Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(7)

Everyone is watching him, waiting. They have all stopped eating except for one young circle-star. She laughs at Aramovsky as she takes a big bite from her bar.

He points at her, long arm and long finger stretched out like a different kind of spear.

“This god is watching you, girl. Do not anger him.”

The laugh drains from the girl’s face. She lets the food slip from her hand. It drops to the floor.

She’s eating and having fun, and he’s scaring her? His mysterious invisible gods didn’t deliver us here, I did. He makes me so angry.

I stand.

“You usually talk about the gods,” I say. “Magic beings that don’t actually do anything for us. Now it’s just one god? Well, which one is it?”

I hope that, for once, our sparse memories will work in my favor. Forcing him to name something he can’t recall will make him look stupid in front of everyone, maybe shut him up.

Aramovsky smiles at me with his big, beautiful, fake smile.

“The God of Blood, Em.”

That sounds ridiculous. I laugh, look around expecting others to be laughing with me, but only a few are. Most stare at him wide-eyed, like he’d just said something brilliant.

I’d hoped he would leave this nonsense up on the Xolotl. Aramovsky is going to be a problem.

“No prayers,” I say. “Everyone, eat.”

Aramovsky bows to me. “As you say, great leader.”



He steps down and sits. People gather around him.

Laughter and talking slowly return. So much hope in this room. Pure joy.

The circle-stars seem happiest of all. Coyotl and the bigger Visca are wrestling. They strike each other so hard I wince at the sound, but they laugh madly at each impact. Bawden has figured out how to belch on command. Every time she does, circle-star kids howl with delight and try to imitate her. Those children are skinny, but they will grow taller, fill out, gain the thick muscle so familiar on the teenage circle-stars.

Farrar is rooting through every green bin as if he’s searching for something very important. He looks up, meets my gaze, then runs to me.

“Em, do you have anything sweet?” His hopeful expression makes him look like a child. Wide smile, wide nose, dark eyes and that big jaw…Farrar is pretty. Everyone here is pretty: I wonder if the Grownups somehow modified their “copies” to fit a vision of what they thought they should be, rather than what they are.

I shake my head. “I don’t think protein bar and hard biscuit sound sweet.” I offer him the half-eaten grain bar. “Want to try this? It tastes nutty.”

He takes a bite, chews, thinks, hands it back to me, then leans in close.

“It’s just…well, you’re the leader. I thought maybe someone brought you cookies.”

He says that word the way Gaston said cloud cover and Spingate said microorganism.

“Sorry. If I had any, I would share them with you.”

He snarls, smacks a closed fist against an open palm. I know it’s only a gesture of frustration, but it scares me a little.

I notice Bishop is still holding his bin, still walking from person to person, offering more food. He stops in front of Aramovsky, who is sitting at the foot of his coffin, and offers the tall boy a package. Aramovsky takes it and sets it on a pile of unopened packages on the floor—his food, and food from the others around him.



Bishop is making sure everyone has enough, and Aramovsky is hoarding?

I think of when I was first walking down the Xolotl’s endless hallway with Bello, O’Malley, Spingate, Aramovsky and Yong. We were starving, talking about the food we dreamed of. Aramovsky wanted cupcakes.

I whisper in Farrar’s ear.

“Maybe there’s something sweet in Aramovsky’s pile, even if it isn’t labeled like that. The people who packed the food could have made a mistake.”

Farrar runs down the center aisle toward Aramovsky. Children scramble out of his way. Aramovsky sees the big circle-star coming and moves a hand to cover up his collection.

That wasn’t nice of me, but it’s fun to watch them argue about something unimportant. And it makes me happy to give Aramovsky some grief. It shouldn’t, but it does.

Two little girls run up to me and throw themselves down, somehow landing cross-legged. One is Zubiri, the dark-skinned tooth-girl who calmed me when I fought against O’Malley and Bishop putting me in my coffin. There are no leaves in Zubiri’s jet-black hair. No blood, no scratches, no bruises, no scars. Like most of the younger kids, she hasn’t suffered that much.

The other girl I don’t recognize. She’s got hair just as black as Zubiri’s, but her skin is light and her eyes are so thin I can barely tell they’re open. She’s also a little chubby. The symbol on her forehead is a circle inside of a circle: a double-ring, the same as Aramovsky’s.



“Hi, Em,” Zubiri says.

“Hi, Zubiri. Who is your friend?”

“This is B. Walezak,” Zubiri says. “Our cradles were next to each other.”

I offer my hand. “Nice to meet you, B. Walezak.”

The girl stares for a second, then giggles and hides her face behind Zubiri’s shoulder.

Zubiri rolls her eyes dramatically. “Oh, Walezak, you have to learn how to talk to people.”

I’ve spoken with Zubiri only a few times. Somehow, she seems older than me. Maybe more mature is the right word. That’s good, I think. Soon, she will have to do her part. All the kids will.