by Amy Ewing
“Have you all become acquainted with our newest addition?” he asked. “She’s remarkable. Gave us quite the scare yesterday, didn’t she, Francis?” Francis looked like he’d rather not be included in this conversation.
“But what is she?” the woman demanded.
“Don’t be frightened, Gwen, she’s harmless. And you have no idea what she can do,” he added with a wink. That brought Sera up short. What did James know? Or was he lying to impress this woman? Sera wasn’t sure what to believe on this planet.
“All right, it’s time to get started,” Martin said, clapping his hands. “We’ll do a full run of the first act today. Francis, move her backstage for now, please. I’m not sure what role Xavier has planned for her yet. Everyone else, places for act one! Places!”
Sera did not know what any of that meant, but the humans sprang into action. Francis slid a large metal hook onto the chain around the crate and dragged it away until she was behind one of the red curtains. Other people were back here too, but they gave her a wide berth and she was fine with that.
The day progressed and all Sera could do was sit in her crate and watch. They appeared to be telling a story of some kind, except that instead of one person telling it, like Cerulean storytellers, many people acted out the different characters.
The plot seemed to revolve around Gwendivere and James—Gwendivere was an evil woman from Pelago, Sera gathered, who had hidden Errol and Boris away because they had great power and she wanted to keep it all for herself. James played the hero, who was searching for them to bring them back to Kaolin and save its people from famine and death. The hairy-lipped Grayson appeared to be playing a comedic role, something called a pirate. The other humans behind the curtains would laugh at his antics and silly faces. Sera didn’t find him very funny.
Her eyes were drawn again and again to James. There was something magnetic about him, as he prowled the stage and delivered his lines with passion and gusto. He was captivating to watch, and the more she watched him, the more intrigued she was by him, his build and stature, the muscles in his arms, his shirt open enough to reveal the skin of his chest, which also had hair on it. His hands were broad and sure. And his eyes were the most beautiful color green she had ever seen. Over and over she told herself to stop staring, and over and over her gaze would find its way back to him.
What was this . . . this . . . compulsion? Did James possess a magic of his own, like Errol and Boris? But no, humans did not have magic, her green mother said. And surely she would have seen human magic by now if it existed.
At last, the storytelling was over and suddenly James was kneeling by her crate.
“Almost time to leave, my lady. We’re going on a little trip,” he said with a smile that made Sera’s mouth water like she was hungry, except she did not feel hungry at all. His face was so close to hers, she could smell his skin—it had a woodsy scent that reminded her of walking through the Forest of Dawn at twilight, but with an undercurrent of something she could only identify as male. She had a sudden desire to run her fingers through his hair and see what it felt like.
It hit her then, with the force of her orange mother’s cherry cordial. This was not magic. This was attraction. She wanted this male, the way she had tried to want Koreen or Treena or any of the other girls her age and failed. The thing she had longed for above all else, the one secret she had kept from those she cared for . . . she had been wrong. This whole time. She was not incapable of love.
She loved males.
All the air left her lungs in a whoosh. How could she have known? She had never seen a male until she had come to this planet. And now she knew and the knowing was painful and confusing.
And yet, there was a strange sense of comfort too, as if a missing puzzle piece had been found and the picture of who she truly was came into perfect clarity. She understood herself in a way she had previously been unable to, and there was relief in that.
“Are you all right?” James asked, his voice thick with concern. Sera blinked and realized there were tears in her eyes. She turned away, embarrassed. “Francis, help her out of there, will you?”
The young male crouched beside her, taking a ring of keys from James’s outstretched hand.
“Listen,” Francis said softly. “I know you don’t know what I’m saying, but . . . I’ve got to let you out and they’re going to take you away now for a little while, and it would be best for you if you didn’t try to run. They’ll hurt you if you do, I think.” As if to prove the point, two shadowy figures, males in dark suits and hats, appeared around the crate. Boris was too far away to help her.
Sera had to be honest with herself. Her two previous escape attempts had not gone particularly well. Maybe she would have a better chance once she got to wherever they were taking her.
Once she was out of the crate, Francis handed James the keys, and James put bracelets on her wrists, but not delicate ones like her stargem bracelets. These were heavy and iron; they kept her hands close together with a strong chain, and they chafed against her skin. She pulled hard to see if she could break them apart, but they were stronger than the slats of the crate.
A shiny black car waited for them outside. Sera caught a glimpse of tall buildings lining a very large street before James opened a door and helped her into the back—the seats were sticky with heat and the windows were darkened so she could not see out. The other men got into the front two seats.
This car moved faster than the one she had been in with Agnes, and the ride was smoother. When it stopped, James opened the door, and she found herself in front of a grand dwelling, multistoried with lots of windows. There were even more men in suits prowling around it, and Sera had the sense they were guarding something.
Me, she realized.
They walked through a garden and her heart ached at the scent of hydrangeas. The sky was a darker blue than she had yet seen it, the sunlight a rich honeyed yellow tinged with orange. She, James, and the two men entered the dwelling through a door that led to a kitchen. Lots of people were bustling around, but they all stopped to stare at her.
“Mr. Roth.” An older woman with a golden triangle at her throat and a tiny white cap pinned to her head came hurrying up. “Mr. McLellan has been expecting you. He is in his study and told me to send you there as soon as you arrived. I can take her from here.”
“Gladly, Mrs. Phelps. I assume she’ll be cleaned up a bit before the evening,” James said.
Mrs. Phelps glanced at Sera, the corners of her mouth turning down at the sight of her dirty cloudspun robe. “Yes, Hattie is just filling the tub now. Mr. McLellan has hired private security, so you needn’t worry, she won’t be going anywhere.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know. Pemberton men are the best.”
“Mr. McLellan spared no expense. Take those handcuffs off for now. You can put them back on once she’s cleaned and ready.”
Sera was only half listening. This dwelling was quite tall. Maybe if there was a way to get to the very top of it . . .
James took off the bracelets with a key. Sera shivered when his hands brushed her skin. “I will see you at the party, my lady.”
The two men shadowed her as she followed Mrs. Phelps out of the kitchen, and the stares continued as she entered a large area covered in plush carpet and then climbed up a set of stairs with a wooden banister. How many people lived in this dwelling? Most of the women had little white caps, and the men wore the same jacket-and-trouser combination.
Mrs. Phelps opened a door to a windowless room filled with steam. A girl in an apron was pouring a bucket of water into a massive porcelain basin large enough for Sera to lie down in. There was a sink inlaid with a mosaic of roses and a dress hanging up by an oval looking glass similar to the one in her mothers’ bedroom. A little dresser sat in one corner with brushes and combs and tubes and powders on its surface.
“Here she is, Hattie,” Mrs. Phelps said, and the girl nearly dropped the empty bucket at the sight of her. “I’ve got to get ba
ck to the kitchen. Have her washed, dressed, and ready in one hour sharp.”
“Y-yes, Mrs. Phelps,” Hattie stammered. Once the older woman had left, the girl reached for Sera’s dress.
“Stay away!” Sera cried, backing up against a wall.
Hattie looked confused. “I was only trying . . . you have to disrobe before you bathe.”
“My orange mother made me this,” Sera said, wrapping her arms around herself. “You will not take it from me.”
They’d already taken so much. Her bracelets. Her necklace. Her freedom.
“Please.” Hattie could not understand her words, but her actions were clear. “I’ve got to get you clean and you can’t bathe in that thing, it’s filthy.”
“You will not take my robe!” Sera shouted.
“Hattie?” There was a loud banging on the door.
“Agnes?” Sera gasped. Hattie looked torn.
“Hattie, open this door at once!”
Sera’s knees went weak with relief as Hattie opened the door and Agnes strode into the room.
“You shouldn’t be here, miss,” Hattie was saying, but Sera had already run over and thrown her arms around Agnes, who stiffened, as if surprised at being hugged, but then returned the embrace with feeling.
“It’s so good to see you,” she whispered in Sera’s ear.
“You too,” Sera whispered back, not caring that Agnes couldn’t understand.
“Leave us, Hattie,” Agnes said, releasing her hold on Sera. “I’ll get her ready.”
“Your father—”
“My father wants her clean and dressed, and I’m more than capable of doing that. Go see if Mrs. Phelps needs any help in the kitchen.”
Hattie hesitated, then made a dipping movement with her legs and left. Agnes took a key out of her pocket, closed the door, and locked it.
“Oh, Sera, I’ve been so worried about you,” she said. “How have they been treating you? Where have they been keeping you? They haven’t hurt you, have they?”
But Sera had questions of her own. “Did you find anything in my hair that would help me get home? Is there a way to get to the roof of this dwelling? I need to see the sky and find the tether!”
But it was hopeless. They could not understand each other any more than a starbeetle could understand a sun trout. Now that they were face-to-face once again, Sera was desperate to be able to communicate, to tell Agnes everything, to have someone to confide in, to help her. Talking to Errol simply wasn’t the same. Agnes felt more like . . . like Leela.
She looked down at her hands again. Her green mother had told her it had taken the Cerulean quite some time to talk to those giant birds, but they had figured it out. And they were more knowledgeable then—they had visited planets regularly. She’d never been challenged like this before, and maybe the trick was simply in believing it could be done. Her brow furrowed as she concentrated on her heart pumping her blood through her body, sensing the magic within her. A smattering of light crackled across her palms.
“Of course you can’t answer me,” Agnes was muttering to herself. Then she slapped her forehead. “But you can write! Pen and paper, that’s what we need. . . .”
She went over to the small dresser and started rifling through its drawers. But Sera’s mind was churning. Agnes was more like Leela . . . like Leela . . . had she given herself the answer? Humans and Cerulean were similar in physicality. They spoke in words, not colors or hums. The difference was their coloring and the magic in Sera’s blood. Could she blood bond with Agnes? Sera did not know if her magic alone would be enough to let this human girl read her heart, to open some line of communication. It was daunting, not only because Sera had blood bonded with only four others in her whole life, but because Agnes’s blood did not contain magic. So would it even work?
“You will let me speak to her,” she said to her hands in what she hoped was a commanding tone. “You will work as you did in the days before the Great Sadness.”
“Are you all right?” Agnes asked, stepping away from the dresser.
Sera called on her magic and her fingertip began to glow.
Agnes gasped. “What is that?”
“Give me your finger,” she said, holding her own up and motioning for Agnes to do the same.
The girl was sharp—she held up a finger and said, “This? Is this what you want?”
Sera nodded. The human finger looked so plain next to her own. A seed of doubt began to sprout, and Sera squashed it before it could fully blossom.
I am a Cerulean, she thought fiercely. My blood is magic. And it will do as I command.
Then she pressed her glowing fingertip against Agnes’s.
21
Agnes
AGNES DID NOT FULLY COMPREHEND WHAT WAS HAPPENING.
She wasn’t sure what she expected when Sera held out her fingertip, glowing with a bluish-silver light. It reminded her a bit of the medulla she’d seen in Sera’s hair, but bigger and brighter—it pulsed and twinkled like starlight. It was fascinating and beautiful and more than a little scary.
She hadn’t really considered what she was doing until their fingers touched and Agnes felt a rush of heat enter her body through the point of contact. It was shocking and disorienting—she found she had no sense of where she was, if she was standing or sitting or if she even had legs at all. She felt like an empty vessel, more spirit than flesh. The heat that crawled up her arm was a tangible thing, wrapping itself around veins and bone and muscle, crackling and spitting like a fire. It raced to her elbow, then up into her shoulder, growing stronger in intensity, and Agnes wanted to shout, Stop! but she could not find her mouth.
The heat curled around her heart like a fist, squeezing it with every beat. She felt another heartbeat fall in line with hers, a secondary pulse in her chest that was both comforting and unfamiliar, and she thought she said, Sera? but she had no mouth so she could not have spoken aloud.
Yes, a new voice replied, and it was everywhere, it was echoing in her ears and wrapping around her knees and beating alongside her two hearts, and all of a sudden Agnes felt herself pulled in a thousand different directions. There was a hard jerk in the place where her stomach used to be; her eyes were squeezed shut but she could not stop the images and feelings that rose up with shocking clarity.
She was seven, snooping in her father’s study for some evidence of her mother, when Leo caught her and pulled her hair, telling her she was going to be in trouble.
She was a child in a massive, circular room with moons and stars and a sun painted on its vaulted ceiling. A silver-skinned woman with an orange ribbon tied around her neck was chastising her for asking an impertinent question.
She was sixteen, at Miss Elderberry’s, helping Susan Bruckner lace up her corset, her heart bursting with desire.
She was in a bed in a room made of opaque glass. A mobile of glittering stars hung above her, and a young woman with a purple ribbon around her neck was telling her she would love her as long as the stars burned in the sky.
It was her twelfth birthday and she was standing in front of her father, hoping that maybe this year, her Grandmother Byrne had sent a present. He handed her a small box wrapped in pink foil with a yellow bow, and she unwrapped it to find a Solit triangle necklace from Grandmother McLellan. Tears of disappointment pricked her eyes.
She was running along the banks of a large river of crystal-clear water, dodging low-hanging boughs of trees with golden leaves as another girl, silver-skinned but her own age, called out from behind her, “Sera, wait up!”
Sera must have pulled her hand away, because Agnes came back to the present abruptly, falling against the vanity and knocking over a bottle of talcum powder. She gaped at her arms, silvery blue sparks bursting underneath her skin, then fading away, leaving the brown color she had always known. She could still feel them though, faintly, a tingle in her veins.
Sera was watching her finger, the glow dimming until it disappeared completely. Agnes could not think of a single thi
ng to say. She did not know if she would ever be able to speak again. The memories had been so sharp, so precise; some of them she’d nearly forgotten, like Leo catching her in the study. But others were definitely not hers at all—who were the women with the ribbons around their necks, and the girl she had been racing? They had silver skin and blue hair just like Sera. Had Agnes managed to see into Sera’s memories too?
“Mother Sun, what was that?”
Agnes’s head whipped up at the sound of the Yes she had heard in her heart before the memories took her.
“What did you say?” she gasped.
“Can—can you understand me?” Sera choked on the words.
Agnes nodded, her mouth open, her face dazed. “I need to sit down,” she croaked, collapsing onto the vanity’s bench and putting her head between her knees. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be. It was too much, too bizarre, too impossible.
“My name is Sera Lighthaven,” Sera said. Her voice was so much lower and richer than it had been before. “I am a Cerulean. My blood is magic. And you can understand me now!”
She looked ecstatic, but Agnes could not share her mood, not yet.
“What . . . this is . . . it can’t be . . . magic, you said? You . . . have magic? In your blood?”
“Yes,” Sera said triumphantly, like she had passed some test. She held up her finger and Agnes froze—she was not certain she wanted to experience whatever that was again. But the finger did not glow this time. “We just blood bonded. I think.” Sera frowned. “It was not quite like real blood bonding, though—I have never shared memories during a blood bond before. Your brother does not seem to have been any nicer when he was a child than he is now.” Agnes let out a bewildered sigh that may have been intended as a laugh. Or a cry. She had not realized Sera had been seeing the memories too, and she wasn’t sure she liked that fact now that she knew. “But maybe that is how blood bonding works on planets,” Sera mused. “I think I may have given you a little bit of my magic. And we can talk now!” She knelt before Agnes, looking up at her with pleading eyes. “I need to get someplace where I can see, someplace very, very tall. Do you have dwellings like that here, or a temple I could climb? I must find the tether. I must know if the City Above the Sky is still out there.”
