And she wonders why she has no friends, he thought.
“The Fire Starter. The Lady of Justice. The Winged Horse. Aetheus’s Harem—”
“That’s not Aetheus’s Harem,” Leo said.
“Yes, it is,” Agnes insisted.
“No, it isn’t.” Aetheus’s Harem was the only constellation Leo knew because he had once seen a picture of the actual harem in a book when he was nine, and the women were all topless. The constellation was much less exciting than the picture, but still. It wasn’t something he was ever going to forget.
“Leo, I think I know better than you.”
“There are too many stars,” he said. “Look, it’s supposed to be that one, that one, that one. . . .” Leo pointed each of them out in turn. “But that star, that big bluish one, that’s not part of the harem.”
Agnes was silent for a moment, which Leo took to mean he was right.
“What is that star?” she said.
“I don’t know, but it proves that that is not—”
“Oh, get over yourself for one second. Look. It’s . . . it’s getting bigger.”
“Agnes, I really don’t . . .” But his voice trailed off as he gazed at the bluish ball of light. She was right. It was getting bigger. And it was moving. When he first saw it, it was near the right side of the harem, but now it was definitely closer to the middle.
“Maybe it’s a shooting star?” he said.
“Shooting stars leave a trail as they enter the atmosphere.”
“Well, I don’t know, what’s your suggestion?”
Agnes didn’t get a chance to answer because the star flared up, streaking across the sky. Leo was about to rub it in her face that he was right, it was a shooting star, when suddenly, something crashed into the ground nearby. The car was lifted up in the air before thudding down again, and Leo found himself toppling over onto his sister. A wave of dirt slammed into his face, making him cough and choke.
“What . . .” Agnes spluttered, pushing Leo up off her. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, a sudden determination setting in. “But we’re going to find out.”
Part Three
The Knottle Plains and Old Port City, Kaolin
12
Sera
SERA WAS FLYING.
She’d felt frightened for only the first few seconds, when the City Above the Sky swirled in her vision as she tumbled through space. Its underside was a beauty—sloping sheets of sunglass that ended in long stalactites, hanging suspended like icicles with the tether nestled in among them.
So that’s what it looks like, she thought.
Her fall followed the line of the tether, and it was even more beautiful up close, an iridescent, shimmering chain of gold and silver and blue links. Sometimes it sparkled like dewdrops in the moonlight. Other times, it glowed like a Cerulean’s finger before a blood bond.
Slowly, the City grew smaller and fainter. Then it disappeared. And she was flying among the stars.
Of course, she wasn’t anywhere near close enough to touch one of them, but she sensed their presence as if they welcomed her to share their sky. Sometimes flying felt weightless. Other times, it felt like not moving at all. Sera marveled at how her lungs expanded and contracted, even as the air was so thin it didn’t feel like air, really, and how her body had acclimated to the strange, new, cold environment. It was just like her green mother had said: her magic allowed her to withstand all sorts of conditions. But this was not how Sera would have chosen to experience the unique phenomenon of her people.
The planet came closer so gradually, she didn’t realize it at first. The familiar shapes of Kaolin and Pelago did not seem to get any larger.
Until flying turned to falling.
All the peacefulness evaporated. Falling was terror. Falling was upside down and inside out. She hit the planet’s atmosphere and her skin began to sizzle.
This is it, she thought. My blood will spill, the tether will break, and Mother Sun will take me.
In the atmosphere, the tether was fire. It was red and orange, a flickering candlelight. The blood oozing from her elbows began to flow faster, boiling on her skin, little blue bubbles popping. Sera felt herself weaken. The bracelets on her wrist were like tiny balls of flame, but the moonstone necklace was a cool circle against her chest. The heat grew more intense, and just when she was sure this must be it, the end of it all, everything stopped.
What’s happening? she thought. Her body hung suspended in a pearly mist. The heat lessened. Her blood stopped flowing out of the cuts on her arms. The mist was soothing on her skin, like a balm. The High Priestess had not told her about this part. Was there something else she was meant to do? Surely dying should be enough. Perhaps the High Priestess had made this mist to help her, to calm her mind, but if anything it was making Sera more frightened. The tether was just outside its pearly border, and she felt this must be the moment she was meant to break it. She reached toward it, steeling herself, waiting to see if it would be hot or cold, if it would dissolve at her touch or snap clean in two. . . .
And somewhere in a place she did not want to give voice to, she wondered if it would hurt very much to die.
But just as she was about to touch it, the mist shifted—it swirled and spun, wrapping tight around her like a cocoon, and she was wrenched back, as if by a giant elastic, and then catapulted forward so fast that tears filled her eyes and everything became a white-gray-blue blur. She couldn’t breathe. Deep down inside, she knew something was wrong. This was not what was supposed to be happening.
She hit a solid surface and dirt filled her throat and ears and eyes and nose. Her lungs ached to breathe, and when at last the dirt was all coughed up, she drank the air in heaving gulps. The mist, whatever it was, had vanished. She lay back, reveling in the feel of her chest moving up and down, of her limbs on something solid. The cuts on her elbows had been seared shut.
I’m alive, she thought.
Then she rolled over and threw up what little was in her stomach. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Sera took stock of her surroundings. She was in a large, deep, earthen hole. The dirt was dry and crumbly, not like the thick, rich soil in the gardens of the City Above the Sky. Her robe was torn and filthy, but to her great delight, the three bracelets and Leela’s star necklace were still intact.
“I’m alive!” she cried, letting out a wild laugh. She hadn’t died. She was still here, still breathing. She gripped the pendant in one hand and raised her head.
Her heart dropped.
Through the opening of the hole, she could see the sky. It was black, like the sky she knew, but so far away. And the stars were mere pinpricks, tiny things no bigger than the stargems on her wrist. The loss of her home, her people, everything she knew, rose up with shocking force. Where among those stars were the Cerulean? They might have already detached from this planet, floating through space until they found a new home.
Sera gasped. She hadn’t died, which meant she hadn’t broken the tether, which meant . . . was the City Above the Sky still up there?
She stood and found that her body felt different—her arms and legs didn’t have the lightness she was used to. Breathing wasn’t as uncomfortable as it had been when she was falling, but it wasn’t quite like breathing in the City either. The air around her was hot and sticky but the dirt was bone-dry.