I leaned back against my father’s bed, letting my hair fan out across the smooth blankets. Then I lifted the book and began to read.
At first it was difficult for me to decipher the handwriting. The writer, one of my long-dead ancestors, the matriarch of my bloodline, had written in nearly incomprehensible cursive. Zs that dropped below the line. Qs that looked like giant numeral twos. But eventually I got used to it. I don’t know what I was looking for in those pages. No, that’s not true. I knew, but I didn’t want to admit it. I was looking for some shadow of my mother in that woman, an old woman who wrote daily letters to a daughter she had also named Terra.
I didn’t find her. This woman was hard, bitter—nothing like my mother at all. She wrote all about her daily life on the ship, about how claustrophobic the light panels that lined the dome made her feel and how she didn’t like the taste, mossy and stale, of the recycled water. These things meant nothing to me—after all, I’d drunk that water all my life. I’d never tasted what she called “the crisp tap water of New York City, the best water in the world,” and I’d never experienced the wonders of getting sunburned after “sitting out all day under a hazy Manhattan Beach sky.”
She hated the ship. She would lie down beside a man she didn’t love, and her heart twisted and thundered in her chest. But she did it anyway. Over and over again she wrote about how someday, maybe, it would all be worth it—someday some descendant of hers, some distant great-great-great-great-grandchild, might have a chance to set her feet on a planet, a real planet, under a real, wide sky. And be free again. Spiritually. Emotionally. Physically.
Some of the things she wrote scared me.
and
I remember the day they took your brother away to be sterilized. Only thirteen years old. They told us to tell him that the “ceremony” would make him a man, that it was a mitzvah. . . . I may not be a good Jew myself, but it nauseates me, the way they’ve perverted religion.
I read, and read, and read, tasting my own frantic heartbeat in my mouth. It wasn’t until the clock bells rang out in the distance that I bolted upright. Ten chimes for ten o’clock. My hands shook as I smoothed down my hair, remembering Mara’s lab and the duties that still waited for me. Ducking into the closet, I shut Momma’s jewelry box and slid Abba’s suits back into place. Then I gathered the crumpled paper and twine up, and held them close. Momma’s words were on them. Her soft hands had touched this paper—this ink. I couldn’t throw it away. So I tucked the book under my arm and carried it back to my room.
I folded the brown paper into a square the length and width of my palm and tucked it into my underwear drawer, buried at the back where no one ever looked. The journal went inside my bag. I dressed in a hurry, throwing my lab coat on and pushing a knit cap down over my untamed hair. Then I hustled downstairs. But as I made my way through the empty districts, I held my bag against my chest. I could almost feel the journal there, throbbing like a second heart.
After work I sat on a stone bench in front of the library. I watched children straggle along the path from the school toward the districts. Little girls walked along with their arms interlinked—young boys chased and jostled one another. I felt a sharp stab in my chest. Not for the first time, I wanted nothing more than to join them, to leave my bag with its heavy burden in the pricker bushes and go run and play until I felt dizzy and out of breath.
The iron doors finally swung open. Out stepped Van. He wore a smart sheepskin coat and heavy scarf. A leather satchel, weighted with books, was slung over one shoulder. In his gloved hands Van held an iron key. He locked the library doors with it.
“Hello, Terra,” he said, hardly looking at me.
I rose to my feet. “I have the book!”
Van tipped his head.
“What book? I’m the librarian, girl. There are many books.”
“The book,” I said weakly. My hand settled on the flap of my bag. I could feel the shape of the journal there—the corners were sharp under my fingers. “The one you asked for.”
“Come with me,” Van said, and hurried away from the crowded pavilion.
I matched my strides to his. Together, not speaking, we made our way along the path that ran beside the pasture fence. It wasn’t until we reached a narrow footbridge, shadowed with browning willow branches, that he turned to me.
“Stupid girl. What if someone heard you?”
“Sorry!” I said, my face warming. I lowered my voice to a whisper, though there was no one near except a few carrion crows that loitered in the branches overhead. “I got what you asked for. You know. The book.”
“That was fast.”
Van held out his hand.
I threw my bag open. But then I found myself staring down into the shadows. Amid the crumpled papers and the wrinkled pages of my sketchpad, I could see the journal’s gilded pages. I ran my finger along them. The metal felt cool and smooth. I thought of Momma’s note. Give to Terra, it had said. She had meant the book for me.
“Will I get it back?” I asked, still staring down. At first, Van scoffed.
“It doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to all of us.”
I looked at the librarian, and my voice took on a cold edge. “It was my mother’s. And now it’s mine.”
Van’s mouth stayed hard a moment. But then it fell open. He sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “I can copy it, then return it to you.”
He held his hand out to me again. I looked at his open, waiting palm.
“Liberty on Earth,” I said to myself at last, hoping the words would help me to feel triumphant. I’m not sure it worked. I reached into my bag and then shoved the book at Van. I watched him throw it into his satchel with all his other books.
My eyes burning, I started down the path. But Van called out to me.
“Terra Fineberg!” he said. I stopped, but didn’t turn. I couldn’t stand to look at him. “The meeting’s at twenty-three o’clock tonight. In the library.”
Finally, finally, I’d done something right. A grin lifted the corners of my mouth. I turned to the librarian and touched two fingers to my heart in salute. He squinted in puzzlement, but touched his heart back in turn.
I hadn’t realized how small my world had always felt, until the day when the Children of Abel invited me to join them. It was as if the dome walls had opened, leading me toward a brand-new place. As I hurried down the path toward home, I felt, for the first time, like I was walking toward something. Toward my future. Toward Zehava.
13
Now that the winter and long nights had begun in earnest, there was no artificial sun to pass through the library’s stained glass windows. Instead the dusty chandeliers that hung from the rafters were on. Their feeble bulbs burned a slow, gloomy yellow, casting long shadows through the wood beams. I passed through the iron doors, nearly missing the figure in the shadows there. It was Van who slipped by me, hustling toward the door.
“They’re up there,” he said, gesturing toward the staircase as the key clanked in the lock.
Voices drifted down from the first landing, beside the ancient card catalog that stood gathering dust. Three strangers, men, who wore the brown, rough-hewn garb of fieldworkers, spoke in low tones. Green cords barely held on to the worn fabric of their coats. Among them stood Koen. My intended’s gaze met mine, and he lifted his arm at the sight of me.