The Cerulean Read online

  I’m alive, she thought.

  Then she rolled over and threw up what little was in her stomach. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Sera took stock of her surroundings. She was in a large, deep, earthen hole. The dirt was dry and crumbly, not like the thick, rich soil in the gardens of the City Above the Sky. Her robe was torn and filthy, but to her great delight, the three bracelets and Leela’s star necklace were still intact.

  “I’m alive!” she cried, letting out a wild laugh. She hadn’t died. She was still here, still breathing. She gripped the pendant in one hand and raised her head.

  Her heart dropped.

  Through the opening of the hole, she could see the sky. It was black, like the sky she knew, but so far away. And the stars were mere pinpricks, tiny things no bigger than the stargems on her wrist. The loss of her home, her people, everything she knew, rose up with shocking force. Where among those stars were the Cerulean? They might have already detached from this planet, floating through space until they found a new home.

  Sera gasped. She hadn’t died, which meant she hadn’t broken the tether, which meant . . . was the City Above the Sky still up there?

  She stood and found that her body felt different—her arms and legs didn’t have the lightness she was used to. Breathing wasn’t as uncomfortable as it had been when she was falling, but it wasn’t quite like breathing in the City either. The air around her was hot and sticky but the dirt was bone-dry.

  What was that mist, and where had it gone? Why hadn’t she broken the tether like she was supposed to? Why could she not even get dying right?

  “Oh, Mother Sun,” Sera said, collapsing back to the ground and pressing her palms against her eyes. “I failed.”

  There were so many shades of awfulness, Sera did not know how to process them all. She had not wanted to die, but she had been meant to die, and now here she was, alive and alone, with no idea where she was or what to do. The only home she had ever known was miles and miles away. She felt sick at the thought of letting her City down. Surely they would have noticed the tether hadn’t broken. Sera wished she could be back in her bed with the star mobile and her purple mother’s embrace. She would gladly fall again—she’d get it right this time, if she could just have another chance—if it meant one more moment with her mothers and Leela.

  She didn’t know how long she sat, giving in to the overwhelming despair, before she heard voices approaching. Hopelessness melted away in the face of a new fear. There was no place to hide. What should she do?

  “The wind blew the dirt this way,” she heard a girl’s voice say. “See, it left a trail.” Another voice responded, but it was too low for Sera to hear. She waited, still as a statue.

  When the heads popped up over the lip of the hole, Sera couldn’t make out their features in the dark. They were black outlines against the sky. She shifted slightly, trying to see them better.

  “There!” the girl said. “Something moved.”

  Sera cursed herself internally.

  “Where? I can’t see anything. Give me the flashlight.” The second girl had a deep voice, like Koreen’s orange mother, who was very old. Except this girl didn’t sound old at all.

  Then another star lit up. This one was much brighter and closer than the others, right at the edge of the crater. It cast a thin cone of light over the sloping dirt until it reached Sera’s feet. She quickly backed away from it.

  The girls above stopped bickering.

  “Did you see that?”

  “There’s something down there,” the low-voiced girl said.

  Sera didn’t much like being called something.

  “Of course there’s something down there,” the normal-sounding girl said. “Those looked like feet.” Then, in a louder voice that was entirely unnecessary, she said, “We come in peace!”

  That made Sera feel a bit better. She decided to risk speaking—maybe these girls could help her. She certainly had no idea where she was.

  “Me too!” she called back. Something about her voice sounded wrong.

  “Do you think it’s a wounded animal?” the low voice said.

  “What sort of animal sounds like that?” the girl replied.

  “I’m not an animal,” Sera said indignantly, without thinking. “I am a Cerulean!”

  “I think it’s getting angry,” the low voice said.

  “Shhh,” the girl hissed, and then the cone of light swung up right into Sera’s eyes.

  “There it is!” the low voice shouted, as Sera scuttled away from the strange starbeam. “It’s moving, get it, get it!”

  “Shut up, Leo,” the other girl said. “You’re scaring it.”

  Sera was scared. She didn’t like that low-voiced girl, or the strange star, or the fact that she felt and sounded different. Maybe the girl had been lying when she said they came in peace. People on planets lied all the time, her green mother had said. Telling the truth wasn’t important to them like it was to the Cerulean. That was how the Great Sadness had happened, lies and deceit, humans trying to steal Cerulean magic.

  Sera’s heart plummeted. Would these girls try to take her magic away? Oh, why had she spoken up at all in the first place? Why had she not run when she had the chance?

  Well. She wasn’t the best climber in the City Above the Sky for nothing. She grasped the crumbling earth, finding balance on the balls of her feet, judged the angle of the slope, and raced up it. The dirt disintegrated beneath her, but she was always one step ahead, until she shot upward and landed silently on solid ground.

  It was lighter up here than in the hole. The moon was bright and easy to see by. The other two girls still seemed disoriented. They were peering over the lip of the crater, the starbeam swinging this way and that.

  “I think it crawled out,” the girl said.

  “Ah!” the low voice cried. “Something touched me.”

  “Leo, that was me.”

  “Oh.”

  Sera didn’t know what to do. All around her was empty space. No trees, no dwellings, no temples. Just . . . nothing. For a second, she was frozen with indecision.

  Suddenly, there was a snapping sound, and Sera was hit in the face and fell to the ground. Whatever the thing was that hit her had surrounded her whole body, and the more she struggled with it, the tighter it held her. It almost felt like the twine her green mother used to tie tomato stalks to stakes, but it was thicker and rougher.

  The starbeam drew closer and Sera shrank from it. She shouldn’t have hesitated. She should have just started running.

  “What are you doing?” the girl demanded.

  Sera thought the girl was talking to her until the low-voiced girl replied, and the triumph in her voice sent a chill up Sera’s spine.

  “I caught it. It’s mine. And I’m taking it back to Father.”

  13

  Agnes

  THE LOOKS ON BRANSON’S AND HIS CREW’S FACES WHEN they finally returned the next day to find Leo, Agnes, and the silver girl with blue hair had been priceless.

  But then the whole situation devolved into a lot of chest thumping and arguing over who would present the “prize” to Father. Branson insisted that since they’d used his net launcher, he was partly responsible. Leo laughed and said he’d let Branson have 10 percent of the credit, since that was how much he’d contributed. It was nearly mid-afternoon by the time they were packed up and ready to head back to Old Port.

  The girl was only an inch or two taller than Agnes, and slender—Leo carried her easily to the back of the truck. Though it was cramped, Agnes stayed with her, refusing Branson’s offer of sitting in the front car. She couldn’t imagine how frightening this all must be for the poor thing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said over and over on their way back to the city.

  The girl’s skin was iridescent silver, more beautiful than any chain or watch fob or brooch, and her hair was a rich, vibrant blue that matched her eyes exactly. Cerulean blue, if Agnes wanted to be specific. Otherwise, she looked quite l
ike any Kaolin girl. She wore a necklace with a pendant shaped like a star, but it wasn’t the way Agnes would have drawn a star, with five even points—it was made of points in all shapes and sizes, some long and delicate, others short and stubby. In its center was a beautiful stone, similar to an opal but richer in color and vibrancy. Three jeweled bracelets hung from her right wrist, and her dress, torn and filthy but made of an impossibly soft material, had a detail around the hem, poorly sewn in a zigzag fashion in the same colors—purple, green, and orange.

  The girl spoke in an unfamiliar language, her voice high and musical, but even though they couldn’t understand each other, Agnes decided to talk to her all the same. It felt like the decent thing to do.

  “You’re in Kaolin,” she said. “It’s a pretty big country, and quite hot at the moment, as you may have noticed. I don’t know what the weather is like where you’re from, but here every year seems to get hotter and hotter.” She bit her lip and cringed.

  The weather, Agnes? she thought bitterly. You have a potentially new species of human sitting in front of you and you’re talking about the weather?

  But the girl didn’t seem to care. She kept pushing at the net.

  “I’m sorry,” Agnes said for the millionth time. “I would take that off you, but I’m in quite enough trouble as it is.” Or I will be, once I get home. “My father is sort of . . . well, he’s a difficult man, to put it mildly. He’ll probably lock me in my room for a month after this. I just can’t seem to act like the daughter he wants me to be. I don’t fit in Old Port society and I don’t want to.” She knotted her fingers together. “I only snuck onto this expedition so I could catch a sprite and write an essay and be accepted to the University of Ithilia. And now I’ll never get there. I’ll be stuck in Old Port for the rest of my life, forced to put on a face and act like all the other girls when I’m just not. Life isn’t fair sometimes, you know?”

  Agnes assumed she’d been rambling to herself until the girl nodded with a sympathetic look on her face.

  “Can—can you understand me?” she gasped.

  Another nod.

  “But . . . how do you know Kaolish?” The girl thought for a moment, then shrugged and pointed to the crook of her elbow, which was covered in dirt. Agnes didn’t know what that meant. She was still wrapping her head around the fact that the girl could understand every word she was saying. This was truly incredible. Agnes felt herself on the brink of something not even the great Cadhla Hope had ever experienced.

  “Are you from Pelago?” she asked, wondering if maybe this girl was like the Arboreal or the mertag, before realizing she probably had no idea what Pelago was. But the girl shook her head and Agnes was once again surprised. “You know Pelago?”

  The girl nodded. Then she started speaking very fast, her musical gibberish forming what must have been a string of questions, each one growing more insistent than the last.

  “I wish I could help,” Agnes said. “But I don’t know what you’re saying. I’ve never heard anything like your language before.”

  The girl leaned back, gazed at the roof of the truck, and made a sad, five-note wail.

  “I don’t understand,” Agnes said with a sigh. The girl sighed too, and they lapsed into silence. Agnes felt her wonder turn to worry. Whoever she was, wherever she was from, this girl was intelligent and sensitive and extraordinary. She would surely be snapped up by Xavier McLellan and held along with his other creatures. Agnes found herself growing protective. The poor thing didn’t deserve the life her father would force her into. She probably just wanted to get back to whatever place she came from.

  “I think it would be best if you don’t let anyone else know you can understand Kaolish,” she said. She felt certain her father would use it somehow. The girl stared at her warily for a few seconds, then nodded.

  They had left the plains too late to make it back to Old Port that day, so they stayed the night at an inn. When it became clear they were going to leave the girl in the truck overnight, Agnes refused to take a room and insisted on staying in the truck as well. Her reasoning was twofold. In the inn, she’d have to act like a proper lady and force smiles and all that awful stuff. But really, she didn’t trust Branson’s crew. The leering looks they had given the girl had turned Agnes’s stomach, and she wasn’t going to let them put their dirty hands on her. She’d already stolen a small dagger from the supply truck, and she kept it tucked in her belt.

  “At least let her out of the net so she can get some sleep,” Agnes said to Branson.

  He laughed. “What, so she can run off in the night? I know you women are tenderhearted, but this is business. She’s got to be worth more than the tree and the little fish-man combined.” He leaned in close, and she could smell his foul breath as he gripped her shoulders. “If you even think about cutting her out of that net, you’ll have more than a slap on the wrist from your father to worry about.”

  Agnes’s throat closed up, but she couldn’t afford to show him fear. “Get your hands off me.”

  Branson snorted and released her. “Just remember what I said,” he warned before following the others into the inn.

  It was a fine establishment, with a large common room and wide, open windows. The night was windy, and carried the voices inside out to where she sat at the edge of the truck, keeping a watchful eye on the door. Leo was clearly drinking too much whiskey, because he got insufferably loud. She thought back to the moment last night when he’d let all his stupid bravado fade, when he admitted that perhaps their father had sent him on this mission to fail. That was the Leo she wanted to share a bag of peanuts with. This Leo she wanted to punch in the face.

  “She’s out in the truck.” Leo’s boasting was getting louder. “Caught her myself.”

  Was he a complete and utter idiot? Didn’t he know the danger he was putting the girl in? Another burst of raucous laughter came from the inn, and Agnes took the dagger from her belt. Damn the consequences, she wasn’t about to let the girl be hurt—she would cut her free regardless of any threats. But just then, the inn door opened and two of Branson’s men came swaggering out.

  “We’re to stay out here for the night,” one said. “Make sure nothing happens.”

  Agnes subtly slipped the dagger back into her belt, cursing herself for her hesitation. The two men threw themselves on the ground at the edge of the open truck door, and Agnes retreated back inside to perch on a crate beside the girl, who was looking back and forth between Agnes and the men with alarm.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Those guys are real jerks.” The girl looked confused. “Not nice people,” she tried to explain. The girl’s eyes narrowed, and she made a sound halfway between a growl and a purr.

  Agnes had to laugh. “Wherever you come from, it’s got to be better than here,” she said.

  The girl shrugged modestly.

  “I’m Agnes, by the way,” she said, suddenly conscious that she hadn’t introduced herself. The girl gave a short but beautiful wailing word that Agnes took to be her own name.

  “I wish I could understand your language,” she sighed.

  The back of the truck was crammed with boxes and equipment, but there was a small square of floor exposed, covered in a layer of sand and dust and dirt from the long ride. The girl poked her fingers through the net and began drawing shapes in it. It was mostly squiggly lines, triangles or circles with slashes through them, and other strange markings Agnes didn’t recognize. When she ran out of space, she erased the symbols with a brush of her fingers. She tried again and a word appeared. A word with letters Agnes could read.

  Sera.

  “You can write?” she cried. The girl was staring at the letters, looking as shocked as Agnes was. “Sera—is that your name?”

  She nodded eagerly. A strong gust of wind blew into the back of the truck, clearing the dirt and dust from the rudimentary chalkboard and making both of them cough.

  “Well . . .” Agnes wasn’t quite sure what to say. “It’s nice to meet you
, Sera. I mean, not nice given our present circumstances but . . . I’m glad to know your name.”

  Sera said something back, and Agnes felt the girl shared her sentiments.

  What a crazy turn of events. She had come all this way looking for sprites and ended up finding something even more unique.

  The idea struck her like a thunderclap. She didn’t need the sprites to write the essay. She was sitting here communicating with a creature from . . . another world, as far as Agnes could guess. Surely that would count as a brave step in the name of science! She would need a token, though, something to prove that Sera was real. She couldn’t very well bring her over to Pelago and show her to the Masters. A fingernail clipping, perhaps, or . . .

  “Sera,” Agnes said hesitantly, because she wasn’t a thief like her father or brother. She wasn’t going to take anything from this girl without her consent. “This may seem an odd request, but . . . might I have a strand of your hair? To study in my lab. I’m a scientist, you see, and I would like to know more about you, where you come from, that sort of thing. Would that be all right with you?”

  Sera bent to scratch out more letters, but the dirt was gone. She made a plaintive wail and even though they did not speak the same language, Agnes understood her all the same.

  “You just want to go back home, don’t you?” she said. Sera nodded, tears filling her eyes. “Well, I will help you as best I can. That much I promise.”

  And she would if she could—she would try at least, even though she hadn’t the faintest idea of how to go about doing it. But she felt like she’d already let this girl down once.

  Sera studied Agnes’s face for a long moment, as if deciding whether she could trust her.

  “I won’t let anyone know I have it,” Agnes said, for she felt she needed to prove her sincerity.

  Sera reached up and plucked a thin blue strand from her head. She looked at it for a moment, as if it was meaningful to her in some way Agnes couldn’t begin to guess, before poking it through the net. Agnes took a glass jar from her pocket, one she had brought to keep a sprite in, unscrewed the top, and carefully placed the hair inside.