Wandering Star: A Zodiac Novel

by Russell, Romina

  I stand inside one of the green circles, and almost immediately there’s a rush of wind and the hissing of pistons beneath my feet—then the circle I’m standing on opens.

  A gust of air pressure sucks me down, and I’ve tapped into the Vein, the train system that tunnels through the Zodiax.

  “Zodiac art from the first millennium,” announces a cool female voice. I grab onto the handrail above me as the wind changes direction, and a stray curl falls into my face as we shoot upward.

  The Zodiax is an underground vault that contains what the Tenth House calls a treasure trove of truths: the collective wisdom of the Zodiac. Down here, there are museums, galleries, theaters, Membrexes, auditoriums, restaurants, reading rooms, research labs, hotels, shopping malls, and more. When Mom described it to me once, she said the Zodiax is like a brain, and the Vein is its neuron network, zooming people around as fast as firing synapses, its route mapped by subject matter rather than geography.

  A couple of Capricorn women in black robes share my compartment—one is tall with dark features, the other short with a ruddy complexion. We slow down for half a moment at “Notable Zodai from this century,” and the smaller woman is sucked up to a train platform.

  “Surface, Cancrian settlement.”

  I click a button on the handrail and let go. I’m blown up to the bouncy bed of another train station, and biometric body scans search me again as I leave the Zodiax.

  Outside, I instinctively raise a hand to shield my eyes from Helios’s light. Echoing silence is instantly replaced with the sounds of crashing waves and animal calls and distant conversations. As my vision adjusts, I make out herds of seagoats (House Capricorn’s sacred symbol) feeding and roughhousing at the water’s edge, and long-bodied terrasaurs flicking in and out of the rocks along the seashore, their scaly skin shiny in the daylight. High above us, horned hawks flap across the sun-bleached sky, circling the air in hopes of picking off the pocket pigs feeding in the weeds.

  Tierre is the largest inhabited planet in our galaxy, and it has a single massive landmass, Verity. Up ahead, the planet’s pink sand beach spills into the blue of its ocean, and behind me, wild forests grow right up to the ridges of volcanoes, giving way in the distance to snowcapped mountains that pierce the sky. The view is occasionally interrupted by the long neck of a fluffy giraffe reaching up for a fresh tree leaf.

  This place is a land lover’s paradise—which makes sense, given that Capricorn is a Cardinal House, representing the element Earth. People here live in modest homes on vast plots of land with multiple pets that live free-range.

  Cancer’s colony is being built along Verity’s western coastline, our people predictably opting to settle near our preferred cardinal element, Water. As I walk into our settlement, clusters of Cancrians are working on their respective tasks. Some are building pink sand-and-seashell bungalows, some are chopping seafood for sushi on flat stones, and some—including Stanton—are knee-deep in the ocean wearing wet suits, tending to the newly arrived species. As I walk past each group of people, they don’t stare anymore. Not like they did at first.

  A month ago, the Cancrians I met on Gemini insisted on my innocence and vowed the other Houses wouldn’t get away with this insult to Cancer. Then three weeks ago, we came to Capricorn, and the Cancrians here have barely spoken to me. Their glares and pointed silence have made it clear they’re not interested in my political failings—their sole concern is saving what’s left of our world.

  I wade toward Stanton through a shallow sea of crawling hookcrabs, miniature sea horses, schools of flashing changelings (blue fish that turn red when they sense danger), and a few just-released baby crab-sharks. My brother is with Aryll, a seventeen-year-old Cancrian who came here with us from Gemini. They’re in the process of releasing another school of changelings into the ocean.

  Rather than disturb them, I hang back and scour the sky for the telltale metallic glint of an approaching spaceship. It’s getting close to sunset. He should be here by now.

  “You look nice today,” says Stanton, spotting me. Only he says it less like a compliment and more like a question. His gaze searches my turquoise dress for clues before landing back on the water.

  Aryll turns, and his electric-blue eye roves over my outfit; a gray patch covers the spot where his left eye used to be. He flashes me a boyish smile before rearranging his expression into a Stanton-like look of disapproval. Even though I know he cares for us both, he takes my brother’s side on pretty much everything.

  “It doesn’t matter, I can still help you guys.” I come closer, letting the bottom of my dress get wet to show Stanton I’m not fussy.

  “Rho, don’t,” he says with a bite of impatience. “We’re nearly finished. Just hang back.”

  I do as my brother says, watching as he and Aryll set the fish free. The changelings look radioactive, their fiery bodies staining the blue water red, but soon their coloring begins to cool, and they disappear into the ocean’s depths. Changelings, being small and low-maintenance, have had the easiest time adapting to Capricorn so far.

  Stanton opens up the last closed crate floating beside him, and he and Aryll start releasing hookcrabs into the ocean. “That’s good, but watch for its pincers,” says Stanton, deftly taking the crab from Aryll before it snaps his finger off.

  When he talks to Aryll, my brother sounds different than when he addresses me. With Aryll, his voice dips lower, adopting a comforting tone that’s painfully familiar. “See this part of the shell back here, where it curves in a little?” Aryll nods obediently. “That’s always the best place to grip them.”

  Stanton’s words sweep me back to Kalymnos, where I learned how to handle the hookcrabs that constantly clawed at our nar-clams, and I realize who my brother is acting like. He’s being Dad.

  It shouldn’t bother me. After all that’s happened, I should be mature and understanding and compassionate. I should be grateful my brother’s alive at all. Some people lost everything.

  Aryll was at school on a Cancrian pod city when pieces of our moons started shooting through our planet’s atmosphere. The explosion took out his left eye. By the time he made it home, his whole family and house had drowned in the Cancer Sea. Like Stanton, he was herded together with other survivors and transported to House Gemini’s planet Hydragyr.

  Then Ophiuchus attacked Gemini.

  Earthquakes ransacked the rocky planet right as the Cancrian settlement was being built. Stanton was ushering a family to safety when he lost his balance and slipped off the rock face. Aryll caught him just as he was going over.

  He saved my brother’s life.

  “We’re going to change,” Stanton calls out as he and Aryll duck behind a privacy curtain to shed their wet suits.

  I study the horizon again for a sign of the ship I’ve been anxiously awaiting all day. Ophiuchus hasn’t destroyed another planet since Argyr, but the Marad attacks a different House every week. The army has also been linked to pirate ships that have been intercepting travelers and inter-House supply shipments all across the galaxy. Zodai on every House are cautioning citizens to avoid Space travel, encouraging us to travel by holo-ghost whenever possible.

  What if something’s happened? How will I know? Maybe I should try his Ring, just in case—

  “There!” shouts Aryll, his red hair flickering like fire under Helios’s rays. He points to a dot in the sky.

  My heart skips several beats as the dot zooms closer, sunlight catching its gleaming surface. The ship grows bigger on its approach, until the full form of the familiar bullet-shaped craft is visible.

  Hysan is here at last.

  2

  ’NOX LANDS ON A PLOT of pink sand far enough away not to disturb our camp. Stanton, Aryll, and I march toward the ship, and in the distance, Hysan’s golden figure leaps onto the beach, carrying a black case with him.

  I exhale in relief, realizing as I d
o that I’ve been holding my breath since Hysan and I parted. In a way, I’ve been lonelier these past few weeks than I was our whole time on Equinox.

  Hysan’s lips twist into his centaur smile as he approaches, and my mouth mirrors the movement effortlessly. I’d forgotten how relaxing a real smile could feel.

  He looks taller, and his golden hair has outgrown its Zodai cut. The white streaks are gone, and so are the expensive clothes—he’s dressed in a simple gray space suit that he’s filling out with more muscle than I remember.

  “My lady.” His lively, leaf-green eyes rest on my face and travel to my turquoise dress. “Memory did not do you justice.”

  “You should have been here hours ago,” I say, the flush in my cheeks undercutting my rebuke.

  “I apologize if I worried you.” Hysan brings my hand to his lips, his kiss activating a million Snow Globes stored inside my body. My skin tingles as the ghosts of his touch echo tauntingly through me.

  “Hysan. Thanks for coming. Hope all is well.”

  The choppiness in Stanton’s speech means he’s still wary of Hysan. When they met on Gemini, I introduced him as a friend and nothing more. Even though that’s technically true, I’m still lying to my brother . . . and apparently not even well.

  “Happy to be of service,” says Hysan, flashing Stanton one of his winning grins and bumping fists with him. After exchanging the hand touch with Aryll, he says, “I can’t stay long. I only came to deliver the Bobbler, then I must report to the Plenum on House Taurus. An emergency session has been called.”

  “What’s happened?” I ask, the alarm in my chest going off.

  “Nothing like that. I’ll explain later.” He opens the black case he’s been carrying and holds up what looks like a deflated hot-air balloon attached to a pump. “This is a Bobbler—it’s what our scientists use to explore Kythera’s surface. As soon as you hit Inflate, it will activate, and the navigational system will launch an instructional holographic feed. You can use it to send someone to explore the surface of Cancer—or even into the Cancer Sea, up to a pressure point—and it will withstand the harshest atmospheric conditions.”

  The Bobbler looks like a person-sized version of the membranes surrounding Libra’s flying cities. “Transparent nanocarbon fused with silica,” I recite, recalling Hysan’s words.

  He beams at me. “Exactly.”

  “What about the species down in the Rift?” Being unpleasant isn’t in my brother’s nature, so the hardness in his tone is so slight that anyone but a Libran would miss it. “We don’t have watercraft that can penetrate deep enough to know how they’ve been affected or whether we need to move them.”

  “I’ve reached out to my contacts on Scorpio,” says Hysan, his smile faltering but his manner still pleasant. “It’s the only House with ships that can descend to those depths. They’re not feeling particularly warm toward Cancer right now”—his eyes flit to mine but don’t quite connect—“still, I’m hopeful they’ll come through.”

  Around us the sun is setting, and a few stars are already peeking out in the darkening sky. As Hysan stores the Bobbler back inside its case, the night glows suddenly white. We look up to see silver holographic letters forming high above Tierre:

  DINNER.

  “Can you stay?” I ask Hysan hopefully.

  There’s a slight hesitation before he says, “It would be my pleasure, my lady.”

  Though he’s smiling, I sensed something worrisome in his pause. Whatever’s going on, it’s worse than he’s letting on.

  Dinner for the sector of Capricorn we’re residing in takes place in the vast valley of a steep hill—the same one from Sage Huxler’s recollections. Herds of black-robed Capricorns make their way there with us, each holding what looks like a magical wand. It’s their Wave-like device, a Sensethyser.

  Since Capricorns believe in quantifying and containing knowledge, they use a Sensethyser to capture and create holographic versions of anything new they stumble across. When pointed at something—a rare item, a new technology, an unknown mineral or plant or animal species—the Sensethyser digests every detail and creates a holographic replica that’s downloaded in a terminal of the Zodiax for review and classification.

  When we reach the valley, parallel processions of people pad along both sides of one extra-extra-long table, filling their plates with small servings from every platter. Each person brings his own plate and silverware, and every Capricorn household contributes a dish to the meal. For our part, the Cancrians who were chopping up seafood earlier now deposit a tray of sushi at one end of the table.

  There’s a stack of extra plates for those who forgot theirs, so Hysan pulls one from there, and once we’ve piled on some food, the four of us find a patch of grass to sit on. Most Capricorns gather in groups, holding huddled discussions and debates about a variety of subjects, and often people choose where to sit not based on whom they know but what topic is being discussed. As I thread through the groups, heads snap up to look at me.

  The Cancrians here may want nothing to do with me, but the Chroniclers—Capricorn Zodai—have taken an avid interest in me since I arrived. They’ve encouraged my visits to their Membrexes and still regularly invite me to discussions across the Zodiax about the current political climate. They’ve even requested to create a Snow Globe of my experience leading the armada—but those memories are dangerous enough inside my head. Giving them physical form would only make them more destructive.

  After a while, most Capricorns left me alone, probably realizing I wasn’t ready to be a full person yet. But now that there’s trouble in the news again, they’ve taken to staring at me like I’ve been holding out on them.

  At last we find a quiet place to sit, in the shadow of a twisty tree. As I look around me, I try to ignore the ghosts of the Zodai who died on this very land . . . but it’s hard to forget a quilt of broken bodies.

  “What is it?” asks Hysan. His large eyes run across my face like Sensethysers, deconstructing and reconstructing me inside his mind.

  There was a time Stanton and I could decode each other like that . . . and now the people who know me best are a Sagittarian and a Libran. “What isn’t it?”

  Hysan and I trade small, nostalgic smiles. I catch Stanton’s eyes narrowing, so I add, “What held you up?”

  “I found out one of my—one of Lord Neith’s—Advisors was a Riser.” Since Stanton and Aryll don’t know Hysan is Libra’s true Guardian, we have to be careful around them.

  “But Risers can’t help being Risers,” I argue, surprised that Hysan would hold a prejudice against any group of people. “It’s not their fault—”

  “We caught him sabotaging Aeolus’s Psy shield. And it’s not just him—Lord Neith has been in touch with Guardians from the other Houses, and we’ve confirmed a spike in the population of Risers everywhere. Which means—”

  “An imbalance in the Zodiac,” I finish, recalling Mom’s lessons.

  A person becomes a Riser when her exterior persona conflicts so strongly with her internal identity that she begins to develop the personality and physical traits of another House—and it can happen at any age. Most Risers only shift signs once or twice in their lifetimes, and with each shift they try to build a new life for themselves on their new House. But there are some Risers for whom the shift doesn’t take well, leaving them with an imbalance of traits from their old and new Houses. These Risers keep shifting signs throughout their lives, until their souls regain their balance.

  But some never do.

  Eventually, the transformations begin to wear on the bodies of imbalanced Risers, and they develop permanent deformities, making them look like the monsters of children’s stories. Excessive shifting also affects the mind, which can sometimes turn imbalanced Risers into real-life monsters.

  “Risers come from unstable Houses. A surge in their numbers now, in the midst of attacks from Ophi
uchus and the Marad and the master . . .” Doubt casts a shadow across Hysan’s usually sunny glow. “It’s getting darker out there every day.”

  Our conversation is interrupted by the appearance of a girl my brother’s age with frizzy curls, chestnut skin, and periwinkle eyes. “Can I join you?” asks Jewel Belger. Hers is the family Stanton was shuttling to safety on Hydragyr when Aryll saved him.

  “Of course,” I say. She smiles shyly and sits next to Stanton. Right as Hysan is greeting her, a tall Capricorn Acolyte approaches us.

  “Hysan Dax? Sage Ferez has requested your presence.” Her tourmaline eyes turn to me next. “Yours as well, Rhoma Grace.”

  Stanton and I exchange questioning looks. “I’ll come with you,” he says, his protectiveness reminding me of Mathias.

  Pushing away the pain, I shake my head. “I’ll be fine, Stan. I’ll find you after.” Hysan and I leave our still-full plates behind and follow the Capricorn Acolyte underground, where we tap into the Vein. Since the whole House is having dinner, the train is empty.

  As they age, Capricorns unlock higher levels of wisdom and uncover more of the Zodiax’s secrets. Only young people ride the Vein—those over fifty have a different way of traveling no one else even knows about.

  “Guardian’s chambers,” announces the cool female voice, and we click our handrails and are blown up to a station platform. The Acolyte holds her thumb over a hidden sensor on the wall, and the whole thing slides open like a door.

  On its other side is a crystalline cave with walls of amber agate. The room’s bands of color are so luminous that it feels like we’re aboveground on a brilliantly sunny day. The only furniture in the cavernous space is a simple wooden desk with three chairs; behind the desk sits a stooped old man who must be nearing his centennial.