First Light

  “What?”

  Sasha stood up and sniffed what Ham had left on the ground.

  “Double yuck,” Peter said. His mother's hand stayed on his arm.

  Sasha turned and then lay down again, her hindquarters to Ham.

  “And she accepts him,” his mother said. She and Dolan began talking at the same time.

  Sasha wasn't coming to New York, Peter realized. A sudden heat in his chest told him how hard he had been holding on to that piece of happiness. He watched as Ham took his place next to Sasha, and then he walked back out to the sands feeling numb.

  Norma was curled up asleep, a soft mound of black fur. Peter settled himself next to her. If only they had left yesterday, he thought. He and Sasha would be safely back in the geebee geebee now.

  There was a flash of gray and white behind Norma. Peter peered over the dog's flank and saw Feet making his way toward him. He glanced at Cassie's whelping box across the sand—the pup had come a long way.

  “Hey, Feet,” he said. “How did you find your way over here?” He reached out to rub the dog behind the ears. Feet tipped his face with pleasure.

  Peter's hand stopped. “Feet! You did it!” He scooped up the pup. “We don't have a whole lot of time. Let's see if Dolan will give us a ride.”

  “No.” Peter's mom stood in front of the locked doors with her arms crossed. “It isn't safe.”

  “But Mom, I want to do this! It's important. I'm sick of hiding out!”

  Something flashed across his mother's face then, and her eyes darted over his head. Peter turned and found Dolan behind him.

  “I'll keep him safe, Aurora. You have my word.”

  She smiled and looked like she was about to cry at the same time.

  “All right.”

  Peter meant for all of them to go together. But hismom said, “I'll stay with the Chikchu. This is for you to do, I think. And I have something to finish before we leave this afternoon.”

  Peter glared at the red notebook in her hands and turned to Dolan.

  “Let's be off, then.” Dolan slid back the lock on the doors.

  Inside the council chamber, the stage was set: There was the long shipping dock, dyed carefully to look like real wood, and, a bit higher up, the two whaling ships' decks—one to the left and one to the right. Woven ladders hung down from each ship to the dock, which was piled with boxes and baskets.

  Red banners hung everywhere, and a few old-world houses painted onto slabs of sealed ice leaned against the walls. Lightglobes blazed. The chamber was packed with people, some with young children on their shoulders.High above everyone's heads, the icy forms of the Settlers continued their endless march.

  Thea and Mattias sank into their seats on the balcony between Dexna and Lucian. Rowen sat on her podium opposite them, wearing a dark red cloak. The sight of her grandmother ignited something inside Thea.

  Rowen called the celebration to order, and the chamber quieted. The boy who played the part of William always took the stage first, and Thea watched along with everyone else to see who it would be this year.

  A smallish boy in an old-world costume appeared nervously at the back of the stage and began walking forward, to quick applause. She remembered the year Mattias had won the part of William—he hadn't been able to eat a thing that morning.

  The girl playing Grace was now taking her place on the dock, and then other children in costume appeared, climbing onto the stage. They made themselves busy with the boxes and baskets, carrying them down the dock and then passing them up to the ships' decks. The parcels had words written on them, “seeds” or “ink” or “medicine.” Thea had loaded this same cargo several times when she was young enough to participate in Launch—her middling school marks had never earned her a more distinguished role.

  Grace slowly walked over to William, who looked ready to collapse in anxiety.

  “Oh, poor thing,” Thea whispered to Mattias.

  “Our friends should be here soon,” said Grace. Her volume was impressive, though she couldn't have been more than ten. “You and the other eye adepts keep watch.”

  William just nodded.

  There was a murmur—everyone in the chamber knew that William was supposed to say his line: “Yes, Grace, and I will alert you if I see hide or hair of the hunters.” He was also supposed to wipe his eyes, because he was bereft at having to leave his secret love in the old world. Thea began to hope that Dexna would get on with their plan, if only to save the boy further embarrassment.

  Dexna must have read her mind. She stood up and spoke in a voice that filled the chamber. “We all know what happens next, don't we?”

  Every face on the floor turned up to the balcony, shock written on most of them—no one had heard Dexna speak for fifteen years. Rowen's expression was grim, but far from surprised.

  “I do apologize for the interruption,” Dexna continued. “But I don't imagine that anyone will find the suspense too difficult to bear. Grace's friends betray her in this chamber year after year, do they not? Perhaps it is time for another story.”

  She turned to Thea, whose mind buzzed and went entirely blank at the same time. “Me?” she whispered. Dexna took her hand and brought her to her feet.

  “My niece, Thea, is not distinguished by grades or apprenticeship. But there is something that marks her as different: She has shown the courage to reach out where she was taught to shrink back in fear.”

  Dexna sat, leaving Thea to stand alone.

  Everyone looked confused, or stunned. But Dexna had given her the floor.

  “Friends,” she said. “I have been to the surface.”

  Thea believed that the chamber was silent when she opened her mouth to speak. But she had been wrong: There must have been fifty hushed conversations taking place, complaints of hunger from children, murmurs about Dexna. Now they stopped. Even the children seemed to stop breathing.

  Rowen exploded. “Do not heed this girl!”

  Thea kept her eyes on the people below. “The Settlers themselves preserved the passage to the surface. They left it for us deliberately. And Rowen has known of it!”

  Rowen's voice was a growl. “On my line, Thea, you will—”

  Thea forced herself to meet her grandmother's burning eyes. “It is my line now, Rowen, isn't that so? I am the last bearing daughter of the first line, and without my daughters, there will be no more of it.”

  Rowen was nearly suffocated by rage. “What of Grace?” She pointed to the carved figure above them.“What do you say to those who sacrificed for the way of life you cast off?”

  “Grace never intended this to be our way of life forever!” Thea shouted.

  People started talking; some looked angry. Angry at Thea. Rowen smiled. She raised her eyebrows. “Grace didn't intend this?” Rowen swept her arms in front of her. “A beautiful world full of healthy people?”

  Thea looked down at the people below. “Yes—no! Not forever. Her true hope was that this world could shelter us until we were ready to return to the surface.” She noticed Lana in the crowd below; the Angus stood next to her.

  “I see. And you have decided that the time has come, have you? A girl of ten and four.”

  Thea's heart sank. It sounded ridiculous even to her.

  “Have you known of the passage, Rowen?” Chief Berling was not a talkative man, but everyone knew his voice, and the chamber hushed. “Is this true?”

  Thea looked at Rowen, daring her to lie.

  Rowen said nothing.

  “Answer me!” Berling bellowed.

  “Of course I have known of it!” Rowen cried. “It is a passage to brutality, to sickness, to death, and it has been my job to protect every life here from entering it! My own daughter, Mai, discovered the passage. She threatenedour world with her own curiosity and finally destroyed herself! Now Mai's daughter, my granddaughter, tries to do the same.” Rowen doubled over, sobbing.

  Thea was stunned. She had never seen this sort of emotion from Rowen. Perhaps Rowen was truly a
fraid; maybe she loved Mai and had hated to give her up. As much as she despised her grandmother, a part of her wanted to believe.

  It was almost a minute before Rowen collected herself. “Mai did not drown,” she said, sniffling.

  Silence. Thea waited.

  “My daughter visited the wider world without anyone's knowledge, and she contracted an illness there. We did all we could, despite what she had done to hurt us, despite the risk to ourselves. But there was no way to save her. She died in my arms.”

  Her grandmother's words gave Thea the sort of shock that wipes every thought from the mind. She didn't hear the sympathetic gasp from the chamber, and she didn't see that Lucian had risen to his feet beside her.

  One memory floated up to her: She remembered holding her mother's locket up for her grandmother on Ezra's birthday. Rowen was bothered more by Thea's chewed fingernails than by the memory of her own lost daughters.

  Then Lucian exploded. “No way to save her? There was no attempt to save her! Mai was a sacrifice, Rowen. A sacrifice to your fear! You cast her out! She didn't die inyour arms, but on the surface! What a foul liar you are. You don't care for the people here, any more than you did for your own daughter. You care only for a way of life over which you have great control! You were afraid of Mai, of where she might lead our people!”

  “Of course I was afraid!” Rowen cried. “I was afraid for all of us. Afraid of what Mai's selfishness would bring upon Gracehope. Do you think I would have parted with a daughter, had I any choice?”

  Rowen was painting the story as her own terrible sacrifice. Thea felt hot and dizzy. She was afraid she might be sick.

  Lucian yelled out across the crowd, his neck bright red, the tendons standing out clearly. “She is deceiving you—Mai could have been saved! Rowen did have a choice!”

  No more than a handful of people looked up at him, and those who did looked reproachful. Thea had never felt so helpless: She told the truth about the passage, about Grace's real hopes for their people, and somehow none of it made a difference. She stared, numb.

  Rowen shook her head. “No, Lucian. I had no more choice than I do today. There are engineering apprentices posted at the passage right now, with strict instructions that no one is to come near the lake.”

  Lucian started yelling again. Thea's thoughts began to collect themselves.

  Swimwarm.

  Lynx had been to the lake before first light this morning. Rowen must have gone to inspect the passage wall; perhaps she suspected something. Then she needed only to tell Chief Berling that she had seen gas escaping the fissure in the lakebed. He would have posted his apprentices there within the quarter hour. It was so simple. She wanted to scream. Everything Dexna feared had come true—Thea appeared young and foolish, Lucian looked like a lunatic, and the passage was out of reach. Rowen would surely seal the entrance this time. Aurora and Peter would be trapped forever. She looked at Dexna, who sat perfectly still with her eyes on the crowd below and a smile creeping across her face. Was she insane?

  Thea followed Dexna's gaze to the chamber floor. In the midst of all those huddled heads, someone was waving at her. It was Peter, making his way in from the great doors. And Dolan was right in front of him, clearing a path through the crowd.

  Lucian fell silent. People had begun to notice Peter, whose yellow hair glowed among the dark heads. In another moment the chamber was quiet.

  Peter stopped right below Thea and smiled at her. He gestured at the crook of his arm. The runt! He swept the tiny dog up over his head.

  The pup's eyes were open, and they were blue. Sky blue.

  The runt's four white feet dangled in the air. Theaheard a young man say, “The pup! Look at the pup he's got.”

  Someone said “The legend pup!” and the chamber was ringing with voices.

  “Who is that?”

  “It's true!”

  “And he can see—”

  “Who is that boy?”

  “Look at his hair!”

  “Everyone,” Thea called over the noise, “I would like to introduce my cousin. His name is Peter. He has come here from the wider world.”

  The room fell silent.

  “Hello.” Peter held the runt tightly as he nodded at the people around him. “Nice to meet you.” His neighbors were frozen. Thea saw him take a tiny step toward Dolan.

  Children on shoulders pointed at Peter, and people stood on tiptoe to see him. They found their voices again, and everyone talked at once. Thea felt a quick chill. Several things could fall into place now, if she did things right. The way Rowen would, perhaps.

  “Peter is an eye adept,” Thea said evenly. “The first born to our people since William.”

  “Nonsense,” Rowen snapped. “There are no eye adepts among us anymore.”

  “There is one now.” Thea smiled. “One who was raised in the wider world.”

  “Raised by whom?” Rowen flashed.

  “By my mother!” Peter said. “Her name is Aurora. And by my father, Gregory.”

  Aurora. The name swept the hall.

  Rowen's face was stony. “In Gracehope we do not speak of those who take their own lives,” she said severely.

  “My mother didn't take her own life!” Peter told her angrily. “She's at the breeding grounds right now.” At this, the voices rose again.

  Rowen looked around. “The boy is not an adept. William was the last eye adept, sent to us to provide safe passage to Gracehope. This boy is an intruder.”

  Peter turned to face Rowen. She was his grandmother, too, Thea realized. “I am an eye adept,” he said, though with less conviction. Thea saw him glance nervously at Dexna next to her on the balcony, but Dexna made no move to help him.

  “Boy!” A woman's voice came from the far side of the chamber. “Boy! Tell me what is in my hand.” A figure raised an arm in the distance.

  Peter turned toward the voice, and the crowd pressed back so that his line of sight was clear. Peter stood still as a stone, his yellow hair pointing in three directions and the hood of his fur bunched up inside his collar. No one in the chamber seemed to breathe.

  “It's a cloth doll,” Peter said finally. “With black hair, and a dirty blue dress.”

  “That's right!” the voice called out, and the chamber broke into loud talk.

  “A trick!” Rowen spat. “They've tricked you!”

  Another voice rang out from the far side of the chamber, silencing everyone: “Tell me, Peter. What is at my throat?” It was the Angus.

  Peter froze again, and then said, “It's a red ribbon, and there's something hanging from it…a circle, with three little bars across it. They're…wavy.”

  He was describing the water sign of the twelfth bloodline: the Angus's bloodline.

  “The child is an adept, Rowen,” the Angus called.

  Rowen colored. “This boy is not one of us,” she said, “and he may very well infect any who touch him, just as Mai was sickened in the wider world. None of us is safe with him here among us.”

  The people closest to Peter looked at one another and then, more closely, at him. They didn't move any nearer, but they didn't step away either.

  Rowen was down off her podium and striding toward Peter, her eyes on the pup. She thrust out her hands. “You are a danger to us, and you are a danger to the Chikchu you hold. Give it to me before you sicken it.” She reached into Peter's arms, and grasped the pup with one hand.

  “Better not,” Dolan said.

  The pup's mouth opened in silent protest. Silent tosome. Thea heard it—it was a tiny shriek, like the noise a baby might make watching his mother walk away. The other ear adepts in the room probably heard it as well. And so did all of the Chikchu waiting in the courtyard.

  In the next moment, the air was full of long, sharp howls. The dogs' cries pierced and echoed, crisscrossing layers of sound that made thought impossible. It was unbearable. Children put their hands over their ears and squeezed their eyes shut. The adults looked scared.

  Do
lan stood in the middle of the crowd, looking pointedly at Rowen, who was dangling the pup by one hand, a look of pure shock on her face. Peter reached out and clutched the pup back to his chest. The howling stopped.

  Dolan laid a hand on Peter's shoulder. “The boy and the dog are together now.”

  Rowen looked at Dolan with blazing eyes and stalked back to her high podium.

  “Grandmother,” Thea started, “no one here seeks to end our way of life, only our fear of the world above us. That was Grace's hope. Her hope was that we might choose for ourselves how to live. Here, or on the surface.”

  “Choose?” Rowen roared. “That choice has been made!”

  The chamber erupted in protest, and Rowen found herself shouted down every time she attempted to speak. She waved to the crowd for quiet and pointed across the chamber to Thea. “She is my daughter's daughter, but itis time to show this child that we will not allow the one to sacrifice the many. We will not permit the dangerous impulse of a thoughtless girl to risk the lives of all of our children. Turn your back to her now, and we will set to work together. We will preserve what Grace built for us!”

  Thea shouted: “It is you who betray Grace, Rowen. You have forced ignorance upon us, and encouraged our fear. I promise you this: The first line is finished seeking refuge. Sons or daughters, my children will know the stars.”

  There was a collective intake of breath. She felt Mattias turn to look at her.

  One woman, a mother holding a child, spoke up in a loud clear voice.

  “Only one speaks the truth, Rowen. I don't believe it is you.”

  And she turned her back to Rowen and faced Thea, who recognized her from the gardens, where she was a caretaker. She looked steadily at Thea while her son wound his fingers in his mother's hair.

  Another woman turned toward Thea, showing Rowen her back, and then her brother did the same. Thea stood, struck dumb, as a murmuring rose from one corner of the room and then another, and more and more people turned their backs to Rowen, who stood with an eerie calm.

  “Fools!” she said. “You look to a child for wisdom! Sheseeks to waste the lives of the ancients who gave themselves to find this refuge for our people! She would lead you back into a world of cruelty for no reason other than her own childish curiosity!”