Shatter the Suns

by Caitlin Sangster

  I’ve never heard this story before, but I can tell Howl is searching for words, either because he’s changing them for June or because he can’t quite remember. The notes from Luokai’s erhu twine together with his voice as if they were born under the same star.

  Howl continues, “But one day, the sky grew too hot, burning away the girl’s beloved trees, the shade that kept her safe. Instead of one sun at a time, the sky was full of ten all at once. The ten suns, so lonely after years of solo journeys across the sky, decided to stay together. They talked and laughed, their blaze in the sky searing the forest. Each tree was like a matchstick. The village like coals. It was almost as if the suns couldn’t see the way the world burned beneath them. Or perhaps they could see, and all they cared about was their own place in the sky.”

  June’s wide eyes flick to Luokai, though the Speaker doesn’t pause in pushing and pulling his bow, his eyes closed as he listens. Luokai who wants to find his own place in the sky, alone and ready to do anything to fix it, even if it leaves every corner of the world but his smoldering. Tai-ge’s mother, the new General, the Chairman, Dr. Yang. The Menghu. It feels as if our sky has been full of suns for years, and we didn’t know why we were burning up.

  June looks back to Howl, her eyes wide. “What happened?”

  “This fearless hunter came out from her shadows. She climbed the tallest mountain to stand the suns down. ‘You must leave!’ she shouted up at them, their rays burning at her hair. ‘You are destroying my home!’

  “ ‘Your home?’ one of the suns sneered. ‘I’ve seen the way you hide. The way the others fear you. You have no home.’

  “The girl looked around at the world she loved so much, her beloved trees burned to ash, the villages on fire pointing to her in dread almost as much as toward the suns, as if she were the one who brought them. The very ground began to crack under her feet, and she wondered if maybe he was right.

  “But as she stared up into the ten suns’ fiery depths, she knew someone had to fight, someone had to stand, or everyone would die. The girl took her bow from her shoulder, the wood specially made so it couldn’t burn. ‘You cannot tell me I’m worthless. You may believe you’re stronger and more important than me up there in the sky. You’re too high to see any of us for who we are. Too high to know what I’m capable of.’ She drew back an arrow and let it fly straight into the sun’s heart, and he shattered into a million pieces of fire and glass, raining down in pieces on the earth.

  “ ‘I am strong!’ the girl yelled up at the suns, ‘and I will protect the earth, even if the earth doesn’t want me.’ And she shot the heart out of each sun threatening her forest, and the villages cradled underneath the trees. The suns had seemed so far away, their glaring lights untouchable, but each shattered at the pierce of her arrows, falling to the ground in a deathly blaze when faced with such strength. The girl shot until there was only one sun left. He hid behind a bank of clouds, and the girl left him be. The villagers needed one sun, one bit of light they could shade themselves against, one bit of light to make her trees grow and to make her shade.”

  He pauses for a moment, swallows. “We need one sun because the heat brings out the best in us.”

  “I wish . . . ,” June whispers, her eyelids heavy, and I can see her thoughts just where mine were, on the many suns burning down on us, competing for space in the sky, our homes smoldering ashes, all that’s left after a fire.

  I hold her close, her hair bright as sunlight against my dirty uniform shirt. “You’ve already shot the first one down, June.” Luokai doesn’t look up from his strings, though his fingers slow over the notes.

  June’s head is heavy against my shoulder, her eyes finally closed. I can feel each breath in the press of her ribs against my stomach, long and drawn out at first, and then slowing. Shallow. Almost as if she’s full to the brim inside and can’t fit another mouthful of air. The long notes of Luokai’s song settle like a blanket across us, heavier than the gas mask ever was. When I slip my fingers under June’s wrist, her pulse is dying like the sputtering glow of incense as the last bits of ash fall. Howl shifts to her side, wrapping his hand around her other wrist, both of us watching her chest rise and fall. Until it stops.

  The new strain moves quickly, the Chairman said. It takes hold and doesn’t let go.

  I brush June’s curls back from her face, trying not to remember when she first came into the cell, panicked. Trapped. Is she awake behind those closed eyes, begging for her arms to move, for her lungs to open?

  I pull her closer, confidence injected into my voice more for me than for her. “I love you, June. You’re going to be all right. No matter what happens, we will be back for you with a cure.”

  Luokai’s song dwindles to a single sustained note that dies in the cold air of the cell. Silence takes the room, pressing up against me, smothering my mouth and lungs, pushing down hard on June’s still form.

  He opens his erhu case and pulls back the furry inside to reveal a single sheet of paper, the white of it stained to brown. It’s black with my mother’s spiky writing.

  “You had it here the whole time?” I choke on my tears and the outrage that boils just beneath.

  “Most of Jiang Gui-hua’s things are in the care of the Speakers. We were worried Gao Shun would destroy it all because she was so angry with her sister. But today she removed a device from the box, a miniature telescreen.”

  “The Speakers just let her have it?”

  “There was no reason not to. She told the Speakers it might scare away the helis gathering like flies before they attempt to mob us.” Luokai sighs. “I can’t risk going up against her directly, not without the time it would take to convince my fellow Speakers. As it is, I took the paper without my fellows knowing. If Gao Shun realizes they’re gone and that I’m missing too . . .” He shrugs. “Tomorrow, though, Gao Shun will be distracted, and she’ll be less careful of the device once the Reds tell her they’d rather take it than bargain. You might be able to get it away from her while she’s trying to shake the helis from the sky.” He turns to Howl. “You have a link in the things I brought you. The one in the tooth. Can you send pictures with it?”

  Howl sucks one of his cheeks in. “I think so.”

  “Do it. I’ll take the paper back to the Speakers before anyone notices it’s gone.” His eyes follow the tooth as Howl pulls it out, his expression hungry. If I remember correctly, Luokai is the one who gave it to Howl in the first place.

  Once the little black device is out, Howl hands it to me, awkwardly caving around his bound-up arm. “Will you? I can’t with my arm . . . the way it is.”

  June a dead weight across my legs, I can hardly bring myself to pull my hand from her wrist, as if I keep holding on, her heartbeat will reappear. But I take the link. The paper. Find the command to capture a picture of the graphs and charts and closely knit characters strung together in sentences I don’t understand. I catch mentions of chemicals, of measurements and trials. Howl’s name is on the paper, and so is mine. At the very end there’s a frantically scrawled string of characters that almost looks like a chemical formula.

  The cure?

  It feels so heavy. This, my answer to the war, like a rock around my neck. But I take the pictures and send them. It’s hard to hope when June lies almost dead in my lap.

  Luokai pulls the paper out from my grip once the pictures have been taken, then presses it back underneath the lining of his case and stands. He goes to the door and calls for the Baohujia, and they come with a cup of sludgy-looking tea, which Luokai sets in front of Howl.

  After shooing the Baohujia away, Luokai bends down in front of me, his arms out. He wants June. To take her now.

  My arms curl around her, my fingers pressing into her little arms.

  “I need to take her somewhere safe.” He gently pulls her away from me. “Once she’s situated, I’ll come back for you. We need to move you before the morning light breaks. Just in case negotiations go poorly and the helis co
me.”

  “If anything happens to her . . . if she doesn’t wake up, I’ll . . .” Howl’s voice is so tired it seems to be coming from a person choking out their last words, garbled and rough.

  “If anything happens to her, I’ll be the first to mourn. I am not one of your suns, and I will not shatter,” Luokai whispers. He stands, June’s head lolling back against his arm. “But I am sorry to be the bars on her cell.”

  CHAPTER 54

  THE IDEA OF SLEEP FEELS wrong, as if giving in to my tired eyes will be some sort of betrayal. That doesn’t stop me from taking the medicine-doused cup of tea Luokai offers and holding it in front of Howl’s face until he succumbs, taking the cup and drinking. Only a few minutes pass before he lets me help him back to the pallet, eyes closing as his head touches the pillow. It reminds me of the time we were together out in the forest. How he used to fall asleep in the oddest places and times, as if he could just turn his body off, knowing his next opportunity to rest might not come for a while.

  Except, when we were in the forest, June was with us. After all those nights of waking up to find her tousled hair, there’s nothing to find. Nothing but a quivering ghost of an image in my mind, a presence I keep reaching out to touch, only to find it gone.

  I huddle next to Howl, my brain slowly losing the fight against sleep. I keep the link balled in my fist, staring down at the glowing letters as they scroll across the back of my hand, the light too bright in the cell to allow me to read them. If Sole answers, I can’t see it.

  Luokai returns within the half hour, the erhu still strung across his back, but somehow it looks as if it weighs a hundred pounds less, no cure weighing it down. He settles himself down across from me, noting with an approving nod that Howl’s eyes are closed. “We’ll give him some time to sleep. We are safe here for a few more hours.”

  I wrap a blanket around me, refusing to answer. Its scratchy fibers seem to have soaked up all the water in the air, leaving me shivering. Luokai folds his hands comfortably in his lap, back straight, closing his eyes. Watching is almost uncomfortable because I keep waiting for movement, wanting to itch and scratch in sympathy as a fly lands on his forehead, crawling down to his cheek and across his lips. Not even a twitch.

  Is he asleep? Maybe—just as being able to flop over anywhere and start snoring is part of being a Menghu—pretending to sit at attention and snoring away inside your head is part of being Port Northian.

  It’s the last thought that twists in my brain before my eyes close.

  • • •

  “You are angry at me.” The voice brushes past my ears, not enough to ratchet my eyes open when they seem gummed shut with sleep.

  “You just took someone very important to me, Luokai.” Howl’s voice rasps with sleep, sending prickles down my arms. I keep my eyes closed, not sure I can face Luokai right now.

  “I’m sorry about June. But you cannot pretend that is the only reason you are angry.”

  “You’ve got everything about me figured out, then? We might share blood, but that doesn’t make us the same.”

  Long pause. “I didn’t want to leave at all, much less disappear without even saying good-bye. Every day I’ve been here I’ve thought of you there in the Mountain with no one but the dormitory heads and Jiaoyang to take care of you. I wanted to come back.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Silence.

  “I would go back with you now if I could. You’re not the little boy I left there, but you’re not a young man the way you should be either. There’s something hard inside you that I wish I could . . . fix.”

  “I don’t need to be fixed.” Howl shifts, and I can feel his warmth against my side.

  “Maybe not. I’m glad you aren’t alone now. I worried that . . . you would be.” I can almost feel Luokai’s eyes flick past me. “I wish I could be so lucky. The two of you move together. One an extension of the other. Two halves of something yet unfinished.”

  “Me and Sev?” I can feel them pause; now it’s Howl looking down at me and a thread of nervousness sews its way up my spine. “Sev’s made it pretty clear that she was done with me a long time ago, and it was only you opening the door earlier that saved me from hearing it out loud. Again.” Howl’s voice is quiet. “And you know very well that Sole is still sitting in the Mountain waiting for you. More alone than you are here, I think. You could write her a message now, if you wanted. She’s on the other end of this link.” There’s a rattle, the sound of the link inside the gore tooth around Howl’s neck. He must have taken it out of my hand and put it back where it belongs.

  Now the silence is Luokai’s, heavy and thick, tasting of something I can’t define. Mourning, perhaps. When the Speaker finally speaks, his voice creaks, as if he’s gained a hundred years in only a few moments. “I’m dangerous, Howl. Just because they try to give me a place and a life here doesn’t mean it’s less of a risk to be in the same room.”

  “Sounds like an excuse to me. We’ve had Mantis at the Mountain for years.”

  For a while I think Luokai isn’t going to answer, but when he does, the strain in his voice sends a jolt of surprise down my spine. “There are men and women who protect me from myself, protect others from my sickness. Their life’s work is to hold me up when I fall, to make sure no one else falls when I do, like human crutches. They can’t change me into someone who isn’t infected, though. Mantis might make some people feel safe, but what if it doesn’t work? What if I don’t take enough or take too much? With so much at risk, how do you make friends, love, marry, if at any moment, your mind could decide to hurt the people you care about most? You could only watch yourself do it. Live with the memories that you took away your happiness with your own hands.”

  The image crimps inside me, memories of the darkness of the Sanatorium, the people sequestered from society because they couldn’t trust their own hands to obey. The one compulsion I did have is buried deep in my memory, a curtain drawn over it so I don’t have to look. The terror, the rot and bile it tracked through my mind, leaving nothing but a wish that I could scrub myself clean from the inside out. It happened right before I left the City, right before it was just me and Howl, before I knew I’d been cured. I worried for him every day, just the way Luokai is saying. Worried I’d wake up one day and he’d be dead next to me. But the reality of that first brush with the sickness curdling in my mind . . . I hardly knew where to draw the line between myself and it.

  SS wasn’t me. It terrified me. It was inside me, and I couldn’t get it out. How many times had Luokai had those same moments of terror, of not realizing until it was too late that he was not himself, and not being able to stop?

  I open my eyes, finding the two of them sitting across from each other, sunrise streaming through the window to touch Luokai’s lined face. There are threads of gray caught in his hair I didn’t notice before.

  “How could I come back, knowing I couldn’t trust myself to be near you?” Luokai asks. “Couldn’t be near her? I’d have had to watch as you played without me, pretend I was happy for her as she fell in love with someone else. I’ve had nightmares of situations like . . . this.” The frustration lacing through Luokai’s voice seems to weigh down his shoulders as he gestures to us, the room, him in here with us. “I can’t even have guards to protect you, or they might miss their chance at escaping the contagion. Anything could happen in here. I’d never forgive myself if something did.” Luokai sighs. “Even in Port North, my life is one of watching from afar. I can help people. Mediate problems, look at crops and decide how they can be grown better. Bring food when it is scarce. Give peace when there is none. But that’s all I can do. The only way I can keep from hurting others is by choosing to be alone. I don’t think I could make that choice if I were with you.”

  I close my eyes again as the two of them stare at each other.

  “I was alone. For a long time. It wasn’t a choice.”

  “But now it is,” Luokai says,
and once again, I feel them both looking at me.

  “It’s her choice too,” Howl whispers. “You’ve been worried that you could hurt me or Sole. I did hurt her. She hurt me. We’re both . . . You can’t take back the worst things you’ve done unless the other person lets you. But even after everything . . . I think I love her.”

  My brain goes blank, just trying to fit around those words. I love her.

  “She’s kind when she doesn’t have to be.” Howl’s still talking. “Makes me laugh. Makes me want to do better.” He stops, and it takes everything I have to keep my eyes shut. “I would do anything to make her happy. I think she loves me too, and that’s what makes it so . . .” He exhales. “So frustrating.”

  I feel an echo of what he’s saying in my chest, as if it’s been traced there over and over, suddenly feeling trapped in the tiny space of those words. Maybe it is that control Luokai is talking about that makes my hands start to shake when I think of Howl. If I choose Howl now the way I did back in the Mountain, that means entrusting a tiny bit of control over my fate, my plans, my life to another person. Again.

  Trying to go against the war machine Dr. Yang is creating is dangerous enough without allowing someone else to have a finger on the self-destruct button. Someone who could have pushed it before. Someone who almost did, whether he meant to or not. I let myself be vulnerable for the first time in my life, realized the walls I had built so firmly around myself were a weakness instead of a protection. That I could finally let them come down. And it was a mistake.

  And now . . . ? Now what? After everything? I open my eyes again, willing myself to really look at Howl. At the things he’s said and done. The things people have said about him versus the things I’ve seen with my own eyes.

  Luokai takes another deep breath, his lungs expanding through his stomach and ribs. I catch myself holding my own breath, waiting for him to exhale. “Hope is something you fight for, Howl.” He breathes again, deep. “I would do anything to have that kind of hope. To be able to control this weakness, the awful base humanness SS imposes on me.”