Prologue
The screen door banged behind her as the little girl came tumbling out onto a broad porch, her small feet busy as she laughed her way through a cloud of fat, indignant insects that buzzed away at her approach. Their green bodies shone in the bright light. She leapt off the bottom step into the lush grass, landing awkwardly, then she stumbled and pelted ahead in the way that only children can, somewhere between joy and chaos.
She kept her feet pumping and ran on, leaving a wake of clacking, buzzing bugs roused into flight by her flailing passage, their only accompaniment her silvery laughter. It was late morning, and behind her in the grass, the girl left a trail of passage. Overnight dew, now burning off in the brilliant sun. A path, wandering as she did, her eyes lifted up into the sky, where the angry bugs dispersed in fading metallic sounds.
“Lookit!” she said, raising the doll she’d been cradling in her arms—a smiling boy with wild, dark curls of hair and crude insignia patches sewn to each arm of its tattered shirt. “Lookit, Mister Starman! Lookit the bugs!”
She turned a circle so Mister Starman could see the fleeing bugs; he took it all in with his usual cheerful smile but had nothing to say about it. He wasn’t chatty. Just happy, and a good companion.
The girl shrugged and broke back into a run, aiming for the cool shade under the sour-fruit trees at the edge of the orchard, their limbs drooping with dark green globes.
Partway there, she stopped again and squinted up against the yellowish dazzle of the sun that was framed so perfectly in the cyan-blue of the sky. Of course, this was why she’d come outside in the first place as soon as breakfast was done. She shifted Mister Starman to one arm and raised the other, pointing with a small finger. Her eyes narrowed in the light, cheeks already pinking with the heat of a summer’s day.
“Awwww.”
No horse.
Yesterday, there’d been a horse in the clouds, trotting slowly across the sky. She loved horses, even though there were none here on Nebo. There were hulking, smelly things called broad-backs that sometimes pulled the plows and wagons, but they were nothing like the ethereal horses.
Since discovering them on the vid during learning-time, all she’d wanted to do was watch the sleek, beautiful creatures, with their intelligent brown eyes and their flowing manes and tails. It didn’t matter if they trotted or galloped or just stood still; the elegant creatures had utterly captivated her. That’s why seeing one in the clouds yesterday had been so exciting.
Mister Starman hadn’t been with the girl, though. Mommy had insisted on cleaning him up, then leaving him to dry for the day. And now the beautiful horse in the clouds was gone, leaving the girl’s lips in a moue that began to fade as fast as it formed.
She dropped her arm and frowned. Her black robe seemed eager to slurp up the heat of the mid-morning sun—a steamy heat, because it had rained only a little while ago on top of the dew, and now the air felt the same way it did in the bathroom when the shower was running. Her frown fell away as she looked around for some sort of relief that didn’t mean going back inside. Learning time would start right after lunch, so she only had until then to—
She wasn’t sure what. She’d come outside to see the sky horse, but it had trotted on to—somewhere else, beyond her limited horizons.
“I’m hot, Mister Starman,” she said, careful with her s sounds. “Are you hot, too?”
He didn’t reply and just kept smiling, but the girl thought she saw a glimmer of sweat forming on his fabric brow.
“Yeah, you are. Let’s, uh . . .”
She looked around but stopped when she faced the sour-pod orchard that sprawled off behind the house. The shade beneath the leafy trees looked so cool and inviting.
“Let’s go there!”
She bounced off, skirting the grav tractor with a broken strut, reaching the shady gloom and stopping again to take her bearings. The air under the trees still had a thick, sultry heat to it, but without the glare of the sun it seemed cooler. At least, cool enough to stand, take stock, and find a good place to sit. The girl was too young to have a schedule, so selecting a tree to lean against would be one of the most important events of her day.
Settling back against the rough bark of a sour-pod tree on the edge of the orchard, the sky was still visible, spreading away in an endless dome of blue.
“Hope the horse comes back,” she said, eyes wide and round.
She kicked off her shoes, then wiggled her toes and settled herself in. She sat Mister Starman on her lap, his back against her chest, and peered closely at the doll when she saw one of the patches on his shirt had started to come free, loose threads dangling. The patches had symbols on them, and words she couldn’t actually read, but she knew what they said anyway. Daddy had told her.
“That says Orbital,” he’d told her, one calloused finger pointing at the first word. “And this one says Navy.” He moved his finger back to the first word, then traced both as he spoke. “Orbital Navy.”
“Ortib—”
He smiled. “Orbital.”
“Orbit—al.”
She’d eventually gotten it, even if she didn’t know what the words themselves meant. It didn’t matter, though, because Mister Starman did. He knew all about Orbital Navy, and lots of other things, too.
But not horses. She had to tell him all about horses.
Sighing, she looked back up at the sky, still unhappily free of dancing horses. There was a cloud that looked like a bunny, and another like some kind of spiny thing, maybe a jawfish, like the ones that made it so you couldn’t swim, except where mummy and daddy said it was safe? Uncertainty pulled at her tiny brow as she watched the clouds bloom, their edges swirling and dancing as a hidden wind began to pull hard, high above.
Then something did appear, and it was no horse.
It was a hard, fierce point of light, so bright it hurt to look at. It was like a little piece of the sun had broken away and now streaked across the sky. The sun shard left a glowing trail behind it, but it was utterly silent.
“What’s that, Mister Starman?”
He didn’t seem to know.
A huge bang walloped her, like a blast of thunder. The girl jumped and looked around, heart pounding, suddenly breathless with confusion.
“What’s that?” she asked, but Mister Starman had no answers.
The dazzling mote of light fell across the sky, toward the horizon. A steady, rumbling thunder seemed to follow it. The light touched the distant hills and vanished—
Then the entire sky in that direction lit up, as though from a tremendous flash of lightning in the late summer storms. The girl winced at the glare, instincts humming in her little body.
No, she thought. No, no. This isn’t right. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. Pieces of the sun didn’t break off. Thunder and lightning didn’t come from a sunny, empty sky.
Mister Starman agreed. He showed it by starting to glow a soft, shimmering blue. He did that sometimes, when she wanted to change things. To make them just so.
Another piece broke off the sun. Then another. The girl shook her head. No. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how it worked. Pieces didn’t break off from the sun.
The bluish glow swelled, filling the air around her like a pool, outward, slipping, spilling, pouring over grass and broken grav-tractor alike. In seconds, the coruscating light swept through the sour-pod trees in a flood of brilliance, rendering every part of the house and barns in sharp, cobalt relief.