The Girl and the Stars

“What’s up with him?” Kao snorted.

Arka made no reply and they joined her in silence, soaking up the heat until at last a distant clanging reached the cave. Arka cocked her head to listen then relaxed. “It’s the signal for night. We keep our own cycle down here. I’ll take you to the settlement. You can collect your clothes here tomorrow.”

“What about Zeen?” Yaz was no longer sure why she had thrown herself down the pit. In the moment she did it, it had seemed that it was for her brother, though quite how it might have helped she couldn’t have said. But now, against all odds, she really did have a chance to help him and she was damned if she would just shut up about it and go to sleep.

“The Tainted have him,” Arka said.

Even though she had guessed the answer a cold fist still clenched around Yaz’s heart. “Then I need to find him before they eat him.”

“They won’t eat him.” Arka shook her head. “They are vile but none are quite as crazed as Hetta. They’ll taint him along with the rest of those they caught from today’s drop.” Arka stood to go. “You don’t have to worry about finding your brother, Yaz. You have to worry about him finding you.”

Yaz got hurriedly to her feet and caught Arka’s shoulder. “There must be a way to save him.”

The woman turned, the scars on her face very white against heat-reddened skin. “Oh, there’s a way. It’s just very hard, is all. It’s a lot easier to taint someone than to untaint them. I’ve been here twenty years and only seen it work once.”

“Then I need to meet that person,” Yaz said. “The one who was saved.”

Arka pulled free and started toward the door. “You already have,” she said. “He’s called Thurin.”

6

   ARKA LED THEM from the ravine back into the ice caverns. Their footsteps echoed through the endless twilight, each breath steaming up before them. To her amazement Yaz saw that what she had first thought to be fallen lumps of ice scattering the floor of these long halls were in fact something very different. Roundish objects, in shades from white through grey and brown, lay here and there, varying in size from an eyeball to a head, all of them smooth skinned, some beaded with water drops.

“What are they?” she asked as they drew closer to a place where scores of them clustered.

“Are they dangerous?” asked Maya, moving closer to Yaz.

“Rocks,” Kao declared.

Quina reserved her judgment.

“Fungi. They grow where the stones . . . the stars . . . give enough warmth.” Arka bent to pick up a small one from the shadow of a larger one. It made a faint tearing sound as if it were attached to the rock.

“It’s an animal?” Yaz wondered why it didn’t run away.

“A plant. You can eat them.” Arka took a bite from it and winced. “These sort taste better cooked.”

“Plant?” Maya asked. Yaz thanked her silently, not wanting to always be the one showing her ignorance.

“Plants . . .” Arka waved her hands at the things helplessly. “They don’t move and they don’t bleed but they live . . .”

“Like a tree,” Quina said quietly, rolling something small between her fingers.

Arka frowned. “I don’t know about those. But Eular says plants grow anywhere that there is warmth and water and light. He says everything living depends on them for food.”

“I bloody don’t,” Kao growled. “I eat meat like everyone else.”

“Yes, but the fish you take from the sea eat plants or eat other fish that eat plants and—”

“There are plants in the sea now?” Yaz asked.

“Yes and—”

“But there’s no light under the sea,” Quina said.

“Well . . .” Arka grew flustered. “There must be . . . Eular knows these things. Ask him!” She thrust the rest of the fungus ball into Quina’s hand and strode away. “Come on!” As she walked she offered more advice on the mysterious world of plants. “The brown ones aren’t bad raw. Brown ones with reddish spots will have you vomiting blood for a week. Purple ones will kill you. We weed out the bad ones from the groves but out in the more distant caves you’ll find them, sometimes mixed in with the good ones.”

 

* * *

THE SETTLEMENT SAT in an enormous cavern whose entire roof glowed faintly with innumerable stars. Instead of tents, angled to resist the wind, the Broken lived within strange, blocky dwellings fashioned from a variety of materials each more foreign than the next. Glass was the only building material Yaz recognised, gleaming in ill-advised openings in walls. Many of the walls were made from what might be rock but was lighter in colour than that underfoot and shaped into blocks much like those the Eskin clan made from snow to construct shelters.

“Do we have to sleep in one of these?” Maya’s voice echoed Yaz’s own mistrust of those hard flat roofs and sharp angles.

“Is there nothing you’re not afraid of, girl?” Kao snorted. “No wonder Clan Axit wanted to drop you down the pit!”

Maya put her head down and said nothing. The Axit were the largest of all the clans and many said they all thought themselves kings of the ice. Although life in the wastes left no room for war the Axit had a reputation for fierceness. Blood and more blood had been spilled in the long ago and some said they trained in secret for a war still to come. Yaz gave Kao a hard look until he coloured and turned away.

Yaz couldn’t tell how large the settlement was, only that it seemed to cover a bigger area than the Ictha used when pitching their tents. Perhaps there were more of the Broken than she had first thought. Or maybe there had been more of them in the past.

As they drew closer to the buildings Yaz sniffed at the familiar smell of humanity, stronger here than in camp where the wind scoured the ice between the tents. She saw figures moving in the gloom, making their way along the clear pathways between the various structures. Closer still and she heard the drip drip drip of water on rooftops. Every surface close to horizontal glimmered with a light so subtle that the eye almost missed it, stardust falling with the meltwater.

Arka directed them to a low building, one of the first they reached. “You’ll all be sleeping in this barracks tonight. And I will be in that hut over there.” She pointed to a smaller structure whose door faced the barracks door. “To keep an eye on you.”

Arka followed them into the barracks. Unlike some of the other buildings this one had none of those glass-covered openings, a fact for which Yaz was grateful. A single small star-stone hung from the roof support in a wire cage, providing a weak light. A dozen bedrolls had been laid out on pallets of the same stuff the walls were made of. The rolls themselves were patchworks of worn skins, sewn and resewn to the point that Yaz wondered if she would wake to find hers in a hundred pieces. She didn’t recognise the fur, not hoola or harp whale.