I stared at Mara, trying to keep my gaze even. But I couldn’t. My mouth fell wordlessly open.
“Abdominal pain. Hallucinations. Tremors. Massive cardiac arrest, if you get enough of it. Not a pleasant way to go.”
“Poison,” I said, but the word echoed back too late. “Foxglove is a poison?”
Mara shook her head at me. Then she started down between the aisles, gesturing for me to follow. For a moment I stared at the closed drawer. The label’s black letters seemed to burn themselves into my retinas. Digitalis purpurea. Poison. Poison.
As I went to join her, Mara clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Terra, dear,” she said. “You have so much to learn.”
That night I sat beside Koen again on the top floor of the library, surrounded by now-familiar faces. Van Hofstadter stood in front of the railing, lifting his hands high. He was orating right out of the copy of Momma’s book.
“ ‘I must trust that my sacrifices will bring my children’s children closer to liberty,’ ” he declared, his strong voice practically shaking the cobwebs from the low rafters. “ ‘I must trust that someday my descendants will set foot on the Goldilocks planet, the place the Council has dubbed Zehava, not as prisoners of these glass ceilings, not as slaves to the ruling Council, but as free men and women!’ ”
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the gathered crowd. I watched Rebbe Davison stroke his chin with his index finger, mulling over the words. I watched Deklan Levitt pound his hand against one of the study desks.
“Hear, hear!”
The mood among the Children of Abel was electric that night, far brighter than the lights that flickered from the chandeliers overhead. But this time I didn’t feel the spark of passion inside me. At the end of it, when Van touched his hand to his heart and shouted out, “Liberty on Earth!” and the rest of them saluted and bellowed, “Liberty on Zehava!” I stayed silent, my hands pressed between my knees.
Koen didn’t notice. As the other citizens began filing down the stairs, he rushed to greet Van. I watched him clap the librarian on the arm, complimenting his impassioned speech—a speech stolen from my ancestor’s journal, of course. Van smiled easily. For a few fleeting moments they spoke to each other in low tones.
I sat in one of the overstuffed chairs, pulling a long thread of stuffing out of a crack in the leather. As Van and Koen came close, I pretended not to see them, instead focusing very, very closely on the ecru tuft of wool.
“Did you bring me the foxglove?” Van asked. I didn’t want to lie, so I only shrugged. It was a sullen, babyish gesture, I knew, but it felt safe—familiar. That is, until Koen spoke up, his kind voice pained.
“Terra! You promised!” He looked sad. He wanted so badly for me to be one of them, for me to be like him.
“I couldn’t get it,” I said. “Mara caught me in the herbarium.”
Van let out a throaty grumble. He lifted his hands, ready to chastise me. But I didn’t want to hear it. I stood, swiftly pushing past him.
“Terra!” Koen called. I stopped at the top of the narrow stairwell, my hand lingering on the banister. But when I turned, I didn’t look at Koen. Instead I looked Van Hofstadter directly in the eye.
“You didn’t tell me foxglove was a poison.”
“What did you think we wanted it for? Think the Children of Abel are going to start a community garden?” The corner of his full mouth ticked up. It was a self-satisfied sort of smile. “You’re a botanist. I figured you would know.”
“Well, I didn’t. I’m not going to help you poison anyone.”
Van stalked forward. His nostrils flared. “Do you think the Council deserves our mercy?” he demanded. “You saw what they did that night to Benjamin!”
I could almost still hear the librarian’s final gurgle of breath, could almost see the wild-eyed look, animal and afraid, that had crossed his face as the dagger had slid across his throat.
“These are not nice people, Terra,” Van said. And it was true. I remembered the sudden explosion of blood down Mar Jacobi’s shirtfront and the way he’d fallen forward, collapsing on the metal grate.
“I can’t,” I said at last. “I would help you if I could, but I can’t. Mara Stone will never let me get away with it.”
“If our leaders find out that you’ve failed us . . .,” Van began.
But he didn’t get to finish his sentence.
“Lay off her!”
Koen had shouldered his way between Van and me. He threw an arm over my back. I smelled sweat on him, cedar, the lanolin stink of his sweater. I could feel his heart pounding beneath my arm.
“If our leaders find out,” he said, “they can deal with it.”
“Koen,” Van said, his forehead furrowing in confusion. But the young clock keeper just went on.
“Terra will be my wife soon. And if they trust me, they can trust her.” High blossoms of color exploded cross Koen’s cheeks. But he didn’t look embarrassed. He looked proud.
“Are you sure?” Van asked. There was some deeper question hiding beneath his words, but I couldn’t quite suss it out.
“Positive. Now come on, intended,” Koen said, his voice a little too loud for the empty library. “Let’s go.”
We moved down the spiral staircase together. But tucked under his arm, I couldn’t help but feel that I wasn’t walking at all. Instead I flew over the creaky steps, my body suspended several feet above the floor. It wasn’t until we stepped through the iron door and into the cold night of the evening that I touched ground again.
“Thank you!” I said to Koen, reaching out for his hands. It felt like the most natural gesture in the world, to hold his hands in mine. But his cold fingers stayed slack, like dead flesh against mine.
“Sure,” he said. He pulled his hands away and shoved them down inside his pockets. They were balled into fists.
“I didn’t expect you to speak up against Van like that.”
“Oh.” I watched Koen chew the peeling skin from his lower lip. At last he said, “Well, if I’ve learned anything from your father, it’s that it’s my duty now. You deserve to have someone looking out for you.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I stood there, blushing. “Sure,” I said. “But still—standing up to the Children of Abel.”
Koen only shrugged.
We stood there for a moment under a glass sky splattered with stars. At last Koen stepped away.
“I should go. Work tomorrow. And all.”
He didn’t kiss me good-bye. He didn’t even wait for my answer. Koen turned and hustled off, leaving me alone in the shadow of the huge, dark library.
16
I no longer dreamed about the atrium. Now, as the ship drew closer to Zehava, my dreams had changed, become stranger.
I’d be walking through a forest, but the shapes of the trees were all wrong. The bark seemed smooth, fleshy—and branches fanned out gently from the trunks. Indigo leaves stirred and moved overhead in what I assumed was wind. The Asherah’s air circulated in only one direction, from starboard to port, over and over again. This wind was different—lively, capricious—and sometimes, for whole moments, it was still, too.
I was never alone.
At first I was sure that the boy who walked beside me was Koen. I wanted him to be. His strides matched my strides perfectly; sometimes he even laced his fingers in mine. I only ever saw him out of the corner of my eye, a shadow. But night after night I cobbled together a fuzzy image from those stolen side glances. Whoever he was, he was taller than Koen, much taller. And darker, too. Even in my dreams I could tell that he smelled different. Sweet, like flowers. And somehow green. His body beside mine had none of the animal musk of Koen’s body.