What was that mist, and where had it gone? Why hadn’t she broken the tether like she was supposed to? Why could she not even get dying right?
“Oh, Mother Sun,” Sera said, collapsing back to the ground and pressing her palms against her eyes. “I failed.”
There were so many shades of awfulness, Sera did not know how to process them all. She had not wanted to die, but she had been meant to die, and now here she was, alive and alone, with no idea where she was or what to do. The only home she had ever known was miles and miles away. She felt sick at the thought of letting her City down. Surely they would have noticed the tether hadn’t broken. Sera wished she could be back in her bed with the star mobile and her purple mother’s embrace. She would gladly fall again—she’d get it right this time, if she could just have another chance—if it meant one more moment with her mothers and Leela.
She didn’t know how long she sat, giving in to the overwhelming despair, before she heard voices approaching. Hopelessness melted away in the face of a new fear. There was no place to hide. What should she do?
“The wind blew the dirt this way,” she heard a girl’s voice say. “See, it left a trail.” Another voice responded, but it was too low for Sera to hear. She waited, still as a statue.
When the heads popped up over the lip of the hole, Sera couldn’t make out their features in the dark. They were black outlines against the sky. She shifted slightly, trying to see them better.
“There!” the girl said. “Something moved.”
Sera cursed herself internally.
“Where? I can’t see anything. Give me the flashlight.” The second girl had a deep voice, like Koreen’s orange mother, who was very old. Except this girl didn’t sound old at all.
Then another star lit up. This one was much brighter and closer than the others, right at the edge of the crater. It cast a thin cone of light over the sloping dirt until it reached Sera’s feet. She quickly backed away from it.
The girls above stopped bickering.
“Did you see that?”
“There’s something down there,” the low-voiced girl said.
Sera didn’t much like being called something.
“Of course there’s something down there,” the normal-sounding girl said. “Those looked like feet.” Then, in a louder voice that was entirely unnecessary, she said, “We come in peace!”
That made Sera feel a bit better. She decided to risk speaking—maybe these girls could help her. She certainly had no idea where she was.
“Me too!” she called back. Something about her voice sounded wrong.
“Do you think it’s a wounded animal?” the low voice said.
“What sort of animal sounds like that?” the girl replied.
“I’m not an animal,” Sera said indignantly, without thinking. “I am a Cerulean!”
“I think it’s getting angry,” the low voice said.
“Shhh,” the girl hissed, and then the cone of light swung up right into Sera’s eyes.
“There it is!” the low voice shouted, as Sera scuttled away from the strange starbeam. “It’s moving, get it, get it!”
“Shut up, Leo,” the other girl said. “You’re scaring it.”
Sera was scared. She didn’t like that low-voiced girl, or the strange star, or the fact that she felt and sounded different. Maybe the girl had been lying when she said they came in peace. People on planets lied all the time, her green mother had said. Telling the truth wasn’t important to them like it was to the Cerulean. That was how the Great Sadness had happened, lies and deceit, humans trying to steal Cerulean magic.
Sera’s heart plummeted. Would these girls try to take her magic away? Oh, why had she spoken up at all in the first place? Why had she not run when she had the chance?
Well. She wasn’t the best climber in the City Above the Sky for nothing. She grasped the crumbling earth, finding balance on the balls of her feet, judged the angle of the slope, and raced up it. The dirt disintegrated beneath her, but she was always one step ahead, until she shot upward and landed silently on solid ground.
It was lighter up here than in the hole. The moon was bright and easy to see by. The other two girls still seemed disoriented. They were peering over the lip of the crater, the starbeam swinging this way and that.
“I think it crawled out,” the girl said.
“Ah!” the low voice cried. “Something touched me.”
“Leo, that was me.”
“Oh.”
Sera didn’t know what to do. All around her was empty space. No trees, no dwellings, no temples. Just . . . nothing. For a second, she was frozen with indecision.
Suddenly, there was a snapping sound, and Sera was hit in the face and fell to the ground. Whatever the thing was that hit her had surrounded her whole body, and the more she struggled with it, the tighter it held her. It almost felt like the twine her green mother used to tie tomato stalks to stakes, but it was thicker and rougher.
The starbeam drew closer and Sera shrank from it. She shouldn’t have hesitated. She should have just started running.
“What are you doing?” the girl demanded.
Sera thought the girl was talking to her until the low-voiced girl replied, and the triumph in her voice sent a chill up Sera’s spine.
“I caught it. It’s mine. And I’m taking it back to Father.”
13
Agnes
THE LOOKS ON BRANSON’S AND HIS CREW’S FACES WHEN they finally returned the next day to find Leo, Agnes, and the silver girl with blue hair had been priceless.
But then the whole situation devolved into a lot of chest thumping and arguing over who would present the “prize” to Father. Branson insisted that since they’d used his net launcher, he was partly responsible. Leo laughed and said he’d let Branson have 10 percent of the credit, since that was how much he’d contributed. It was nearly mid-afternoon by the time they were packed up and ready to head back to Old Port.
The girl was only an inch or two taller than Agnes, and slender—Leo carried her easily to the back of the truck. Though it was cramped, Agnes stayed with her, refusing Branson’s offer of sitting in the front car. She couldn’t imagine how frightening this all must be for the poor thing.
“I’m sorry,” she said over and over on their way back to the city.
The girl’s skin was iridescent silver, more beautiful than any chain or watch fob or brooch, and her hair was a rich, vibrant blue that matched her eyes exactly. Cerulean blue, if Agnes wanted to be specific. Otherwise, she looked quite like any Kaolin girl. She wore a necklace with a pendant shaped like a star, but it wasn’t the way Agnes would have drawn a star, with five even points—it was made of points in all shapes and sizes, some long and delicate, others short and stubby. In its center was a beautiful stone, similar to an opal but richer in color and vibrancy. Three jeweled bracelets hung from her right wrist, and her dress, torn and filthy but made of an impossibly soft material, had a detail around the hem, poorly sewn in a zigzag fashion in the same colors—purple, green, and orange.
The girl spoke in an unfamiliar language, her voice high and musical, but even though they couldn’t understand each other, Agnes decided to talk to her all the same. It felt like the decent thing to do.