For Darkness Shows the Stars

Andromeda. “Everything . . . else aside, I am aware that you are all that stands between your Posts and your father.”
    She was wrong. Elliot knew that now. The Posts themselves stood there. Dee stood, without her common-law. Gill stood, a forty-year-old laborer willing to fight a teenager for saying Elliot was useless. Or worse than useless—complicit. Thom and so many others had stood, willing to walk away from the farm rather than let Baron North continue with his reign of terror. She may have made those instruments, but it was the Posts who wanted to play them. It was the Posts who were willing to hide them, the Posts willing to defy her father as his punishments grew ever harsher.
    No, she couldn’t protect them then. Not then, at fifteen, still reeling from the loss of her mother and Kai and trying to figure out how the baroness had managed her father with such finesse all those years. She couldn’t stop her father from putting Gill’s eleven-year-old daughter in the women’s barracks, from slapping Dee in stocks for two days after she was discovered sneaking instruments out to the Grove estate, or from beating Thom for trying to break Dee out of those stocks.
    And perhaps she couldn’t protect them now either, but she’d learned something important back there at the concert. She might do her best to protect them—and fail—but she hadn’t realized until now they were also protecting her.
    Dee chose to sneak those instruments. Thom chose to rescue the woman he loved. And then, when so many of the Posts left the estate, Dee and Gill and Mags and the others chose to stay behind. Maybe they chose like Elliot had one year earlier. They chose to save the estate, to protect the Reduced that had even less agency than they did.
    Maybe they chose to protect Elliot herself.
    She’d always told herself that the reason Dee wouldn’t reveal where Thom had gone was because she didn’t fully trust Elliot. But maybe Dee didn’t tell her about Thom so it wasn’t possible for Elliot to get in trouble for keeping it a secret. Elliot was a Luddite and their superior on the estate, yes, but it was Dee and Gill and Thom who were the grown-ups.
    Elliot turned away from Andromeda without another word and marched into the house. She didn’t change her clothes or redo her hair but went straight up to the door of her father’s office and knocked. If he sought to punish her, she wouldn’t hide. If he hoped to punish the others, she would fight.

E IGHT Y EARS A GO
     
    Dear Elliot,
    Where have you been? You haven’t come to the barn in days. Tell me when you are coming back.
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I guess by now you have heard the news. Benedict has been sent away from the North Estate. I don’t know what it is he did. Mother won’t tell me, and all I’ve been able to find out is that it was very bad and has something to do with the Reduced. What is the word among the CORs?
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    I haven’t heard anything at all here. My da never listens to gossip. Where did he go? Another estate?
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I don’t know. No one tells me anything. Tatiana said he was turned out into the cold, but I don’t think that’s true. She always makes up stories. Like she tells me all the Posts that run away end up in butcher shops. I didn’t eat meat for a month, and then my mother found out what Tatiana had said.
    I can’t think of what Benedict might have done. Beat a Reduced?
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    If I know your father, it was probably because Benedict didn’t beat the Reduced enough. You know where that butcher shop story comes from, don’t you? Long ago, before there were CORs, before the Estates could manage to feed themselves, there were Luddites who ate Reduced. At least, that’s what the legends say. The older Posts tell that story on feast nights to scare the rest of us.
    So, when can you come back to the barn? I have something to show you!
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    I’m not coming to see you until you take that back. Luddites never ate people!
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    Did so.
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Kai,
    TAKE THAT BACK NOW.
    NOT your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    I know why Benedict was sent away. I will tell you if you come see me.
    Your friend,
    Kai
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    Come on. I know you want to