When starships leapt into the atmosphere, they almost looked like shooting stars. With a flash of light, they would appear in the night sky overhead. Then with faint trails of stardust in their wake, they would continue to the spaceport, often flying right over the city of Hoffman.
“Make a wish.”
Sorrel could hear her father’s voice as clearly as she could see the stars above her, even though it had been over ten years since his death. If she just looked at the sky, she could imagine that she was seven years old again and sitting by her father on the slanted roof outside of her parents’ bedroom. He’d point out the constellations to her, and tell her the stories behind the stars.
Sometimes they would be stories of grand knights who ventured to defeat an evil witch in a castle, of a princess who ran away with a pirate, of a queen who lived in a castle made of ice. Other times, they would be stories about spacer trading routes and those who’d ventured beyond the borders of the Society of Worlds to undiscovered planets. Or they’d be more mundane explanations of the gases and chemical reactions that made the light seen beyond space and time.
Sorrel preferred the fairytales or the spacers’ tales.
She found her hand drifting toward the bronze compact in her pocket, cold from the winter air even in the flannel-lined pocket of her winter jacket. The engraved letters of V. M. were intimately familiar to her, as was the little heart beneath it. She knew that if she took it out, she would see the cracked glass, and the little ticking hands of the clock. In fact, even now she could feel the ticking like a heartbeat beneath her fingertips.
But she did not take it out now. Instead she sighed and continued scavenging the broken ship at the top of the heap for parts, adding the parts that weren’t completely cracked or decayed from exposure to the elements to the large burlap bag slung across her upper body and over her shoulder.
“I think that’s about the last of what we can expect from this one.” Across from her, on the other side of the open side-panel of the fallen starship, her sister wiped her hands on her stained coveralls. “This one’s pretty old. Vintage parts can go a pretty crown or two—but the problem is they’re so worn down, we’ll be lucky if even half of what we found will actually function once they’re cleaned up.”
“If that’s the case, then we return the rest for scrap, as usual.” Sorrel shrugged.
Next to the open panel into the innards of the ship, she could start to see the faded purple paint of letters on the side. Eternity, the ship had once been called. The irony wasn’t exactly lost on her.
“What kind of ship do you think this was?” Sorrel brushed her hand over what remained of the ship’s name. “Maybe this belonged to pirates who were headed for the edge of the system—or it could have been a merchant ship, that belonged to a traveling family who brought in goods from the Inner Worlds?”
Gwynn hummed noncommittally and tucked a black curl behind her pale ear. “This is a Rosebrier AT-426 model. A smaller, cheaper cargo freighter, but fairly sturdy. The name suggests it wasn’t owned by one of the larger companies.”
She looked up at Sorrel, meeting her matching eyes—one of the few things the twins had in common, both in appearance and otherwise. She smiled faintly. “I’d say your guess about a smaller, independent merchant is likely. Maybe it was a family heirloom, passed on through the ages before it wrecked here.”
She looked back down at the worn metal, her smile deflating. “It feels like everything from space wrecks and dies here.”
Sorrel knew she wasn’t just talking about the ship. She placed her hand over Gwynn’s and didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.
For a moment, they sat there under the stars as their shared sorrow passed over them like a shadow. Ten years had crept along like a small eternity and passed like the blink of an eye. They both had been little girls, still, when their father died. At nineteen, would the twins be unrecognizable to him?
It was a question that kept Sorrel awake at night, with no idea as to how to answer it.
Gwynn was the first to withdraw her hand and stand up. “I suppose Maman will be waiting for us. We’d better take this back home, and we can clean up and sort through the parts tomorrow morning.”
Sorrel bit her lip and rose to join her. The winter wind picked up, gently blowing strands of her dark red hair free from her loose braid. Snowflakes danced in their airborne waltz, to a tune inaudible to humanity. She paused and turned to look up at the stars one last time. They were so much more visible out here in the junkyards, than back home at the bed-and-breakfast in the center of town.
She blinked—once, twice.
The bright light of a ship flashed into act atmosphere. But it did not dim and glide gracefully to the spaceport.
No, it was growing brighter, and larger, and was it coming closer—
“That is not a controlled descent,” Gwynn muttered, shielding her eyes from the light.
Sorrel’s own eyes widened and she grabbed Gwynn’s arm. “And it’s headed straight for us! Come on!”
She glanced around before locating one of the grimy orange safety pads scattered around the piles. She didn’t particularly like the idea of jumping onto one of them. But she liked the idea of being crushed and burned by a falling spacecraft even less.
She and Gwynn exchanged a glance. Sorrel let go of Gwynn’s arm long enough for both of them to ditch the bags of scrap, tossing them to the dirt at the bottom of the heap. They took each other’s hand and leapt.
KA-BOOM.
It was as they crashed onto the landing pad that the shockwave of impact rang out. Sorrel scrambled to her feet and turned to see a sleek silver capsule where they’d once stood on the top of the heap.
“Well, that’s convenient,” Gwynn muttered as she rose next to Sorrel. “Looks stable where it is.”
“We’d better check it out.” Sorrel started climbing up the heap.
“Maybe we should call the paramedics—who knows if the pile is going to hold?” Gwynn lingered on the ground, craning her neck up at Sorrel.
“But what if someone needs us now?” Sorrel turned her head as she continued her climb. They’d been scavenging from the Eternity for the last month. She knew the ascent as well as she knew the grooves of her father’s initials and hte little heart on her compass. “We can’t leave someone in trouble.”
Gwynn sighed. “No, we can’t.”
She then joined Sorrel, quickly catching up in the climb back to the top of the scrap heap and the flat side of the Eternity.
By the time they’d gotten to the top, the silver capsule had cooled considerably. No heat radiated off of it. But still, Sorrel and Gwynn donned their thick work gloves as they approached and Gwynn drew her small metal toolkit from a pouch on her belt.
“It’s an older style,” Gwynn declared, tilting her head as she examined it. “You can see from the bolt shape, that’s from—wait. . .”
She froze in place, her lips still parted. Then she shook her head. “That can’t be right.”
Sorrel frowned. “What do you mean?”
Gwynn ignored her, crouching down to examine a line of bolts and rivets. “Look at the shape, it’s octagonal, not hexagonal. And it’s got a symbol of a maker that was in business back before the Society of Worlds formed.”
“What?” Sorrel blinked rapidly. “But that would mean it’s over five-hundred years old.”
“That’s why I don’t think it’s right, but also. . .” Gwynn trailed off, biting her lip. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“We should get it open, I think if anyone inside was alright by now, they’d have gotten out.” Sorrel stood and looked for a door.
A very thin line in a vaguely rectangular shape was off to the side, just barely accessible. A degree or more turned, and Sorrel wouldn’t have been able to open it at all because the door would have been partially or completely blocked. There was a black handle right above a viewing port. Sorrel glanced inside, but could only see a very faint glow inside, something white, but she wasn’t sure.
She tried the handle. To her surprise, the door swung open easily, requiring no extra force than opening the door to her house.
Inside, lying crumpled between the edge of a seat and the cold metal floor was a boy, who looked to be around her age. He wore a longer dark-blue jacket made of a fine material and a slender golden chain from around his throat with a matching azure stone that glowed. He had a boyish face with freckles like galaxies swirling on his cheeks, but it was somewhat marred by a collection of scars like a spider’s web around his right eye.
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However, what was most peculiar was the boy’s hair—it was as white as the snow falling around them, and glowing.
By this point, Gwynn had abandoned her investigation of the capsule to see who or what was inside the capsule—and she gasped.
“I don’t recognize—I don’t think there’s anyone from any of the other worlds in the Society that look like that.” Gwynn spoke the words that were on Sorrel’s mind. It was funny, how they had a way of doing that.
“Is—is he alive?” Sorrel reached out to touch his arm.
His eyelids fluttered and he groaned, but he otherwise did not move.
Sorrel and Gwynn exchanged a look. With her sister’s help, Sorrel gently moved the boy to see red, stark against the boy’s glowing white hair. The smell of iron filled the air.
“He’s injured, we should take him to the hospital.” Gwynn looked up at Sorrel. “I think we should—“
She was interrupted by a roar like thunder.
Sorrel looked up. More ships had jumped into the atmosphere. Some were the smaller, standard size Sorrel had come to expect—but they were all around one massive ship, blocking out the crystalline moon. Even from a distance, Sorrel could recognize the draconic silhouette of an Annwynese warship.
She’d only seen them on news broadcasts. Most of the Annwynese ships that came to Perrault were merchant ships, here to take advantage of their location as a Border World between the Society of Worlds and the Undiscovered Worlds who refused to join them.
Never had she imagined that they would be here.
“We’ve gotta get out of here.” Sorrel looked to Gwynn. “And I don’t think we want to take him to a hospital.”
Gwynn’s eyes widened. “You mean you think all of that is here for him? Maybe we shouldn’t. . .”
“Look at him, he has to be around our age.” Sorrel grabbed one of his arms. “How much trouble can he be? And we’ve seen the newscasts—the Annwynese are a bunch of bullies, attacking other, smaller worlds every other day it seems.”
Gwynn was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded. “You’re right, we can’t leave him. Where’s the hoverboard?”
“Hang on a sec.” Sorrel pulled the remote out of her pocket and hit a button, calling the old hoverboard to the top of the heap. It hadn’t been far, waiting faithfully at the bottom of the pile. “We’ll grab our bags, then we’ll get the hell out of dodge.”
Gwynn nodded, and the girls pulled on the stranger in sync, and managed to lift his unconscious body onto the board. Gwynn and Sorrel climbed on, with Sorrel grabbing the paddle off of the side of the board.
She looked one last time at the stars and the ships blocking them out. How long had she wished for her life to change?
Well, she’d finally gotten what she’d wished for all her life. She could only hope that she wouldn’t regret it.
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Never had Sorrel flown so fast on her hoverboard. The wind whistled around them as they raced through the city. Never had she seen the streets of Hoffman so empty, either. The few people and vehicles that were out and about were doing the same as Sorrel and Gwynn—hurrying to the safety of home.
As they turned onto the street where the Marchand Bed and Breakfast stood, the green street lamps turned red.
“This is an emergency announcement from your Governor.” A cool, detached female voice emanated from the speaker boxes just under the lanterns. “Please return to all dwellings at once. Curfew begins in fifteen minutes.”
“Curfew?” Sorrel couldn’t help her frown. “Since when have we had one of those?”
“Since now, I guess.” Gwynn set the unconscious boy aside on the board and got on her knees to reach out for the lamp-post in front of the bed-and-breakfast, pulling them to a stop.
Sorrel leapt off. The snow half-frozen to the cobblestone sidewalks crunched beneath her boots. She turned back to the board and grabbed both bags. “I’ll take the scrap into the back shed, you take him upstairs.”
Gwynn’s pale face turned pink. “What, do you mean in our room?”
“Look, if the Empire of Annwyn is looking for him, then the less our patrons know about him, the better.” Sorrel looked skyward again. The Annwynese ships were omnipresent, visible from nearly everywhere in the city. “There’s nowhere else for him to go.”
“You’re right, I’ll take him in through the back door.” Gwynn took the edge of the hoverboard and started pulling it around to the kitchen-side door. “See you in a few.”
Sorrel couldn’t help but smile. “See you in a few.”
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It didn’t take long to take the scrap the shed in the small garden behind the bed-and-breakfast. Once she’d locked the bags away for future sorting, she headed for the back door, in through the laundry room.
Only the glow of the circular doors of the washing-and-drying machines lit the hallway, with industrial-sized hampers pushed neatly in-between the units to clear the walkway. At the end of the hallway were two doors—one leading to a spiral staircase up to the second floor of the owners’ quarters. The other went into the kitchen, and then out to the parlor where the patrons would no-doubt be waiting.
“Sorrel! Can you come help serve the last round?”
Sorrel froze, captured by the warm light coming through the kitchen doorway. “Coming, Maman!”
She rushed into the kitchen to have a tray of mugs smelling of warm spices thrust into her hands.
“This is the last call, I promise, then we’re closing down the parlor for curfew.” Her mother stopped, pushing a black lock of hair behind her ear, the spitting image of Gwynn. Indeed, if it weren’t for her delicate blue eyes, perhaps Gwynn and Celine would be the ones accused of being twins. “I’m sorry to push this on you when you were just out, but—“
“It’s alright.” Sorrel forced the cheeriest smile that she could manage. “I take it you heard about the curfew and the ships, then?”
“Hard not to, given the announcement from the Governor and whatnot.” Celine turned to a mountain of used cups, silverware, and dishes. “But we can discuss that later—the patrons are upset enough as is, they really could use the pick-me-up of the free warm drinks—“
Ah. So that was what this was about.
“On it, Maman.” Sorrel headed out the other side, into the large parlor and the main entrance to the bed-and-breakfast.
By the kitchen door was the front desk, a mammoth slab of finely-carved pine, native to the reserves of Perrault with a tapestry hanging behind it. Behind the desk and curving over the high ceiling of the parlor was the stairway into the guest section of the house. From the rafters were red and violet silk banners draped as an attempt at decoration.
At the farthest end was the elaborate stone fireplace. Well, it had been a fireplace once, before Celine had replaced it with a more modern heater model and had installed a new-at-the-time holo screen into the mantle.
Around the fireplace were scattered small tables, armchairs, and sofas with knitted blankets tossed over it at a further attempt of decoration, the needlepointed pillows often thrown to the wayside by the patrons. Rugs from the secondhand market littered the floor, all of it creating an illusion of home away from home.
There weren’t many patrons tonight, and all were gathered around the screen. There was mainly one type of guest at the Marchand Bed and Breakfast these days anyway: the same sort of washed-up spacer who was just stopping by until their next flight out. Usually they were working cargo for the merchants, loading and unloading wares for the next stop in the trade chain.
They were the gruff, lonesome sorts. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, Sorrel supposed.
Gwynn was already out and had managed to ditch her coveralls, heavy jacket, and work-gloves for the dress she’d worn underneath. She was passing out drinks without a single word, slipping between the chairs as quickly and silently as a shadow.
Sorrel did a quick scan, and started setting code mugs at the tables next to patrons who didn’t have mugs—or theirs were already empty, discarded.
One of the older regulars, a Mr. Teach, glanced up at Sorrel disdainfully as she set the mug at the table by his elbow.
“Couldn’t take the time to change out of those greasy rags, eh?”
Sorrel bit her lip. It’s not like you’re dressed much better.
He rolled his eyes and raised the mug to his lips. He stopped, frowning a the holo screen. “Seen the news, have you? Apparently Annwyn’s hanging over our skies. Lady on the holos thinks they’re invading.”
“Our skies?” Sorrel couldn’t help herself. “Last I checked, you’re from Malcif, Mr. Teach.”
He glared up at her. “It’s about to become our skies for a while, girl. The Governor’s got an embargo on ships leaving, too. Something about trying not to aggravate the Annwynese. No one’s coming in or out until they get what they want, and stars knows what that is.”
Sorrel thought of the boy upstairs.
“Tell the madame that the drinks are fine, as usual,” Mr. Teach continued. “Think I could get another?”
Sorrel shook her head. “Last round, then it’s curfew for all of us.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Curfew is for outside, though, ain’t it?”
“It’s an order from ‘the madame,’ as you put it,” Sorrel shot back as she set a mug down next to another patron.
“Fine.”
Sorrel continued around the room, taking the time to pick up any discarded or empty mugs and to place them on her tray. All the while, the newscast kept going. A perky young Lemurian woman with blue-green hair and iridescent markings like scales around her deep blue eyes continued on with a dissonant cheer for the subject matter, with a background showing the Annwynese warships in the atmosphere and several languages beyond just Ondrinan scrolling on a bar under her.
“Governor Rhodopis has told all citizens of Perrault to stay indoors, especially the people of Hoffman, as the fleet is positioned over the city.”
Sorrel stopped and looked to the screen as Gwynn joined her side. “I hadn’t realized we’d made solar news.”
“I mean, Annwyn and their empire are one of our greatest trade partners outside of the Society of Worlds,” Gwynn pointed out. “How could it not?”
An image of the Governor, an older gentleman in a white coat, appeared on the holoscreen in a little box next to the Lemurian reporter’s head.
“I ask that all citizens of Perrault stay calm, and all operations are halted in the state of emergency until we can get this resolved,” the Governor said. “Be assured, our best negotiators are in communication with the diplomats from Annwyn. We will remain a part of the Society of Worlds and we will get through this.”
As the Governor finished speaking, the screen went black. The patrons started yelling, only for a quiet voice to cut through it all, like the deafening silence of snowfall.
“I think that’s enough of that.”
Everyone’s head turned to see Celine standing in the doorway of the kitchen, the remote in her hand.
“They’ve said all they’re going to say about that.” Celine straightened, looking as austere as was required of an innkeeper. “Off to bed, all of you.”
She glanced out the window at the red city lights and the falling snow. “Might as well get some sleep. Only the stars know what’s to come in the next days.”
There was a dull roar of grumbling among the patrons as they abandoned their soft chairs, reluctantly heading up the main staircase for their rooms. It was only once the last stragglers were gone that Celine turned to her daughters.
“If you wouldn’t mind locking up the doors and shutting the curtains, we can then go and check on what you brought upstairs,’ Celine said.
“You told her already?” Sorrel turned to Gwynn.
“Didn’t have to—she carried him through the kitchen, remember?” Celine pulled her key-ring off of her belt and handed it to Sorrel. “You did the right thing, by the way.”
Sorrel nodded, not knowing what else to say.
“Well, I’ll be in the upstairs kitchen if you need me.” With that, Celine headed back through the kitchen door.
It didn’t take long for Sorrel and Gwynn to finish locking up and securing the bed-and-breakfast. It was routine after all. Completely mundane—even daresay boring. Still, Sorrel was looking forward to getting rid of the coveralls and her work jacket, getting something to eat—and to check in on their mysterious new guest.