For Darkness Shows the Stars

surveying the entire scene before her. She had little doubt that, were the light to suddenly vanish, Andromeda could re-create every particular of that morning, from the open, friendly expression on Horatio’s face as he approached with Elliot to the way Kai had barely nodded at the introduction to the number of particles in the gravel drive at their feet. No wonder she was such an excellent explorer—nothing escaped her observation.
    Elliot shuddered to think what the Post girl was noticing about her.
    Olivia met them by the steps. “I’m Olivia Grove,” she burst out. “I love your sun-carts. That’s what these are, right? I’ve never seen one before. May I go for a ride in one? Are they very hard to operate?”
    Now Kai did respond. “Yes; I’m not surprised; of course; and I can teach you if you’d like.”
    Olivia worked out which answer matched which of her questions and Elliot became very concerned with the state of the dust beneath her feet. Perhaps he had not changed as much as she’d thought. His knack of remembering everything, of organizing it in his brain and acting as if everyone else did, too—it had grown only more pronounced over the years.
    “My brother always teases me because I didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until I was nine,” Olivia said. “He says I’m marvelously uncoordinated. I bet you can teach me, though.”
    “I’ll do my best,” said Kai, and offered the girl his arm.
    Elliot had always liked Olivia Grove. She was a sweet, unaffected girl who never had anything bad to say of anyone. She was kind to the workers on her estate, liked to sing and to walk in her orchards, and seemed equally comfortable discussing fruit with Elliot as she was ribbons with Tatiana. Had she been asked, Elliot would have denied the possibility of ever having a reason to hate the fourteen-year-old girl.
    Had she been asked, she would deny a lot of things. That she ever doubted the Luddite ways she’d been taught to follow all her life. That she had broken a sacred trust in the locked room on the second floor of her family’s barn. And most of all, that listening to Olivia pepper Kai with questions, hearing him explain the workings of the sun-carts to her in the same open, excited tones she’d once known so intimately—a voice very different than the stiff, stilted syllables he’d spared for her in the barn the previous evening—Elliot would go to her grave before she admitted that it made her heart hurt so much she could scarcely breathe.

F IVE Y EARS A GO
     
    Dear Kai,
    I was sorry to learn what happened to your father today. These pills are the medicine they gave to my grandfather after he had his strokes. If you give two a day to Mal, it might help. I know you’re still mad over our argument about the Wars of the Lost, but I hope you know I’m thinking of you. Please tell me if there’s anything else I can do.
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    Thank you for the medicine. I hope it can help my da. They’ve taken him away to the healing house—I hate that name. They never do any healing there. People just go there to die. It’s hard to see him. This is the man who taught me to read and write and fix engines, and now he just stares at me like one of the Reduced.
    He must hate that. He used to tell me how hard it was for him growing up. It wasn’t like now. He was one of the only Posts on the whole estate. They didn’t even have a name for what he was growing up—they hadn’t started calling us CORs yet. He loved his family—his parents, his brothers and sisters who were Reduced, but he wasn’t one of them. He spent his whole life proving that. And now he’s trapped, he’s mute, he’s just like them.
    And that made me think of the wars. If there was a war tomorrow, would your father send the Reduced out like they did in the old days? Would you send out my uncles and cousins? Would you send out my da, now that he can no longer speak or work for you?
    I will tell you the truth. The truth is I was angry at you. The truth is that you’re my closest friend, and I still felt like there was no way I could possibly make you understand what it’s like to be me, what it’s like to be my da. The truth is that my da is dying, and because he’s a COR, he’s shoved away to be forgotten in the healing house, while your grandfather gets medicine and nurses who wait on him hand and foot. The truth is, if there was a war tomorrow, everyone I know would be forced to