For Darkness Shows the Stars

responded, he could punish her, but he didn’t need her reaction to press on. Her very existence was provocation, was failure, was outrage enough for him. She could remain silent forever, never build another string-box, never graft another plant, and still he could see the lie that bloomed in her heart.
    AS SOON AS SHE could, as always, she slipped away to the barn. As always, her eyes went immediately to the knothole—their knothole. And as always, for the last four years, it was dark and empty.
    Well, at least Kai was complying with her request not to speak to her. She ascended the stairs and drew her key, but there, at the door to her workroom, she paused. She could not go in there tonight. She could not work on her illegal wheat. She could not stand there surrounded by a hundred gliders that all said the same thing:
    She was not a Luddite.
    She might not have asked Felicia to break the law with her grandfather, but she had wanted to. She’d made the wheat and she’d taught Ro how. And then there was Kai. She should hate him. She should fear him.
    She did neither.
    Elliot returned to the ground floor and swept the stalls. She fed and watered the horses, and then she gritted her teeth and curried them, even Pyrois. And when that failed to exhaust her, she turned to the machinery.
    She’d been useless with her grandfather today. Perhaps she could fix something tonight to make up for it. Her recent success with the churner had galvanized her to tackle some more of the projects that remained. The estate didn’t need to suffer because she wasn’t a properly trained mechanic. Stupid Kai, fixing the tractor just to spite her. He’d been raised to fix machines. She’d just picked up what she could from watching him and Mal. But she wasn’t completely helpless.
    She turned to the thresher. It had been smoking for the latter half of the season. She changed the oil, and tightened a few bolts. She’d thought Gill had mentioned something about a worn belt, but he must have fixed it, because everything appeared in working order.
    This wasn’t as challenging as she’d thought. No wonder the Posts had pitied the state of the North machinery, if the repairs were so easy, after all. Finally, she turned her attention to the plow with its faulty gearbox. It needed new parts—she’d write to a craftsman in Channel City. She could afford to fix her machines now. The Fleet had been good for something.
    Surely Gill would find it a relief if she managed to get that up and running again before spring. Elliot hauled it out of its corner and prepared to brush away the cobwebs . . .
    Only to discover none.
    And that wasn’t all. There were three new hoses and two new bolts attached, and when she turned on the engine, the machine hummed happily. Elliot stared at the gearbox in bafflement. It wasn’t brand new. Perhaps Gill had found an extra somewhere, fixed it, and neglected to tell her.
    Except she knew there was no extra. Not on the North or Boatwright estates, and not on the Grove estate either—she’d asked Horatio a few months ago. Either Gill had fixed this plow today and hadn’t had a chance to tell her because she’d been busy with her grandfather, or there was something else at work. And the idea that he’d fixed the thresher, too? Come to think of it, the oil in the thresher had looked remarkably clear.
    She turned slowly in the barn, looking for once beyond the empty knothole. Each machine stood silent and still, but Elliot could see a flash of new metal here and there. Lots of things had been fixed, apparently. There was only one possibility, and it wasn’t that her father had finally determined to take a more hands-on approach to his farm.
    High above her, Nero the cat perched on a beam and watched her, purring. Elliot fisted her hands at her sides. She probably wouldn’t have looked at these things until spring, when it was time to start the planting and the Fleet was scheduled to depart.
    She never would have known.
    How dare he?

S IX Y EARS A GO
     
    Dear Kai,
    I waited for you in the barn tonight, but you never came. It was dark and scary in there alone. Where were you? How can you stand it in there, with all the machines and the creaking? Do you believe in ghosts?
    Your friend,
    Elliot
        
     
    Dear Elliot,
    I want to believe in ghosts. It would be nice to think that we stay around after we die. I also like what the ancients thought about our spirits traveling up the island and into the sea.