“What’s all this about?” he growled.
Ronen and I exchanged a look, our eyebrows lifting in a wordless agreement. We’d keep out of Abba’s way, as we always did when he got like this. But Hannah didn’t know Abba like we did.
“Arran,” she said. “Come, sit. I’m making stuffed cabbage. Your favorite, isn’t it?”
My father grumbled something incomprehensible. He looked up at Koen, who stood by the door with his hands in his pockets. “You, boy. Get me my wine.”
Koen shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know where it is,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll get it.”
I crouched down beside the icebox to fetch Abba’s wine out of its hiding place. I tipped it into one of our glass tumblers, handing it off to my father.
“We had a hard day,” Koen offered. “We received some bad news from the Council.”
“Oh?” Hannah tilted her head to one side. Her black curls spilled against her collarbone. Then the frying pan gave a hiss, and she scraped her spatula hastily over it. My father drank down a mouthful of wine.
“Winter,” Abba grunted. “They’re moving us back to winter soon.”
We all went quiet at that.
“That can’t be right,” my brother protested. “Spring’s only just started.”
My father stared down into his sour wine, half gone already. He didn’t answer, but then, he didn’t have to. Hannah answered for him.
“Spring as we know it won’t exist on Zehava,” she said. “It’s too cold. The Council must want—”
“—to get us used to winter.” My father finished her sentence for her. Then he wiped his mouth against the hairy back of his hand. It left a purple stain there.
“When I was a boy,” he said, “they still gave us a few weeks of summer. They let us camp out in the atrium.”
None of us spoke—not even Hannah. She stood still over the stove, smoke drifting up into her face.
“Now no spring?” my father asked. And when he spoke again, his voice broke. “Who the hell wants to live on a planet without any spring?”
“No!” I said, slamming my fist against the counter. On the table Pepper jumped. The force behind my words surprised even me. “No, it’s not right.”
“Terra,” my father said, a dark warning in his voice. But I didn’t hear it. I slammed my fist against the counter again.
“It’s not right!” I said. I thought of Momma’s flowers, of the walks we’d taken through the dome on spring nights. I thought of the artificial sunlight and how it warmed our faces even as the nights turned to dusk. I thought of never feeling that again. “Why do they get to decide? It’s not right!”
“Enough!” Abba roared. He drained the tumbler in one gulp, then slammed it down against the table. He ambled to his feet, stumbling toward me. “I won’t listen to treasonous words under my roof!”
“But you said—” I began to protest, backing up until my spine pressed against the metal wall. I heard Ronen say my name in a low tone. He was warning me away from Abba, warning me about what waited for me if I continued down this path.
He didn’t have to. I knew the dangers. Before my father could lift a hand to me, I shoved past him. Then I shouldered by Koen, too, groping for the door handle.
“I’m out of here,” I said. “Enjoy your cabbage.”
I slammed the front door shut behind me.
I tumbled past our front gate, my footsteps brisk against the cobblestone. The twilight air was chilly. I crossed my arms tight over my chest to keep the wind away. Maybe my father had already turned the dials up in the clock tower’s control room, moving us toward autumn before we even knew what was happening. I wondered what the birds would do once the frost came in. They’d only just begun to lace their nests with downy feathers. Would their eggs hatch in the winter? Or would the baby birds freeze to death inside their brittle shells? I wondered if the Council even cared.
Liberty on Earth.
The words rang out in my mind. I wondered if this was what Mar Jacobi had died for—for spring and baby birds and the right to live our lives the way we wanted. In school we’d learned about the different forms of government. Democracies. Parliamentary republics. Military juntas. The names stuck out in my mind, but I could hardly recall what they meant. Something about voting, maybe. I’d memorized the definitions only long enough to pass our tests, then I’d quickly forgotten them.
Liberty on Zehava.
I knew the Council was meant to rule long past landing. After all, they’d been the ones to keep our little ship afloat these five hundred years, hadn’t they? Rebbe Davison always said you didn’t change horses midstream. Silvan and his cronies, Council sons all, had shared a hearty laugh. But I hadn’t understood. What would a horse be doing underwater?
“Terra, wait up!”
I’d reached the end of our street by then. In the circle of light cast down from the corner streetlamp, I stopped and turned. Koen was rushing toward me, his dark hair tossing in the wind. It felt lately like wherever I went, there he was, following me like a lanky shadow.
“What do you want, Koen?” I asked. He came to stand breathlessly beside me. His cheeks were pink, though I couldn’t tell whether it was from the cold or because of how fast he’d been running. Or maybe he always looked like that—red cheeked and sheepish.
“I wanted to see if you were okay,” he said. I shoved my hair behind my ear so that I could better see his face—his strong jaw, his narrow nose, his pale skin, scattered with freckles.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m fine. Happens all the time. It’s nothing new.”
He smiled at me like I’d cracked a joke, but I hadn’t meant it to be funny. I turned toward the darkening street. The lights were coming on in the town houses, and they cast mottled yellow squares down from the curtained windows.
“I don’t know why you keep coming home with him,” I said. “It’s not like it worked out so well the first time.”
Koen chuckled. “I come because your father asks me.” He waited a beat. His smile didn’t falter, not a centimeter. “I come because it beats going home.”
“Oh?” I asked, and turned my face up to him. Behind his grin I now saw the shadow of something else. But I couldn’t quite read it.
“Your dad is nothing compared to my parents. They’re at it all the time. It’s like I might as well be invisible.”
“Better invisible than a target,” I said. Koen only shook his head.
“You might think that, but I don’t.”
Koen was a full head taller than I was, almost as tall as Abba. But he was slender and gawky. He had big hands, big feet, a big, smiling mouth. I thought about the night before—about Mar Jacobi’s death and the way he’d cried out as he’d collapsed on the floor. I had the sudden urge to tell Koen about all of it, to let the weight of the secret spill from my lips. But I didn’t know how.
“Koen,” I said at last, dropping my voice to a murmur, “do you ever think about ‘liberty’?”
Koen’s coltish eyes darted left, then right before returning to me. “No,” he said, in a tone that I didn’t quite believe. “I don’t think about that. All I think about is how I wish I could be normal.”
I dropped my gaze. My throat tightened, full of tears. I didn’t know why I ever tried to tell anybody anything. It was better to just keep it all locked inside, a secret.
“Oh,” I said.
I felt pressure across my back. Koen had rested his broad hand against my shoulder.
“I don’t know about you,” he said gently, turning me toward home, “but I’m starving. That stuffed cabbage sure would hit the spot right now.”
I forced a feeble smile to my lips. “Sure, Koen,” I said as we walked together. “Sounds great.”