Wandering Star: A Zodiac Novel

by Romina Russell

  “Where are we?” I ask Arcadia, who is sitting in the back of the car with me.

  “The heart of the Heart,” she says, and for the first time, her almond-shaped, sepia eyes grow gentler. “Everyone in each Section of Vitulus lives within a community; this one is called the Professional.”

  The bullet-car pulls onto a ramp, and we exit the highway and cruise into a cluster of interconnected homes. Our speed has dramatically decreased now that we’re in a residential area, and I glue my face to the window to take everything in. The modest, two-story houses have super-thick walls, which they share with adjacent structures, so that the rows of homes appear as though links in one chain. I also don’t see any barriers between neighboring properties: Swing sets straddle lawns, tree branches in one yard jut into the next, balconies bump against each other, and so on.

  Yet most striking of all is the technology that outfits each home, making every task more efficient. There are elevators waiting at front doors, holographic sensors that trim the grass when it grows too high, roving litter catchers, sliding sidewalks, spinning driveways, and more.

  It’s evening, and many families seem to be reuniting after a day apart. There are cars pulling into garages, returning home from work, and a collection of big blue buses depositing children done with their daily lessons and activities. “Adults work from morning to night three days a week on Taurus, so on those days kids participate in Selfless Service, which keeps them busy until about now,” explains Arcadia.

  “Selfless Service is an after-school activity organized by the Education Department of each Section,” she adds, though I already know this from Mom’s lessons. “Big blue buses pick students up from every school and bring them to communities that could use a hand—the less fortunate, the elderly, the disabled.”

  Our vehicle comes to a stop in front of a decrepit house that looks nothing like the perfectly manicured ones surrounding it. No modern technology or cars or people are milling around . . . it’s just a rough-hewn wooden structure that’s barely standing upright.

  “This was Vecily’s childhood home,” says Arcadia when we’ve exited the car. We stand in front of the cabin, looking up at it somberly.

  It looks like a rotting animal carcass, its lawn overgrown, the ceiling partly caved, the paint flaking off the walls. “Why hasn’t it been torn down?”

  Arcadia runs a hand through her short, silky locks. “Then we would forget.”

  I turn to her in curiosity, and in the dimming day, her complexion deepens to an even richer shade of brown. “Vecily didn’t stand with her House,” she explains. “She went astray. So now her home sits here as a relic, a reminder of what happens when you go against your people.”

  I start walking toward it, but Arcadia yanks on my unbandaged arm. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going inside.”

  “But it’s not safe in there! The structure is a millennium old; it could come down any moment—”

  I free my arm from her grip. “I’ll be quick.” I didn’t come all this way to turn around now.

  Arcadia hangs back as I walk up the overgrown, weedy garden and reach the creaky, rotting door of the ancient cabin. I recoil when I feel fuzzy moss on the handle, so instead I push the moldy wood with my shoulder. Immediately I have to cover my mouth from the stench that greets my nostrils; it’s like the smell of decay from the Marad torture chamber.

  The cabin is smothered with dust and dirt and spiderwebs, so much debris that it muffles my footsteps and makes the air taste solid. Smears of mud and graffiti cover the walls, and shards of broken bottles gather like fangs in the room’s corners.

  There’s an archway leading to the back of the house, where there are two bedrooms. I know which one is Vecily’s by the rotting V carved into the closed door. I have to shove it twice before it comes to life, and when the door finally swings open, the hinge cracks off, and the whole thing thumps down onto the dusty ground.

  When the air clears, I look inside and see a moldy mattress, a three-legged chair, and a slanted wooden desk. I picture Vecily the teenager, perched at that desk on the day she was named Guardian, knowing her life would never be her own again. I think of her lying on the small bed, contemplating her childhood, probably remembering Datsby most of all.

  I can see her resolving to make a difference in her friend’s name. To do whatever it takes to change the plight of Risers in our worlds.

  But her Advisors didn’t take Vecily seriously when she came into power. Her own people didn’t listen to her. And then along came enigmatic Blazon and beautiful Brianella, and they invited Vecily to be an equal. They whispered to her of a future without divisions—no walls between Houses, no hate toward Risers—and she saw her chance to have an impact. An opportunity to be a true leader of her people—and the Zodiac—and she seized it.

  “I’m going to finish what you started,” I say out loud, so that maybe this dying house might finally find some peace.

  29

  IT’S LATE WHEN I GET back to the Cancrian embassy, and Lodestars are about to lift the plank for the night. I hurry into the first bungalow, where there are hammocks outfitted with embassy Waves and a saltwater swimming pool. The Cancrian representative at the reception desk gives me my lodging information and shows me the way.

  My room is in the third bungalow, beside Nishi’s. I open her door slowly to check on her, and I find her asleep, with Deke’s frozen hologram drifting slowly through the room. I close the door quickly, my pulse beating in my throat.

  Stanton and Aryll are bunking together on the other side of my room. I’m sure they’re already asleep, too, so I resist the urge to knock. I’m too pensive to sleep myself, so I take out Vecily’s heart-shaped Ephemeris and turn it over in my hand, thinking of her rotting home. Then, remembering one of my favorite details from the Cancrian embassy on Aries, I head to the top floor of the bungalow to the reading room.

  On Cancer, and on most Houses, a reading room is a place for star-reading. Since most Cancrians prefer to study their Ephemerii under natural starlight, the room is often built as a planetarium. In this embassy, it takes up the whole top floor of this bungalow. The walls and ceiling are cut from crystal, just like Mom’s reading room at home.

  I expect it to be dark inside, but when I open the door, I see shimmering lights swirling in black air. A girl walks through them, and in the hollowness of the room, it looks as though she’s wading through real Space. I turn to go, but—

  “Stay,” says Pandora.

  “No, that’s all right, I was just—”

  I spy a gaze as dark as midnight shining from a spot on the floor, watching me. I forget my excuse and stare back at Mathias, who, save for his eyes, is wrapped completely in shadow.

  “How are you?” I chance.

  No answer.

  “He’s been a lot better since reuniting with his parents,” says Pandora softly.

  I walk across the room to the wall Mathias is sitting against, and I join him, leaving a few feet between us. He’s still watching me, but at least he doesn’t move away. Pandora hangs back, staring at the lights of her Ephemeris, giving us space but not any privacy.

  “I heard about what happened at the Plenum.” Mathias’s voice is so weak, his words might as well be the whistling of wind. He clears his throat and adds, “I’m . . . proud of you.”

  I wonder whether it’s speaking or just my presence that’s making him miserable, and I wince. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Rho.” At the sound of my name, my heart releases a sharp punch, and I let myself look up into Mathias’s eyes. “You restored Cancer’s reputation.”

  This time the words come out effortlessly, and I think he might mean them. “Thank you.” Emboldened but still cautious, I say, “I . . . I was hoping we could talk. You know, whenever you’re ready.”

  Mathias rises, and I know I shouldn’t have said
anything.

  “Yeah,” he says, walking over to Pandora. He stops before her, and she takes his hand and squeezes it. If he says something to her, I can’t hear it, then he continues past her, out the door. To my surprise, she doesn’t leave with him.

  “I can go, or . . . I mean, you don’t have to stay here with me,” I say as I stand up, unsure I want to get to know this girl. “I only came for a stroll. I didn’t realize anyone would be in here.”

  “We star-readers are creatures of the night,” she says, her amethyst eyes practically glowing in the dark, reflecting the constellations.

  “How is Mathias really doing?” My throat closes on his name.

  “Better. I probably won’t be here much longer,” she adds in a lower register.

  Even though I’m not displeased by this news, I can’t help but hear the disappointment in her voice. Her feelings for Mathias—and her fear that he might not need her anymore—are as obvious on her as they’ve probably always been on me.

  But does he love her back?

  “How . . . what’s he like? Now that he’s . . . been away for so long?” My greedy heart can’t help itself—I miss him more than I can let myself feel. For five years, he’s taken up so much space in my mind, but the past few months he’s lodged himself in so deep, I don’t think I can uproot him without leaving a permanent scar.

  “He’s quiet,” she says in her normal, airy voice. “He mostly holds my hand and thinks. He used to wake up every night, screaming, but he doesn’t anymore. Sometimes he’ll speak in his sleep, though. Those nights, he only says one word.” Her eyes flash to mine. “Rho.”

  My heart feels like a carafe that’s close to overspilling. I have to turn away, pretending to study the lights of the Ephemeris while my pulse slows. “If you’re a Nightwing . . . have you seen anything in your reads about what’s coming?”

  “No . . . but I have seen something . . .”

  Her voice trails off, and she orbits the holographic Helios, turning her face away from mine. A cloud drifts past the full Taurian moon above us, and the map glows brighter in the deepening dark, dappling the glossy floor with its lights and shadowing her profile with mystery. I survey the ground for an Astralator or another mathematical tool, but there’s nothing, and Pandora didn’t seem to bring any supplies.

  “How do you do your reads?”

  “I’m different, like you.” She looks at me, semi-smiling, but there aren’t enough stars out to be certain.

  “On Aquarius, we use astrogeometry instead of astroalgebra. We make predictions based on the new shapes formed by the stars shifting in the sky.” She paints invisible lines with her finger connecting the moons of Sagittarius and shows how they form an unevenly five-sided shape. “Most Aquarian Acolytes measure the movement with an Astralator to decode the new patterns, but I solve the degree differences between the old and new shapes in my head.”

  I nod. She’s a natural, like me, only her instincts lean more toward the math than the stars.

  “My instructors disapprove of my methods,” she says, her words gathering speed and energy, “even though my reads are right eighty-six percent of the time. Then I heard about you, how you didn’t use an Astralator and were predicting something nobody else could see . . . like I was. Then Mallie told me about you, and she believed in you so much that I signed up for the armada. I realized I could keep trying to fit in at the Academy, or I could leave and search for where I belong.”

  My insides freeze.

  The crystal room has transformed into a Snow Globe, filling up with an icy memory. I press my head into the wall to steady myself as images from the worst day from my childhood resurface. Pandora just reminded me of the last words Mom spoke to me.

  “Rho? Is everything okay?” she asks, walking over to me.

  “Yeah, just . . . déjà vu,” I say vaguely, still pressing my forehead to the cold crystal.

  “On Aquarius, we have another name for déjà vu,” she says, her voice dipping to a whisper. Her breath forms puffs of vapor on the crystal wall next to our faces. “We call it starstruck. We believe the sensation comes from the stars picking out a moment in your life to highlight, and it’s up to you to discover the reason.”

  I stare into her wide amethyst eyes, and I realize she still hasn’t answered my question. “Pandora . . . what have you Seen?”

  “I still See it,” she whispers. “When I Center myself as deeply as I can . . . I feel this heaviness. My predictions show . . . something awful.” Her waterfall of hair swallows her face, but I can still see her orb-like eyes, which have grown larger and rounder. “I’ve Seen that Helios is going to go dark . . . and then the rest of the Houses will follow.”

  A chill ripples through me as I picture the moons of Cancer flickering and their eventual turn to darkness, then I imagine that same thing happening across the entire Zodiac.

  “Someone’s going to turn off the sun,” she whispers. “Have you ever seen an omen like that?”

  I shake my head, and for a moment, I know what it must be like to listen to my warnings of Ochus. Staring into Pandora’s terrified face, all I can think to myself is please let her be wrong.

  When I’m back in my room minutes later, I’m still contemplating her vision. I don’t know what to make of it; all I know is if someone is going to turn off the Zodiac’s light, the best way for an everlasting flame to fight back is by burning even brighter.

  30

  I WAKE UP TO MY own screams.

  Footsteps pound the floor, and I hear my door opening in the darkness. “Rho?”

  “Stan . . . sorry,” I blurt between breaths. “Nightmare.”

  As I say the word, I catch a glimpse of the dream. Every House in our galaxy going dark, every planet being consumed by Dark Matter, our galactic sun burning into ashes . . . Pandora’s omen.

  My vision adjusts to the night’s blackness as my brother sits down across from me on the bed. Cross-legged, the way he used to do when we were kids. “Want to hear a story?”

  I nod and close my eyes, eager for Stanton’s voice to fill my head and drive out everything else.

  “There once was a little girl whose name I can’t remember, so let’s call her Rho.” That’s how he often used to start his stories, and the familiar detail makes me smile in the dark.

  “Rho carried within her a light so bright that it outshined those around her. At first, she was afraid to stand out, so she tried to muffle that light by stuffing it deep within her hard Cancrian shell. While Rho managed to fool most, a few people still caught glimpses of that light—in the passion behind her stare, or the sweetness of her smile, or the purity of her soul. So bright was that light that it soon burned right through her shell, and everyone noticed.

  “The world was so blinded by Rho’s brightness that they didn’t know how to react. Some were attracted to her light and wanted her to lead them. Some were scared of it and wanted her to shut it off. And two fell in love with her and wanted to make her light theirs.”

  My eyes fly open, and I stare at my brother in mortified alarm. But he keeps narrating.

  “Rho thought she didn’t have anyone to talk to, that even her brother wouldn’t understand. Until she gave him a chance, and he swore he’d trust her judgment. He also, however, imparted some humble advice of his own—because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be doing his job as the older sibling.”

  I grin with nervous relief. The final obstacle standing between Stanton and me isn’t actually there at all. “This is one of your better stories,” I tell him.

  “His advice to her was this: Forget everyone else for a moment and all their claims to your light. You’ve always done things for other people. Moving to Elara, accepting the Guardianship, leading the armada, coming here . . . but tomorrow, do what’s best for you.”

  His story now at an end, Stanton takes my hand. “For once, don’t worry a
bout the rest of us, Rho. There’ll be time to save the Zodiac, to choose a path, and a partner, and a home planet—but before your light can guide others, you have to let it illuminate you.”

  I lean forward and hug him. “When’d you get so wise?”

  “Must’ve been all the brainberries I ate on Capricorn,” he says into my ear.

  When we pull apart, I rest my back against the headboard and exhale deeply. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything about Hysan or Mathias.”

  “It’s okay. Your attempts at lying are too funny to be upsetting.”

  “Thanks. Hey, can I trade you in for the brother from your story?”

  “No, but you can take over as storyteller.” He leans back on his elbows and stretches out his legs, his feet next to me and pressing into the headboard. “Tell me, what did Rho say to her brother after he gave her such sage advice?”

  “She thanked him . . . and she admitted that while she has no clue how she feels about the two guys, she’s starting to understand how she feels about herself and her place in the Zodiac. And she thinks he’s right—that might be enough for now.”

  “I’m glad for her,” he says soothingly. “But remember, we can’t stop until we’ve arrived at a death or a wedding.” That’s how we always concluded our tales as kids—weddings for comedies, deaths for tragedies.

  “So for the story’s sake, at least,” he says, “and just between us—which guy’s it gonna be? The Cancrian or the Libran?”

  “I think this one’s going to have to end on a cliffhanger.”

  I push his feet off the headboard, slide lower beneath the covers, and rest my head on a pillow. At the other end of the bed, Stanton snaps up to sitting. “Rho, you know that’s not how we end our—”

  “Good night.”

  I roll over and pull the sheets across my head, and I feel Stanton’s weight lift off the mattress. “Fine,” he says indignantly. “To be continued.”