The Stars Never Rise

“One of Adam’s parents, then. They love him. They won’t want his baby to die.”


She was right. But Adam’s parents weren’t much older than our mom, and…“Do you really want to take one of his parents away from him? Away from Penny?” Adam’s little sister was only twelve—way too young to lose one of her parents and half of the family’s income. “Would you really make them decide who should die to pay for a mistake you and Adam made?”

She looked crushed by the realization that that was exactly what she’d be doing. “What about the public registry?”

“Melanie, that’s no guarantee!” And I wasn’t even sure they’d put her baby on the list if the Church declared her unfit to procreate. They would never make her end the pregnancy—in fact, they wouldn’t let her—but they wouldn’t hesitate to let the child die a natural, soulless death.

“Then I’ll pledge to the Church!” she cried, swiping tears from her cheeks with both hands, and I glanced nervously at the closed laundry room door. We couldn’t hide forever, but we couldn’t afford to be discovered before we had a plan. And my sister pledging to join the Church was not a good plan.

Sure, if she pledged, they’d put her baby on the very short, very elite Church registry—a list of elderly Church officials who were ready to give up their souls to support the next generation of life. But then they’d take the baby, not as a ward, like the orphans, but as an ecclesiastic dedication. A human tithe. In another town. She would never see him again, and at eighteen, he would be ordained without choice, his soul to be paid for with lifelong service to the Church by both mother and child.

“You don’t want to pledge, Mellie,” I said, though I couldn’t make myself voice the reasons.

She wiped her eyes again and looked at me with more determination than I’d ever seen from her. “What I don’t want is to let this baby die.”

I stared at her. I wasn’t sure I recognized my own sister in that moment. Melanie had changed in the hour since we’d walked to school. She was still young and impulsive, and still wasn’t quite thinking things through, but at some point she’d come to value her unborn child’s life more than her own, and that made her a better mother than ours had ever been.

“I can do this, Nina,” she said, and that determination I’d seen in her eyes echoed in her voice. “I know you think I never take anything seriously, and I mess everything up, but I can do this, and if you’ll help me, I may not have to join the Church. I’ll do whatever you say.” She took my hand in both of hers. “I’ll do all the laundry, and the dishes, and anything else you need me to do, if you’ll just help me keep my baby. Please, Nina!”

She was too young. We couldn’t guarantee her baby a soul. Even if it lived and the Church let her keep it, we couldn’t afford to feed and clothe a baby. And I wouldn’t be able to pledge and become a teacher, because Melanie couldn’t do this on her own. To give her baby even a chance at life, I would have to spend the rest of mine in a factory.

I knew I should say no. But I couldn’t.

“Okay. I’ll help you. But you have to understand that there are no guarantees. If the Church decides to prosecute”—and they would if Deacon Bennett saw her as an embarrassment to the town—“you could serve serious time.” Unpaid prison workers were the nation’s largest source of factory labor, producing everything from paper cups and clothing to car parts and traffic signals, in every plant that had survived the war. “And even if you don’t go to jail, you’ll have at least two convictions on your record.” One for fornication, one for conceiving a child without a license. “Those’ll keep you out of college.” Which was a real shame, because Melanie was smart. She had a head for numbers and a memory for facts and dates. “And they may still take the baby. But I’ll do the best I can.”

My sister threw her arms around me, sobbing her thanks onto my shoulder, where her tears and snot mixed with the rainwater already soaked into my shirt.

I held her for a moment, trying to squelch the sudden certainty that I’d just nominated us both for execution. Then I let her go, hyperaware of the clock ticking over the door. We’d been sequestered in the laundry room for ten minutes. It didn’t seem possible for so much to have changed in less than a quarter of an hour, but clocks don’t lie.

Melanie sniffled. “So…now what?”