These Broken Stars

by Amie Kaufman

  She tries to calm herself, but I can still see the urgency in her eyes—she’s hoping I’ll listen if she hides away the crazy. “We have to get out of here.” Her breath catches as she says it, as though she’s surprised to hear herself speak those words. “It’s not safe.”

  “No kidding,” I say, hauling the blanket up underneath my chin. “And trust me, the first rescue ship I see, we’re on it. But for now, we’re as safe as we can be in here. We’ll freeze out there. You don’t screw around with blizzards.”

  She hauls back the blankets and grabs my wrist, throwing her weight into the effort. I can feel the tremors racking her body. Not just a dream, then—this was one of her visions. She’s clearly beyond reason.

  “Believe me,” she says, teeth gritted with effort. I don’t let her shift me, and without my cooperation, neither of us moves. “Tarver, I know. But we have to go, we have to go right now. Please, it’s not safe in here, something’s going to happen.”

  “Something’s going to happen if we go out there,” I say, pulling my wrist back, which jerks her closer. “We’re going to start slurring our words and shaking, then we’re going to stop shaking, then we’re going to go mad and start pulling off our clothes, stumbling around, laughing. Then we’ll collapse, and that’s the merciful part, because that way we won’t feel it when we freeze to death. For once, please just make things easy for me and lie down, all right?”

  This is the thing I’ve been afraid of. This is why I made her promise not to go running after one of those voices she hears. That’s how I could lose her.

  “Please!” There’s an edge to her voice, hoarse and desperate—whatever’s scared her so much, she believes in it completely. “I don’t know how, but I swear to you, I know.” She closes her eyes for a moment, gathering calm, gathering steel. I know that look. When she opens her eyes again, her voice shakes with passion. “I know you lied to me back there, and I don’t care. I’ve trusted you with my life every second, Tarver. Can’t you trust me for one second? Just once?”

  My heart’s breaking, and I reach out for her hands, but she snatches them back. “It’s not about trust,” I tell her. “I don’t know what’s happening, I can’t see what you see. But there’s a difference between making some educated guesses about who died in that pod and thinking you can see the future. Lilac, if we leave in the middle of this blizzard, we risk dying from exposure. It’s insane. We’re not going out there, if I have to hold you down myself. Give yourself a few moments to calm down, and you’ll see I’m right.”

  “We don’t have a few moments!” Lilac is breathing hard, agitated. “You’re wrong. It’s all about trust. You just don’t believe me.”

  I don’t know what to say, and I’m still searching for words when she snaps into action. She scrambles to her feet, grabbing my pack and wheeling around to dash for the mouth of the cave.

  I can hear myself roaring in pure frustration. The blankets seem to come to life, wrapping around me and tangling my arms for vital seconds before I rip my way clear. I pound after her, leaving behind the blankets and the fire, the warmth and safety of the cave.

  The cold hits me like a wall, cutting in through my open jacket. I’m thanking whoever’s listening that we slept fully dressed. No light from the strange moon makes it through the clouds and the snow swirling through the air. For long, terrifying seconds I can’t see her at all, the darkness leaching the color out of everything. Then there’s movement—she’s stumbling away from the cave, scrambling over rocks and dragging herself to her feet again—and I hurl myself after her, breath rasping, boots crunching on the snow.

  I’ve been moving so slowly and carefully for days that for an instant it almost feels good to stretch my legs. I vault over a boulder and throw myself after her, driven by my fear that she’ll disappear into the night, or fall, or I’ll lose her in any countless number of ways. I’m not gentle when I catch her—I grab her upper arm and slam on the brakes, so she’s pulled up short and jerked into my arms, to hold her still and keep her from escaping again.

  She doesn’t struggle, and my heart pounds as the two of us stand there, panting, the snow quickly coating our heads and shoulders.

  Then a sound starts to rise above the howling of the wind, and the muffling blanket of the snow, and the harsh rasp of our breath. It’s a deep rumbling, starting as a whisper and then building to drown out everything else as the ground trembles beneath our feet. I’m forced to let go of her to catch my balance, but she doesn’t move away. She looks past me toward the cave, and when I follow her line of sight, I see the faint glow of our fire wink out of existence as the roof of our campsite collapses in an avalanche of rock.

  We both stand for a few moments, still panting, still staring. It’s nothing but a pile of rubble and snow.

  Our bed and blankets are buried beneath it all, as we would have been too, if we’d been inside. I know this, but somehow I’m disconnected from the knowledge. I know that our cozy shelter is somewhere under the debris, but I can’t imagine that it’s really true.

  Or how she knew to run.

  When I turn to walk away, she comes without a word. We can’t move far in the dark, but we find a place to wedge ourselves between two rocks and build up some of the snow to shelter us from the wind. It creates a poor shelter, but lacking any alternative, we huddle down together. We sit on the pack and wrap our arms around each other, and I don’t think either of us sleeps a wink in the few hours until dawn.

  The sky’s only starting to lighten when the snow stops. My arms and legs have long since gone through the agony of losing circulation, and they’re out the other side into numbness. The feeling comes flooding back in bolts of fiery pain as I instruct my body to move.

  She follows my example as I stretch, exhausted but uncomplaining. She must hurt as much as I do, but I note with a twinge of admiration that it doesn’t show up in more than a tightening of her jaw, a careful slowness to her movements. Once we’re both able to take a step without stumbling, we turn away from the cave.

  The last of the stars are sparkling overhead, as they always do after snow, and the artificial moon hangs low in the sky. The world is crisp and beautiful. Every step is careful and testing—you never know what lies beneath the overnight crust of snow. I sink in over my ankles, and Lilac’s breathing behind me quickly becomes labored. Our progress is slow.

  I don’t want to think about what happened, but my mind insists on revisiting it over and over.

  She saw the folks I buried.

  She dreamed, and knew to run from the cave.

  I let myself skid in a controlled slide down a rock as big as a tank, then turn to lift my arms up so she can slither down to join me. I catch her, hands braced against her sides, and when I move to release her, she grabs the fabric of my sleeve, holding me still.

  I look down at her, and though her skin’s pale with exhaustion, and her eyes are two dark, sleepless circles, her gaze is locked on mine.

  She wants what happened to be her proof. Proof her voices are real, proof of her sanity. She’s waiting for me to admit she’s not crazy, for my conversion.

  But what happened last night was impossible. Nobody can know something before it happens. I can’t explain it, can’t let myself dwell on it. I have to stick to the task at hand, and get us out of here.

  I’ve been trained to close my mind in order to keep functioning. I’ve been trained to keep moving.

  I let my gaze slide away from hers, and I hear her breath catch as she stiffens. I can imagine her face closing over, but I can’t let myself look at her. She releases my arm, and I turn back toward the path.

  I thought yesterday was awkward and too quiet; it pales against today. The hopelessness in the set of her shoulders as she trudges through the snow is heartbreaking.

  We struggle through the snow without speaking, legs made of lead and arms protesting every moment they’re put to use. The things we don’t say grow thicker between us, and by the time we’ve been walking a f
ew hours, the silence has set like concrete.

  When we stop I reach for the canteen, only to find it gone. I look up to find Lilac watching me, and we realize at the same time. The canteen is with our blankets, buried in the rubble. I close my eyes against the blow of it. Without a way to carry water, we’re tethered to creeks and streams, left hoping our guts can take the local bacteria. Without water—She starts moving again first, continuing on down the slope. Maybe she doesn’t realize what the loss of the canteen means. Maybe she does know, and is just moving anyway.

  When we finally make camp, we work side by side to clear a spot of snow and hunt for meager piles of grasses for our bed, picking out twigs and stones and scooping out a hole for our hip bones. Without the blankets, we’ll have to bury ourselves in whatever we can find.

  We melt snow in a strip of fabric torn from the too-long sleeves of the mechanic’s suit, sucking at the water as it drips. It’s precious little, but eating snow will only increase the effects of exposure. I reach inside the pack for the flashlight to lay it by the bed, and catch sight of the small case that holds my photograph inside it. I can’t help wondering why she grabbed the pack before she ran. Why, in such a panic, would she think to get supplies?

  Then it hits me. She wasn’t sure I’d come after her, unless she had my prized belongings with her.

  Half-formed words gather in my throat, but she won’t even look at me, and I don’t know what to say.

  When I curl up behind her to sleep, the curve of her spine says everything she doesn’t. Tense and unhappy, she only barely tolerates our close proximity. If it were warmer, if we had our blankets, if she had a choice, she’d be on the other side of the fire. For a moment it seems like she’s about to say something, her breath hitching with intention, but she remains silent.

  Neither of us has spoken a word all day. It’s a long time before we sleep.

  We wake a little later than usual in the morning, paying the price for the night before. One of the many prices. It doesn’t take long to clear up the camp—stretch, pack up our supplies, split one of the last few ration bars.

  I stretch again as she tightens the laces on her boots, and when we set out it’s clear she’s determined to keep to the pace I set. But by the time we reach the crest of the pass she’s breathing fast, lagging behind despite her best efforts, her gaze fixed on the ground in front of her.

  The view of the rolling hills before us is spectacular. They stretch out for klicks before they level off and reach a forest that’s only a dark line from this distance. Between the base of the mountain and the start of the forest lies the Icarus.

  She’s strewn out over a huge distance, ripped apart by her descent. Though sections of it have collapsed in the unfamiliar gravity, a large part of her hull is intact, with her trail showing where she came skidding in over the ground. My heart thumps in my chest as I run my gaze along the trail of debris—ruined escape pods that didn’t detach until the ship broke apart, chunks of metal, burned streaks along the hillsides, half-melted things I can’t begin to identify.

  The Icarus held fifty thousand souls. I wish I could believe that any of them have survived this charred disaster. Not a single pod that I can see is intact, and the ship herself is beyond all redemption.

  But it’s what’s not there that nearly drives me to my knees.

  There should be rescue craft buzzing around the ship’s carcass. There should be crews climbing all over her like so many ants. There should be people, life, salvation. But what lies before us looks like nothing more than a graveyard. I’ve been holding on to the hope that we could have somehow missed their approach, that if we could get as far as the crash site, rescue would be waiting for us there. But there’s not even a hint of other survivors.

  After everything we’ve been through, I finally admit to myself what I’ve been avoiding since we landed.

  I don’t think anyone’s coming for us.

  And I don’t know what to do, except try to stay alive. The wreck and the broken pods below us must hold the soldiers I sparred with, the folks I met on the lower decks. The man who conned his way into the first-class salon to petition Lilac. Her gaggle of friends, her bodyguard, her cousin.

  I take a breath, and turn to begin making my way down the mountain.

  “Just—just stop.” Lilac’s voice cracks behind me, hoarse from dehydration and ragged with emotion.

  She’s staring down at the wreckage, stuck in place. She’s flushed, or burned from the glare of the snow, more likely, her hair curling across her forehead, damp with sweat. When she turns her burning gaze on me, I flinch. “I need you to look. Look at me, look at that, Tarver.”

  “I see it.” My own voice sounds nearly as bad, unused for so long. “But we can’t stay here, we need to keep walking. There might be supplies in the wreck, some kind of communications equipment we can salvage.”

  She sways, then sinks to the ground in utter exhaustion. “When are you going to stop punishing me for not being crazy after all? I saved your life. We’d never have survived the cave-in.”

  Lilac, I know. I know we’d never have survived it. I know you heard or saw something before you ran, I watched it happen. I know you saw something real by the river. I know.

  But I can’t let myself admit it out loud. This goes so far beyond anything I’ve been trained for, and my training is all I have. I’m better equipped to drag a crazy person across a wilderness than cope with the possibility that she’s receiving communications from—what? Ghosts? The thought is more than absurd, it’s impossible.

  If I let myself believe her, then everything I know goes out the window. And what I know has kept us alive this far.

  She’s still looking at me wearily, pain written clearly in her expression. “I’m not trying to punish you,” I say finally. “But I can only work from what we know. I don’t think I know everything, and in a place like this, I know even less than usual. But what I do know is that we need to keep moving.”

  She slumps over to rest her forehead against her knees, and my heart groans under the pressure. I wish I knew what to do, or even what to say. I wish I knew anything useful at all.

  “So you’re going to shrug it off again,” she mumbles, fixing her tired glare on me. “I’ve been struggling for anything I could find to show you I’m not crazy, even when my own logic told me I must be, even when you lied to me outright. And now that we both know I’m not, you’re just going to dismiss this?” She’s crying, but the harsh edge to her voice is anger. “Just once, Tarver, just once, I wish you could see what I see.”

  She speaks the words like a witch in an old story, laying a curse on me. I look away, down the mountain at the wreckage below us.

  “I’m sorry, Lilac. I don’t know what you see. I only know how to keep us moving. I’m just a soldier. Once we get out of this place, you won’t ever have to see me again. But I can’t make myself see what you do.”

  She starts climbing to her feet, slow and painful, and if looks could kill I’d be dead and buried. “I hope that one day you’re forced to believe in something for which you haven’t got a shred of proof.” Her voice is taut like wire. “And I hope someone you care about laughs in your face for it.”

  She stalks off down the mountain, and I wonder which one of her fancy tutors taught her this—the ability to make an exit without a door to slam, picking her way down the snowy path with her back ramrod straight in furious indignation. I wonder where she finds the strength for it.

  “I’m not laughing at you,” I whisper. I adjust the pack and start to make my way down the mountain after her.

  She’s learned a thing or two about trailblazing in the time she’s spent following me, and she makes good time at first, though eventually she starts to slow from exhaustion.

  I can almost see my younger self, marching along, trying to keep up with his big brother as we trekked near home. I think of my parents, and my throat closes as I conjure up our cottage in my mind’s eye. My sanctuary, the place that�
��s always safe. No matter how I try and stay focused on what’s real, what’s in front of us, I can’t resist the thought of home.

  The path—maybe a path, anyway—that we’re following curves around the side of the mountain. As we clear an outcropping and a secluded valley becomes visible below, Lilac’s head snaps up. She draws breath to speak, her eyes widening. Then it’s gone, stamped out, and she’s quiet again as she turns away to start working her way around a boulder. She has one last longing glance over her shoulder, as if whatever she sees, it’s something far preferable to our reality. On cue I see her start to shake, shivering as though cold, fingers twitching before she shoves them into her pockets.

  Another vision, then. A wave of dizziness washes over me, like a sympathetic reaction—I clench my jaw before my own teeth can start to chatter. At least she knows the difference now. I ignore the part of my brain that points out that if she knows the difference between visions and reality, she can’t be that crazy. I follow in her wake, and I glance down into the valley below us.

  It feels like the air’s been sucked out of my lungs. I’m caught gasping for breath, grabbing thin air for something to support me.

  There’s a cottage in the valley. My parents’ cottage. It’s all there—the white walls, the rich purple of the lilac, the curving path and the red flowers in the field behind it. The faint wisp of smoke from the chimney, the black smudge to one side that must be my mother’s vegetable garden.

  The path winds its way out of the valley, vanishing into the distance, through the hills toward the wreck.

  It’s perfect, to the last detail. It’s my home. It’s not really there.

  I can hear her voice in my head. Just once, I wish you could see what I see.

  I feel her presence beside me, and she reaches out to slip her hand silently into mine. It isn’t until her fingers wind through mine that I realize I too am shaking violently.

  I’m going mad.

  “As a member of the military, you’ve been trained to withstand a certain degree of shock.”