by K. A. Holt
“Maybe they stole it from us,” I say. “Maybe the wind blew a seed over there and it started growing up on its own.”
Temple shakes her head. “Shine trees don’t grow from seeds. They only grow from the needles they shoot.”
And that’s when it hits me. It gum near knocks all the breath out of my body.
Only two people in this settlement have been shot by a shine tree needle. Only two times anyone’s ever seen it happen. One time was me, one was Rory. Shine tree is why I only have four fingers on my right hand. I don’t know about Rory’s hands or arms or legs or head because the Cheese got to her first. They took her just as the poison was making her cry out.
“You think that tree has something to do with Rory?” I whisper. You can hardly hear my voice over the hot gusts whipping by.
Temple nods once. She stands, swiping a tear across her dusty face. “Don’t say anything to Boone,” she says.
“You know I won’t,” I say. I lick the salty grit from my bottom lip and then kick a rock over the edge of the field into the gorge. It cracks and snaps as it bounces off ledges and outcroppings on its way to the bottom. “C’mon. We got ten hundred rocks to clear.”
I give her a quick one-armed hug. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without Temple, even if she is a gum rockhead sometimes. How Boone still breathes and eats and lives without Rory is a mystery I will never solve.
Temple and I both reach into the pockets of our ratty canvas aprons and pull on our gloves made of the same canvas scavenged from the Origin back in the early days before we were even born. The pinkie finger in my right glove is tied in a knot so it doesn’t get in my way.
“Hey, Temp,” I say, staring at my glove. “You ever think about what these gloves were like before they were gloves?”
“Huh?” Temple looks at me like I have night beetles in my hair.
“You know. Our aprons, too. This canvas. It was probably part of some vital mission on the Origin.”
“Or part of a tablecloth on the Origin.” Temple wanders over to a giant boulder and gives it a shove. It doesn’t move. “How do you think this canvas got up here?” Temple asks. It’s a familiar discussion between us. “I mean, how did it really get up here? How did any of the supplies get up here, out of the gorge?”
“Papa says everything comes from the wings of angels,” I say, though what he means by that I’m not sure.
“They must be strong angels,” Temple says. “And tireless.” She shoves the boulder again, and again it doesn’t move. It is the biggest, nastiest one of the bunch, for sure, nearly as tall as she is. Even with both of us pushing, we can’t budge it.
I go and untie Heetle. It’s tricky with the big rocks like this. I pull some grotty old rope out of one of Heetle’s saddlebags and tie a big slipknot. Temple helps me pull the circle of rope around the boulder. The knot pulls tight as I yank on the rope and tie it to Heetle’s saddle.
This is not something we like to do, but sometimes it’s the only choice. Can’t plow a boulder. And no seedling is gonna grow on top of one, either. I give Heetle’s haunch a pat and she trots forward a few feet, pulling the rope taut. Another couple of trots and the boulder rolls forward a bit. A swarm of prairie spiders comes flying out of the hole and Temple and I both shriek like a dactyl, and leap almost as high as one, too.
Heetle is none too pleased at our antics, and rears up at me, waving her hooves in an impressive display of You better watch out or I will brain you with my feet just to teach you how big of a rockhead you are.
I whisper and purr at her, getting her to sidestep closer and closer to the edge of the gorge, so that she’s dragging that boulder behind her, kind of diagonally to the drop-off. She is not happy with me. I try to keep my breathing even and steady, so she can see I’m calm, even though I hate doing this to her.
“I don’t like this part, either, girl,” I say to her as calmly as I can. “But Temple’s quick with the knife and the gum rope is trash anyway.” Heetle stamps and edges away from where I want her to go. But with a few prods she swings her backside close enough to the gorge that the rock follows and starts to slip off the crumbling edge. Heetle’s eyes tell me she feels the weight behind her giving her a tug. My heart lurches as hard as her front legs do as they try to regain purchase.
“Now!” I shout to Temple. “Now! Now!” I’m patting Heetle’s neck with one hand, and realize I’m gripping on to her saddle with the other. As if I could pull her to safety with my matchstick arms.
Temple saws away at the rope as the boulder slips farther over the edge. Heetle loses a bit of footing in her hind legs now, slips a foot or so, and lets out a fuss. My heart hammers through my body like a quake.
“What is taking so gum long?” I shout at Temple. I see her sweating back there, sawing through the rope.
“Rope is stronger than you thought, rockhead,” Temple shouts back.
Heetle’s feet slip some more, kicking up a cloud of dirt and dust that the wind grips and turns into devil spirals that spin off across the field just like the spiders. Heetle, she looks at me—I swear she does—with eyes that say, Lookit what you done now, Rae, as her back legs slip closer and closer to the edge.
But then Temple lets out a whoop, the severed rope springs back and whips me across the face, and the loosed boulder crashes into the gorge below.
Heetle takes off at a gallop to go stand under the awning and shoot me looks of rage, while Temple saunters over, twirling her knife.
“That was exciting, eh?” She grins and flips the knife shut before dropping it back into her pocket.
“Too exciting,” I say, reaching up and touching the red welt growing on my cheek. It’s as if Heetle herself slapped me good. And deservedly so. “Can you imagine explaining to Papa how we accidentally dropped Heetle over the edge of the gorge?”
Temple’s eyes go wide and then we both start laughing. The idea is so terrifying and absurd—and close to the truth—that it’s either laugh or cry, I suppose.
We sit in the scrub for a minute, taking sips from our canteens and not saying a word.
“You wanna hear a story, Temp?” I ask, holding my hand out to help her stand. Temple nods and pulls her hat lower over her eyes to protect from the suns that are out full force now. “It’s the story about how the Cheese got their name,” I say.
Temple smiles, sweaty dirt and grime lining her face like an old lady’s. I know she loves this one.
3
“THE SHIP CAN’T MAINTAIN ALTITUDE! Everything is failing!” I run around the field and flail my arms over my head. Temple laughs. “We’re dooooomed!” I cry. “Dooooomed!”
“But why are we doomed?” Temple asks, playing along. We’ve acted out this part of the story dozens of times. Rory used to tromp behind us and chant “Dooooomed, dooooomed, doooooomed” in a low voice. She’d have us rolling in the dust, we were laughing so hard.
“Those gum fools on Old Earth couldn’t program a horse to water!” I shout. “They’ve mucked us up but good!”
“Whatever shall we dooooo?” Temple says in her fake cry that almost sounds like she’s singing. Together we push a boulder into the gorge and wait for one beat, two beats, three beats, and then watch it hit the blackened skeleton of the rear of the Origin.
“We shall pray to the gods,” I answer, marching to the next big rock. “We shall pray that all five thousand of us and our animals won’t be smashed to bits or eaten by monsters or lost completely when this infernal machine plummets to the red moon below.”
“Red moooooon?” Temple singsongs, holding her hand to her forehead just like she did earlier when she was pretending to be me fainting. “But that doesn’t sound like the glorious New Earth we were promised in the newsgrams of the Star Farmers Act!” We shove the next boulder into the gorge and then heave some smaller rocks in after it.
“You speak the tru
th, crusty-nosed maiden!” I say. Temple punches me in the arm and then wipes her nose with the back of her glove. “We have veered terribly off course and kept it a secret from everyone.”
She pretends to beat me with the rock in her hand and I pretend to cower in the dust.
“Do me no harm, ugly child!” I shout. “I am your captain! I have sailed you hundreds of light-years into the blackest of space. I have fought star pirates and space narwhals to keep you safe!”
At this, Temple breaks character and doubles over laughing. “Star pirates? Space narwhals? What is a narwhal ?”
“Pay you no mind!” I say in my deep captain’s voice, sweeping my arm out in front of me, thinking of how much Rory would have loved to tell a story about space pirates.
Rae. Don’t. Stop thinking about Rory.
“Do not continue beating me with your loathsome, weak hands,” I continue, trying to shake the thoughts of Rory from my head. Trying to ignore the shine tree across the gorge.
Temple throws a small rock at me and it bounces off my handbow holster. “Watch it,” I say. This time, I’m the one breaking character. “If you break my handbow Papa will whip us both.” Temple winces.
“What shall we doooo, Captain?” she says, returning to our story. “Surely we will all diiiiieeee!” We heave another stone into the gorge. It bounces off the growing pile of rocks below.
“Watch over us, gods!” I shout. “The time is nigh!”
This is the part in the story when we run around like lunatics, screaming into the wind and whipping our heads and arms around as we reenact the historic crash of the Origin, thirty summers ago, into the smallest moon of KL-5, third planet in the Kepler galaxy.
KL-5 . . . unreachable even as it looms overhead. We call it Red Crescent because of how it hangs in the sky. We call our moon nothing. It was too insignificant to warrant a name when it was discovered. And even though we have inhabited this dusty rock for thirty summers it still remains nameless. I do not know why. Maybe because there is still a shred of hope we might leave it someday. There are people on the Red Crescent. Not humans, but . . . not Cheese. Reenacting their battles with the Origin homesteaders is another favorite game of ours.
I always wonder if they will come back, but Papa is sure they will not. “Not after having a taste of our mighty strength,” he says, and it makes me think—don’t we want them to come back? Wasn’t the entire reason for the Origin’s journey to obtain lands on the Red Crescent? What do we gain by having scared them away? It perplexes me.
By this time, Boone has wandered over from the far side of the field where he was working. He must think we are both suffering from heat madness. He quickly figures out what we’re doing, though, and takes a seat on a large rock, pulling his hat low over his eyes, but tilting his head back so he can watch and laugh. He aims his good ear at us.
Temple and I both collapse on the scrub to catch our breath. The suns are really beating down now. I wish I had my hat.
“Hallelujah!” I shout, after I’ve rested a moment. I sit up. “I did not get burned alive or eaten by monsters after that dreadful crash!”
“Nor did I!” Temple says, sitting and shaking scrub from her hair.
“It appears many of our shipmates have been killed, though,” I say. “Woe is me. Also, I think some of them have been eaten. But by what?”
Temple’s hand flies to her mouth and she points to the sky. I know this is part of the story, but my heart always jumps when she points. I lift my head and pretend to see a dactyl for the first time.
“Oh, gods! What is this beast? Why does it shimmer pink in the sky? Why must it clack its huge jaws in our direction?!”
“We are breakfast, I fear, Captain! Biscuits for the beast!”
Boone laughs at this and Temple shoots him a grin.
“Come then!” I say, remembering that we’re supposed to be clearing the field and not just playing. I throw several more rocks into the gorge and Temple follows suit. Boone stays reclined on his rock until we shove him off and then push his boulder over the edge. “We must run away from this beast!” I continue. “Gather the survivors before we are all of us gobbled up!”
Temple grabs Boone’s arm and pulls him up and we all run around in circles for a moment before I shout, “Here is where we shall hide! This cave carved in the walls of the deep gash we have crashed into.”
“This cave does not seem saaaaafe!” Temple wails.
“Perhaps you would rather be eaten by a flying monster?” I say, gesturing to the sky. I see Temple break character for just a second as her panicked eyes move to the sky. But then she’s right back with me.
“I choose the cave!” Temple says, and Boone claps, making us all laugh. We toss a bunch of small rocks into the gorge and the wind carries the crashes they make as they bash into the pile below.
“I shall turn on the lights on the exterior of my helmet,” I say. “So that we can see inside this mysterious cave.”
“I forgot they were wearing space suits,” Temple giggles. Then she pretends to turn her helmet lights on, too.
“Oh my!” I shout. “Whatever is this I see?” I kneel by a boulder that was scorched by an electric strike during one of the storms last month. “How can this be?”
“What is it?” Temple says in her high-pitched voice. “A message from the gods?”
“It is . . . ,” I say. “It is . . . a drawing of cheese!” I use a small rock to carve a crude drawing in the charred place. “Perhaps a tube of clotted cheese?”
Boone and Temple both bust out laughing. I’ve altered the story from the usual and I can’t help but laugh, too. The story we usually act out—the story told to us by Papa and Aunt Billie that their parents told them—is that the captain and the few survivors saw pictographs in the cave that matched the basic shape of the dactyls that had chased them there. They saw drawings of humanoid figures, too. Then everyone heard a vibrating whistle and a red-moon native said something that sounded like “Chee-hoot.” Before anyone could react, he snatched a man right from the opening of the cave and fed him straight to a dactyl that had landed beside the native. From then on, the natives were called Cheese.
Not as funny as my story.
“This drawing of cheese is remarkable!” Temple says, still playing. “The tube looks so realistic.” I laugh because my drawing is pretty much the worst thing ever.
“Cheese,” Boone says.
“I looooove to squoosh it on biscuits,” Temple says, patting the drawing on the rock.
“No,” Boone says, pulling on his gogs. The right lens is still smashed from over a moon ago when Raj trampled it during one of our races. “Cheese.” He’s standing still, staring out over the gorge.
I drop the rock I’ve been drawing with and snap my gogs over my eyes. Sure enough, there’s a Cheese standing across the gorge from us. He’s alone, with no dactyl, no obvious weapons. Strange.
“Rae.” Temple has her gogs on, too. She grabs my hand.
The Cheese is smaller than the warrior from the other night, thin but muscled. I would guess he is not much older than we are. He’s standing by the shine tree, but not too close to it. Smart Cheese. I flick at the side of my gogs and zoom in. He’s just standing there, with the dusky brownish-red ropes of his hair whipping in the wind. And he’s wearing what? Only underpants? It looks like they’re made of dactyl skin. I’ve only ever seen the Cheese painted and shining, ready for raiding. He looks small and not so fierce, with a pack slung over his shoulder and no sparkling swirls on his skin. He is staring at us.
There’s a familiar sizzle that sounds through the air and I turn, seeing Papa’s flare become a brief third sun. It’s time for studies.
“Come on,” I say, still holding Temple’s hand. Boone runs to his side of the field and mounts Raj. I push Temple onto Heetle and climb on. Boone waits for us at the rise to the schoolhouse an
d we gallop in. Today, it’s not a race. Today, we stay together.
4
“OH, DEAR GODS,” PAPA SAYS when he sees me. He does not say it in a funny way or a tired way. He says it in a drop-down-on-his-knees-and-pray-about-it-right-gum-now way. “Ramona Darling, what have you done?” He whispers that part.
I find it hard to meet his eyes. He does not understand what it is to be a girl-child on this moon. To know you are hunted.
Papa takes a step closer to me and I shrink back. He will whip me for sure. The gods say not to hit a girl-child—unless you are her father and you are teaching her deference to the gods. I would rather not experience this particular lesson in front of Boone, though. I lift my eyes finally to meet Papa’s. They are black as mine, sparking. He works his jaw, but says nothing else.
“I will be safer this way,” I whisper.
He reaches out and I flinch, but he doesn’t hit me. He just pushes hard on my shoulder and I sit on my stool in a burst of skirts.
We are the only ones in the schoolhouse, so there is no one other than Boone to be bothered by this familial scene. And no one to be bothered as we eat our sack lunches during the first part of lessons. Well, no one to be bothered other than Papa, who is grouchy to say the least. He is not just grouchy with me, though. He is unhappy that the other children have not come—again—and now he protests against our eating here at the school table instead of the field. He wants us to “pay full attention!” And “If I can eat while on duty and take time from my work to teach you, you can respect me by not spilling crumbs on the schoolhouse tables!” As if we would waste any crumbs by dropping them.
“There are too many rocks, Papa,” Temple says, between bites of her biscuit. “That storm churned the field up good. There’s no time to eat if we are to keep coming to studies and clear the whole field before we take the journey to the cooling flats.” Temple is good at being reasonable—and at looking up out of deep-blue eyes and smiling in a way that seems to work only on Papa.
