Astra (41 page)

Astra stayed late after school all week, and because Lil was doing her Owleon chores, she didn’t go up to Wise House in the evenings when she got home. She had dinner with the Sec Gens, avoiding Ahn – who ignored her even more than usual, so that was easy – and then she went straight up to the Earthship. She’d made Hokma promise that she wouldn’t let Lil fly Silver. Instead, Hokma sent Silver to the Earthship every evening with a memory stick full of ‘work hard’ and ‘good luck’ messages, and Astra sent him back with footage of the rehearsals and her growing pile of petals.

On Veneday evening she finally finished her petals, only a day after Yoki, so on Sabbaday Nimma allowed her to go back to Wise House to show Lil her hipbeads.

‘Just for a couple of hours, darling. You need to bond with the others today. Come back for a swim at four, okay?’

Astra nodded and set off, her hipbeads tucked into a hydropac pocket. When she got to Wise House she saw her name had been spelled out in white pebbles on the path to the front door. Beside it a trail of more white pebbles was leading right. She followed it round the side of the house to the roosting lawn. Silver was there, resting, and the three new Owleons were stretching their wings, trilling and crooning in the strange new oboe-like way IMBOD, for some top-secret reason, had ordered Hokma to Code for. In the middle of the lawn Hokma and Lil were waiting with a picnic, spread out on a gold cloth Astra had never seen before.

‘Happy Blood & Seed Ceremony, Astra!’ Lil jumped up and ran towards her carrying a big white daisy chain. ‘You’re the Queen of Wise House today!’

Astra let her place the crown in her hair. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled.

‘Come and eat.’ Hokma waved them over. The cloth was filled with plates of alt-egg and cress sandwiches, long carrot and cucumber sticks, hummus and cherry tomatoes, and toasted seeds and pine nuts to sprinkle on everything. There were sweet crunchy peapods too, and elderflower cordial, and biscuits with silvery sparkles on top. In the middle, arranged in a triangle, were three dishes of soy yoghurt swirled with strawberry jam.

‘They were my idea,’ Lil said proudly. ‘Blood and Seed pudding.’

Astra sat down. ‘It looks nice,’ she said, grudgingly.

‘The whole picnic was Lil’s idea, and the pebble path too,’ Hokma said. ‘She’s been getting things ready all morning.’

Astra took a plate. ‘Have you flown the Owleons yet?’

Lil shook her head. ‘No, we waited for you. Did you bring your hipbeads?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Excellent! I want to see you wear them after. I won’t touch, I promise.’

Over lunch, Lil told Astra about all the chores she’d done that week: as well as weeding and cleaning, she’d woven a new side-panel for the compost, fixed the leak in Helium’s roof, gathered worms for the vermi-compost and oiled the squeak in the flying-field gate. As Lil chattered, Astra began to feel almost sorry for her.
She’d
spent the week getting ready for her Blood & Seed ceremony, a national event the whole country stopped for. Lil might never be able to take part in anything as important. She didn’t fit in, and no one knew what to do with her or where to put her. Astra was her only friend and she’d tried to bully her. Now, though
she would never say so, Lil was obviously scared she wouldn’t ever have any friends, so she was trying to make it up to Astra. Maybe she had learned her lesson.

After the savouries Hokma stacked the empty plates on the lawn so the three red and white puddings were the only dishes left on the gold cloth. Astra stood up and put on her hipbeads. The long string wrapped three times round her waist and belly. Most of the beads were small, and strung in an alternating pattern of rich polished rosewood and golden seeds, but every thirteenth bead was bigger and made of crimson glass. The largest red bead was a garnet; it was set between two tumbled moonstones and hung right over her Gaia mound.

‘They’re beautiful.’ Lil’s voice was tinged not with envy but awe.

Carefully, one foot after the other, her arms raised in front of her, Astra circumambulated the gold cloth. When she returned to her place, she sat down in the way she’d been taught: feet crossed and then slowly lowering herself, thighs aching, to the grass.

Hokma and Lil applauded. ‘That was amazing, Astra,’ Lil said, as Hokma passed out the puddings. ‘You were like an Old World ballet dancer.’

If she was the Queen, she could make announcements. Astra finished her pudding and put the bowl down on the cloth. ‘Next week I’ll ask Nimma to make Lil a hipbead string too,’ she said.

‘That’s kind of you, Astra,’ Hokma commented.

‘
Really?
’ Lil’s eyes shone like polished tiger stones. ‘Thanks, Astra.’

A shadow beat down from the sky and beside them Helium landed on a perch, his enormous wings casting a breeze over Astra’s shoulders. He had a ribbon around his memory-clip leg: a message from Or, red for urgent. Hokma got up.

‘I’d better check this, girls.’

‘The Queen desires to inspect the compost panel,’ Astra proclaimed. Leaving Hokma to take the memory clip into Wise House, she and Lil raced over to the garden. The new panel was woven tightly, preventing the compost from bulging and spilling out like it used to.

‘You did a good job,’ she said.

‘My dad taught me weaving.’ Lil picked up the compost stick and rested it on the fence.

Astra plucked at the edge of a bark slat. ‘I’m sorry I said that about you and your dad. And borno.’

‘That’s okay.’ Lil poked the stick through the top layer of dried grasses. ‘I’m sorry I messed everything up. I just wanted to see Hokma and Ahn Gaia-worship. I thought you wanted to too, but you were scared.’

There was an ant crawling over Lil’s forearm, weaving between the light golden hairs on her skin. ‘I wasn’t scared,’ Astra said.

‘No. I know you weren’t.’ Lil was methodically stirring the food scraps, her triceps rippling as the ant began to ascend towards her shoulder. ‘Hokma said if we make friends again I can stay here this summer and maybe go to high school in New Bangor in the new term,’ she stated flatly. ‘I can study with you and her and catch up on my lessons. Then I can join the class of the last year of non-Sec Gens. They’ll be older than me, but Hokma said as long as I can do the work, they’ll accept me.’

The ripe, sweaty smell of the compost was blooming in Astra’s nostrils, making her mouth water unpleasantly. If Lil came to her high school, would Astra have to deal with her strange behaviour, introduce her to Tedis and Silvie, try to explain her to the Sec Gens? Lil would be in Year Ten, but she’d be a year younger than her classmates so would that mean she’d Gaia-play with the under-fifteens? Astra didn’t know at all if she wanted that to happen. She should be saying ‘That’s great’, but the words stuck in her throat.

‘What if we don’t get on?’ she asked instead.

‘Then I have to go to an IMBOD Shelter school in Cedaria, for non-Sec Gen kids who need special care. Ahn and Hokma will tell them that I’m mentally ill, so even if I tell them about you, they won’t believe me.’ Lil stabbed the stick deep into the mulch. ‘I would
never
tell anyone about you, Astra. I
hate
IMBOD. I don’t want to go to their stupid school. I want to stay here and go for walks with you and fly the Owleons and meet the other Or-kids. I just want everything to be like it was before, only better.’

It was as if Lil were stabbing the stick into her heart. Lil was crazy but she was her friend and her fate, suddenly, was in Astra’s hands. She couldn’t let Lil go to an IMBOD school. She didn’t want that power. ‘Me too,’ she whispered.

The ant disappeared into the small, sweaty cave of Lil’s armpit. She scratched, flicked the dead ant away, then turned and examined Astra’s face. ‘No, you don’t,’ she said.

Astra was affronted. ‘Yes I do.’

‘No, you don’t. You don’t want me to go to your high school. You don’t want me to Gaia-play with Tedis Sonnenson.’

It was too close to what Astra had been thinking to admit it. ‘I don’t care who you play with,’ she said haughtily. ‘We’re supposed to play with lots of people. Anyway, you think boys are stupid.’

Lil returned to churning the compost. Astra leaned against the panel. The rough slats pressed into her chest and her hipbeads dug into her stomach, making little indentations that would collect water if she and Lil ever lay down in the rain together. Lil was scared, she understood that: scared of starting high school and scared of meeting boys.

‘Lil,’ she said slowly, ‘tomorrow night in the ceremony, I have to ask Gaia to help me let go of childishness. I’ll ask Her to help me let go of our fight, and when I come back, we can start again.’

Lil gave the compost one last thrust. She withdrew the stick from the mulch, wiped it clean on the edge of the fence and turned to Astra. ‘Promise?’

‘I promise. On the ancestors.’

‘Good.’ Lil nodded. Then she tossed the stick aside. ‘Gallop-twizzle you to the bird-roosts!’ she cried.

Gallop-twizzle
? What was—?

Lil was prancing and twirling across the lawn, making snorting noises. ‘Not fair, not fair!’ Astra shouted. Laughing and whinnying, her hand clamped to her head to keep her daisy crown from slipping, she skipped and pirouetted after Lil until they had both collapsed in giggles on Hokma’s gold cloth. Clutching their sides, they rolled about, knocking knees, as Silver spread his sun-glinting wings, the trainees warbled and Helium swivelled his head 180 degrees to watch them, blinking his wild planet eyes.

* * *

‘My darling Shelter daughter. My precious Shelter son.’ Klor stood up as Astra and Yoki entered the living room. ‘Here you are, tall and bronzed on your Blood & Seed Day. Could I be more proud of you? Not if you won an IMBOD medal. Not if you swam an ocean. Not if you discovered how to milk moonbeams and feed all of Nuafrica with their rich goodness.’

Klor’s craggy face was as warm as a sunlit cliff. Beside him, Nimma’s eyes were moist.

‘Oh darlings. Don’t you look wonderful?’

It was late Arkaday afternoon. Astra and Yoki had had an extra-big lunch and a long siesta and were now wide awake. They had spent the last
hour washing and dressing for the ceremony, which started at dusk. Astra was wearing a pair of brand-new boots, her first ever knee-high pair, and a new solo-purpose hydropac – a small one made entirely of tubing that sat high on her back so the straps didn’t detract from her hipbeads. Yoki was also wearing a hydropac, boots and a beaded necklace which complemented her string’s design – his mother-of-pearl centre bead was flanked by two small garnets. They were both carrying cherrywood staffs, from the tops of which dangled their white and crimson petal bags. Klor had carved Astra’s staff with a spiralling pattern of feathers to represent the Owleons, and he’d whittled the head into the shape of a heart. Yoki’s Code-Shelter father Pan had carved his with four bands of animal footprints and a flame on the top. Klor and Pan had given them the staffs in a special presentation after lunch in the dining hall. They’d also received an orchid each from the Code House teams and then, to the applause of the whole of Or, Nimma had fastened on Astra’s hipbeads and Yoki’s necklace.

Afterwards, Klor and Nimma had also given Astra Eya’s bracelet to keep in her box in her room, saying she didn’t have to wait until her birthday because she would become a woman tonight. She had wanted to wear it for the ceremony but it was the wrong colours. She’d pleaded to wear it just in the van, but it was still large for her wrist and Nimma was afraid it would fall off. She’d been upset, but then Nimma had also given her three glass beads for her hair: two blood red and one creamy white.

The beads were big and looked like sweets. They were very special glass, Nimma said: Murano glass, from Atlantis. Kali had bought them a very long time ago and Nimma had worn them at her own Blood & Seed. Then Klor had put his arm around Nimma and said, Sheba had loved looking at the beads, though she always had to be stopped from trying to eat them, hadn’t she, Nimma? Nimma hadn’t smiled. She’d said that Astra couldn’t keep the beads, but she was allowed to wear them today. Astra had wanted to thread them into her dread, but Nimma had refused; instead, she’d worked them into a braid on the other side of Astra’s head and they hung there now, beautiful but heavy, like the responsibility of remembering Sheba today.

‘Your chariot awaits, my noble young warriors.’ Klor gestured to the front door and Yoki and Astra led the way out of the Earthship and down the path through Or. Beyond Core House, a crowd had
gathered – children and adults – all waving and clapping as they approached West Gate. Out on the road, the minivan was waiting, its side door open.

‘Happy Blood & Seed Day,’ everyone was calling. Torrent was making a war whoop with his hand patting his open mouth, Meem and Peat were throwing flowers in their path, and Congruence and her friends were dancing in their honour, swaying like waterweeds to aid their procession. As she passed through the gate to the minivan, Astra’s heart fluttered into the sky like a lark.

Pan was sitting in the driver’s seat beside Freyja, Yoki’s Code-Shelter mother. Nimma was in the middle pair of passenger seats and Hokma was opposite her on the single. Between them, at the end of the galley, someone else was sitting alone in the back row.

It was Ahn.

‘Hello, Astra,’ Ahn said. ‘Hello, Yoki. Happy Blood & Seed Day.’

Astra paused on the step of the van.

‘Come on, Or-child, in you go.’ Klor put a hand on her back.

‘You and Yoki sit at the front.’ Nimma patted the backs of the first row of passenger seats.

Astra turned round to Klor. ‘Why is Ahn coming?’ she whispered.

‘He’s filming the ceremony, angel. Now step up, we don’t want to be late.’

She had no choice. Astra heaved herself into the interior. She took the window seat behind Pan and tucked her staff between her knees. Freyja and Pan turned to exclaim over Yoki, giving him hugs and a kiss as he sat down too. ‘Do you want me to pass your staff to the back of the van?’ Hokma asked.

‘No.’

‘Don’t you look beautiful, Astra,’ Freyja cooed. ‘Oh! Are those Kali’s beads, Nimma?’