For Darkness Shows the Stars

alive—they’d decorated and everyone had cooked for days. The Reduced had gorged themselves on sweets and pies and food they never saw the rest of the year. They’d burned lanterns and bonfires, and everyone had slept late and ignored their chores the following day.
    Since the bad time, the feast days had turned into perfunctory affairs—the Reduced were given extra food, but with none of the pomp and circumstance that had come before. Their most recent harvest feast had been more lavish than others, given the Fleet money, but Elliot still hadn’t had the courage to include more than extra food and a few meager decorations. The bad time was too recent a memory to risk it, even with her father out of town.
    At least this party was thrown by the Cloud Fleet on the Boatwright estate. It would be difficult for her father to find fault with it here.
    “There,” she said to Ro, tying the scarf in a knot around the end of her braid. “Done.”
    Ro tossed her head, admiring the part of the braid she could see, then scampered off to show her new hair to some of the North Posts who’d been gathering on the blankets nearby. Elliot laughed, watching her descend upon Dee and Jef.
    “Pretty girl,” said a voice from above. Elliot looked up to see Andromeda balancing some mugs and bowls. “Is she your pet?”
    “No,” Elliot snapped. “She’s not my pet, and she’s not my handmaiden, either. Ro is my friend.”
    “I find that difficult to believe,” Andromeda said, kneeling beside her and handing over her food. “I’ve been sent by Felicia to bring you dinner.”
    If Andromeda hated her so much, why did she always come around? At least Kai had the decency to avoid her. “I don’t care how difficult you find it to believe, Miss Phoenix. It’s the truth.” She shut her mouth before everything else she wanted to say came pouring out. That Kai could vouch for Elliot, that Andromeda should not assume all Luddites were the same—was she so unfair to the Groves?—and that regardless of either, it was none of her business. Ro and Elliot’s relationship belonged to no one but them.
    Andromeda regarded her for a long moment, staring until Elliot was forced to turn away from the penetrating look in the Post’s crystal blue eyes. “Do you think it’s dangerous for us to give a concert on your lands, Miss Elliot? I know what your family likes to do to musical instruments.”
    Another line of attack, because she wasn’t getting so far with her first? “You rent this land,” Elliot said. “You may do as you wish.” She turned her attention to her cider. If Andromeda Phoenix was determined to be rude, she would steal a card from Kai’s playbook and ignore her presence.
    But Andromeda made no move to leave, and the others did not return to the cushions. As the night turned cold and violet around them, the musicians began to play a slow, mournful melody underscored by a drum that sounded like a beating heart.
    “Oh no,” Andromeda said softly. She looked about the crowd. “Do you see Felicia anywhere?”
    Elliot shook her head.
    “There’s no talking to him,” Andromeda went on. “He insists on singing it, even when she’s here to listen . . .”
    “Who?” But Elliot needn’t have asked, as Donovan climbed the porch steps and began to sing.
    My eyes open to the sun
    The brightness of a brand new world
    The wave of our tomorrow breaks
    Beneath our ships, our sails unfurled.
    And yet a streak of darkness
    Swirls throughout this cloudless dawn
    And even my eyes cannot see
    Into the place where you have gone.
    So I don’t want to see anything now
    Not the sun or the sky or the distant shore
    I don’t want to see anything new
    Because I can’t see you anymore.
    Your sightless eyes could always see
    To distances I could not reach
    Without you I am truly blind
    You’ve fled to shores I cannot breach.
    You were the lantern in my heart
    You were the first star in my sky
    As far as I could ever roam
    You were the light that showed me home.
    And I don’t want to see anything now
    I am lost inside our yesterday
    I don’t want to see anything new
    Now that you are gone away.

Sixteen
     
    A HUSH FELL OVER the crowd as Donovan’s deep, clear voice faded into the gathering darkness. Elliot surveyed the lawn. Even Ro, still engaged with a few of the North Posts, looked subdued. She’d never heard a voice like that in her life. His lyrics might break your heart, but it was the pain evident in every note he