For Darkness Shows the Stars

the window with its heavy shade. Beyond, the moon would be rising.
    She lifted the shade and bathed the room in silver. Moonlight glinted off the glass and metal instruments on her desk and vanished into the eaves. Moonlight skimmed over the floorboards and made Nero’s eyes a shimmering green. It wasn’t enough to work by. It wasn’t enough to read by. But who needed to read? She knew them by heart.
    All around her, strung from the ceiling and wafting softly in the draft, Kai’s paper gliders glowed in the moonlight like pale spring shoots bursting from the soil.

F IVE Y EARS A GO
     
    Dear Elliot,
    Thank you for the textbooks. I put them right back where you told me. I can’t believe my da doesn’t know anything about the wars. Especially if they did all that stuff like your textbooks say. Can you imagine always knowing exactly where you are in the world, just with a machine? I can’t help but be really mad at the people who screwed that up for us.
    By the way, I’m putting all this in the letter because I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about it in front of my da. He got very upset when I told him about the Reduced infantry in the Second War of the Reduction. I suppose that’s why they only teach that stuff to Luddites.
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I know! I find it amazing, some of the things they could do before the Reduction. (Just don’t tell anyone I said that.) My grandfather has one of those old compasses on the wall in his house. The wheel just goes round and round now. One day I’ll sneak you in to see it.
    What I learned in school is that the Lost were so desperate, knowing that all their offspring would be Reduced and in a generation their entire society would be gone, that it didn’t matter to them what happened. They wanted to make sure that no one stole what they thought was theirs, even if all their descendants wound up Reduced and couldn’t use it. They thought that if they couldn’t have their technology, their land, their things, no one could. My Luddite ancestors survived, but there were whole countries that at the time were too poor to have the ERV procedure. The Lost bombed them into oblivion rather than let them inherit the Earth. The same thing would have happened to us if we hadn’t hid away in the caverns.
    I’ll tell you a secret. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like, to live before the Reduction. Can you imagine knowing what way you’re going without using the stars? I read these stories in the books about England or Greece or Egypt or China and I wonder if they are still out there. Do you?
    I’m sorry if I upset Mal, even inadvertently.
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    I know they are still out there. The wars couldn’t have destroyed everything. They just can’t find us, same as we can’t find them. (Don’t tell anyone I said that.)
    And don’t worry about my da. He’s been cranky recently. He keeps saying stuff like he’s run out of things to teach me. But about this I guess I understand. He can’t help but picture his parents or his brothers and sisters being used as Reduced infantry to draw away the seeker bombs. That’s really upsetting.
    I’m glad we don’t have wars anymore. The Reduced have it bad enough without being used as living targets.
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I still don’t understand. Obviously, no one in your ancestry was ever in the Wars, or you wouldn’t have been born. Your family was protected by their Luddite lords. They would have been under the care of the Norths, not someone who was Lost. So I don’t see why it bothers Mal.
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    Where were you today? You didn’t write me a letter and you weren’t in the barn.
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    It’s now been a week. I spoke to Mal today and he said he didn’t know where you were. I know that’s not true, and I know you got my last letter. If you’re mad at me, I wish you’d tell me why.
    Your friend (I hope!),
    Elliot

Seven
     
    ELLIOT SET OUT EARLY the next morning to see Ro. She should be told if Kai was back. After all, she’d probably been more outwardly upset than Elliot when he’d left the first time.
    That morning, Ro’s group was working in the easternmost field, and when Elliot arrived, the foreman, Gill, gave her a wry look. “Come to see what all the commotion is about?”
    “What do you mean?” Elliot asked.
    Gill nodded his