Stars, the chasm this library was built in. It was formed when the kitsen left the somewhere, taking the stone of the cliffs with them.
“You look up at their lights,” Juno said, “letting their vibrations wash over you. You too are eternal like the stars, a piece of the endless something that makes space for the nothing, but never yields to it.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but I tried not to focus too hard on it. I concentrated instead on the threads that made up the border, infused with memory, vibrating so strongly as if the nowhere wanted to burst out of the portal. I didn’t want it to swallow Dreamspring, didn’t want to open the entire thing.
Just enough for those trapped on the other side to come through.
I could feel Gran-Gran listening, noticing what I was doing as I began to manipulate the threads. The way Alanik described the boundary—it was like listening to a description of an ocean when I was young. I never really understood until I saw it for myself. But I could feel the boundary between the realms. I might not be able to carry myself through, but here I had power.
I tried to give you the story you needed, Gran-Gran said. I told you to imagine yourself flying among the stars.
I remembered Gran-Gran’s story, about how disobeying orders could be the right thing to do.
Wait until you hear what I’ve done, I said.
I can see it, she said. I tried to give you the story you needed, but perhaps you’ve found your own story after all.
Had I? I could feel the way the threads of the boundary wove together, sealing the portal. I didn’t know how to move them, but I focused on them the way I had the birds. That image wasn’t quite right for this, so I tried vines all woven together, creating a wall between us and them. I didn’t want to cut the vines down, only move a few aside, forming a small area where the kitsen could return, where Gran-Gran and Cobb could slip through.
“You are the light and the darkness,” Juno said. “You are the place where the two worlds meet. The intersection of what is, and what could be.”
Spensa flies among the stars, Gran-Gran said. But you build things up from the ground. She is a warrior, and you are a defender. It’s a different kind of story.
I can’t protect them all, I said.
You can’t, Gran-Gran said. We all have our own burdens, even if we carry them differently.
I thought about the way I’d lost it in the senate meeting. I’m not carrying mine well, I said.
Ah, Gran-Gran said. Well, you’re not alone in that.
I hated it. I wanted to get it right, to get everything right. But maybe sometimes there was no right. There was only the best I could do.
I pictured the vines and touched them each in turn, trying to see which would shift and which held fast. I was able to bring one to the side, creating the smallest part in the jungle of them, but there were more vines on the other side, ones I couldn’t reach.
I couldn’t do this alone. I needed help.
I reached out to the old kitsen on the other side of the portal, trying to show her what I saw. Her mind seemed to receive it, as if she also knew the barrier well, had been over these same vines thousands of times. I showed her the ones I could move, and I felt her study them.
And then the ones on the other side began to shift.
I focused on the vines I could control, feeling the vibrations, holding fast the ones that supported the entire structure while manipulating those that only supported tiny bits of it.
“You are completely relaxed,” Juno said.
I breathed in rhythm with the vibrations. I wasn’t relaxed, but I was calm. I was at peace. I was the power.
And then all at once, the smooth surface of the portal cracked open, and a kitsen hobbled through. Her fur was greying and her skin was so wrinkled it folded down over her eyes. She pushed it back and looked up at us.
And then a dozen more followed.
Eighteen
More kitsen crowded into the area in front of the portal, all blinking at each other and at us. Several of them hummed with a cytonic vibration, though some of the younger-looking ones didn’t. Non-cytonics who’d been born on the other side of the portal, who’d lived their whole lives there.
Juno nearly fell off his platform. He bumped his stack of books and had to snatch at them to keep them from sliding over the edge. He started fumbling through his book, like perhaps he needed a meditation to calm himself.
“Human!” the one with the wrinkled skin said to me. “Are you the one who released us?”
“Yes,” I said. “I can’t believe…I can’t believe that worked.”
I looked down at Cobb and Gran-Gran, but they lay still with their eyes closed. Scud, had it not worked for them?
No. Wait. I could feel something, a signature emanating from Gran-Gran.
That had to mean…
Cobb stirred, and then he coughed. Kel bent over the screen that showed his vitals.
“Is he okay?” I asked.
“He’s improving,” Kel said.
“Will he wake up?”
“I don’t know. But if he does, he’ll be in no condition to help. We should get them home to Detritus.”
Stars. Of course he wouldn’t be in any condition to lead. He’d spent the last two days with his mind disconnected from his body.
A loud boom sounded through the walls of the library, as if the stone above us had been struck—probably by a falling starfighter.
Zing turned the radio back on, and the airwaves were a mess of talking.
I didn’t want to take the time to sort that out. Alanik, I said, how’s it going with those reinforcements?
The UrDail flights have joined the battle, she said. What are you doing down there?
Found us some more backup, I said. Cuna had bent down to the level of some of the kitsen cytonics and was conversing with them quietly. I hoped to all the stars in the sky they weren’t calling them “lesser.”
That’s good, because we need help.
Scud. Sitrep?
Three more carrier ships. No planetary weapons yet, but Arturo is worried. Something about a bomb.
Oh no. What bomb?
He said he spotted a ship with a strange flight pattern.
My whole body went cold. I focused, widening my reach—
And I found the impressions again, the minds of the pilots, all flying around in what felt like disarray.
No, there was a method to it. Arturo had them divided into flanking groups and the flights were working together, though I couldn’t pinpoint the strategy at a glance. If Arturo had seen what I thought he’d seen, I didn’t have time to consider it. I found his mind flying near Alanik. As I drew closer I could feel his focus, his determination.