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me, we could die ! I came all this way just for this place, just for you, and now that I’m here, you tell me you “can’t”?
    I was angry, my fingers cutting through the air, my jaw clenched so hard, I thought my molars might crumble in my mouth. But underneath that heat was fear, raw and real. At long last he took my frantic hands in his.
    But he didn’t put them on his body, like he normally would have. Nor did he press them to his wet, sweet mouth. Instead he shoved myfingers upward, toward the evening sky above. I followed the line of our intertwined fingers to the green-streaked sky.
    The full dark of night hadn’t come on yet. The sun was a white circle in the west. All the trees unfurled their blossoms, exposing their lewd insides to its light.
    Xarki, he said, pointing fiercely. Xarki .
    The sounds curled my tongue in new ways. Xarki. Xarki. Epsilon Eridani. Their sun. Then he moved my hand in a wide arch across the firmament, stopping at each of the three moons above. He named them.
    Akku. Zella. Aire .
    I glanced up. One moon was a perfect crescent; another barely a sliver high overhead. The third was full and perfect, a rose-gold circle marked by distant mountains and empty ocean beds.
    Why are you telling me this? I asked. His chest was close to mine. I could smell him, fragrant, like overripe peaches and something else, something foreign, strange. He didn’t answer, only pointed upward to the stars that barely twinkled to life in the evening sky.
    These nine stars. The hunter in his carriage. Look for the head of his harp. It is fixed in all seasons—in autumn, in spring. And in the deep, deep cold of winter. He always stands upright as he makes his music. You will stand upright too. And then turn around. Walk away from the hunter. Stay on the rocky pathway. Avoid the forests.
    The vines tangled around us, caressing our ankles, our calves. They didn’t seem dangerous.
    Why? I asked.
    His eyes went dark, half-shaded. He let out one simple word: Beasts.
    There was a shudder in the distance, like the rattle of an ancient engine, but louder, rawer. He gave his head a fearful shake and went on. From there the path to Raza Ait lies between the shadows of Akku and Aire.
    Raza Ait?
    He still held my hand up in the sky, cradled against the palm of his hand; his chest was pressed to mine. When I looked at him, I saw a fierce hunger. I felt the burn of his skin against my skin—blue, so blue, against my own pale white belly.
    The city of copper. He paused, licking his lips with his bright purple tongue. The city where I die.
    •  •  •
    I gasped myself awake. My heart thudded so hard that at first I was afraid that the others might hear. But then, with a relieved breath of air, I realized that I was alone. Shaking—as much from the dream as the shock of the cold against my naked limbs—I rose and put on my flight suit. I could smell the ripe, rank smell of my body, but ignored it. On the ship our ancestors had been able to maintain the fictionthat our society was polite, orderly. But here in the wilderness we could no longer deny the truth. We were savages.
    I stumbled out of the tent, zipping it tight behind me. The others had gathered around the smoldering coals. Rebbe Davison had one arm thrown over Ettie’s shoulders. He was singing “Tsen Briders” to her—that counting song about the brothers who all die off, one by one. I’d always thought it was a ghastly song, even when we all sang it together in school. Ettie didn’t seem to like it either. She squirmed beside him.
    I trampled over the hard-packed snow. We were still deep in night, even if our bodies didn’t know it yet. The only sign of the sun— Xarki? I asked myself—was in the delicate blue wash at the eastern edge of the sky. Soon, in a few hours maybe, dawn would come. But for now it was all wild, unbridled night.
    I gazed up at the sky. The stars were different here from now they’d been on the Asherah . There they burned