Starbreak by Phoebe North

Author:Phoebe North
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

17

Sometimes it seems to me that there are two types of love. The first starts small—like a drop of pigment against a wrinkled page. At first it looks like nothing but a smudge of color, stark against white. But then you add to it: a laugh, a conversation, the way that he kisses you. One brushstroke after another. Like art it fills the paper slowly until the image is undeniable. On the ship most marriages worked out like that. As we grew older, we hoped for friendships that would slowly flower into something else—by then too world-weary to expect the passionate embraces that had been promised to us in stories and in dreams.

And that was the other love, the sort we whispered of in the school yard, bright as sex and twice as dangerous. A love that caught fire like a match in the darkness, ready to burn oxygen, our lungs, our lives. Bashert, bashert, we whispered, half afraid we would find it was someday true. Because it was a risk, wasn’t it? To love hot and ask questions later. We wanted it, but we didn’t want it. By the time I’d found Vadix, I was sixteen—old enough, really, to know better.

But sometimes you need a forest fire to clear the ground for new growth. Mara had taught me that long ago—a lesson she’d hoped I’d use on our new planet, though I don’t imagine that she ever meant it this way. Vadix and I stumbled back toward his bedroom, heading straight for the round bed at the center. He peeled my clothes off as we went, leaving one dirty layer after another in a pile on the floor. His hands were long, familiar. I found in them a thousand tender mercies. They graced bare skin, caressed my rib cage and my belly. Electricity arced and flickered between us. How could I have ever doubted my own worth? Because no matter what Abba had said—and Aleksandra, and Mazdin Rafferty, and so many others—he found me worthy, urging me to love and love and never leave.

I kissed every uncountable scar. There were so many of them that soon I was dizzy, desperate for air. He laced fingers through the matted locks of my hair, drew me closer and closer still. I thought of the vines curling around one another in the forest, desperate to make their parts meet. I empathized. Why couldn’t we just have one body, one mind? It seemed to me a grave injustice that we had been born separate, different, that we had wasted so much time so far away from each other. That afternoon and into the deep golden evening, I endeavored to correct that. We would be one. Whole. Formidable. A new sort of creature.

The forest burned, but anyone who tells you that nothing is left in its wake has never felt what I’ve felt, has never seen the green promise of new growth turning up its head toward the sun—all in a darkened world of char and ash.

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