Mara wandered off to her desk. She seemed to be taking her time rummaging through it, whistling to herself. Finally she returned with a glass bottle of antiseptic and an adhesive bandage.
“Let’s see,” she urged, easing my hand away again. She splashed the antiseptic over it, and I drew in a sharp breath. But when I looked up, Mara was grinning.
“That wasn’t so bad,” she said as she wrapped it. I watched the blood pool beneath the surface of the bandage, congealing in a brownish, squished-down spot.
“Easy for you to say,” I said. I could feel how Mara studied me.
“Terra,” she said at last, “you’re not your usually sunny self this morning.” I glowered at her. But she was unperturbed. “You know, I heard there was a little gathering last night. In the library, hmm?”
I felt the blood drain from my hands. Even the cut seemed to throb a little less.
“How did you hear about that?”
Mara waved her hand through the air. “They invited me. They always do. I keep saying no, but they just never get the picture.”
I didn’t know what to say. But apparently Mara didn’t expect me to say a thing. In a delicate tone she just rambled on.
“You need to understand,” she said, “that historically there have been many rebellions. On Earth there were the peasant uprisings of France. The American revolts—three civil wars could be blamed on revolutionaries there, in fact. There were the Jacobite Risings. The Boxer Rebellion. The Indian Mutiny of 1857. So it’s unsurprising that we’ve seen uprisings on the Asherah. One might say that such acts are a part of human nature. Like teenagers”—she made no effort to conceal the laughter that hid beneath her cool expression—“we all must eventually rise up against our parents.”
I just stared at her, still holding my injured hand out in front of me.
“It’s happened on the ship several times. The largest was the uprising that coincided with the deactivation of the ship’s engines. That was . . . a dark time in the Asherah’s history. Without the sound of the ship’s engines to drive them, many passengers felt lost. For the first time in their lives, they saw how empty their lives were. You know, before the uprising all marriages were chosen by the Council, as vocations are today.”
“I know,” I said. But I couldn’t imagine it. At least Koen and I got along, mostly.
Even if he still wouldn’t kiss me.
“Terra . . .” Mara spoke carefully.
“Yeah?”
She let out a deep sigh. “In the event that your tardiness this morning does indeed have something to do with the Children of Abel . . .” My ears pricked up at the name, but I did my best not to let it show. I only kept my mouth tight. “You should know that every single time they’ve approached me, I’ve turned them down.”
“Oh.” I was still being careful to look disinterested.
“They know of my feelings about child rearing and marriage. I can’t imagine why anyone would be interested in such things, but you know how gossip travels through these halls.”
I nodded.
“I always tell them that Mara Stone’s never been much of a joiner. Movements are for people who can’t move themselves, that’s what I’ve always said.”
She cocked her head to one side, looking at me for a long moment. It was the sort of scrutiny that would have normally made me blush—but I was too spent for that. “Really, I’d expect no different from you. You are my talmid, after all. P. pungens?”
I squinted at her. She held her palm out. “The Picea pungens sample, Terra. You know, some of us still have work to do.”
I turned to one of the long boxes of finished slides that waited on my desk. As I ran my finger along the glass edge, I heard Mara make a strange noise—a rumble low in her throat, like she was trying to get it clear but couldn’t.
“Funny thing,” she said. It seemed she spoke more to herself than she did to me. “I can’t remember the name of the woman who first asked me to join the Children of Abel. I do remember the smell of her, all yeasty. And there was flour on her shirt. I believe she was a baker. Yes, that’s right. A baker. Now, what was her name? You know, it’s been years since I last saw her. I wonder whatever became of her.”
I swallowed hard, but it didn’t do anything for the lump in my throat as I handed Mara her slide.
“Oh, well,” she said, taking it from me. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter now. Does it, Terra?” Though the words seemed casual, her gaze was piercing, pointed. Like she was sharing a secret with me.
That’s when the pieces fell into place. The journal. Mar Jacobi. The bakery. Mara’s words.
Momma was a Child of Abel. A rebel. Like me.
“No, it doesn’t matter,” I said quickly, and though my lips lifted in a giddy, exhausted smile, we both ignored it. “It doesn’t matter at all.”
14
A few nights later I came home to an empty house. I couldn’t be sure where Abba had gone—out drinking or wandering the streets. But I was relieved to find our quarters silent and peaceful. I’d just begun fixing Pepper his dinner when a knock came at the door.
It was Koen. When I saw him standing in the doorway, his smile broad, I felt my heart swell in my chest.
“I have something for you,” he said, and held the journal out to me. I snatched it from him, and hugged it to myself. Then I laughed a little. I must have looked foolish, clutching the leather book to me like it contained the spirit of my mother in its pages.
“Thank you,” I said sheepishly. “Would you like to come in?”
My pulse raced as I said it. Now that we shared the rebellion between us, I wondered if Koen would finally take me in his arms, touching his lips to mine. He glanced into the dark galley behind me.
“Sure,” he said.
We went up into my room together. Pepper soon appeared, wrapping himself around Koen’s ankles. I waited in the doorway to see where Koen would sit. Maybe he would settle into the nest of tangled sheets on my bed. If he did, I would sit down beside him and press my leg against his. But, to my disappointment, he sat in my desk chair instead. I tried not to sigh as I sat on the end of my bed alone, drawing my knees up against my chest.
“So what is that?” he asked, pointing to the journal that he’d carried for me across the dome. My fingers caressed the smooth leather cover.
“Van didn’t tell you?”
At this, Koen flushed lightly, scratching at the back of his neck. “Um, no. I didn’t ask him.”
“It belonged to one of my ancestors. She was one of the first passengers, but she wasn’t like the signers we learned about in school. She was an agitator.”
“Like us!” Koen exclaimed, his grin broadening. I couldn’t help but smile back at him. I had liked the way it felt to chant along with the fieldworkers in the library, to touch my hands to my heart in salute and have it mean something for once.
“Yeah,” I said. “She wouldn’t have been happy to know that five hundred years down the line we still live under the Council’s thumb.”
“Can I see it?”
I passed it to him. He began to fan the pages, but then a scrap of paper that had been pressed between the cover and the first page fell out. It fluttered to the floor. Koen bent to pick it up.