For Darkness Shows the Stars

he stood out from all the other partygoers, but then again, Elliot might have thought he stood out anyway. She drew her knees up to her chest. She wore her old black dress with a lavender sweater over it. It didn’t hold a candle to the Post clothes, but it was the brightest color she owned. Now, she didn’t know what she’d been thinking. Trying to emulate the Post style of dress did nothing to make her fit in. It only served to highlight her shortcomings.
    “I’m happy to see you, too, Malakai,” said Dee, stressing the last syllable. “I have heard some disturbing things. Perhaps you wish to clarify for us—”
    “I’d be happy to, later,” said Kai. “Right now, I need to dance with Ro. She’ll think I’m snubbing her.” Ro looked up at the sound of her name. “Dance with me, Ro?”
    The girl hopped up and right into his arms. Kai laughed and spun her away. Elliot tugged at the fraying cuffs of her sweater and tried to forget how well she knew that laugh.
    “Try as I might,” Dee said, “I can’t hate him completely, Elliot. He hasn’t forgotten where he came from.”
    “I wouldn’t want you to, Dee. You’d be no better than Andromeda if you did.” The jig went on and on, and Donovan’s music became more frantic and frenetic by the moment. As mournful as his last piece had been, it was utterly eclipsed by the melodies reeling off his fiddle now, as if he could exorcise his pain if only he could find the proper chord progression. The music was overwhelming in its intensity. Donovan must be some sort of prodigy—even Luddites with a lifetime of training didn’t possess such talent.
    Dee still watched Kai. “But his behavior now is inexcusable.”
    “He doesn’t want to be my friend. It’s his choice.”
    “What choice did he give the Fleet girl, or did he simply poison her mind against you?”
    “Drop it, Dee. This is the way it is. Like so many other things.” Elliot took a breath. “The way it is.”
    Dee shook her head. “I refuse to believe that. Look at us, here. Together, listening to music on a Luddite estate. It’s like the old days, Elliot. And look at Kai, who went away and made something of himself. I want that for Jef. I want it for this baby, whoever he or she is. They have been born into a thrilling time. It’s even like that song Donovan sang—the world isn’t a certain way. We reinvent it, every day, something new. It’s changing around us, as fast as a weed taking root.”
    And yet, Thom was still in exile. And her father had plowed under her wheat. And her grandfather lay dying in his room back at the house because treatments that could help him were illegal under the Luddite laws. This winter they had money and food, thanks to the Cloud Fleet. But what would become of the people on the North estate in the years to come? What else could they rent? How could they make do?
    If things were changing, it wasn’t nearly fast enough to suit Elliot.
    She watched Kai and Ro dance. Long after the song ended and another began, they remained out there. Kai danced with Olivia again, and Ro with anyone—Grove Posts, Jef, all by herself beneath the swinging lanterns. Part of Elliot wished to join her, but then she caught sight of Kai whirling very close, Olivia Grove held tightly in his arms, and her legs remained glued to the blanket. She could not dance on the same ground as him.
    She shouldn’t have come tonight. She’d thought she could enjoy the company of friendly faces and ignore the ones who weren’t, but she couldn’t. Not until she could teach herself to stop looking for Kai at every chance.
    The dancers whirled on inside their island of light. Above the bobbing lanterns, Elliot could see a few stars flickering in the sky—the Cross; the pointers; Scorpius, its tail slashed across the sky; and Antares glimmering like the red heart of one of Ro’s flowers. Most of the smaller stars weren’t visible in the glow of the sun-lamps. Elliot wondered if this is what the skies had looked like once upon a time, when there was so much light in the air that no one could see the stars.
    “Are you here to keep the pregnant woman company?” Dee asked.
    “I’m tired myself,” Elliot said, and hoped she sounded convincing. “It’s been a long week, and I still haven’t figured out what’s wrong with the tractor.”
    “Don’t beat yourself up too hard, Miss,” said Gill, looking up from his third mug of cider. “We won’t need it again for another few