Chapter Thirty-Six The Starlight
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Starlight
We danced so long, laughing and trying not to hurt ourselves more than we already had, that I didn’t notice until Entoo put on a slower song that it was almost morning.
Already? It had been barely dusk an hour ago, it felt like.
And soon it would be tomorrow, and I didn’t know what sort of tomorrow that would be.
“You look lost in thought.” Sian’s voice drew me out of my head. We swayed slowly, at the edge of the party.
“Everything is going to change now,” I said.
“I guess so.”
“And I guess you’ll be going, too?” I went on, because it couldn’t be helped. The tour had come to an end, and like every other one, I was expected to say goodbye. To become barely a passing footnote in the lives of everyone else.
He clicked his tongue, pondering the question. “Maz gave me a lead to get this lightsaber fixed, so I think I’m going to figure out how to get to Batuu.”
I pressed on a smile. “Maz won’t steer you wrong.”
“No, I don’t think she will. But—Ardent.
” He swallowed thickly and stopped dancing, his face serious.
He squeezed my hand. If he wanted to say something else, he didn’t say it, or didn’t know how to, and I couldn’t make him, either.
I didn’t know what I wanted him to say, anyway.
I just knew that the galaxy was quiet, and my heart sounded so loud, screaming for him to ask me to come along.
But he never asked.
And I never answered.
So we stood in the quiet a moment longer until Dad wandered over, leaning heavily on a cane.
His wound had been bandaged up, and he’d dressed down for the party, though he looked so odd in just a linen shirt, trousers, and well-worn boots.
Like it was a disguise that didn’t fit him.
“Aaaaah, Daughter! Look at you! Still dancing away,” he said warmly.
“I was wondering where you two had wandered off to.”
Sian quickly lurched away from me, hands in the air. “I—um—I don’t think we’ve met. Sian.” And he extended a hand.
Dad regarded the hand silently and then took it, maybe a little too hard. “Quay. I hear you stowed away on my ship.”
“Um, it was a mutual stowing. Ardent knew about it—and the droids.”
“You stayed in the pantry.”
“It was very cozy.”
“And you helped save the Starfarer and all its passengers.”
“Just a little,” he said hesitantly, clearly worrying that he’d never get his hand back.
Finally, Dad let go, eyebrows set into a serious line.
I rolled my eyes and punched Dad in the shoulder. “Stop it. You’re scaring him.”
Dad cracked and grinned. “Ha! I’ve always wanted to do that.” Then he put a hand on Sian’s shoulder and squeezed it tightly. “Thank you, m’boy. You did good.”
That caught Sian off guard. “Um…it—it was nothing.”
“It was not nothing. You helped my daughter. I’ll never forget that.
If you ever need a home, you have it here.
” And then he pulled Sian into a one-armed hug, something the boy absolutely had not expected, but he melted into it like a child not knowing how much he’d needed it.
Then he pulled away quickly and cleared his throat.
“I—thank you. Excuse me,” he mumbled, and with one last lingering look at me, he departed from the party and went into the ship, Noola following.
“He’s a good kid,” Dad said. “A bit rough around the edges. But good. I can see what you like in him. Is that how you did it? You trusted him to have your back while you looked at the sky?”
My throat tightened a little, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. Of course Dad knew that I’d astrogated without my having to tell him. I gave a single nod. “It felt—amazing. Like something in me had finally come alive.”
“Because a part of you probably did,” he admitted. “You’re so much like her, it scares me sometimes.”
Tears came to my eyes, and I scrubbed them back.
I leaned my head on his shoulder, and we faded into silence again, the soft whisper of the wind through the trees and grass cool on our skin.
The Starfarer sat so peacefully in the meadow, tinged green from the reflection of nature around it.
The ship had ferried us through so much.
I closed my eyes. There were so many memories on that ship. Happy, buoyant ones. Good ones. Bittersweet ones, too, of Mom in the cockpit, or Mom making caf in the mornings in the galley, or Mom humming as she braided my hair in my room.
“I miss her,” I whispered.
“I do, too, love.”
“But…” I swallowed the trepidation that bubbled up in my throat.
I knew what I had to say—and it was a decision I had made somewhere between Coruscant and here.
“I can’t stay, Dad. I know you’re afraid that I’ll go off and never come back, too, but…
I want to see things. Experience them.” My voice broke, and I bit my bottom lip to keep myself grounded and blinked away the tears.
I had thought by now I wouldn’t have any left, but I kept surprising myself in more ways than one.
“I want to go out and see if I am made of the same star stuff my mom was.”
“Oh, love.” Dad kissed the top of my head.
“I know. I’ve been thinking about that, too.
I think she’d want you to go out and see the galaxy.
Find out what you’re missing.” He took a deep breath.
“As a parent, I want to protect you from everything…but I have to trust that I’ve given you the tools to protect yourself, too. It’s just hard.”
“You have to let me try,” I begged.
He nodded. “I will. And I’ll always be here when you’re missing home. You’ve got stars in your blood. No matter where you are, you’ll always find your way.”
“Even to you? Will I always find a way back to you?”
He hummed, soft and gentle. “I’ll never be far, love. Never.”
But somehow, this felt like a goodbye. Not a bad one. The kind you whispered at night before you turned off the lights.
It felt like an invitation to try something new.
When I had finally astrogated, the sky itself had cracked open for me, wide and impossible and exhilarating, beckoning me with a thousand stars, a thousand stories, and a thousand different beginnings.
And I knew exactly where I wanted to start.
“I should probably go find him before he disappears, huh?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think that was his plan,” Dad replied.
I kissed him on the cheek and hurried across the party and up the ramp into the Starfarer. I went to my room, where I shoved a few clothes into a bag, then hurried down to Kotti’s door. I knocked on it urgently.
A moment later, her sleepy face appeared in the doorway. “Best friend,” she slurred, pulling me into a tight hug. She smelled like a cask of wine. “I’m glad you aren’t dead.”
I hugged her tightly. “I’ll see you later. I’ll write often,” I promised.
“Go chase those stars, Arie.”
And so I did. I turned on my heel and hurried down the corridor again, toward the galley.
Veebee wouldn’t be there, but I knew who would.
Rations were expensive, after all, especially for a stowaway.
He’d finished shoving his pack full of supplies when I caught him.
I was breathless, my muscles sore and aching.
“I hope you weren’t leaving without saying goodbye,” I started.
He had the gall to look bashful about it and pulled his long fingers through his silvery hair. “I’m bad at goodbyes.”
“So am I,” I admitted. I took a deep breath and added, “So let’s not say goodbye. I want to go with you.” If I was going to start taking charge of my future, I needed to start here, with the small things. Maybe the big things would be easier in time. “You’ll need a good navigator. I’m the best.”
“Are you now,” he replied. Noola purred and poked her head out of his pack, but he shushed her. “Do you have references?”
“I do. His name is Sian. He thinks I’m impossible.”
“Does he,” he said. His ears were turning a lovely shade of pink, making his eyes look all the blacker.
I liked them—both his ears and his eyes—very, very much. But more than that, I liked the way he saw me through them. I liked the way he held my hand, and the way he asked if I was okay, and the way he had given up escaping a terrifying warlord to ram a lander into him instead. All of him, really.
I liked all of him very, very much. Maybe enough to love—was this love? A feeling bigger than any one part of me. Bright and hopeful and shining, like a star.
He said, “Well, I guess I can’t argue with him. You do seem quite impossible. One of a kind.” He held out his hand and asked, “Would you want to go on an adventure with a stowaway?”
I was already accepting his hand as I asked, “Will it be dangerous?”
“Probably.” He tugged me out of the galley and down the corridor.
“Will I need to rescue you?”
“More than once,” he confirmed.
I closed the space between us, and there in the dull halogens of a starship made of stories that persisted long after the people in them, I kissed a stowaway made of star stuff and faraway things, and he tasted like hope and adventure and impossibly wide skies.
Then I led him down the ramp and into the meadow, where sunlight broke across a purpling sky, catching in the dew on the grass and in the trees. They sparkled like stars, and the morning was cool and quiet, and the sky was wide.
And with his hand in mine, we decided to get lost.