Lotus and Thorn

by Sara Wilson Etienne

  Still . . . I ran my hand over the cover. He shouldn’t have been going through my things.

  “Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm?” The authority was gone from Edison’s voice, leaving it tentative. “Is that the book?”

  I stiffened, running my fingers over the gold lettering on the cover. I had to remind myself that the Curadores had nothing to do with Pleiades’ laws and its prejudices. In fact, Curadores lived with technology every day . . . they were alive because of it. “The book?”

  “The book you said your mother named Taschen after.”

  “Oh. Yes. This is the book.” And I showed him where the word Taschen was written in gold on the binding.

  Lotus had been fascinated by the Grimms’ tales when she was little, flipping through the pictures thousands of times. She’d been slower to read than I had, and Taschen had no interest in learning at all. So it had fallen to me to read the fairy tales to both of them.

  But once we’d gone through the fairy tales so often we had them memorized, Tasch had taken to making up her own. Ones where, as she put it, the girls just don’t wait around in towers and the men aren’t quite so stupid. As we got older, somehow the stories had become more real—inspired by the things we’d seen and found out in the Reclamation Fields. We’d whispered them late at night in our bedroom, feeling a giddy rebelliousness as we imagined what the original Colony might’ve been like. Or the dream of returning to Earth, journeying on great ships through the stars. Living a life that had nothing to do with plagues, hunger, or atonement.

  “Can I hear one of the stories?” Edison asked.

  I hesitated. The book had been a secret between me and my sisters for so long—it almost felt like a betrayal to read the fairy tales without them. Then again, it would keep back the dark and the nightmares.

  And I opened the book to my sisters’ favorite. A story I knew by heart.

  Once upon a time . . . there was a sorcerer who disguised himself as a beggar. He went from house to house stealing beautiful girls. He spirited them away and no one knew where, for none of them were ever heard from again.

  “Let me see that thing.” Edison came and sat next to me, flipping through the pages. “Why don’t we find one with a valiant prince instead?”

  But he got sidetracked, looking at the strange pictures. I understood the fascination—women in beautiful dresses, animals wearing clothes, and rolling hillsides with perfect, rectangular houses. But scattered amongst the playful loveliness were disturbing images as well. Snarling wolves with cruel teeth. Thorns dripping with blood. Lost, weeping children.

  “Do you think Earth was really like this? With huge palaces and all those trees?” He pointed to the cover—the girl with the golden ball and the faraway castle. The illustration was from the tale of the Frog Prince. The story read, When it was hot, the Princess would escape deep into the forest, where even the sun couldn’t touch her.

  There were only a few scrubby trees out in Tierra Muerta and small clumps of them climbing up the mountains, nothing like in this book. Lotus and Tasch and I had debated about this a thousand times—in fact, it was our favorite argument. Could there really be so many trees that even the heat of the sun couldn’t reach you? So many that you could get lost in them and never found again? But if Earth had been so green and lovely, why would anyone leave? I thought again of the missing radio, wondering if we’d ever get our answer.

  “Well, if Earth was like this book, then we finally know why the Colonists left.” I made my voice deadly serious as I paged through the pictures to find the right one.

  “What?” he asked, tensed.

  “Mice in pants.”

  Edison looked at me sharply, then cracked up, shaking his head. Then he found the story of the three sisters again, continuing where I’d left off. And we took turns like that. Reading to each other from the ancient book.

  I don’t remember when I fell asleep. I just know that Edison’s steady, deep voice was in my ears. And then a thought drifted up from the silt of my mind, like a riddle I’d been trying to solve without even knowing it. Edison had asked me about my sisters . . . before I’d ever told him that I had any.

  CHAPTER 6

  I WAS SHIVERING and wet. Everything lit up in a flash, and an epic crash of thunder rattled through me. I was on my feet before I was fully awake.

  My shoes were soaked and the shuttle groaned. Another flash of lightning showed rain pouring down the windows.

  “Get up!” I prodded Edison with my foot and shoved the book in my pack as the whole shuttle lurched forward. A gush of water flooded in through the makeshift barricade in front of the door.

  We’d done the one thing you never do in a sandstorm: take shelter in the lowlands between dunes. And this was a prime example of why not. Rain rarely fell in Tierra Muerta, so when it did, it came so fast the desert didn’t know what to do with it. The paths between dunes turned into raging rivers, drowning everything in their way.

  I could hear Edison scrambling in the dark now. The beam of his headlamp strobed around the cabin.

  “For God’s sake, help me!” I threw on my own pack, then started yanking crates and bags out of the way. Trying to clear the slideboard—even as water rushed in through gaps. The whole tower of bags teetered and I ducked. But the blow didn’t come. Edison was beside me now, helping me unblock the hatch.

  “We’re gonna drown if we don’t get to high ground.” I went for the opening in the door, just as another flash lit up the world.

  And there was no ground—only an angry, spitting river. Edison yanked me back just before I fell in. The rain had swept away all the sand and now the shuttle was at the center of a rabid flood surging through the dunes. Carrying us along with it. The shuttle was floating—but not for long.

  “Climb up!” I pointed to the roof, screaming over the roar of water.

  And Edison nodded, hoisting me out the doorway and toward the roof of the shuttle. Wild panic hit me as I dangled over the waves. I didn’t know the first thing about swimming. Even if I did, I’d be pulled under in seconds.

  Then from out of nowhere, something swooped down on me—its great wings thrashing against the pelting rain. Luminescent blue eyes enormous in its moon-face. The bird’s talons grabbed at my shirt, raking my arm, as if it was trying against all odds to haul me onto the roof.

  Before I had a chance to do anything, the shuttle slammed against the side of a dune, spinning the ship madly in the current. My fingernails clawed the roof of the shuttle, trying to hold on. Finally, they caught on a seam in the slick metal. Using it as a handhold, I pushed off Edison’s shoulders and scrambled up.

  By then, the bird was gone. I reached down for Edison—but he was already leaping up onto the roof next to me. As much a force of nature as the lightning streaking through the sky.

  Water streamed down my face, blurring everything. But by now my panic had morphed into the same rush I felt when I was sparring. I was used to uneven odds.

  “We have to jump,” I yelled over the storm.

  If Edison said anything back, I couldn’t hear it. He just shook his head, wiping at the rain pouring down the face of his isolation suit.

  I opened my mouth to speak again, but he shook his head and pulled me to him. His arms wrapped around me, pressing the side of my face against his warm chest. And for a moment, we stood there, rocking in the darkness.

  “Now, say it again.” The voice from his speakers rolled through me like thunder.

  “We have to jump.” The shuttle was sinking lower and lower as it filled with water. Soon there would be no roof to stand on.

  “I can’t see anything,” Edison said.

  “You’ll have to trust me.”

  “Anytime.” And there was a smile in his voice, even now.

  I pulled away and took Edison’s hand. Mine was lost inside his grip and I let the solidness of it ground
me. I leaned into him. “One, two . . .”

  Water crept over the edge of the shuttle’s roof and I waited just long enough for the current to take us a bit closer into the side of the dune.

  “Three!” I squeezed his hand and we leapt.

  I never would’ve made it on my own. I know that. But Edison sent us soaring into the air, pulling me along with him. We cleared the river and slammed into the hill of wet sand.

  Then we were on our feet again. Clambering up the dune. Trying to find traction in the grit.

  “Here!” Edison shouted.

  He’d stumbled over the ruins of an old building the flood had uncovered. Clinging to each other and what remained of the structure, we climbed. Pulling ourselves up jagged walls. Half-gone staircases. Steel crossbeams. Anything we could find, as long as it was up. Away from the water.

  Rain turned to hail and I scrambled into what was left of an old stairwell. Part of the ceiling was intact and we huddled together, catching our breath.

  “Let’s wait it out here,” Edison said. His headlamp scanned the narrow stairway, but we couldn’t see much. Which was fine with me. I had no desire to see how unstable this place was.

  I sat there, listening to the rain. Remembering to breathe. Wiping water out of my eyes. My teeth chattering.

  Edison pulled me close to him and I let him. Letting the heat from his suit calm me down. Stop my shivering.

  “Once upon a time . . .” Edison’s voice rumbled through me. “There was a house belonging to three beautiful sisters . . .”

  CHAPTER 7

  DAWN ROSE SOFT over the desert, the sand drying almost as soon as the sun touched it. I eased away from Edison—untangling myself from his arms—and began to make my way out of the crumbling stairwell and back down to solid ground. Like Pleiades, this building had probably once stretched high into the sky, blue solar glass walls shimmering in the sun. But now it stood exposed, like a person without their skin.

  You could see chipped sinks and toilets sticking out of the walls. Decaying furniture and waterlogged computers. Within a day, some crew would run across this place and strip it. Wire from the walls. Metal faucets. Circuit boards. Plastics. All good for trading. And anything wood could be used for bonfires.

  I swung down from the lowest beam and dropped into the sand. I pulled off my boots, setting them in the sun to dry. Then I planted my feet and drew my knife. I did a few small kicks first, to work out the stiffness. The sand clung to my damp toes and I kicked high, flinging it off—the energy of the storm still imprinted on my muscles.

  But here in the early morning desert, it was impossible not to feel the absence of my lost crew all around me. Right now, they’d be breaking camp. Sparring. Chatting over breakfast. I closed my eyes, imagining them here—testing the bruise. My grief was still so fresh and at its center, I hit a wall of isolation so concrete it knocked me to my knees.

  I forced myself to open my eyes and see its truth. That there were not friendly spirits bustling around me. That I knelt alone in the empty sand.

  The only one of them left.

  I clutched my arms to my chest as if they might keep in the pain—as if they might be able to hold me together. And this time when the tears came, I let them. It seemed right to let them fall on the damp sand.

  It would not be the last time I’d cry for my friends, but when the tears were gone, I understood something new. I would have to speak louder now—because their voices had been lost. And I would be able to do so because the might of their voices had been added to my own. I wiped my eyes and got to my feet, steeling myself. Remembering what Suji and those women had taught me about surviving in a place that wanted to kill you.

  Planting my feet again, I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind again. But it was still crowded and clamoring. Bit by bit, I cleared away the terror of last night’s flood. And the implications of losing the shuttle. I tried to clear Edison away too—the image of him sleeping slumped against the wall of the stairwell, mud streaking his isolation suit.

  But my thoughts about him were too messy. This man—this Curador, I reminded myself—I was drawn to him in a way I didn’t understand. He was so confident and full of bravado and yet, when he’d talked about his brother . . . about being different . . . I’d understood him. Or rather, we’d understood each other. I’d never had that before. Not with anyone who wasn’t Tasch or Lotus. But I wasn’t sure what to do with that yet, so I tucked it away for now.

  The memory of the bird was not cleared away easily either. Wings pumping. Talons curled.

  Had it survived the storm?

  I hadn’t gotten a good look at it and I didn’t need to. I’d glimpsed that same bird many times before, when Dad and I were training out in the Commons. Or in the firelight of the Festivals. It wasn’t easy to spot, just a flash of blue eyes in the night. I didn’t even remember anymore the first time I’d seen the creature—but I felt like I’d spent my life peering into the shadows, watching for it.

  I told my sisters about it once but I got the feeling they thought it was one of our stories. Taschen had slid her arm through mine and said, Maybe it’s watching over you—as if it was part of our make-believe world. In truth, the bird seemed so fantastic, I wasn’t sure I’d truly believed in him myself.

  Now I traced the pink ridges running up my arm—the scratches from its claws were real enough.

  “Are you hurt?” Edison crossed the sand, worry in his voice. And for a second, I was back in the storm—balanced on the roof, his arms locked around me.

  “It’s nothing.” And knowing he wouldn’t give up so easily, I showed him my arm. “Just scratches.”

  “Well, I feel like I’ve been through a meat grinder.”

  “You’re injured?” The possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.

  “Like you, just a little . . .” Edison trailed off, something catching his eye. “Will you look at them!”

  He gazed around the dunes in amazement. The sun was all the way up now, and the thunderstorm had done more than simply gouge a trench through the desert.

  Overnight, the Tierra Muerta had come alive. Tiny flowers graced the wasteland—yellow, orange, and red speckling the grey-blue sand. And the gully the flood had left behind was blanketed with blooms—a river of color.

  “There was nothing! Nothing here yesterday!” he shouted. “Give them some water and they just spring up out of nowhere.”

  “And they’ll probably be dead by tomorrow.”

  He picked a flower, twirling it between his fingers. “But not before they shed their pollen. Don’t you see? That’s the whole point! They’ve been waiting months, maybe years, for this exact moment. The elegance of adaptation. Of evolution.” He held the tiny blossom in his outstretched hand, as if he was reaching for the right words to wrap around the ideas in his head. “That something so fragile could grow in this desert should be impossible. But against all odds, here it is.”

  Without thinking, I repeated what Sarika said when she was collecting spices for brewing. “God loves all things beautiful and delicious.”

  “God has nothing to do with it. It’s genetics. Years upon years upon centuries of this brutal place pushing life to evolve better, stronger, in order to grapple with this desert. You of all people should understand that.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re proof positive.” Edison reached out carefully and took my hands—running his gloved thumbs across my extra pinkies. Then he looked into my eyes as if he was searching for something. Some sense of understanding, of validation. And I found myself, more than anything, wanting to give it to him.

  “Leica, can’t you see this world was made for you? Or more accurately, you were made for it. Immune to Red Death. Fast, strong. Your extra fingers must give you an edge!”

  An edge? What had my dad told me over and over again? Your opponent is the least of your worries, L
eica. If you believe you are weaker than him, if you believe his five fingers are better than your six, then you have already handed him your sticks.

  I’d always imagined that I compensated for my Corruption with speed and strength and cunning. But was it like Edison said? Were my hands actually an improvement on the rest of the world? I’d never gotten a chance to try myself against the best of Pleiades; maybe I was stronger.

  “Gabriel made you better. And for the sake of your people, you should accept that.” He laid his great hand against mine. “And Jenner? The Dome? For the sake of my people, they made me better. We are the same.”

  Edison looked at me the way he’d looked at the wildflowers. I thought of the careful way Edison had talked about his brother and him being “the future.” I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. But I realized, stunned, that I’d never really had a future before. In a group of people who lived their lives in anticipation of a paradise I was never invited to, I’d only ever had an existence.

  The same. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t liked the sound of that.

  There was none of the grinning exuberance in Edison’s face now. Only a promise as he folded his fingers with mine. “The same.”

  • • •

  With only a half jug of water left, it seemed smart to see if we could find the shuttle. We followed the riverbed, picking through debris as we went. Broken crates. One of the orange boxes. Nothing useful.

  “Maybe some of the supplies are still intact inside the shuttle,” Edison said.

  We didn’t have to go far to find out. Around the bend we found the shuttle on its side, dug into the sand. Happily, it had flipped door side up when it sank.

  The metal groaned as we used the wing to pull ourselves up onto the side, and drop in through the door. The shuttle was filled with wet sand and I dredged through it to find anything of use. The slideboard was smashed. Jugs were split open.

  “Find anything?” Edison was rummaging through the back.