Akos’s gray eyes—the same color as most of the smoke—widened.
“Then one of the oracles had a vision, that our ruling family would lead us to a permanent home. And they did—to an uninhabited, cold planet we called ‘Urek,’ because it means ‘empty.’”
“Urek,” Akos said. “That’s the Shotet name for our planet?”
“Well, you didn’t expect us to call the whole thing ‘Thuvhe’ the way your people do, did you?” I snorted. “Thuvhe” was the official, Assembly-recognized name for our planet, which contained Thuvhesit and Shotet people both. But that didn’t mean we had to call it that.
The Storyteller’s illusion changed, focusing on a single orb of dense smoke.
“The current was stronger there than anywhere we had ever been. But we didn’t want to forget our history, our impermanence, our reclaiming of broken objects, so we began to go on the sojourn. Every season, all of us who were able would return to the ship that had carried us around the galaxy for so long, and follow the current again.”
If I had not been holding Akos’s hand, I would have been able to feel the current humming in my body. I didn’t always think about it, because along with that hum came pain, but it was what I had in common with every person across the galaxy. Well, every person but the one beside me.
I wondered if he ever missed it, if he remembered what it felt like.
The Storyteller’s voice became low, and dark, as he continued, “But during one of the sojourns, those who had settled north of Voa to harvest the iceflowers, who called themselves the Thuvhesit, ventured too far south. They came into our city, and saw that we had left many of our children here, to await their parents’ return from the sojourn. And they took our children from their beds, from their kitchen tables, from their streets. They stole our young ones, and brought them north as captives and servants.”
His fingers painted a flat street, a rough figure of a person running down it, chased by a rolling cloud. At the end of the street, the running person was subsumed by the cloud.
“When our sojourners came home to find their children missing, they waged war for their return. But they were not trained for battle, only for scavenging and for wandering, and they were killed in large numbers. And so we believed those children lost forever,” he said. “But a generation later, on a sojourn, one of our number ventured alone on the planet Othyr, and there—among those who did not know our tongue—a child spoke to him in Shotet. She was a child of a Thuvhesit captive, collecting something for her masters, and she didn’t even realize that she had traded one language for another. The child was Reclaimed, brought back to us.”
He tilted his head.
“And then,” he said, “we rose, and became soldiers, so we would never be overcome again.”
As he whispered, as the smoke of his illusions disappeared, drums from the city’s center pounded louder and louder, and drums all throughout the poor sector joined in. They thudded and rumbled, and I looked to the Storyteller, mouth drifting open.
“It is the storm,” he said. “Which is all the better, because my story is done.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry to—”
“Go, Little Noavek,” the Storyteller said with a crooked smile. “Don’t miss it.”
I grabbed Akos’s arm and pulled him to his feet. He was scowling at the Storyteller. He had not touched the cup of sweet purple tea that I had poured for him. I tugged hard to get him to follow me up the steps of the Storyteller’s house and into the alley. Even from here, I could see the ship drifting toward Voa from far off. I knew its shape the way I had known my mother’s silhouette, even from a distance. How it bowed out at the belly and tapered at the nose. I knew which scavenges had yielded its uneven plates by how worn they were, or by their tints, orange and blue and black. Our patchwork craft, large enough to cast all of Voa in shadow.
All around us, all throughout the city, I heard cheers.
Out of habit, I raised my free hand up to the sky. A loud, sharp sound like the crack of a whip came from somewhere near the loading bay door of the ship, and veins of dark blue color spread from it in every direction, wrapping around the clouds themselves, or forming new ones. It was like ink dropped into water, separate at first and then mixing, blending together until the city was covered in a blanket of dark blue mist. The ship’s gift to us.
Then—as it had every season of my life—it started to rain blue.
Keeping one hand firmly in Akos’s, I turned my other palm to catch some of the blue. It was dark, and wherever it rolled across my skin, it left a faint stain. The people at the end of the alley were laughing and smiling and singing and swaying. Akos’s chin was tipped back. He gazed at the ship’s belly, and then at his hand, at the blue rolling over his knuckles. His eyes met mine. I was laughing.