The Cerulean (Untitled Duology, #1)(30)

And somewhere in a place she did not want to give voice to, she wondered if it would hurt very much to die.

But just as she was about to touch it, the mist shifted—it swirled and spun, wrapping tight around her like a cocoon, and she was wrenched back, as if by a giant elastic, and then catapulted forward so fast that tears filled her eyes and everything became a white-gray-blue blur. She couldn’t breathe. Deep down inside, she knew something was wrong. This was not what was supposed to be happening.

She hit a solid surface and dirt filled her throat and ears and eyes and nose. Her lungs ached to breathe, and when at last the dirt was all coughed up, she drank the air in heaving gulps. The mist, whatever it was, had vanished. She lay back, reveling in the feel of her chest moving up and down, of her limbs on something solid. The cuts on her elbows had been seared shut.

I’m alive, she thought.

Then she rolled over and threw up what little was in her stomach. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Sera took stock of her surroundings. She was in a large, deep, earthen hole. The dirt was dry and crumbly, not like the thick, rich soil in the gardens of the City Above the Sky. Her robe was torn and filthy, but to her great delight, the three bracelets and Leela’s star necklace were still intact.

“I’m alive!” she cried, letting out a wild laugh. She hadn’t died. She was still here, still breathing. She gripped the pendant in one hand and raised her head.

Her heart dropped.

Through the opening of the hole, she could see the sky. It was black, like the sky she knew, but so far away. And the stars were mere pinpricks, tiny things no bigger than the stargems on her wrist. The loss of her home, her people, everything she knew, rose up with shocking force. Where among those stars were the Cerulean? They might have already detached from this planet, floating through space until they found a new home.

Sera gasped. She hadn’t died, which meant she hadn’t broken the tether, which meant . . . was the City Above the Sky still up there?

She stood and found that her body felt different—her arms and legs didn’t have the lightness she was used to. Breathing wasn’t as uncomfortable as it had been when she was falling, but it wasn’t quite like breathing in the City either. The air around her was hot and sticky but the dirt was bone-dry.

What was that mist, and where had it gone? Why hadn’t she broken the tether like she was supposed to? Why could she not even get dying right?

“Oh, Mother Sun,” Sera said, collapsing back to the ground and pressing her palms against her eyes. “I failed.”

There were so many shades of awfulness, Sera did not know how to process them all. She had not wanted to die, but she had been meant to die, and now here she was, alive and alone, with no idea where she was or what to do. The only home she had ever known was miles and miles away. She felt sick at the thought of letting her City down. Surely they would have noticed the tether hadn’t broken. Sera wished she could be back in her bed with the star mobile and her purple mother’s embrace. She would gladly fall again—she’d get it right this time, if she could just have another chance—if it meant one more moment with her mothers and Leela.

She didn’t know how long she sat, giving in to the overwhelming despair, before she heard voices approaching. Hopelessness melted away in the face of a new fear. There was no place to hide. What should she do?

“The wind blew the dirt this way,” she heard a girl’s voice say. “See, it left a trail.” Another voice responded, but it was too low for Sera to hear. She waited, still as a statue.

When the heads popped up over the lip of the hole, Sera couldn’t make out their features in the dark. They were black outlines against the sky. She shifted slightly, trying to see them better.

“There!” the girl said. “Something moved.”

Sera cursed herself internally.

“Where? I can’t see anything. Give me the flashlight.” The second girl had a deep voice, like Koreen’s orange mother, who was very old. Except this girl didn’t sound old at all.

Then another star lit up. This one was much brighter and closer than the others, right at the edge of the crater. It cast a thin cone of light over the sloping dirt until it reached Sera’s feet. She quickly backed away from it.

The girls above stopped bickering.

“Did you see that?”

“There’s something down there,” the low-voiced girl said.

Sera didn’t much like being called something.

“Of course there’s something down there,” the normal-sounding girl said. “Those looked like feet.” Then, in a louder voice that was entirely unnecessary, she said, “We come in peace!”

That made Sera feel a bit better. She decided to risk speaking—maybe these girls could help her. She certainly had no idea where she was.

“Me too!” she called back. Something about her voice sounded wrong.

“Do you think it’s a wounded animal?” the low voice said.

“What sort of animal sounds like that?” the girl replied.

“I’m not an animal,” Sera said indignantly, without thinking. “I am a Cerulean!”

“I think it’s getting angry,” the low voice said.

“Shhh,” the girl hissed, and then the cone of light swung up right into Sera’s eyes.

“There it is!” the low voice shouted, as Sera scuttled away from the strange starbeam. “It’s moving, get it, get it!”