A Million Suns

When I dared look again, Harley was staring up. One hand still held hers, his thumb going methodically over her cool, lifeless palm, back and forth, back and forth.



“Why did she leave me?” he whispered to the painted metal sky above us.



Because this wasn’t an accident.



It couldn’t have been an accident.



Kayleigh loved the pond. Loved to swim with the koi. She’d dive under with handfuls of feed in her grip and uncurl her fingers underwater so the shy fish would dance up to her and nibble from her hands. She could hold her breath longer than anyone I knew. No one could catch her when she swam, not even Harley, who always tried.



Kayleigh couldn’t have died by accident. Not in the water.



I stared at what was left of her.



Pale yellow square patches lined the inside of both her arms. Doc’s med patches—the ones that made you fall asleep. This—this was what killed her. Not an accident. A choice. Kayleigh put herself into a watery bed and made sure she would never wake up. Suicide. We knew it must have been suicide. She’d been talking about how much she hated living, trapped on this ship, for weeks. Months. Just little things, a comment here, a snide remark there. Nothing we noticed. Not until—



My eyes drifted from her body to the lapping, almost-still waters behind her. I looked farther, over the reeds and lotus flowers on the far edge, my eyes skimming across the bright green new grass.



Where they crashed against a metal wall.



A hard, cold, relentless metal wall, studded with rivets and stained with grease and age. My eyes burned as I followed a seam in the wall up, up, curving higher up, until it met with the bright solar lamp in the center of the ceiling. Above that, I knew, was the Shipper Level, and above that, the Keeper Level.



And beyond that—beyond tons and tons of impenetrable metal—was a sky I had never seen.



A sky Kayleigh had never seen.



And she couldn’t live without the sky.



22



AMY



ELDER FINISHES HIS STORY AS WE ENTER THE CITY. I WANT TO say something to comfort him, but this memory happened years ago, and there’s nothing to really say, anyway.



I’ve never been this far into the City before. The whole Feeder Level looks different now, in the middle of the day, even though there’s not that much difference in the solar lamp between morning, when I used to run, and day—this false sun doesn’t move across the sky, doesn’t paint the horizon with pink and orange and blue.



The City is bigger than it looks from the other side of the Feeder Level. When I look at the City from the Hospital or the Recorder Hall, it seems like it’s made of Legos. The buildings are brightly colored boxes stacked one on top of the other, and the people are almost too tiny to see.



But here, it’s different. The streets are crowded. Men—and a few women—pull carts, running through the paved streets and pulling their loads behind them as if they were nothing. Produce, meat, boxes, bolts of cloth—all fly from one street to another. It’s louder than I expected. People call to each other across the street, and a couple at the corner are shouting at each other, waving their arms about. I smell smoke, and I’m worried that something bad has happened, but no—it’s wafting from an outdoor grill.



The City itself seems more chaotic too. There are so many people. And for the first time, I really think of them as individuals, each with their own story. I try to imagine their lives. The man behind the window, slamming his cleaver into a rack of ribs. Is he bored or hiding anger behind the brutal attack on the meat? The girl leaning against the building, sweating and fanning herself—what’s made her want to leave the comfort of her home to just stand there? What’s she waiting on?



And what will they all do when they find out the truth? How much of the City will be destroyed when they discover, as they inevitably will, that Godspeed isn’t even moving?



Although I keep my head down, wary of these people who could so quickly turn on me, Elder greets them all with a smile. He seems to know everyone, and they grin back at him.



Their grins fade when their eyes slide to me, though. They hiss “freak” so softly that Elder doesn’t notice. I carefully pull my hood back up over my hair, making sure all of it is hidden.



“Harley’s family lives in the weaving district,” Elder says, leading me down the street. “That’s in the middle of the City.”



Each block is named for what the people there do. We must be in the meat district—there’s a lingering scent of blood in the air mixed with a trace of rancid fat. Flies buzz in the windows and drift lazily over the slabs of meat waiting to be processed.



“Can you wait here a moment?” Elder asks. “I see something I should take care of.”



I nod, and he walks into the butcher’s on the corner. I creep closer to listen. Two men, both of the older generation, are working, even though there are five workstations in the building.



One of the men looks up when Elder enters. He nudges his partner.



“Oh, um, hello, Eldest,” he tells Elder, wiping his bloody hands on the stained smock in front of him.



Elder doesn’t bother telling the man that he prefers to be called Elder. “Where are your other workers?”



The men glance nervously at each other. The first turns back to the cow he’s butchering, sawing away at a leg bone with a hacksaw. The other man stands at his counter, unsure of what to do. “They—well—they didn’t come in today.”



“Why not?”



The man shrugs. “We told them yesterday we would need help, that Bronsen was bringing in at least three head, but . . .”



“But they didn’t come in.”



The man nods.



“Why didn’t you do something about it?”



He keeps wiping his hands on his smock, but they’re as clean as they’re going to get against that dirty thing. “It’s . . . it’s, uh . . . it’s not our place.”



“Not your place to do what?”



“To tell others to come to work.”



Elder’s jaw clenches. He leaves, letting the bell at the door say his farewell.



He storms down the street, and his scowl wards off any further greetings from those who pass us. “Eldest never had these problems,” he growls at me in an undertone. “People just not working. Lazy. He never had to deal with that. People obeyed him, and they didn’t dare miss work. Eldest made sure that everything on this ship ran smoothly.”



“Eldest didn’t do that,” I say. My words startle Elder enough that he stops in his tracks. “He didn’t,” I insist. “Phydus did.”



Elder smirks, and some of the anger in him fades. We pass a group of spinners sitting on the sidewalks, chatting merrily with each other as the threads slide through their fingers. In the next block, though, the buildings that house the looms are dark and quiet, no weavers in sight. Elder glowers at it as he leads me to an iron staircase set against the side of a series of brightly painted trailers stacked on top of the working area.



“The yellow one,” Elder says, pointing to a trailer three flights up. “That’s where Harley used to live.”



I follow Elder up the steps. The higher we go, the more paint splatters there are on the railings and steps. Even here, Harley has left his mark. Elder hesitates before knocking, his fist poised over an aqua blue smear of dried paint.



No answer.



He knocks again.



“Maybe they’re not here?” I ask. “It is the middle of the day.”



When no one answers on his third knock, Elder pushes the door open.



23



ELDER



IT’S DARK INSIDE, AND IT STINKS OF SOMETHING SOURED. There are traces of Harley here still—the inside is painted white with yellow swirls along the top. A table sits in the center of the room, but all but one of the chairs have been stacked in the corner, and the top of the table is littered with scraps of cloth, scissors, and tiny bottles of colored dye—accouterments of being a weaver.



“Hello?” Amy calls. “I think someone’s back there,” she adds, nodding at the cloth covering the doorway that leads deeper into the trailer.



I step in front of her and peel back the curtain. This room is darker still and smells of musk and sweat. It’s the main bedroom—beyond this room is another curtained door leading, I know, to a bathroom and a smaller bedroom.



Curled in a tight ball in the center of the bed is Harley’s mother, Lil. Her hair is messy, but she’s fully dressed, although her clothes are stained.



“What are you doing here?” Lil asks, her voice quiet and defeated.



“Where’s—” I struggle for the name of Harley’s father. “Where’s Stevy?”



Lil shrugs without getting up.



Amy moves forward, hesitates, then sits on the edge of the bed. “Is everything all right?” She reaches for Lil, but Lil, startled by Amy’s fair coloring, cowers back. Amy’s hand drops into her lap. After a moment, she gets back up and moves behind me.



“Where’s Stevy?” I ask again.



“Gone.”



“For how long?”



Lil shrugs again.



From under the covers, I hear her stomach growl.



“Let’s get you something to eat,” I say. I step forward, reaching down for her hand. Although Lil doesn’t flinch from me, she doesn’t respond to my offer, either.



“No point,” she says. “No food.”



“No food?” I ask. I instinctively look to the curtained door; the wall food distributer is in the main room of the trailer. “Is it broken? I’ll have maintenance come and check on it.”



“No point,” she says softly. I ignore her and com the Shipper level, requesting they send someone as soon as they can.



Once I break the com link, I turn my full attention back to Lil. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Why aren’t you working? Should I com Doc?”



She stares at the ceiling. “I can’t work. The dyes remind me of him. The colors. Colors everywhere.”



“Lil,” I say, making a mental note to com Doc later, “did you take any of Harley’s paintings from the Recorder Hall?”



Now she sits up. “No!”



But her eyes dart to the curtain.



She notices my glance in that direction. “They’re mine. He’s my son. He was my son. It’s all I have left of him.”



“We just want to look,” Amy says in a small voice from behind me.



Lil flops back into her pillow. “What’s the point? He’s not coming back. Neither of them is coming back.”



She doesn’t look up again, so Amy and I creep around the bed to the curtain on the far wall. I lift it up, and Amy follows me into the room.



A bathroom. The toilet’s unflushed and the sink is stained. We move quickly to the side, where another curtain blocks a doorway.



This is Harley’s room—or, at least, it was until he moved out to live in the Ward. There are traces of what the room used to be—a narrow mattress against one wall, a small nightstand that still holds a clock—but clearly in the years since he left, the room has become something of a storage space for his family. I maneuver past the boxes until I see what we came for: Harley’s painting, Through the Looking Glass.

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