Raging Star

by Moira Young

  He’s seen us. He glares with unbrotherly malice.

  He don’t look too happy, says Creed. You don’t suppose he blames us?

  Don’t be stupid, I says. Hey, Moses.

  He bellows with rage. He charges.

  He blames us, all right! shrieks Emmi.

  We scatter fer safety, boy, girl an beast. Jest as we do, a giant bird comes barrellin straight at us from the sky. No, no bird, a flyin machine. But not a Wrecker flyer. A junkflyer. A revamp two-wheeler with metal wings an two windcranks. One on top, one behind. A skinny old fossil in goggles an a helmet wrestles with the stick controls.

  Look out! I yell.

  Moses turns on a dime an scrambles. I dive fer cover. We’re all jest in time. The flyer smashes at speed at the scrapmetal hill. It explodes in every direction. The racket’s so fearsome, you could hear it on the moon. As it starts to settle, we git to our feet an brush ourselfs down. Bean’s honkin his head off in raucous alarm. Moses hollers back from wherever he’s hid. Nero shrieks an swoops.

  Welcome to Starlight Lanes, says Creed.

  Everybody okay? I says. There’s nods all around.

  The pilot don’t appear rattled in the least. Still wearin his goggles, his helmet cock-eyed, he chunters to hisself as he clambers around, checkin the damage to his flyer. There ain’t nuthin but damage. It’s completely wrecked. An now I notice that this particular scraphill’s main scrap seems to be crashed junkflyer—bits of wing, wheels an so on. Sudden nosedives must be a regular event around here.

  Ah … Peg the Flight, says Ash. Now I git it.

  I call over. Hey there, sir? Hello? Are you okay? We’re friends of Slim’s.

  He tucks the smaller windcrank unner one arm, slithers down the heap an hurries towards the junkhill shack, still talkin to hisself. Maybe he didn’t hear me, what with the crash an the helmet an bein old an all. I chase after him, swervin an leapin through the scattered junk. Tracker an Emmi an Nero come too. We catch up an trot alongside.

  I says, Excuse me? Sir? Peg the Flight? I’m—

  Slim’s girl, Angel of Death, yes yes, shut up, I heerd you, she says.

  She. Peg the Flight ain’t no sir, she’s a ma’am. A scrawny old damsel, stringy as rawhide. Her tan skin droops in leathery folds. Her vulture neck pokes from high, narrow shoulders. Tattered britches flutter like feathers.

  Sorry, I says. Sorry about the sir, ma’am, I mean, uh—Slim should be here any time. He ain’t far behind us. He said he thought it ’ud be okay with you if we was to—

  But she’s gone. Nimblin one-handed up a rackly ladder, speedy as a spider. Still gabblin to herself nineteen to the dozen. Step by step, back to the start, basics, you goose, you fathead, she says.

  Me an Em scramble up the ladder in her wake. Tracker’s left below, whinin an barkin.

  We follow as she scampers along a rope an slat walkway towards her shack. Easier said than done. It’s a peril, with missin slats an patched in bits of frayed rope.

  Beggin yer pardon, Miz Peg, but we’d like to stay here a bit, if that’s okay, I says. If it don’t cause you no trouble, that is.

  Beggin my pardon blah blah blah! Peg swats her free hand about her head. As she rushes past the caged birds, there’s a great hullabaloo of flappin an screechin. Yes yes, my dearies, I know, I know! Not long now to wait, my hearts! she cries.

  She dives through the open door of the shack. She dumps the windcrank on a bench with some other rammel, barks, Quiet! at us an starts to scribble on the wall with a piece of chalk. Airflow, she mutters, turnage, lift, thrust. Step by step, back to the start. Basics, you goose, you fathead.

  Ma’am? I says. I’d be grateful if, uh … well, would you look at that. I watch, spellbound, as a picture of a windcrank starts to emerge. Every last detail clear an sharp. Who’d think it of such a rattlepate old nonny? How far you flown in these things? I says.

  She makes no reply, heedless to all but her task. Nero’s followed us inside. Still more cautious than he would be usually, but he’s far too nosy to resist at least a peek. Like the yard outside, the shack’s a junkheap. But a indoor one. An a shipshape one. An it’s all about flyers. There’s spare parts in buckets an crates. Endless drawins an plans scrawled on the walls. This room seems to be the heart of the sprawl of buildins over the junkhill. I crane my neck to see the clutter of corridors, cranky stairways an other rooms that spider off from here. Through dozens of windows, big an small, sunbeams warm the dust of a thousand days gone. Peg’s only comferts seem to be a rocker chair an a rusty stove swagged with webs.

  A heap of fightin kit on a bench catches my eye. I pick out a couple of armbands an a jerkin an dust ’em off. They’re Wrecker old, smooth an supple with age, but not bad fer all that. Good sturdy dark-brown leather with rusty metal plates. Well padded. Brass buckled. The jerkin looks to of stopped a few arrows in its time. It’s got the wounds to show fer it. The armbands cover me, wrist to elbow. A good thing to have. Whaddya want fer these bits of armour? I ask Peg.

  Them ain’t fer tradin, she says. She don’t even bother to look, she jest keeps on scribblin.

  As I go to drop ’em back, she says, They’re yers, meant fer you, kept fer you, put ’em on.

  I pause. Cast a frown at her back. Crazy old coot. Then, Thanks, I says. I slip the jerkin over my head, slide on the armbands an do up the buckles. A perfect fit. All of it.

  Emmi’s bin silent this whole time. She’s knelt by a table, starin in wonderment at a birdcage that sits on top. It’s tiny. The size of my two fists together. Such dainty metalwork you wouldn’t think possible. Vines twine the bars, burstin with leaf an fruit an flower. Inside, there’s a metal finch perched on a swing. Scabs of colour tell of its painted beauty, once upon a long ago. What kinda person in what kinda world had time or cause to make somethin like this?

  Nero flaps onto the table. He peers at the bird, his head tipped this way, that way. He croaks. Taps the bars gently with his beak.

  Nero, don’t, says Em. It’s sleepin.

  Wake it up, says Peg. The key, the key is the key to a song. She throws down the chalk an comes over, swipin her hands on her britches. Her crabby old fingers wind a key hid low on one side. There’s a whisper of a clank. Then the tinkle of ancient spiderweb music. The finch’s beak opens an shuts. It tips forwards an backwards, flickin its tail. As the song ends, it sits back on the perch. Its beak slowly closes. Frozen till the next turn of the key.

  Oh, breathes Emmi. Make it sing agin!

  Please, I says.

  Sorry … please, she says.

  Peg waves consent. Em winds the key an the song tiptoes through the dustbeams once more.

  Them birds out there in the cages, I says. You should let ’em go. Birds need to fly.

  Soon, girlie, soon. Me an them, says Peg.

  A shadow falls over us. Tommo stands in the doorway. Slim’s jest pullin in, he says.

  Slim gives me a morsel of news on the quiet. He made three stops on his way here. One to pull the tooth at Willowbrook, one to lance a neck boil an one to treat a private complaint so gruesome his toes curl at the thought. He starts to regale me, but I hold him in check an the gist of it is this.

  At each place he stopped, they told him the same. They heard from their neighbour who heard from his that the Angel of Death haunts New Eden. That her ghost comes each night with the starfall. She was seen last night. An the night before that. She’s ridin the roads with her wolfdog an crow, seekin vengeance fer her death from any who cross her path. They’re all unsettled. Worried what it means. Fearin it portends trouble soon to come.

  I don’t ever ride the roads. Nobody’s seen me. In starfall season folks see haunts where there ain’t none. I’ll tell Jack about this when I see him tonight.

  Luckily, there’s more than jest junk at Starlight Lanes. There’s a little coldwater washpond too. Round the back, through a woodland garden patch, an a nut glade an a stand of cottonwood. We find Moses an Hermes an Bean there, nibblin at the bark. Hermes wo
uld put up with anybody fer cottonbark. Even a foul tempered camel.

  I’m amazed Peg could give us direction to the pond. From that ripe smell she trails, I took her to be a stranger to water.

  Now with a ring of pale skin where her slave collar was—Peg had it off in a jiff, like Slim said she would—Mercy strips off her ragged hemp tunic. A shawl of thin whip scars shrouds her shoulders. She folds the tunic with care.

  I’d of thought you’d wanna burn that thing, I says.

  The day there ain’t no slaves in New Eden, she says, I’ll build a pyre an watch it burn.

  She wades in fer a swim an a wash. I toss her my soap-bundle. I don’t look at her direct. I cain’t bear to. That Mercy should be brought so low. The sight of her naked body, so scarred an gaunt, stabs my gut with red anger. This is DeMalo. I gotta remember that behind his clever words this is who he is. Mercy, jest one slave among many such as her. Like Slim’s friend, Billy Six. His hard-worked land stolen an him spiked through the throat, nailed to a post like a trophy rat. Maev, dead. Bram, dead. The Free Hawks an Raiders, all dead.

  You kill people to git what you want.

  So do you. You’ve just done it again. Any violence is regrettable, but it’s a means to an end. Did you weep when you destroyed Hopetown? Did you lose sleep over any scum that might have burned in its flames? No. We are so alike, Saba.

  Me, like DeMalo. I gotta shut out his voice. It’s runnin through my head all the time. Confusin me. Twistin my thoughts. I can feel the heat rise to my cheeks. Mercy sees—not much escapes her notice—but she don’t remark on it.

  You comin in? she says.

  I bathe on my own, no offence, I says.

  She takes that in, too, without comment. While she scrubs the dirt of slavery from her skin, I splash my hot face. Try to cool my hot mind. Drink down handfuls of water to calm the sick anger that roils my belly.

  Once she’s outta the water an rubbin herself dry with a clean sack, Mercy says, So, what is it you want to talk about?

  Would you say love makes you weak? I says. That’s what Lugh believes. Becuz of Pa, how he went after Ma died.

  Mercy don’t answer right away. Then she says, That’s Lugh. What about you? Tell me what you believe.

  I stare at my boots as I speak. As I think my way through each word. I seen both sides, I says. Not jest other people, I know it in myself too. I know how strong it made me when I was searchin fer Lugh. I couldn’t of done what I did, I couldn’t of endured if my tie to him hadn’t of bin so strong. But I bin made weak by it too. I made some bad choices. On the whole, though? I’d say I’m stronger fer love, not weaker.

  I couldn’t of said it better myself, says Mercy. She sits down beside me, wrapped in the sack.

  I raise my head to meet her eyes. I remember somethin you told me at Crosscreek, I says. You said my pa looked to the stars fer answers, but you look at what’s here, in front of you, around you. I need you to tell me what you see, Mercy. Whaddya make of this place? Of New Eden?

  Huh! She gives a little laugh. You sure do got big questions on your mind these days, she says. What do I make of New Eden. She thinks fer a bit, then she says, Things ain’t always what they seem to be. People neether.

  That ain’t new, I says.

  She says, Somehow … New Eden don’t seem entirely real.

  Them scars of yers look real enough, I says.

  Of course, but, for instance, she says, them girls I tended at the babyhouse. Imagine that’s you. Your family’s driven away or killed—maybe right in front of you—but you’re not. You get to live becuz you’re one of the Pathfinder’s Chosen ones. You’re a Steward of the Earth now. You’re dazzled by him. Convinced by him. The power, the violence, they keep you in fear.

  Yes, I says.

  Mercy goes on. You’re paired with a boy you don’t know. Sent off with this stranger to work the land an make healthy babies for New Eden. Before you know it, if you’re lucky, you’re pregnant to him. Maybe you cain’t abide him, but you got no say in it. What do you think? How do you feel about it all?

  My remembrance goes to the Stewards we killed. Buried in a shallow grave on the road to the Lost Cause. Eli an RiverLee. His dislike of her. Her fear of him. Her desperation to have a child. Knowin if she didn’t, she’d be slaved. I think of RiverLee’s precious silver necklace. Family reminders forbidden in New Eden, but she kept it, hidden, a secret. To remind her who she was, where she’d come from.

  How do you feel? You tell me, says Mercy.

  I feel awful about my family, I says. Why choose me above them? An I’m grievin them, I miss them, but I gotta hide how I feel. I cain’t talk to nobody. I hate the boy they paired me with. I hate him touchin me. He’s mean. But if I don’t have a baby, he’ll turn me in an I’ll be slaved. I feel afeared. I feel alone.

  That sounds about right, says Mercy. An I’ll tell you somethin. Girls givin birth, they always call for their mother. Your mother did. So do them Stewards. Not one wants her baby to be took from her. They try to hide what they feel—after all, the Pathfinder knows best, it’s for the good of New Eden an Mother Earth—but I seen it in their eyes, their faces, every time. They cry in the night. An the ones who birth weak babies? They know ezzackly what’s gonna happen. They know the child of their flesh, that they carried in their body, will be left out of doors to die. If the cold don’t take it, some animal will. Maybe to feed its own young. Them poor girls, it just about kills ’em. One took her own life while I was there.

  She killed herself, I says.

  They don’t let that get out, says Mercy. Not good for morale. Them Steward girls, they’re breeders. Their wombs belong to New Eden. Natural feelins an inclinations don’t come into it. Did you know they’re expected to produce a child every two years?

  Two years, I says. I didn’t, no.

  If they fail, they’re slaved. An the boy ain’t never to blame, she says.

  What about them? I says. The boys?

  They pretend to be men, she says. I can only imagine how they feel about never seein their own child. The Chosen of New Eden, they’re all tryin to be who DeMalo says they are.

  Pretend. That trigger in my head clicks agin. Things ain’t always what they seem. People ain’t who they seem. They’re all tryin to be who he says they are.

  So that’s the Stewards an the babyhouse, Mercy’s sayin. I cain’t say about Edenhome, I don’t know it. Only, babies go there once they bin weaned.

  Edenhome. Where they raise children to serve New Eden. Kids who was stolen from their folks. Weaned babies. When they turn fourteen, they become a Steward of the Earth an they’re paired by the Pathfinder to breed an work.

  Then there’s slaves, says Mercy. Most like me, shanghaied. Some who used to be Chosen ones. Them that fell from grace with the Pathfinder.

  One moment they’re a Chosen one, the next they ain’t, I says. That must give ’em food fer thought.

  It don’t go unnoticed, let’s put it that way, she says.

  An there’s the Tonton, I says. Don’t fergit them.

  I ain’t likely to, she says.

  When you start to pick it apart, I says, when you start to look close, New Eden ain’t what it looks like. But it’s workin, isn’t it? The Pathfinder’s plan to make a new world.

  In some ways, maybe, she says. The Stewards are well fed all the time now. That means more of the girls carry to full term. Word is that crop yields are up.

  DeMalo’s voice runs through my head.

  I’m making difficult decisions every day. Allocating what scarce resources there are to those who can make best use of them. I’m behaving morally, responsibly.

  Mercy an me sit silent fer a time, there by the coldwater pond. The sun on my skin feels softly, rarely kind. The same words churn in me, over an over. Mothers an children. Fathers. Brothers. Sisters. Family. People ain’t who they seem to be. On the whole, we’re stronger fer love. DeMalo’s weakness. Our strength.

  I realize that Mercy’s watchin me, her e
yes sharply curious. I take her neatly folded tunic an hand it to her.

  You’ll be buildin that pyre one day soon, I says.

  There she is, by the twisted tree. Allis, my sunlight mother. We’re alone, her an me, on the wide flat plain. In the grey at the edge of the world. The clouds hang low. The wind wails high. The tree gleams, bare an white.

  At the foot of the tree is the gravepit. Rough an narrow an deep. Then we’re standin beside it, my mother an me. I know what lies within. The body in rusted armour. Laid out in the pit full length. The head wrapped around with a blood red shawl.

  Golden Allis. Gone fer so long. Sun hair, sky eyes, bright soul. But the dark-past-the-edge has vanquished her light. She drifts. She shifts. She fades.

  Her feet of air step into the grave. She beckons, come with me. It’s empty now. I follow her down. Into the down-dark earth.

  Then water. On the rise. Up my bare legs. No, not water. Blood. It rises quickly. Blackly. Thickly. To my thighs, my waist, my chest. It grips me, I cain’t git away. I slip an I’m chokin, I’m drownin, I’m chokin, cain’t breathe, I’m—

  With a jolt, I’m awake. Scrabblin at my throat. Pullin frantic at what’s chokin me—

  Saba, wake up! It’s Molly’s voice, urgent.

  I cain’t breathe! I gasp.

  It’s off, okay, I’m takin it off. Saba, c’mon honey, open yer eyes. Sit up.

  She pats my hand gently. I blink. Made stupid by the sudden glare of sunlight. Blasted to life while lost in the darklands of dream. Molly kneels beside me. She holds the red shawl.

  Uh! I shrink back. Take it away!

  Okay, calm down, okay, it’s gone. She pushes it behind her skirts, outta sight. You got yerself tangled in it, that’s all.

  My rattleheart slows to a rackety gallop. That was in the bottom of my pack, I says. How’d you git it?