Mirage (Mirage #1)(3)

I grinned and held out my hands. “Give it to me.”

“Close your eyes.”

I did so, but kept my hands outstretched. A moment later a wide, thin object was folded into my hands. I peeked before he told me I could open my eyes and nearly dropped the sheaf of papers as if they were on fire.

“Amani!”

“Is that—?”

Almost a month ago we’d journeyed to Cadiza Prime, the capital city on our moon, to pick up supplies for the small farm my brothers and father kept on our tiny sliver of land. I’d wandered through the open market, and shoved in the back of a bookstall was an aging sheaf of papers—Massinite poetry. It was too expensive to even consider purchasing it, and besides, most religious poetry was outlawed. It had been used too often as a rallying point for the rebels during the occupation.

Massinia was the prophetess of our religion and though we all loved her, I loved her above all other things in our faith. Just as we had songs in her name, so too had an entire tradition of poetry sprung up venerating her life and accomplishments. I loved such poetry above all else, and hungered for it despite the risk of being caught with it. My hands shook as I reached for the collection.

“You took a huge risk—”

“Never you mind the risk,” he said. “It belongs to you now, and that’s all that matters.”

I was afraid to grin or to touch them. Mine! I could hardly believe it. I’d never owned a collection of poetry before.

“Oh, for Dihya’s sake,” he laughed, and undid the twine around the pages before setting them in my hands. I would have to transcribe them to holosheets or put them in a database or some such. There was no telling if they’d survive the weather here, or if I would lose them or any number of things that could happen. And I would have to hide them, or risk them being confiscated by the magistrates.

Our souls will return home, we will return, the first poem read. We will set our feet in the rose of the citadel.

I closed my eyes, seeing the imagined citadel, no doubt now turned to dust. I could imagine the pain of the writer, could feel it like a bruise on my heart as my soul looked over its shoulder, leaving something treasured behind. I knew what it was like to trace a quickly fading memory in my mind, to watch it fade with every remembering until it was nothing but a feeling, a well-worn groove you could walk but not recall. The pain on the page was palpable—everyone had a citadel. The city of their birth, turned to rubble, family long gone, buried in an unmarked grave, all of it unreachable except through death.

And this, poetry like this, was all we had to preserve our stories, our music, our history.

“Thank you,” I said at last, and threw my arms around him. “You have no idea—”

“I have some,” he laughed, and kissed my forehead. “You are my favorite person in the the world, Amani. I’m glad to give you this. Dihya, are you crying?”

“No!” But I could feel the lump in my throat, ready to dissolve into tears at any minute. I’d been so afraid, so nervous about tonight. And in the end, it was a night of joy. I would step into adulthood not just with family and friends, but now with a treasure that would comfort me on nights too difficult to comprehend.

“Maybe now you’ll write some of your own,” he said, a little softer.

I snorted out a laugh. I was a poor poet, to be sure, and in a world where poetry didn’t pay, I’d had no chance to improve.

“You’re good,” he insisted. “You should write more.”

I flushed, hungry for praise. Husnain was the only person who’d ever read my poetry, but I knew he spoke out of the loyalty born between us and not out of any knowledge of what my skill looked like compared to true poets.

“In another world,” I said, and clutched the poetry to my chest.

Our souls will return home, we will return.

I looked up, and smiled at my brother, the other half of my heart. “But not this one. In this one, these poems are enough.”





2

Most of our village had set out on the road before sunset, but Aziz, Husnain, and I set out later with a few other families. I’d tucked Husnain’s gift in my pocket, reluctant to part with such a treasure so quickly.

“Amani, don’t ruin the parchment before you even have a chance to read it,” Husnain murmured, low enough that Aziz couldn’t hear.

I glanced over at our eldest brother. Aziz had been born before the occupation. Of the three of us, he was the only one who remembered our lives before then, who’d known our parents outside the shadow. The years under the occupation had forged our brother into steel. He was wise, perhaps wise beyond his years, and reliable. While Husnain jumped before he looked, Aziz watched, relentlessly, as if in the end all the world would surrender its secrets to him. Including his unruly younger siblings.

“I won’t,” I promised Husnain, fighting a grin.

“I should have waited until after to give it to you,” he said, but his grin matched mine.

Outside, the air was eerily silent but for the sound of Vathek probes whizzing overhead, their bright white beams scanning the ground. To our left was the orchard, scorched earth, the air above tinted red with the fumes of the extinguishing canisters the Vath had lobbed at it at the height of the fire.

A few weeks ago there had been three fields side by side—pomegranates and olives to the west, and a field of roses we grew to sell and make perfume facing the east. Now the west orchards looked like a graveyard with a hundred spindly, ashen arms reaching toward a red sky. The rose bushes and the trellises had gone, vaporized in the blaze of the fire. Smoke and red fumes from the extinguishing canisters still rose into the sky. Nothing would grow there now, not for years. I made myself look away. There was nothing to be gained by worrying at the bruise, nothing to be gained from wondering how we would feed ourselves this coming winter, or what we would do for work in the spring.