Goddess in the Machine by Lora Beth Johnson

Author:Lora Beth Johnson [Johnson, Lora Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781984835925
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2020-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Andra took a different route back to the palace, this time getting caught in the late afternoon rush. She’d managed to convince Lew to let her return by herself.

“I’ll be fine,” she’d said. “I have Mechy here to protect me.” She patted the ’bot’s shoulder and then realized that was something Zhade would have done.

Not that she minded Lew’s company, but she needed time to herself, time to think. She’d expected to feel joy when she finally obtained a mech’bot, and there was some. But there was also fear of the festival, and strangely, guilt for planning on leaving. And on top of all that, disappointment that she wasn’t only feeling euphoria. It was too much to untangle with someone by her side.

She got lost in the crowd, the mech’bot following behind. She picked up bits of language as she passed. It sounded different from the pieces Zhade, Lew, and Lilibet taught her, the accent thicker, the rhythm too fast.

She followed twist after turn, dodging barkers selling their wares and swerving past what was apparently a school letting the student sorcers out for lunch. She kept turning back to make sure the mech’bot was keeping up. It was. People parted to let it pass, barely giving it a glance. Andra was exhausted, but she kept going, until the buildings fell away and the noise of the city muted, and she found herself standing at the edge of a clearing.

The river flowed on the far side. The ground was sandy as the desert, and nothing—no rocks, no plants, no buildings—were within a two-hundred-meter radius. Except for a grove of ruins in the very center.

A circle of columns stretched out of the earth and broke off suddenly, their edges worn and cracked. A crumbling statue was buried in the middle, the head and shoulders of a humanoid figure jutting out of the ground, so worn down, it looked like a decaying body. These ruins were old. Perhaps from the first colony, just like the mech’bot. The colony she was supposed to be a part of.

Something more than curiosity pulled Andra toward them. A tug, a nag. She gave the mech’bot a command to stay where it was and crossed the clearing, gravel crunching beneath her feet. When she made it to the first stone, she reached out cautiously, wanting to touch it, to feel what had been created possibly by people she knew. Oz might have stared up at the statue, clinging to his sister’s hand. Acadia’s, instead of Andra’s.

Right before she made contact, she heard a voice behind her.

“How you happen here, girl?”

It was not a friendly voice. The threat was evident. Andra spun.

The man in front of her was dirty, hair hanging in stringy clumps, a sinister leer revealing several missing teeth. He wasn’t alone. Two others stood behind him.

They had dark reddish tans—the kind of permanent sunburn that people who worked outside got, only visible on their exposed forearms and torsos. The rest of them was completely covered in ragged sand-colored clothing, crusted with dirt and twigs.

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