Chapter 32
Late that night, when the desert is dark and the only light in the trailer is the humming fluorescent one above the back door, Hela goes to the desk where the plant sits aglow.
She doesn’t touch it, because she’s not sure if she wants to go to that dreamlike greenhouse place or not; she’s not sure if she wants to speak to Akara again or not.
Because she knows what she’ll ask if she does, and she’s afraid of the answer.
Are you on Earth?
Elegy is gone again, headed to Austra to do God knows what, so there’s no one here to distract her.
Instead of touching the plant’s leaves, she sorts through Keen’s box of artifacts, handling each scrap of metal like it’s a delicate item of rare beauty.
And though they aren’t delicate, “rare beauty” might not be so much of a stretch.
Hexagonal knobs with perfect corners. A curved fragment of an unknown ship.
A handle so smooth it seems to be made from a single piece of metal.
All made of that strange matte material, the one neither she nor Keen were ever able to identify.
I believe in the unknowable universe, Keen told her once. Don’t you?
And she did, of course. But she’s discovering there’s a difference between “unknowable” and “unknown.”
Sighing, she sets the handle down in the box and sits before the plant. She reaches for the leaf, and it reaches back, curling around her fingertip like an infant grabbing a finger.
She opens her eyes in the greenhouse, but it’s dark now, and Akara is nowhere to be found.
Hela steps onto the stone path and ducks under a low--hanging vine.
The path leads to a central courtyard, and above it is a high ceiling made of diamond--shaped panes of glass.
Through them she can’t see many stars—-the ring that stripes the sky is too bright.
She doesn’t know much about planetary rings. That they’re moons, maybe, broken apart and stretched—-or that they’re made of ice and rock. She searches for an exit, hoping to step outside the greenhouse, but Akara’s voice interrupts her.
“You woke me,” she says.
She’s wearing what appears to be a silk robe, but it’s not belted around her middle like the bathrobes Hela is familiar with.
It buttons asymmetrically at her collarbone and hangs in liquid folds to her ankles, as pure white as the ring above them.
Her hair, dark and thick, is piled on top of her head.
Her face has the scrubbed--clean look of someone with no makeup on.
“I’m not sure how,” Hela says. “Does the plant speak to you somehow?”
“In a sense.” Akara crosses the courtyard, her feet bare, to stand closer to Hela. Hela wonders what would happen if she touched her—-would either of them feel it?
“I’ve formed a connection with it, so it makes its needs known,” Akara says. “Why have you come? I told you everything I can safely say. I’ve asked you to find—-”
“—-the one who makes it bloom. Yeah—-do you have any idea how many people exist on this planet? You’re asking me to find one stitch in a whole embroidery, here. Can you be any more specific?”
Akara hesitates. “It would be risky.”
“So is me not getting it done at all, isn’t it?” Hela looks up at the ring again. “Also, while I’m asking for stuff . . . if I’m going to do something for you, you need to do something for me.”
“Oh?” Akara raises her eyebrows. “And what’s that?”
“I want you to answer a question,” Hela says. Her heart is racing. “Are we on the same planet right now?”
For a long time, Akara only looks at her. She seems capable of a preternatural level of focus; Hela would swear, in that moment, that she’s the only thing Akara can see.
“No,” Akara says. “I am very far away from you indeed.”
“And this plant I’m touching right now,” Hela says. “One of your people put it here? On my planet?”
Akara nods.
“We once invited Earth to join us on this side of the gate,” Akara says.
“We met with you in the stars, and made you an offer. You didn’t accept it, so we left you alone.
It’s illegal to cross into a solar system that doesn’t come to terms. But .
. . someone broke the law. They planted that plant so that there would still be a way of speaking to you across the great distance that separates us. ”
Part of Hela wants to think it’s a lie, or a trick. Another part thinks that it takes a real fool to deny the simplest explanation when it’s right in front of you.
So she says, “Take a risk, Akara. Or there’s a chance I’ll never find the person you need me to find.”
Akara takes a deep breath.
“To find the one who makes it bloom,” she says, “seek the traitor’s son.”