground and sky became one, rolling the world into a sphere of light.

“Aga,” Leera had said, crouching to Agapanthus’s level. Her words were muffled through the furs. “There is your home world.” She pointed to a certain light, faintly yellow, unblinking.

It was disappointing. It looked like nothing. Like anything. Like any other star.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Leera said. “That is your home sun.”

“It looks just like the other ones.”

“Exactly. And they are all beautiful.”