Black Moon

by Romina Russell

  A pang of guilt strikes my chest.

  “It’s not looking good for us anywhere, though,” he adds with a deep sigh. “The Taurian government is demanding we join their workforce if we want to stay. Your friend Rubidum is defending us to her people, but as the Geminin government is a democracy this century, she’s going to be outvoted, and we’ll have to find a new home for our largest settlement. Sagittarius might be our best option, since they have such a large constellation and most Sagittarians don’t live there year-round.”

  By now I feel the guilt all over, like it’s a poison infecting my every organ. While I’ve been off obsessing about my personal problems, Mathias has been here, thinking of our people, doing what I should be doing.

  But then, I’ve always known he’s the better Zodai.

  “Do you think Sirna is right?” I ask faintly, still standing in the room’s threshold. “Have I lost perspective?”

  He shuts off the holograms with a touch of his Wave, and when the floating colors vanish, the air is static and gray. I watch as a school of Scorps swims past the window, and I keep focused on their graceful, synchronized movements.

  “When I was your Guide, I spent more time judging you than guiding you,” he says softly, “and far from being helpful, I think I only made you question yourself.”

  “Mathias, that’s not—”

  “It is true, Rho.” There’s a resigned resolve in his tone, like he’s been avoiding this realization for too long not to mean it now. So instead of arguing, I step inside and shut the door behind me.

  “Rather than comparing you to the Guardians who came before, I should have trusted your instincts,” he says as I sit beside him on the spongy blue floor. “When you became our leader, you had to adapt to a new galactic order, and you did so with admirable speed . . . but I held tight to the ways of the past, without realizing the world I was holding on to was already gone.”

  Images of Cancer flick through my mind, renewing my sense of loss. The master’s taken more than just our home planet from us. He’s taken our way of life.

  On Cancer, most Cancrians lived on islands or pod cities overrun with our loved ones. As families grew and expanded and formed families of their own, we’d cluster closer together, like nar-clam colonies, and build bigger bungalows to fit more bodies.

  Now families are irreparably broken, our people are spread out across the Zodiac, and a generation of Cancrians will be raised in orphanages. So much for happy hearts start with happy homes.

  “Your parents,” murmurs Mathias, “they didn’t raise you and your brother on your maternal grandparents’ land?”

  “My parents started a new home in a new place . . . Stan and I never met the rest of our family.” Mathias and I both know how decidedly un-Cancrian this is, so there’s no need to say it.

  “What did you want to do with your life before the Lunar Quadract?” I ask, mostly to avoid lingering on my family.

  Mathias’s expression grows wistful, the indigo of his eyes swirling like whirlpools of the Cancer Sea. “I hoped to distinguish myself at an early age in the Royal Guard . . . then retire young to return home and start a family.”

  It’s a very Cancrian answer, and yet it’s not what I expected of him. I think I envisioned Mathias being in the Royal Guard forever. “Did you have any marital prospects in mind?” I ask.

  I meant it to sound playful, but somehow the question had less weight in my mind than on my tongue.

  “I guess I just figured the right person would find me one day,” he answers, his cheeks looking as pink as mine feel. The passivity of his response is very traditional for the heterosexual men of our House. That’s because Cancer is—was—a woman’s world: We’re the House of motherhood, and that’s why one of our most sacred images is that of the nursing mother. Ours is a maternal society where women run the households, women write the laws, and women make the first move.

  “Did you—” My face flares like a just-lit match, and I’m not sure how I get the rest of my question out. “Did you ever notice me in the solarium?”

  The fire catches and torches Mathias’s features, too. “Not in the way you mean,” he says, and my eyes study the porous ground. “You’d always been a kid to me, and I didn’t want to encourage your crush. But something changed my last day of university.”

  I lift my gaze and find that his is unfocused, as if he’s seeing yesterday. “I wasn’t sad about leaving Elara. I didn’t like it there. But when I woke up that last day, I wasn’t looking forward to my freedom. I was upset about something, and I didn’t know what it was until I walked into the solarium.”

  His eyes meet mine, and there’s an intense clarity in their depths that feels safe and honest and Cancrian. “You were sixteen, but I hadn’t noticed until then. I guess, in a way, that morning was the first time I really looked at you.”

  His baritone deepens, and I feel the rumble of his voice in my bones. “I realized then that mornings with you had become my favorite part of the day.” He seems closer to me somehow, though neither of us has moved. “For five years, I’d been waking up and choosing your company over anyone else’s . . . and what I didn’t want to admit to myself was that I would miss you.”

  I feel my head shaking involuntarily, unable to reconcile his memory of that day with my own. “But that morning, when you walked in and saw me, you stormed right back out, like you were angry I was there.”

  I’ll never forget that day. I’d been so depressed the months leading up to Mathias’s graduation, knowing soon he’d be gone and we’d never share another morning together. For weeks I tried working up the courage to talk to him. Nishi threatened to invite him to my sixteenth birthday party if I didn’t, and though I really wanted to . . . I just couldn’t.

  Behind my paralyzing fear of rejection hid a deeper reason: I liked the idea of him too much.

  Mathias had become so important to me without ever saying a word. Because of him, I visited the solarium every day to read or meditate, and as a result I found a profound peace and concentration in Centering that I hadn’t felt since the days of Yarrot with Mom. Every time I’d hear about another of his accomplishments in the Elara news, I’d work harder in class so I could become someone he would notice in a few years. He was my constant; I could bicker with Nishi and Deke, I could do poorly in class, I could suffer severe homesickness, but Mathias would be in the solarium every morning, as sure as Helios’s rays would light up its glass walls.

  So on his last day I finally resolved to speak to him. I thought it an auspicious sign that he actually held my gaze that morning, and just as I opened my mouth to say something, he blasted out of the room, and the moon, and my life.

  “The moment I realized how I felt, I knew I had to leave,” he says now, bridging what little space was between us. “I was still too old for you,” he whispers, his breath brushing my face, “and we were in such different places in our lives, that I still think it would have been selfish to do otherwise.”

  “And now?” I ask, eyeing the slight stubble of his chin, the full shape of his lips, the sculpted lines of his cheekbones. I focus on every familiar feature of his face, forgetting my resolve to freeze my heart in hopes of finally figuring out my feelings. “Is what we feel for each other real . . . or is it a memory?”

  I’ve wanted to be with Mathias since I was twelve. My love for him kept me steady during my homesickness on the moon, and his love for me kept him steady during his torture at the hands of the Marad. Whatever was between Hysan and me was wrong because it went against our laws and would have always had to stay hidden—but Mathias and I are fated. So what are we still waiting for?

  My breath catches as I realize Mathias is leaning in, moving ever so slowly, until our lips lightly touch. His thumb caresses my jawline, then his hand slides to the back of my neck, and he pulls me into him, at last pressing our lips together.

  The k
iss is deep and breathless and all consuming—like first love. His mouth tastes like mornings in the solarium and afternoons in the Cancer Sea and yesterdays that came with guaranteed tomorrows.

  “Whatever this is,” whispers Mathias, “I don’t think it’s ever going away.” He looks into my eyes, and the deep blue of his gaze feels as soft as clouds.

  “Whatever happens, Rho . . . part of me will always be waiting to be yours.”

  6

  I WAKE UP TOO EARLY the next morning and sit upright in bed, disoriented. As I survey my room for the cause, remnants from my dream flicker in my mind, and my body grows warm as I start to relive last night’s kiss with Mathias. . . .

  Then I hear it again. Someone’s knocking on my door.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Helios,” says Engle’s flat voice. “Rise and shine, crab.”

  I flop back onto the waterbed and pull the sheets over my head. “I’m sleeping.”

  “Chieftain Skiff has requested a meeting, since your party is leaving us so soon.”

  I pull the sheets down to my chin. “We are?”

  “Your business here is finished. We expect you gone by tomorrow at the latest.”

  I’m really going to miss this House’s hospitality.

  I clamber out of bed and sleepily pull on a blue suit sewn from the same lightweight, stretchy threads everyone here wears—flexible enough for air swimming and thin enough to endure this world’s humidity. My hair is a frizzy mess, but I have to hurry, so I just tie it into a sloppy bun. I should probably put more effort into my appearance when meeting with a Guardian, but if Skiff cares about that stuff, then he should have given me more time to get ready.

  As we ride the lift up to the roof, I Wave Mathias a message, letting him and Stan know we’re no longer welcome on Scorpio, so we’ll have to figure out where to go next. I decide against mentioning Nishi’s invitation, because we each have personal motives for wanting to visit the Eleventh House, and if we do go, I want to be certain it’s not for one of those reasons.

  “Where are we meeting your Guardian?” I ask as we retrieve our waterwings and fins from the lockers.

  “Chieftain Skiff has a very busy schedule, so we’ll be travelling to him. At the moment he’s on my home world, Oscuro.”

  I snap my head up from the fins I’m slipping over my feet. “We’re leaving Pelagio?”

  “Where’d I lose you?” he asks as he activates his vapor jet packs. I roll my eyes as he floats into the sky, then I rise after him.

  We merge into a school of air swimmers. The ocean around us is so clear that Helios’s light illuminates the whole city of Nepturn, glinting off its glass walls and revealing a world of activity bustling beneath us. Crowds of Scorps hurry along sandy sidewalks, while families in small boats navigate networks of narrow canals outfitted with traffic lights and pedestrian bridges.

  Unlike the visitors’ burrow, most of the blocky buildings surrounding us don’t have any windows. That’s because the inventors inside are working on technology that’s decades into the future, so they’re less concerned with looking out than with outsiders looking in.

  We board a submarine at the spaceport, and this time we bring our waterwings and fins with us and store them in the overhead compartments. I take the window seat and Engle sits beside me, promptly projecting messages from his Paintbrush and ignoring my presence.

  A wiry, long-faced girl sits across from us, donning a black shirt and shorts sewn from the same lightweight material we’re all wearing. Clipped onto her shirt is a scorpion-shaped metallic device; Scorps like to add strange pieces of technology to their clothing that are often their own inventions.

  When we’re underway the girl pricks her finger on the scorpion’s stinger and a drop of blood dribbles out and gets absorbed by the metal. After a moment the scorpion’s shell cracks open, and the girl wipes her hand on the hem of her shirt before pressing her Paintbrush inside the opening.

  The scorpion’s legs and tail clamp around her finger, and she shuts her eyes and goes completely still.

  “They’re called Crawlers,” says Engle, and I turn to meet his red eyes. “Every Scorp designs his own version because the device is molded to his mind. The right DNA sequence unlocks it.”

  “What’s it do?” I ask as I stare at the frozen girl.

  “Organizes your thoughts.”

  “How?”

  “When a person places his Paintbrush against the hidden sensor, the software syncs with his mind and runs a program in his head that sorts his thoughts into a processing system of his own design. Something compatible with the way his brain works but more comfortable than his mind’s natural set-up.”

  “Where can I get one?”

  With a glorious glare only a Scorp could pull off, he says, “You’re sneaky.”

  “I’m sneaky?”

  “You’re good with words, I’ll give you that. But all your talk of the Zodiac magically uniting against a mythical monster doesn’t cut it on Scorpio. Here, we take Trust Only What You Can Touch more seriously.” Brow furrowed and voice sharp, he adds, “And you’re still too untouchable to do anything real.”

  The bite in his tone tips me off to the feelings behind his words; Engle’s problem with me is more than just lack of faith—he doesn’t trust me.

  “What aren’t you telling us?” he asks, proving me right. “What is it you really want?”

  His questions are so ridiculously paranoid that rather than answering them, I retort with one of my own. “Who’d you lose in the attack on Oscuro?”

  He doesn’t respond, but I notice his hand clenching again.

  “I guess I’m not the only one who’s untouchable.”

  Engle returns to his holograms, and I go back to staring at the girl, who’s now moving her hands through the air like she’s conducting an orchestra. Just as I start to lose interest in her and decide to check my messages, the blue water beyond the windows darkens to a velvety black so opaque, we could be floating through Space.

  The submarine’s lighting system shuts off, and I turn to Engle. All I can see are his Maw-red eyes as he whispers, “Welcome to our darker side.”

  Beyond the glass, bright lights flit by, like showers of shooting stars. Once we slow down, I see they’re really schools of glow-in-the-dark fish. Their colors draw patterns in the darkness, like shape-shifting constellations.

  When I look back inside the sub, everyone has started to glow like the fish beyond the windows—including me. I look down at the blue tunic of my suit, and it looks as if bright blue light were pulsing from behind the fabric. Like I’m wearing waves of the Cancer Sea.

  In the black water beyond, the silver stars of Oscuro’s mechanical gills twinkle into view. Within the world’s protective bubble, schools of Scorps wade through the air in glow-in-the-dark outfits, looking like fish showing off shiny skin.

  “You’ll need these,” says Engle.

  “I can’t see what you’re showing me.”

  He grabs my hand and presses something small into my palm. His skin feels thin and waxy, and I can’t imagine it offers much protection from the outside.

  “They’re contact lenses.”

  “And how am I supposed to put them in when I can’t see?”

  He hits something on the armrest, and a dim light pops on over my head. I crack open my Wave and beam out a holographic mirror so I can see what I’m doing. Opting to ignore the cap of fuzzy frizz gracing my head, I hold up the eyedropper and squeeze out a single drop into each eye.

  When the liquid touches each cornea, it solidifies into a pair of soft lenses that hug my irises, which have gone from green to red.

  The overhead light suddenly blinds me, and I yelp, squeezing my eyelids shut against the pain. My eyes are streaming tears, and I cover them with my hands.

  “It’s off now,” says
Engle.

  Very tentatively I spread my fingers apart on my face and peek out. There’s no more illumination in the sub, and yet I can somehow identify every detail of the vessel. The shapes around me are all different shades of gray; I never knew there could be so many variations of the same color. It’s like I’ve zoomed so far into a single wave of light that I’m seeing the particles that create it.

  We dock at the station, and gaining access to this world proves to be exhausting. After the attack on Oscuro and the discovery on Squary, Scorps know there must be double agents within their ranks, and they’ve become even less trusting than they were to begin with—which wasn’t much.

  Once Oscuro’s officials finally finish interrogating us, they grudgingly grant us passage past their borders, and we walk into a world where it’s always night.

  The gills above us sparkle like stars in a black sky, and curious sea creatures peer in through the glass walls, their neon bodies popping in and out of view every few feet. Unlike Pelagio, this waterworld doesn’t have a network of canals; rather, the ground is buried beneath a sea of water. Boats abound, transporting people to the spongy buildings on the horizon, each vessel identifiable by the soft, golden glow of a candle-like light burning from its bow. The effect makes this place seem almost romantic, though that couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to its people.

  “Do you want to visit your family while we’re here?” I offer Engle.

  His glower closes the subject, and I silently slip on my waterwings and fins before we take flight to join the swimmers in the sky. This world is so dark that soon the boats beneath us are visible only by the glow of their candle-like light.

  Since I’m wearing the special contacts, the blocky buildings are easy to spot and avoid. I cycle to the outer lane when Engle does, and then we peel away from the group and land on the narrow rooftop of a green building. After stowing our gear in a locker, I follow him to what appears to be a gaping hole in the structure’s ceiling. I peer over its edge tentatively. All I see below is darkness.