Shadows Cast by Stars (3 page)

For some reason, setting my hands on the earth, digging my fingers deep into her soil, as if I might grow
roots myself, staves off the seizures. Keeping spirit away, though, isn’t so easy. If it wants me, nothing I do will stop it from taking me under into a world of blackness and shadows and monsters.

This is my problem, my curse, the counterpoint to Paul’s visions. My mother said it was a gift, but I think she was wrong.

Later, after the glass is swept up, after I’ve come inside to wash the dirt from my hands, Paul makes tea. This is his way of making amends.

Our tea isn’t really tea at all, but an infusion of minced dandelion root—not what anyone would drink by choice, but real tea hasn’t been imported into the UA since continental quarantines were implemented after the first outbreak of Plague. Since my father refuses to deal with the Band-controlled black market, we’re left with our sorry substitute. Puts hair on your chest, my father always says, to which we reply:
Gee, Dad. Great. Just what we’ve always wanted
.

“It needs to steep,” Paul says. He refuses to look at me. “I’m going to the tree.”

I want to tell him it’s okay, that I know he didn’t mean to break the glass or upset me. Instead I just go upstairs and get a basket of found things, add it to the
tea tray, and head outside for the telling of Paul’s vision.

Vision
doesn’t really describe what happens to Paul. Sometimes the lost whisper to him in his dreams, telling him their sorrows, their grief, as if he’s their confessor. Occasionally they ask him to release them. These encounters leave Paul worn and grim, but it’s the other visions, the ones that foretell the future, that trouble us both. We decode them together, trying to make some sense of the bizarre symbols, the totems, the omens. Most times we don’t decipher what they mean until afterward, when it’s too late, but we still try, hoping that one day we’ll unlock the code. This is what torments Paul, that he has the power to stop things, terrible things, if he could only decipher what he sees. I understand how he feels. What good is a gift when you don’t know how to use it?

We settle under the apple tree, the one where we spread our mother’s ashes, school long forgotten. Paul builds a fire as I take the basket in my hands and ask the items inside what they want to be. The keys whisper to me, and so does a length of twine. As I wait for Paul to speak, I begin to twist the twine into knots, stringing the keys between them. I will give it to Paul once I’m finished, and knowing him, he will feed it to the fire. But that’s okay. I know these things I create with my hands aren’t for me to keep. It’s the giving that’s important.

Today I don’t have to wait long for Paul to speak. He rushes into the words as if he can’t stand to keep them inside himself any longer. “I was a raven, and I was flying,” he says.

I close my eyes. Key and knot, key and knot. A key to open the door of Paul’s vision, and a knot to close it firmly behind him.

“I was above our house,” Paul says, “circling over and over again, waiting for you to come home, but I knew you wouldn’t. No one would, except me because I was already here, and every time I tried to fly away to find you, to find anyone, I couldn’t. It was like there was an invisible rope tying me in place. And then someone shot me and I fell.”

“Oh.” The keys drop from my fingers, falling on the earth with a metallic clatter. I know Paul is waiting for me to say something, but I can’t find words. They’re trapped in my heart. This is not a good vision. I don’t know what it means, but I feel the warning in it. Something bad is on the way. I grapple for the keys, as if they really do open another place, a place where we might be safe, but they keep slipping out of my grasp.

“Here,” I say when I finally get ahold of them. “Put them on, Paul. You need to wear these.”

But before he can take them from me, our father’s
truck rattles down the driveway, going fast—far too fast.

Paul gets up first, and when he breaks into a run, I follow. Our father leaves for work before dawn, long before we wake for school. He gets off after dark. He would never come home from work so early unless something terrible had happened. The worst kind of terrible.

We draw to a halt just as the door groans open. My father slides out. If he’s surprised to see us at home, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he’s pale. “You two get in the house. Now!”

Paul arches an eyebrow at me, but we do what our father asks, springing away like frightened deer. Once inside, we hover behind the front door, peering out the window. As the dust cloud dissipates, we see my father’s not alone. A woman gets out of the truck, hauling an ancient leather bag with her. She’s about my father’s age, judging from the gray at her temples; squat, but not fat, and grim.

“Who is she?” Paul whispers.

“I don’t know.” I feel as if I should, though.

“Do you see anything?” Paul asks.

I let my eyes drift out of focus and scan the sky, but it’s free from anything hinting of spirit involvement. “Nothing. Nothing spiritual, anyhow.” Our father draws an old rifle, still as lethal as any modern weapon,
from behind the seat of his truck and glances our way. “Searchers?” I say.

“Maybe.” Paul turns away from the window. “I haven’t seen him like this in ages.”

“Me neither.” My heart flutters at the thought of the last outbreak, when we were almost taken in a search. The searchers caught up to us at the mag-station on the edge of the reserve, only a mile from our home, at the same time the Band men found us. For three long hours the Band hid us in the bowels of the mag-station, safe beneath the layers of earth blocking the searchers from tracing the signals from our chips. When they finally escorted us home, we found our father sitting on the porch, cradling his rifle. He pressed us to his chest, and then pushed us inside so we wouldn’t see him cry. He wears the same look now—ashen faced, jaw clenched tight, a worried pallor framing him. The sight of his frailty hits me in the gut.

His footsteps are heavy on the porch. He heaves the door open as if it weighs as much as the world itself and looks at both of us slowly, as if time is winding down. “Pack your things. Only what’s absolutely essential— clothes, food, tools.”

Paul makes for the tool shed. I dart upstairs and begin pulling things from drawers, my mind spinning as I try to
decide what we need. Clothes. Needles. Thread. Soap. Underwear. Socks. Shoes. What else, what else? I run from room to room and back again, frantic, panicking at the idea that today, this very afternoon, we are leaving. What if we never come back?

When I finally come downstairs, I set the boxes next to a sack of potatoes and a duffel of tools. Will this be enough? What have I forgotten? What would my mother have taken, if she was here? The china? The curtains? The photograph of my grandparents? I don’t know, I just don’t know.

“Cass.”

I turn to find my father standing there, looking like he’s on the verge of tears.

“That’ll do, starshine,” he says. “Come into the kitchen.”

I follow him, and then wish I hadn’t. An array of surgical instruments is spread over the kitchen table. The woman from the truck stands at our sink, washing her hands. She doesn’t look up.

“Cassandra,” my father says, “this is Madda.”

I should acknowledge her, but I can’t. All I see are needles and scalpels, a neat row of silver. My throat’s so thick with fear that I can’t even ask what’s happening.

“Cass?” my father repeats. “You okay?”

Slowly, I raise my gaze to meet his. “What is going on?”

“Tell her,” the woman says. “The short version. We need to get this over with if we want to make the tide.”

“Plague,” my father says. “A new strain. Airborne, they think, because it’s jumped the quarantine grids.”

I close my eyes. In my mind, I see Paul’s raven circling our house. Is this what his vision was trying to tell us? My father is still speaking about the searches, how there aren’t enough full bloods in the Corridor, how the UA is now rounding up half-bloods, how we’re not safe. I hear him say these things, but what he’s really saying is we’re leaving. We’re leaving our home, the only home we’ve ever known, the one we’ve worked so hard to keep.

“You know what happens to the ones the searchers take,” he says.

I do. Every Other does. We die.

“Where are we going?” Paul asks. He’s standing just outside the kitchen, as scared as me, but at the same time practically shaking from excitement. He knows the answer to his question already. There is only one place
to
go.

“The Island,” my father says. To treaty lands. To the Band.

“We’re removing your chips,” Madda says as the kettle starts to whistle. “No chip, no way to track you. Besides,
best you have nothing of the Corridor left on you. They don’t look kindly on that sort of thing on the Island.”

“I’ll go first,” I say, but Paul pushes past me, rolling up his sleeve, exposing the chip in his forearm that allows us to connect to the UA etherstream. He takes a seat at the table and offers up his arm like a sacrifice to the gods.

Neither of us makes a sound as Madda slices our skin and digs out the chip, but we’re both pale and shaking afterward. My father and Madda load the truck while we sit on the porch, wrapped in blankets, sipping at Madda’s flask of whiskey. I hate alcohol, but when the only thing to cut the pain is willow bark tea, even I will allow myself a sip—but just one. Paul cradles his bandaged arm close to him. I hold mine out to the wind, letting it cool the heat rising from the wound. Later we’ll both have scars. This is how they’ll know where we came from when we get to the Island, that we weren’t born there, that we weren’t raised native. The Band might open its arms wide to us now, but they’ll never, ever let us forget that we came from the Corridor first.

P
aul and I ride in the back of the truck with our belongings. Our route takes us along roads that haven’t been used in years. Trees reach out toward us, snatching at my hair, at Paul’s arms, as my father drives over the potholes faster than he should, forcing us to cling to each other as much as to the truck. We are running, and every time I look up, I expect to see the sleek silver searchcraft bearing down on us.

Only a few Others taken by searchers have ever survived the rescue missions staged by the Band, and the tales they tell are harrowing—wards where row upon row of Others are hooked to harvesting machines to be drained of their blood. For some reason, the powers that be can’t manufacture a vaccine. We’re it. Our blood is
injected into Plague victims, who cross their fingers and hope to survive. Sometimes they do; sometimes they don’t, but it works often enough that they keep using us, even though they can’t keep us alive.

But consider, the UA government says, the greater good. What is the loss of one when that person can help so many?

When my father finally stops the truck at the end of the road where a trail cuts into the brush, I allow myself to breathe. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe we can still go back. Maybe this has all been a mistake.

But the aching wound on my arm reminds me there is no going back. Removal of a chip without UA consent is punishable by law. Like it or not, we are now fugitives.

We work quickly, unloading our boxes and lugging them down to a sheltered cove where a weather-beaten herring skiff rests in the shallows. Madda hops into it, taking our belongings from us until there’s none left. She then begins the careful task of moving the stuff around, adjusting the boxes until she’s happy with the balance, leaving us with nothing to do but fret. I sit on a nearby rock, watching her work, wishing I had something to do with my hands. I’ve always known that belongings are expendable, that stories and memories
are the true treasures we carry with us, but seeing what little we have loaded onto the boat leaves me feeling very poor. Paul stands beside me, his rifle resting in the crook of his arm, staring out across the expanse of ocean. I can sense he feels the same way.

It’s some time before my father returns. He took the truck deep into the forest to be reclaimed by the land, but not before draining the fuel tanks. Fuel is too precious to sacrifice, even to the earth.

No one speaks.

Silence is our talisman.

It takes time for the tide to rise, but once the skiff is floating we climb aboard. The sun descends behind the thunderheads hugging the western horizon. Behind us, to the east, mountains rear up, demanding that we return home.
There is no coming back once you cross to the west
, they say.
We will remember that you abandoned us, and we will exact revenge if you return
. Their peaks are blackened maws stretching skyward to snap at the stars. As fearsome as they are, I can’t help staring at them. This may be the last time I look at those mountains, those peaks I’ve looked up at every day of my life. I wish I could say good-bye, but even if I did, I don’t think the mountains would listen.

My father and Paul use oars to pole the skiff out into
deeper water. It’s hard work. My father’s breath comes fast and heavy as he fights against the tide.

Once we’re far enough out for Madda to risk starting the motor, Paul takes a seat beside me on the cold metal hull, and reaches out to take my hand. He knows I don’t like the ocean. The first time spirit took me was while I was swimming not far from here. If it weren’t for Paul hauling me to the surface and dragging me back to the beach, I would still be there. Even though that day was years ago, when we were only six, I can’t shake the feeling that if I touch the water, I’ll be drawn back down into the shadows of the old cities below. They aren’t friendly, those places: Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Los Angeles. Their deaths were sudden and painful, shaken loose from the land by terrible earthquakes. Below, in the inky fathoms, they’re reaching toward me, raking the water with their gridiron hands.