A Conspiracy of Stars

by Olivia A. Cole

  Barefoot, I step out into the commune. Silence except for the distant trickle of the stream. It feels empty here, even with the trees. I wonder what the jungle outside our walls sounds like at night. Alive, I’m sure. Full of breath.

  “You’re awake.”

  I jump, even though I’d been expecting him. Rondo materializes from the shadows, moving toward me from the direction of our bridge. He’s wearing his skinsuit, I notice, with a shade of disappointment. Not only would I feel less strange for wearing my nightclothes in front of him, but I’m curious what he looks like outside his skinsuit. I’ve never seen his collarbones, and suddenly, here in the silver light, all I can think about is his skin, those two graceful bones beneath his throat. Behind me, the door to my ’wam whooshes shut.

  “Yeah, thanks to you,” I whisper. “What are you doing? What happened?”

  “Why do you think something happened?”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” I hiss.

  “I was awake,” he says. His voice is low, but not quite a whisper. “And I was thinking about you.”

  I squint at him in the moonlight. As I gaze at his face, I’m reminded strangely of a lecture Dr. Espada had given about plant patterns: the mesmerizing angles and waves in tree bark. The asymmetry of Rondo’s broad nose is like that: unique, strong. Elegant. The ogwe trees and their relaxing smell . . . What is Rondo’s scent?

  “I wish I could read your mind,” he says. He’s within arm’s reach, my skin awakening like the flowers that grow along the stairway, changing color at his nearness.

  “No you don’t,” I reply.

  “Why not?”

  “Because my mind doesn’t make sense.”

  “Not everything has to.”

  “No,” I say. “But I prefer it to.”

  He frowns, studying me. Looking at him, it’s a different kind of research. I’m examining the curve of his lips and committing them to memory. My brain holds innumerable facts, but right now I’d wipe the slate clean to make more room for his face.

  “Seriously, O,” he says. His voice is as soft as the dark we stand in. “You’re too hard on yourself. Why?”

  I squeeze my arms more tightly around myself. Whenever I’m asked a question, I know the answer. If not right away, I can figure it out. But right now, every page, every text—they’re all blank.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “But we will.”

  And then he’s kissing me. Or maybe I’m kissing him. The smell of ogwe rises in my nostrils, making my body go loose and relaxed. His lips are softer than I thought they’d be. His hands rise from his sides and rest on my hips. My arms around his neck—had I put them there? My palms slide down to his shoulders, down his arms. My hands find his as they move up to my waist.

  I’m out of breath and pull back. He squints at me in the way only he can—one eye almost winking. I swear I can hear the music of his izinusa drifting through my head like clouds moving over the moon. I smile broadly, and when he smiles back, it’s as if his teeth are the source of all the light in the world.

  Then his smile disappears.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  He grabs my arm and drags me around the side of my ’wam. Déjà vu springs up before me: we’ve done this before. What is it about Rondo that always makes me end up hiding in the dark?

  Someone is approaching the ’wam. I chance a peek around the edge. It’s my mother. She strides down the path from the direction of the Zoo, her face obscured in shadow. I recognize her from her hair—the graceful mass of her locs piled high on her head. Her gait is resolute and she stares down at her slate, its screen glowing dimly. I jerk my head back around behind the ’wam and I hold my breath as she approaches.

  Silence. I don’t hear the hum of her palm sliding to open the door. The door doesn’t whisper. I don’t hear her footsteps either. She seems to be standing at the entrance, not moving. Rondo catches my eye, his expression unreadable in the shadows. My head begins buzzing. I wiggle a finger in my ear, still holding my breath. Rondo holds a finger to his lips.

  And then the moment passes. The door slides open and my mother goes inside. Rondo and I crouch alongside my ’wam for what seems like hours but what must be only a few minutes, waiting. When eternity has passed, I stand from where I’ve been crouching, the muscles in my thighs cramping in protest.

  “Where are you going?” he whispers.

  I look at him like he’s a fool.

  “Inside! We almost got caught!”

  He is only lips and eyes in the near dark. As he starts to open his mouth to argue, I silence him with another kiss.

  “Bye,” I say. “I’ll see you in a few hours. Outside.”

  He says nothing, just watches me leave. When I slip back into my ’wam, I spend a moment leaning against the wall inside, letting my heartbeat float back to normal, swaying to the music he left inside me.

  CHAPTER 17

  We have new skinsuits. They’re bright red, made of the same maigno-inspired material but with a couple of features we don’t have in our white day-to-day clothing. For one, they are infused with the smell of a rhohedron—the large flowers that grow in the jungle, only recently cataloged by N’Terra. The color imitates the flower as well. “Better for an animal to mistake you for a rhohedron than something more vulnerable,” says the finder in charge of the collection group we’re joining, who has asked to be called Manx.

  She goes on to reiterate the majority of what we already learned from the assignment in our slates and I tune out. Instead, I watch Rondo, whose smile of greeting this morning in the commune had planted a speck of stardust in my chest, which now grows into a sun. His fingers move in their distracted rhythm—I wonder what tune he’s playing on the izinusa in his head, if he’s remembering our kiss and turning it into a melody.

  “Yes?” Manx says, angling the question at me with a frown.

  “Yes,” I say quickly. I have no idea what she asked, but she looks satisfied, turning away. Manx is my height and much older than I expected any of the finders to be. Her hair is a tangle of silver spiral curls; little lines extend from the corners of her eyes. Despite her age, though, she is agile: her body leanly muscled and her gait quick and impatient.

  Now we stand outside in the shade of the compound, waiting for Manx to finish doing what she calls “checks,” taking stock of all the equipment and supplies that she and her group have assembled outside the compound. We’re still inside the gates, but I look out beyond them and feel a thrill in my bones. The tree line of the jungle is a mere five hundred yards away. Soon we’ll see more of Faloiv than any of us ever dreamed.

  Manx looks up from securing a loose water canteen to a pack. She shields her eyes from the sun and directs a smile somewhere behind us.

  “Ah, there you are,” she says, waving at a newcomer. “I’m glad you could join us. Red suits you.”

  Dr. Espada wears the same red skinsuit as the rest of us. It seems strange to see him out of his ordinary clothing—the bright red makes him look younger, more daring. His gray hair doesn’t appear as scholarly alongside Manx: instead they look like two silver adventurers, ready for anything.

  “Hello, everyone.” Dr. Espada smiles at us after exchanging words with Manx. “It’s good to see some of my brightest students again. I’ve been happy to hear you’ve all been doing well in your internships so far.”

  “Did someone actually say that?” Alma asks him. “Or are you being generous?”

  She hasn’t spoken much this morning: she’s still not thrilled about going out into the jungle. I tried teasing her about it this morning but that didn’t go over well. She doesn’t understand my enthusiasm for this part of the internship: the idea that I’m excited to be away from the safety of the compound puzzles her. On one hand, it puzzles me too—especially given my grandmother’s fate. But the trees call to me. My wonder swallows my fear.

  “Don’t sound so dubious, Miss Entra.” Dr. Espada smiles
reassuringly. “You’re doing well. This is just one more arrow to add in your quiver. Experientia docet, yes?”

  She manages to smile at that and Dr. Espada picks up one of the packs Manx has finished checking, shouldering it.

  “So,” I say. “My father says you and my mother used to go on collection trips all the time.”

  He smiles a narrow smile, keeping his eyes down on the straps of the pack, which he buckles across his chest.

  “Not all the time,” he says. “But we went on a few.”

  “Did you or my mom ever get lost?” I’ve already decided I’m going to ask as many questions as he’ll allow if it means getting the kind of answers I’m looking for.

  He looks at me, then, his expression serious. “No,” he says. “And let’s hope it stays that way.”

  “All right,” Manx calls from the front of the group. The four finders she oversees have assembled and claimed their packs—the interns don’t carry packs, just canteens—and it looks like we’re ready to get started. The sun has been up for an hour and it’s blazing hot. “Let’s get going. You know the rules now. Stay with the group, do as I do, and never stop listening.”

  I breathe in deeply when we start out on the road. I haven’t been outside the compound in weeks, since the day I fainted in the Beak. The air is the same here as it was twenty paces behind me, but for some reason being beyond the gates feels satisfying, like a deep gulp of cool water, but not from the canteen at my hip. Never be without water on Faloiv—one of the first rules my father taught me. Right now I feel like I don’t need anything but the jungle.

  We don’t say much as we walk on the red dirt road. I clasped on my face mask after two or three steps—it’s windy today and specks of swirling dust have already found their way into my mouth. Rondo followed suit—but not before shooting me a look that makes me smile—and now the others do too. There’s a break in the trees up ahead on our right, the entry point for the jungle, and my stomach starts to flutter, like an insect urging me onward. Manx waves an arm and one by one we allow the trees to swallow us.

  When I first step into the shade of the jungle, it’s as if all my blood begins to flow more freely. I unclasp my face mask. The light is multicolored, filtered in through leaves so thick that the canopy is like a vibrant, living roof. Is this what my grandmother felt, the very first time she entered this dense, green world? I close my eyes for just a moment and feel the jungle soak into my skin. Birds trilling high in the branches, the far-off warbles of canopy mammals. A buzzing has filled my head, but it’s pleasant, like a purr.

  “Welcome to the jungle,” Manx says. “Drink.”

  We all sip from our canteens and replace them at our waists. Alma appears to have relaxed a little, standing by Jaquot and gaping at the gargantuan plants growing around and above us. Some of the trees are as big around as the Greenhouse, some as thick as entire domes. Ahead, Manx appears to stand in front of a wall made of wood; but it’s not a wall, it’s a tree trunk. Leaves the size of my sleeping platform sprout from stems as thick as my ankle. Rondo stands near me, smiling.

  “What are you grinning about?” I ask, nudging him. I didn’t realize until now how tense my muscles have been inside the Paw—now my body feels like it’s made of water.

  “You,” he says, shrugging. His eyes are as warm as the sun I feel on my skin.

  “What about me?”

  “You’re loving this.”

  I nod. It’s true.

  “Thinking of switching careers?” he says under his breath. He reaches out a hand and runs one of his fingers down my arm. “I can’t picture you huddled in a white lab after seeing you out here.”

  “Only if I can have musical accompaniment.”

  Manx shushes us, issuing instructions.

  “Interns, your job is to watch. Nothing more. Do not touch anything. Do not eat anything. Do not attempt to collect anything. Watch what we do and that’s all. Understood?”

  Though we all nod, I can’t help but feel disappointed. I want to sit down on the jungle floor and run my hands over everything in arm’s reach. But I know better—we all do. So instead I fall in next to Dr. Espada, Yaya on his other side, and pepper him with questions as we make our way down a worn path in the jungle.

  “What’s the biggest animal you’ve ever seen on a collection trip?” Yaya says.

  “Have you seen a gwabi out in the wild?” I add, suddenly thinking of the dream I’d had of my mother.

  “I saw a maigno up close once,” he says, and we gasp. “It was shortly after the landing. I was fourteen or fifteen. I’d never seen anything so big in my life.”

  “So you were fourteen when the Vagantur landed?” I say.

  “Around that age, yes.”

  Manx signals for us all to take a drink of water and we pause to do so. When we’re moving again, I jump in with another strategic question.

  “Did you ever get to see the Faloii? During the settlement negotiations?”

  He looks at me sharply, and I stare back, undaunted.

  “No,” he says. “Not up close.”

  “But you saw them?”

  “Very briefly, and from a distance.”

  “What were they like?”

  “Tall,” he says. “Quite tall. And graceful.”

  “What were their ears like?” I say.

  Dr. Espada pauses ever so briefly in his stride, but catches himself and continues walking, unbothered.

  “Their ears? I have no idea. Why are you asking about the ears of the Faloii?”

  “Just curious,” I say.

  “Were they dangerous?” Yaya asks.

  “They were . . . intimidating,” Dr. Espada says, refusing to make eye contact with either of us.

  We stop and drink again. It’s slow going. Manx keeps us moving, but at a leisurely pace so we don’t sweat too much. I wonder how deep into the jungle we’ll go. It already feels as if we’re in the middle of nowhere, but I look down and note that we’re still on a worn path. I envy the finders for being able to do this every day.

  The next time we stop I think it’s time to drink again but Rondo stills my hand with his and points. One of the male finders ahead of us is crouched just off the path with a cylindrical container clutched in his hand. Manx has raised her hand to all of us, the entire group stopped motionless in our tracks, scarcely daring to breathe. What has he found? I wonder. Maigno tracks, perhaps. Scat from a wild tufali. But when the finder carefully closes the cylinder and returns to the path, it turns out to be much less exciting: a species of worm, Manx explains as we all crowd around to peer at the cylinder. It’s as thick as two of my fingers and richly black, with dangerous-looking orange spines rising off its back.

  “Insects are notoriously difficult to find on Faloiv,” the finder says, looking pleased with himself. “That’s why the entomology group is so small and shares space with the Reptilian Compound. We’re hoping to change that. I stay on the lookout for little guys like this,” he says, patting the tube gently. He tucks the specimen carefully into his pack. Jaquot appears next to me, a grin on his face.

  “Can you believe we’re out here?” he says, scanning the trees with his eyes. “If I had known there were insects like that, I might have requested the Reptilian Compound.”

  “That thing was disgusting.” I laugh, shaking my head.

  “I know. Brilliant.” I smile about that. I hear my mother in his voice: the genuine adoration of study. He glances over his shoulder at the others, a few paces away, then lowers his voice. “I never told anyone about that day in the Beak, you know.”

  “I didn’t think you did.”

  “Was your nosebleed in the lab the other day the same kind of thing?”

  I stare at him, searching his face for ill intent. I don’t find anything; just curiosity.

  “I have no idea. But it feels like it’s related. I just don’t know how.”

  He frowns, looking back out at the trees. “Yaya is going to figure it out eventually,” he says
. “I know you’re not crazy about her, but I think she’s good for stuff like this if you’re willing to trust her.”

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?” he says. “Willing to trust her?”

  “No, crazy about her,” I say. His eyes twitch over to my face and he raises his hand to cover his mouth, like if I can’t see his growing smile I won’t notice the way the rest of his features light up.

  “You don’t miss a thing,” he says when he drops his hand.

  “Except for whatever causes me to faint and get nosebleeds.”

  Behind us Manx is rallying the group to start walking again.

  “You’re smart, O,” he says. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Maybe.” I shake my head. “I just wanted to work with animals. Now it’s like I have a curse that’s keeping me from doing it.”

  It feels good to say this to him, as if we’re trading confessions. In a way, he was my first confidant about all the recent strangeness in my life. He was there when most of it began, after all. He turns and looks at me, his expression soft.

  “You never know—maybe it’s a gift,” he says, smiling a lopsided smile. Then he’s gone, walking back toward the group—toward Yaya—leaving me on the edge of the path alone.

  We continue down the trail for what seems like hours. It’s hard to tell how much time has passed in jungle this dense. I enjoy the feeling of time oozing into itself, punctuated by the brief water breaks. I’m so relaxed that I almost forget I’m supposed to be questioning Dr. Espada. I’m just gearing up to find an angle into broaching the topic of the egg when there’s a sharp cry from the front of the group.

  I think it’s a signal at first, and try to remember what that particular sound means, but then I realize that Manx, her face creased with anxiety, is crouched over one of her finders who is sprawled on the path. Her hands are working quickly, rummaging in her pack and coming out with cloth.

  “What happened?” Alma asks.

  No one answers. Dr. Espada breaks away from where he’s been walking with us and hurries toward Manx and the finders.

  “It looks like something bit him,” Rondo says, craning his neck. We move toward where the finder is sprawled. The bite had pierced the fabric of the skinsuit at his calf. Manx has cut off the suit from the knee down, and the bite mark bulges ugly and purple right on the muscle. It looks like it might just be swollen at first. But then, like a tiny, abrupt volcano, the swelling bursts and blood seeps from it, leaking out and down his leg before dripping to the jungle floor.