Alight

  He holds a red axe he took from the storage room. I think about him swinging it as hard as he can, powerful muscles driving the sharp blade into a living thing, and I have to suppress a shiver.

  “I’m going,” I say, adjusting my grip on my spear. “I need to know what’s out there.”

  He wants to protect me. His concern makes me feel warm inside, but I will not sit back while my people face danger.

  The flesh around his left eye is swollen and bruised. When he put me in the coffin—trying to save my life—I went crazy and punched him. I feel horrible about that. Such seriousness in his face. I want to reach out and touch his blond curls, but now is not the time. When I first met him, he smiled easily, seemed so happy and confident. Not anymore. He killed two Grownups. Taking those lives changed him. I hope he can find his smile again, but if he feels inside the same way I do, I doubt it.

  At the back of the coffin room, I see the door in the red wall open. O’Malley and Spingate step out, walk down the center aisle to join us. He’s holding the knife I used to kill Yong. Somehow, that weapon became his.

  “I’ll take a good look around the shuttle while you go outside,” he says. “But…are you sure I shouldn’t come with you?”

  Does he want to see the planet, or does he also want to protect me? It doesn’t matter; we need to learn all we can as fast as we can. Besides, he’s made for thinking, not fighting.

  “I’ll be fine. I have Bishop with me.”

  O’Malley looks down, and I cringe inside. I meant to say I have the circle-stars with me, but that’s not what came out.

  If he’s hurt, he recovers quickly, grins at me.

  “Just be smart,” he says. “We have all the time this world has to offer—don’t rush anything.”

  Our ordeal has affected him, too, but not like it has Bishop. O’Malley’s blue eyes are vibrant, filled with excitement for our new adventure. Brittle bits of leaves cling to his brown hair. Dried blood stains his ill-fitting white shirt, especially at the collar below the nasty cut on his left cheek. He suffered that wound in the Garden, during our fight with the Grownups. I wonder what he had to do back there. I wonder if he—like Bishop and I—now knows how it feels to kill.

  O’Malley looks at Bishop, then offers the knife, hilt-first.

  “Take it,” O’Malley says. “If I’m staying here, you need it more than I do.”

  Back on the Xolotl, the two boys came close to killing each other. Will they get along better now that we’re on Omeyocan?

  Bishop lifts his axe slightly.

  “I like this better,” he says.

  The two boys have been “alive” for only a few days, yet they are both already marked with wounds that will become scars. In that, they aren’t alone. My fingertips touch my split upper lip, the bump on my forehead, trace my cuts and scratches and bruises. We earned these badges of bravery.

  Our creators designed our bodies. Our faces are theirs—these scars are the only things we can truly call our own.

  Bishop isn’t the only one with a new weapon.

  White-haired, pink-skinned Visca holds a sledgehammer that is almost as tall as Gaston. Farrar chose a long-handled shovel. He is the largest of us save only for Bishop, and I bet the point—or edge—of the thick shovel blade could do horrible damage to flesh and blood. Bawden has an axe just like Bishop’s. I find myself wondering how long it takes hair to grow: the first hints are showing on her shaved head, dark-brown skin giving way to stubble. With most of her dust gone, there is no ignoring the fact that she wears nothing but a tattered skirt. Her nakedness makes me want to look away; she doesn’t seem to notice it.

  Coyotl made the strangest choice of all—he still holds the thighbone he used against the Grownups. His skin has a bright hue, as if he spent far too long in the sun.

  I meet Spingate’s gaze. Her eyebrows rise in a silent question.

  It is time.

  “Open it,” I say.

  The shuttle doors slide apart.

  The morning sun is a blinding, reddish ball creeping above the high tree line. I lift a hand to block out the light, feel the sun’s heat against my skin.

  A breeze caresses us, carrying new scents. My head spins as Matilda’s fractured memories rush to the surface, try to put names on what I smell: damp wood, burned grass and something like mint.

  I step onto the shuttle’s platform. I don’t know where the platform goes when we fly, but it is exactly as it was on the Xolotl: a metal rectangle big enough to hold us all. A ramp leads down to flat ground covered in dark-blue vines with wide, pale-yellow leaves. Some of the leaves and vines are burned black; maybe our shuttle did that when it landed.

  We’re in the center of what looks like a large, round clearing. A dense wall of leaves—the same pale yellow as the vines that cover the ground—towers up from the clearing’s curved edge. The sky is a circular patch high above us.

  I understand why Gaston thought we flew into a hole.

  Bishop walks slowly down the ramp, both hands on his axe. Muscles twitch and flex. He scowls at the trees, at the vines covering the clearing, maybe at the sun itself—he wants this world to know he is ready to fight.

  He stops at the ramp’s end, reaches one bare foot toward the vines.

  “Wait,” I say. “Spingate, come with me.”

  The reddish sun seems to ignite the air around her hair. If anyone was made for this place, it is Theresa Spingate.

  We walk down the ramp and join Bishop. I point down at the vines.

  “Do you think those plants are safe to step on?”

  Spingate kneels at the ramp’s edge. Fingers outstretched, she waves her bracer-adorned arm over the leaves. The black jewels come alive, sparkle in many colors.

  “The shuttle doesn’t detect any known poisons,” she says. “None that can go through the skin, anyway. Just don’t eat anything.”

  I glance back at the big silver ship that brought us here, then at her.

  “The shuttle told you that?”

  She turns her head and pulls back her hair, shows a small black jewel nestled in her ear.

  “It can speak to me through this. So can Gaston.”

  I again look down at the vines. This is it—our moment. I consider letting Bishop go first, or even Spingate, giving one of them the honor of being the first person to set foot on our new world.

  But I want that honor for myself. I am the leader, and it is my right.

  I step off the ramp. The leaves are soft and cool under my bare feet, except for the ones that were blackened during the landing; those crunch and break. There is something firm beneath the leaves. I turn my spear upside down. Dried red-gray—Matilda’s blood—coats the blade’s flat metal. I need to clean that up soon; I want to leave all memories of her behind.

  I push the spear tip into the plants. It sinks in a little, then clonks against something hard.

  “Bishop, come help.”

  He kneels beside me. His big hands rip at the blue vines and yellow leaves. That minty smell grows stronger. He clears the plants from a small area, leaving only crumbly brown dirt. He wipes that away as well, revealing flat metal.

  I walk to a new spot, push the spear tip into the vines: clonk. I move to my right, do it again, hear the same sound.

  The tree line…those leaves go straight up, a sheer curved wall of pale yellow surrounding a perfectly circular clearing. That can’t be right…can it?

  Bishop stands. “Farrar, Coyotl, come with me.”

  The three boys jog toward the wall of trees.

  I turn back to Spingate.

  “We’re standing on metal,” I say. “What is this place?”

  Wide-eyed, she blinks. “I don’t know. The shuttle told us where to land, so we landed. I’ll see what Gaston can find out.”

  Her lips move, but I can’t hear what she says. She cocks her head, hearing a voice meant only for her.

  She’s so exhausted she didn’t think to ask about where we landed? Until this moment, ne
ither did I. We were all so focused on escaping the Xolotl we didn’t give much thought to what awaited us on Omeyocan.

  Spingate nods.

  “Gaston says the shuttle doesn’t know much, but this isn’t a clearing—it’s a landing pad.”

  So Omeyocan isn’t an unexplored wilderness after all. Did the Grownups build this? If so, when, and are those builders still here? This planet is ours, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have to take it away from someone else.

  “Em!”

  Bishop is shouting at me from the tree line. Coyotl and Farrar are leaning to the left and right, respectively, pulling apart the yellow trees. Only they aren’t trees at all, they are vines, the same kind I’m standing on—and in the shadows behind them, a metal wall.

  Spingate tugs on my sleeve. “Gaston says he figured out how to make the landing pad rise up.”

  It takes me a moment to process what she just said. I start to tell her no, but before the word comes out, a violent tremor knocks me off-balance, throws me down on the vines. Spingate falls to her hands and knees. The ground beneath me lurches upward, then stops so suddenly it tosses me into the air—I crash back down onto the soft plants. Another vibration shakes my bones, then we rise up, fast. Screams of metal hurt my ears.

  “Spingate! Tell Gaston to make it stop!”

  Another shudder knocks her flat, but she isn’t afraid. Her eyes are wide with wonder—she’s laughing.

  “Gaston says it’s okay. Just hold on!”

  The ground presses into me: we’re moving faster now.

  At the edges of the clearing, the vines seem to pour down the sides, bunching up at the bottom like falling rope, but the vines aren’t falling—instead, the ground is coming up beneath them. Bishop, Coyotl and Farrar are still on their feet, lithely dancing away from the sprawling mass of plants.

  What I first thought was the clearing’s edge is actually vine-covered walls, walls that shrink before my eyes. We’re rising to the top of this…this tube.

  I suddenly feel lighter. We’re slowing.

  With a harsh clank of steel and a tooth-rattling shudder, the landing pad stops.

  I stand on wobbly legs. The landing pad’s edge is still circular, but now it is ringed by a pile of vines three times taller than I am. The sun beats down on us, lights up what looks like pointy, yellow hills rising all around. Not hills, but rather shapes…I almost know what they are. Or rather, Matilda knew what those are.

  Then Bishop is beside me.

  “Em, come on! You’ve got to see this!”

  He takes me by the hand, pulls me so hard my head flops back. I stumble along behind him, still clutching my spear.

  In seconds we reach the vine ring. At the top stand Farrar and Coyotl. Bishop scrambles up, pulling me along behind him. My feet sink into the thick plants, but find enough purchase to let me ascend.

  I reach the top and look out.

  This can’t be…

  In all directions, as far as I can see, what I thought were pointy hills are not hills at all. They are buildings, overgrown with thick yellow vines, bluish trees and other strange plants. Some of the buildings are pyramids, so tall they scrape the sky.

  We are standing in the middle of a vast, ruined city.

  I don’t know how long the four of us stand atop the vines, staring out. Long enough for Spingate and the other circle-stars to join us.

  The immensity of it all. The sky is like a dome above us, so big I could never reach the edge even if I walked forever. The buildings, the land, the trees and vines…this place is a million times bigger than the Xolotl, which was the biggest thing I had ever seen.

  It’s so overwhelming. I fight an urge to run back to the shuttle’s familiar, confined area. I can tell the others feel the same.

  “Spin,” I say. “What is this place?”

  I hear her mumbling, speaking quietly to Gaston back in the shuttle. While I wait, I stare. Tall pyramids block my view in most directions. Where they do not, the city seems to go on and on.

  “The shuttle doesn’t know,” Spingate says.

  “But Gaston said the shuttle told him to land here,” I say. “How can it know where to go and not know what this city is?”

  She has no answer.

  Coyotl is on my right. He points toward the horizon. “Are those birds?”

  Several somethings fly over the city. Maybe birds, but we’re too far from them to make out what they are.

  There is no sound save for the breeze sliding past leaves—it sounds like this city is hissing at us.

  “No movement on the streets,” Bishop says.

  Streets seems like a strange term for what we see: wide, straight spaces between the buildings and pyramids, but those spaces are so choked with vines they look like the flat bottom of steep valleys instead of a place where people might walk.

  “Abandoned,” Farrar says. “Where are the people who made all this?”

  Coyotl turns, looks behind us. The thighbone slips from his hands, thumps on the vines and rolls down the inner slope.

  I turn, and am just as stunned. The shuttle lies before us, sitting on its bed of yellow leaves in the middle of the vine ring. Beyond the shuttle, towering buildings block a view of the city—far beyond those buildings is a pyramid so massive the sky itself seems to balance on its point. All the buildings are covered in yellow, but not the tip of this pyramid, which is an orange-brown.

  “I don’t like this,” Farrar says. “Should we go back to the shuttle?”

  A loud growl answers him. We all look to Bawden—the sound came from her belly.

  She shrugs. “I’m hungry.”

  So am I. We all are. There is so much to explore here it might take us a lifetime. Don’t rush anything, O’Malley said. We have to carefully think about what we should do next. This place appears abandoned, but I have been alive long enough to know that things are not always as they seem.

  We return to the shuttle, which gleams beneath the hot sun. I can’t believe I once thought of the shuttle as large. Nestled in this sprawling city, it is nothing but a toy.

  We enter to the sound of laughter and excitement. So many happy voices—music to my ears. Everyone is awake, older kids and twelve-year-olds alike. Some are alert, others are still groggy from the gas.

  I have Spingate seal the doors behind us.

  In the coffin room, Gaston and Okereke hold green bins, from which they are passing out white food packages. Okereke is a circle, like me, short and thick with muscle. He has the darkest skin of any of us, almost as black as that of the monsters.

  Bishop takes the bin from Gaston and pats him on the back. Gaston looks to me for the next job. I tilt my head toward the pilothouse.

  “You and Spingate get some sleep,” I say. “We’ll all stay here until you’re rested. I need your input to figure out what we do next.”

  He grabs a handful of packages from the bin, then he and Spingate stumble their way to the pilothouse and shut the door behind them.

  I walk toward my coffin. It’s not my coffin, not like before, because none of these have our names engraved on them. It’s the one I came down in, though, and it seems like the only space in this crowded room that belongs to me.

  Everyone gives me smiles. They hug me, give my shoulder a squeeze, pat me on the back. They are happy to be alive, excited to explore their new world.

  I lay my spear down in my coffin’s white padded fabric, sit cross-legged on the black floor.

  So many people in this red-walled coffin room. Not counting Gaston and Spingate, there are seventeen of us with full-grown bodies. And then the kids—108 of them. They are everywhere, mostly clean shirts and skirts or pants, red ties still on. They are laughing, eating, playing, sometimes running around madly until someone my age snaps at them to calm down.

  My age? That’s a funny concept. Am I an “adult”? In body, I suppose, but big or small, we are all twelve years old. We are the Birthday Children. At most, I am a few days older than the smaller kids,
not a few years.

  Bishop strides toward me, a green bin under his big arm. His subtle movements carry him over and around people without jostling a one.

  He tilts the bin down to me.

  “The food is good, Em. Grab some.”

  I reach in, take a handful, read the black letters: PROTEIN BAR, HARD BISCUIT and GRAIN BAR.

  All I’ve ever eaten was fruit and some pig, and not much of either. I tear open the grain bar’s wrapper—inside is what looks like a thin brown brick. I take a bite. The material crumbles between my teeth, and a new flavor explodes across my tongue. I’ve never tasted this, but I know the right word—it tastes nutty.

  “Everyone, stop eating!”

  It’s Aramovsky. He’s standing on a closed coffin, arms outstretched. All heads turn to look up at him.

  “We must give thanks for this food,” he says. His voice is deep and rich. “We must not anger the god who delivered us here.”

  He is the tallest of us. Standing on the coffin, his head almost reaches the ceiling. He stayed clean for a long time, but now dried blood stands out on his torn white shirt. The damage—both to his dark skin and to the fabric—came when he crashed through a thicket to save me. He stabbed a monster, not knowing it was actually his own progenitor. Our Aramovsky learned that truth just moments before Bishop killed the creature with a broken thighbone.

  I think Aramovsky was actually ready to have his mind wiped, maybe even excited to become one with his creator. He wanted it because he thinks that’s what his religion dictates.

  Everyone is watching him, waiting. They have all stopped eating except for one young circle-star. She laughs at Aramovsky as she takes a big bite from her bar.

  He points at her, long arm and long finger stretched out like a different kind of spear.

  “This god is watching you, girl. Do not anger him.”

  The laugh drains from the girl’s face. She lets the food slip from her hand. It drops to the floor.

  She’s eating and having fun, and he’s scaring her? His mysterious invisible gods didn’t deliver us here, I did. He makes me so angry.

  I stand.