Page 78 of In Between Darkness
‘Not empty, just hidden,’she says matter-of-factly.
Wow. A riddle. Why am I not surprised? Another sigh escapes my lips, and I roll my eyes slightly.
“What do you mean, hidden?” I give her a chance to be more specific.
‘The book will show you whatever you desire to know.’Her voice echoes around my mind.
“Well, there’s nothing here,” I say, confused by her responses, still gazing up at the ceiling.
‘Correction, there is everything there,’she replies, and I stare back at the blank pages, perplexed.‘You just have to know how to find it.’
“Okay, well, could you tell me how to find it?” I say, nearly getting to the end of my tether.
‘With blood of the stars, your eyes shall see, for you can ask and will receive.’
‘Blood of the stars’ - of course, she means my blood. I have to get used to having sore fingers. I’ll be surprised if I have any blood left by the end of my time at Sun Sovereign. My eyes fall to my soldier of a finger; it’s been pricked and prodded more times these last few days than in my whole life. I look at the little red wound on my fingertip from the wooden desk. The blood has barely had a chance to congeal and form a scab. I shut my eyes and brace myself for the pain as I give it a squeeze to assist the blood to squirm back out. I grit my teeth as the glob of bright red blood returns, pools and then drips onto the open page of The Soldark. The blood stains the pages, making me cringe, andI console my finger in my mouth again, ushering the blood back in. My eyes grow wide as the red blotches sink into the page as if they were never there. I stare closer, mesmerised by its vanishing act, but the page does not stay blank for long. Red lines start to appear, the same colour as my blood, deepening their colour the more they form. The lines join and transform into words before my eyes. I tilt my head sideways to try to make sense of them as they spell themselves out.
Hello Asha
I gulp in shock and throw it onto my bed. The book shuts at my carelessness, and I jump to my feet. I look at it as if it were alien. How does it know my name? Warily, I retake my seat on the bed and shuffle a little further away from the alien, just close enough where I can open it with the tip of my finger and still make a brisk exit if anything decides to jump out of it. The pages flick open again. This time, I am not even touching it. I feel rigid as my body tenses. The markings are gone. I think back to the rest of Oriah’s rhyme - ‘For you can ask and will receive.’ ‘For you can ask and will receive.’ I repeat it a few times in my mind, hoping to decipher the riddle.
“You want me to talk to a book?” I ask Oriah as if she is crazy, hoping she is still present in my mind.
‘Ask and you shall receive,’she says again, and her voice fades.
If I didn’t feel crazy before, I definitely do now. I sit back up in my bed and cross my legs. I gulp and take the book into my hands. So much for having an escape plan. The book is heavy, and I have to rest my arms against my thighs for support.
“Okay, here goes nothing,” I whisper, slightly startled by the sound of my voice in this quiet room. “I want to know more about my people… the Starkind.”
The book snaps itself shut and opens again. Its pages turn at such a high speed I cannot see them through the blur. It stops,and the same red markings reappear. This time, different words and pictures fill the pages. The book is now full of information.
The Starkind are the product of Sun and Moon people. They are a hybrid of both parents and share light and dark attributes.
My muscles relax as I take in the information I am reading.
The Star race has the ability to manipulate the space-time continuum and create portals to wherever they desire. Many find comfort in their home, Astra Nova.
This must be some kind of mistake. I have been to Astra Nova, and it is cold and empty. How could they find comfort in a place so devoid of life? I shiver just thinking about it. I continue reading on, my nose is so close to the pages, I fear I might inhale them.
The Starkind were considered the most powerful race because they had the Gifts of the Sun and the Moon; with this, they had the special ability to mimic Sun and Moon powers.
The ability to mimic both Sun and Moon powers… Oriah failed to mention this. I stare down at my hands in disbelief. Does this mean I could channel Luca’s power and talk to my mother? Water wells in my eyes at this thought. I could potentially converse with the dead? A shiver runs down my spine — interesting but daunting. I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I take a breath and think about what to ask next. There is still something that seems off about all of this, if they’re so powerful, how did their race die out?
Though powerful, the Starkind were extremely rare. The conditions under which procreation occurred had to be during an eclipse at the moment when the sun and moon overlap, which only happens every four years.
I wonder if my mother knew about this when I was conceived or if it was just dumb luck that created me that day. Or maybeOriah told them the exact time and conditions to do it… How romantic.
The paper crunches as I flick through its off-white pages, scanning them at a faster pace. From what I have gathered, the Starkind have the ability to harness any Gift, and they are not affected by the presence of the sun or moon like the others; however, the Gifts can only be used in short bursts in fear of burnout. The Sunkind saw us as a threat and convinced the Moons to work together to decimate our race. Now I know why I have to be so secretive. The Sun people hate me and people like me. They eliminated a whole race and then hid all evidence surrounding them. Just like that. It makes me feel physically sick.
But I still don’t understand how they deleted us from existence, not just physically, but the memory of it too. The history books altered, the mention of Oriah eradicated. How is this possible?
“Soldark… How is it that not one person remembers my race? Not one book contains a single fact about my God or my kind.”
The book comes alive again, shutting itself, then reopening to showcase several pages with different markings. On the first page, there is a list of ingredients; each one with a stencilled drawing of a fruit or berry or organism used to make a serum. This particular elixir is made up oftoad slime, filaleaf,asingle orange berryandten millilitres of Star tears.The recipe calls for it to be mixed at ninety degrees, allowed to cool, then reheated to thirty-seven degrees to make a mind control serum strong enough to control even the most powerful beings. My brain aches with the overload of information. The potion was created on a mass scale; the Starkind were shackled and tortured for their tears before being slaughtered. There is a diagram of the serum being administered into Palidonia’s water supply,subjecting all Palidonian’s, Moon and Sun, to the mind control. There was a live broadcast on screens everywhere. Just like that, an entire race was destroyed in seconds. Those who did remember were part of the RHE and were ordered to destroy all books and other information that might mention us. My eyes dampen; their memories were stolen from them. I shudder at the harsh realisation that I did the same thing with River. I am no better than they were.
The book pleads with me to read more.
To prevent another Star race from being born, all Sun and Moonkind were made to believe that interdaecial relationships were forbidden and that the bloodlines do not mix.
