Page 80 of Cage of Starlight
Don’t lay down roots,Tory’s mother begged him, and he obeyed her because her wisdom was all he knew. But his raw honesty doesn’t leave him sick. Instead, he feels seen.Grounded, like kuhlu spreading roots and vines into earth and air, tearing down any walls that would cage it.
Maybe roots will make him stronger, if he lets them grow someplace solid. Maybe he can have this strange, comfortable thing that needs no words.
Tory remembers with a sudden, years-old ache that his mother used to love the woods. All he’s been thinking about for years is how she was at the end. Her desperation in those last days, hands white-knuckled around his as she taught him how to survive a world without her.
But before all that, she worked so hard to convince him the earth was beautiful, that it grew trees to shelter people and food to nourish them. On bad days, she’d guide him into the small stretch of woods within the camp’s high fences. She’d pull rotting leaves away from a little frill of greenery and break a bit off the end for him to sample.This is Widow’s Feast,she’d say, or she’d come back flushed and grinning from a short walk to show him a clump of domed white mushrooms.Raincaps, she’d confide,better than anything with a bit of butter.
A purple flower: Emberdown, for infection.
A fat, veiny green leaf for him to crush and put on a wound.
She told him not to lay down roots, but all the things she loved most deeply had them. In the end, she couldn’t follow her own rules, either.
Insects fill the silence with trilling, unbroken songs, and Tory lets himself settle. These woods, too, are full of things that can nourish and heal.
“I’ll die,” Sena says, conversational.
Tory chokes on his own spit. “Wh-what?”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it like that.” Sena pauses. “I can’t think of a better way.”
Tory’s body sings with a jolt of useless adrenaline. His pulse thrums, reckless like running feet. He pushes himself away from the hollow tree’s wide trunk. “Excuse me,” he says again, very slowly, “you’ll fuckingwhat?”
“I told you our Cores would be deactivated if we didn’t return.”
“How does that—you said—” Tory sucks in a lung-filling breath, but the adrenaline still wreaks havoc inside him. “You can’t justsaythings like that. We’ll be fine. Riese said there’s someone who can help us.”
“There’s someone,” Sena says, “who can helpyou.Riese’s ‘helper’ is a Seed. Theoretically, Reachers can remove rooted Cores, but it’s risky. They’re best at identifying foreign substances in the body. That’s how they remove tumors. They’re distinct—malignant. The roots on the Core have been altered to make them difficult to distinguish from healthy, living tissue. They might be able to take out a Core, but you’d die if they missed a single root.”
It settles. A Seed, Sena said.
“. . . And they can’t help you at all.”
“No. And if for any reason this Reacher can’t come in the next two days, you’ll die, too.”
“Then we have to contact the Box!” Tory sits up, shoulders squared, fists clenched, ready for a fight even though there’s nothing to battle. “We can tell them . . . I don’t know. That we were stranded near the border and we’re coming back on foot. That way they won’t disable our Cores. You’d be safe. We just have to tell them—”
“With what communicator?” Sena’s glove skims the pocket that used to hold his radio.
“We’ll find another.”
Sena huffs, like Tory should know how absurd that is. “How?”
“We could tell Riese. He might have ideas.”
“No. Riese is on guard for the faintest hint of betrayal from me. There’s no way he’d let us contact the Compound. If they have a Reacher who can remove your Core, they have leverage. They could easily hold our inevitable Core-deaths over our heads to force compliance.”
“They’re not—”Kirlov, he means to finish, but their treatment of Sena hasn’t given him reason to believe otherwise.
Something ugly curdles in Tory’s gut. He blinks and sees Judge’s broad back, the glint of gray light off his knife. Then the gun. Judge could’ve shot ten times before Riese finally ordered him to lower it. “Point taken. This’ll be our secret. I don’t want to go back, though.”
“I’llnevergo back.”
Taut silence settles between them.
“Tory.” Sena looks up suddenly, eyes bright. “The battlefield, it’s in disputed territory. No one will have gathered the bodies yet.”
“That’s . . . gross?” Tory ventures, not sure what Sena is getting at.
