Thirteen Rising (Zodiac #4)
Romina Russell
PROLOGUE
WHEN I THINK OF MY brother, I hear his comforting voice.
Stanton’s words have always been my lifeline: They have the power to soothe me, guide me, even save me from my nightmares. I especially love what I call his Stantonisms—catchy one-liners he would come up with on the spot whenever I was afraid.
“Don’t fear what you can’t touch,” he told me the night Mom abandoned us. I used to think it was the smartest thing I’d ever heard, but now I know better.
Everything touches us eventually.
The day Mom left us, I stayed up late with Dad and Stan, the three of us huddled on the couch, pretending to watch the wallscreen while we waited for her to come home. At some point I must have dozed off, and Stanton probably carried me to bed. The sky was still dark when I awoke to the sound of my own scream.
The door to my room opened, and my ten-year-old brother’s familiar voice said, “Rho, it’s okay.”
His weight settled beside me on the mattress, and his warm hand closed around my clammy one. “You’re safe. Everything’s fine.”
My entire body was slick with sweat, and my breaths were coming in short spurts. I could still feel the spot on my shoulder where the Maw from my nightmare sank its fangs, the same place where the real Maw had bitten Stan the week before—only in the dream, Mom didn’t swim swiftly enough to save me.
And as the monster carried me far from my family, its eyes were no longer glow-in-the-dark red.
They were a bottomless blue.
“Is—is she back yet?” I whispered as I fought to free myself from the nightmare’s hold.
Stan squeezed my fingers, but the pressure felt faint, like I hadn’t surfaced to full consciousness yet. “No.”
“Is she . . . coming back?” I whispered even softer.
He was quiet a long moment, and I grew fully awake as I awaited his answer. Then he slid up and rested his back against the bed’s headboard, sighing. “Want to hear a story?”
I exhaled, too, as I nestled under the covers beside him and closed my eyes in anticipation. I’d take a Stan story over pretty much anything on the planet.
“There once was a little girl whose name I can’t remember, so let’s call her Rho.” His comforting voice wrapped around me like a second blanket, and I felt my heartbeat finally slowing down. “Little Rho lived on a tiny planet that was about the size of Kalymnos.”
“But how can a world be that small?”
“Are you telling the story, or am I?”
“Sorry,” I said quickly.
“Let’s try this again: Rho lived alone on a very small planet, in a different galaxy where things like small planets were possible, and if you worry too much about the science, this story will end. Anyway, little Rho knew everything about her world: the name of every nar-clam, the shape of every microbe, the color of every leaf. Her home was her heart, and her heart was her home, just like Helios belongs to the Houses and the Houses belong to Helios.”
His words painted pictures in the black space of my mind, burning up the darkness with their light. “But one day,” he went on, “a huge storm rolled through her planet, and little Rho was blown into the atmosphere, caught in a whirlwind that tossed her about the cosmos and stranded her on a strange, much larger world.”
“But what about her home—”
“It sounds like you don’t want to hear the rest of the story,” he said, sitting up suddenly, “so I guess I’ll just go.”
“No, no, I’m sorry, I want to hear it,” I pleaded, tipping my head up on the pillow to stare at Stanton’s gray profile.
“Then no more interruptions,” he warned, settling back against the headboard, and I mimed sealing my lips shut. “Anyway, she landed on a new world, and instead of the sea surrounding her, she stood on a field of feathers.”
“Feathers?”
“Huge feathers. They grew from the ground like grass, and they were every color and design you can imagine. When Rho walked, the feathers tickled her bare feet so she couldn’t keep from smiling with every step.”
I squealed with laughter as something soft suddenly brushed the soles of my feet, and I curled into myself and shrieked, “Stan, stop!”
“Yeah, she reacted just like that,” said my brother, and I could hear the ghost of a smile in his voice.
“Only every time she laughed,” he went on, “Rho’s mind forced her mouth back down into a frown. She shouldn’t be happy, not when she was so far from her home. She had to get back. She had to be serious.”
“Were there people on that planet who could help her?” I asked—and then I cringed as I suddenly remembered I wasn’t supposed to be asking questions.
“Actually,” said my brother, “almost as soon as little Rho started walking across the field, she ran into someone. A purple bird that was human-sized and wore a wreath of flowers around its head.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what Rho said. And then the bird spoke to her.”
“It spoke—?” I asked, awed.
“In a normal—if not slightly squeaky—voice, it said, ‘Welcome, friend. Why do you fight yourself?’” I giggled at Stan’s high-pitched bird impression. “Little Rho’s shock at meeting a talking purple bird turned into confusion as she considered his question, and she asked, ‘What do you mean?’
“The bird pointed with its beak to Rho’s feet. ‘I can see the ground pleases you, yet you won’t allow yourself to feel pleased. Why do you resist the pull of the present in favor of a pain that is clearly past?’”
“That sounds like something Mom would say,” I blurted, and then I sucked in my breath at my own boldness.
Stan paused only a second, and in that instant it occurred to me that he probably didn’t want to sound like Mom right now.
“Little Rho’s shoulders sagged with the weight of her sadness, and she said, ‘I’m upset because I’ve left my home, and now I don’t know how to get back.’ The bird frowned. ‘But why should that be upsetting? Every bird must leave her nest, and once she does, she can never return. The nest dissolves because she doesn’t need it anymore.’”
A sense of unease settled in my stomach, and I went from enjoying Stan’s tale to not wanting to hear its ending. “I don’t like this story. Let’s start a new one.”
“That’s not how life works, Rho,” murmured my brother, sounding older now that he wasn’t speaking in character. “It’s like in a game when you’re dealt a hand you don’t like, you don’t get to ask for a new one. You have to change your hand for yourself.”
“How?”
“By playing through it.”
I didn’t understand what he meant because I didn’t want to try. There was only one thing I was waiting to hear from him. “Is Mom coming back?”
He was quiet for a stretch, and in our silence his breaths grew louder, until they rose and fell in rhythm with my own. When at last he spoke, his voice was so low I barely heard it.
“I think our nest is gone.”