The Stuff of Stars (The Seekers Book 2) Page 3

  I opened my mouth to ask the next question, but Kara waved me to silence. The mentor was beginning to nod off, and she asked our help to shift him into his wheeled chair.

  I waited until the last minute, after he was settled and preparing to roll away. Only then did my words rush out. “May we speak with these dreamers?”

  “Why would you want to speak with them?”

  “Because they’re the wisest ever, wiser than the keepmasters. We all need their wisdom. They can repair your machines. They can help our scholars in their struggle to learn. They can teach us wonders beyond what we found in the keep.” I paused, checked with Nathaniel and took a deep breath. “And they can help us build a new boat so we can return home.”

  The mentor’s eyelids drooped again. I feared he’d fallen asleep, but an instant later, the blue eyes startled open and alert, though tinged with sadness.

  “You’re tired now, your minds unclear. Let’s save talk of the dreamers for another day.”

  Then without a gesture or twitch of his hand, the wheeled chair spun about and rolled him back to his chamber.

  Chapter 3 – A Safe and Dry Place

  Kara led us along a curved hall that circled the rear of the commons, with a smooth outer wall broken by a series of stark doors. I suppressed a shudder—too much like the passageway to our cells in Temple City. But this seemed no prison, with a polished floor and gleaming metal doors so spaced that each chamber appeared as broad as a Little Pond cottage.

  A featureless, glass box hung at eye level beside each door. I stopped to examine one, thinking it like the box with numbered stars that unlocked the entrance to the keep. I reached out to one and let my fingertips glide over its surface. Nothing. Perhaps a form of decoration or another failed machine.

  Kara raced ahead and stopped several doors down. When we caught up, she pressed lightly, and the door swung wide. The room inside was simple but well kept, not too different from the inns we’d stayed at in our travels to the keep. After all we’d been through—those weeks in cramped quarters being tossed by the waves, waking in the middle of the night to stand solitary watch, getting buffeted by the storm and shipwrecked on the shore, and now, bearing the disappointment of this ramshackle city—this chamber seemed the best I could hope for, a safe and dry place where Nathaniel and I could be alone.

  Foam-like tiles checkered the ceiling in alternating squares of white and gray, and seemed to muffle all sound. My boot steps muted as I ventured onto the cushioned floor, and Kara’s words emerged hushed.

  “This was once a dwelling of dreamers,” she said.

  Like a newly freed prisoner, I wandered about the room, sliding my fingers along the dust-free top of the bureau and pausing to gawk at myself in the mirror above it. How awful the reflection that stared back, like flotsam washed ashore. My hair hung limp as seaweed, and my skin looked rough as driftwood. Nathaniel hovered behind me looking no better—a pair of vagabonds discarded by the sea.

  At the far wall stood the largest bed I’d ever seen, far bigger than the one in my night chamber in Little Pond. It was backed by a birdseye maple headboard and covered with a flowered quilt mixing the purple of lilacs and the bright yellow of daffodils. I lifted a corner of the quilt and examined its stitching.

  “The handiwork of the greenies,” Kara said. “Before the day of ascension, many of the dreamers favored greenie crafts, those made by hand with quirky designs, unlike what our machines produce. This quilt is an example.”

  Nathaniel sat on the bed and bounced to test the mattress, which met with his approval.

  Two flat doors made up the right wall, similar to the automatic kind we’d found in the keep, but when I approached them, they failed to open. I waited, puzzled and dazed, until Kara pulled out a hidden latch and slid the left one sideways into the wall. Inside, fresh clothing hung from a wooden rod, similar to the silver garments worn by the children but sized for adults.

  “Something for you to change into.” Kara knelt down and withdrew a pair of shoes for each of us. “I had to guess your size. Please tell me if they don’t fit. We have plenty of clothing for grownups like you.”

  I grabbed mine, settled on the bed, and tried them on, peeling away my own boots, which had been handmade by the fourth keeper, the shoemaker’s daughter. The leather had become waterlogged after so long at sea and had likely shrunk. I slipped my bare feet into these dry ones and let out a sigh.

  Kara opened the second door to reveal a sink and a tub for bathing.

  I was accustomed to washing with hard brown soap made of beeswax and lye, with cold water fetched from a stream. To my delight, the water from these spigots ran hot. On a shelf built into the wall sat several jars in a row. I twisted off the cover of one and sniffed. The powder within had a rose-petal fragrance. Above the bath was a rack with towels as soft as clouds and big enough to wear as a robe.

  “We can’t stay here,” I said. “It wouldn’t be right, when you have so little.”

  “It’s the wish of the mentor. No one has slept here since....” Her eyes glistened as she glanced about the room, but then she steadied, straightening like a child who’d just finished a growth spurt and remembered her true height. She raised her chin and stood confident once more. “Since the day they ascended. I knew the dreamers who lived here. They favored the crafts of the IBs and traded food and medicine from the machines for towels, quilts, and handmade soaps—anything to make their chamber special. The mentor insisted on keeping this room as it was, as much as we’re able. He honors you by letting you stay here, our special guests.”

  I flushed. What had we done to be so deserving? I thanked Kara for her hospitality, for the food and drink, for the shoes and fresh clothing, and bid her goodnight.

  Nathaniel collapsed back on the bed as soon as we were alone, no longer needing to pretend to be a living legend from the across the sea.

  I settled next to him and rested my head on his chest. “Not like the quest for the keep.”

  He nodded, then shook his head. “Well, a bit like it. We weren’t what the keepmasters expected either.”

  A moving picture formed in my mind: Nathaniel and I, along with Thomas, stumbling upon the keepers’ clues, following the trail of riddles left so many centuries before, solving the rhyme, and discovering the keep. How I had rejoiced when the ancient gears groaned, and the golden doors swung wide.

  Then, we listened to the recorded greeting of the keepmasters, explaining how they expected the seekers to be leaders of a revolution, fresh from overthrowing the power of the vicars. And the three of us, little more than bumbling children, huddled together at the front of the near empty hall to ponder our fate.

  “What poor seekers we are,” I said. “Whatever we seek turns out to be different from that which we sought.”

  Nathaniel rolled toward me and touched my cheek, gently brushing aside matted curls. “Yet we managed to change the world.”

  “Changed it, yes, but to what end.”

  “The story’s not over. The end hasn’t been written.”

  How simple it had all seemed then. We’d open the eyes of our people, show them the wonders of the keep, and reveal the truth about the darkness. After the revolution, Nathaniel and I would retire to a life of peaceful study with no more risky adventures. Others would do the rest, take the knowledge we’d discovered and build a new world.

  Now, older and wiser, we’d crossed the ocean not for adventure but out of necessity. The revolution was going poorly. The keepmasters had overestimated their descendants. Their treasure store of knowledge proved too complex for a people kept simple for so long. Yes, we’d change for the better, but it would take generations. In the meantime, those fearful of change agitated for a return to traditional ways, swayed by disgruntled vicars whispering in their ears.

  To keep the revolution alive, we had to cross the sea, to find people for whom the knowledge was current and real, those who might return with us and teach the new ways. But what had we found?

/>   The denizens of this city had problems of their own, searching for their lost past and struggling to survive. Most were children, and their wise ones were nowhere to be found.

  A myriad of questions swirled in my mind, a tangle of knots I could pick at for hours and never unravel. Who were these children, and where were their parents? Why did they cower behind walls of light? What was their mentor hiding from us? Who were the greenies? And how would we get back home?

  I’d assumed we’d meet wise ones who’d help us return, people who’d traveled to the stars. How much simpler to cross the sea.

  But now our boat was destroyed.

  I lifted my head from Nathaniel’s chest and stared into his eyes. “Technos and greenies. Thinking machines with the brain of a lost child. Who can we turn to?”

  He looked at me, a hint of a twinkle showing beneath eyelids heavy with sleep. “The mysterious dreamers, of course.”

  The arch vicar had accused Nathaniel of being a dreamer of dreams—a crime punishable by death. Dreaming led to unrest, chaos, and a return to the darkness, something to be strangled in the cradle. The very purpose of a teaching was to kill dreams.

  Yet here the people revered dreamers as gods. Perhaps a good sign.

  So now a new quest—to seek the dreamers. But what if these dreamers were as unreachable as a dream?

  “How will we find them?” I said.

  “The light knows, but one thing’s for certain: it won’t be tonight.”

  Before I could respond, he gave me a long kiss and bid me goodnight.

  Chapter 4 – A New Adventure

  I lay on my back while Nathaniel dozed, his mouth closed, breathing quietly through his nose so that his breath grazed my shoulder at regular intervals. Unable to sleep, I dragged myself to my feet and grabbed the waterproof sack that had thankfully survived the crash. From it, I withdrew my log. With the pad of my thumb, I flipped through to the first entry I’d written on our now destroyed boat, needing to review what had brought us to this point.

  ***

  Dawn heralds our second sunrise at sea, another day to cross off my calendar. Thirty-four remain, if I trust the keepmasters’ calculations. As the red glow lights up the rim of the sky, I’m forced to admit the truth—my homeland is gone. No glimpse remains of my neighbors gathered on the shore, no sign of my mother waving goodbye. Not so much as a reassuring hint of the tips of the granite mountains peeking above the horizon.

  At least Nathaniel and I will be together throughout this voyage—my fondest wish—but we’ll be apart for long stretches as each of us sleeps while the other stands watch. I take some good from this.

  Today is the third anniversary of the enlightenment, and looking back, all has not gone as expected. Now at last, after our frenzied rush to depart, I have time to update this log, to chronicle the events leading up to this day.

  In the beginning, my people flocked to the keep like children to festival, curious to discover the wonders preserved from the past, but after several months, many returned home. Despite the challenges foisted upon us by the vicars, they found the keep’s knowledge too hard to master, the work on the farm more familiar, and they missed the beauty of our world. They wondered how the keepmasters had survived all those years cooped up in such sterile chambers. Some speculated they had gone mad.

  The life of study suited only a few. After a while, those of us who persisted—the scholars, they called us—began to settle in and create our own identity. We were idealistic, eager to find ideas that would change the world, but we struggled to translate the keep’s knowledge into action. We had some successes—medicines beyond what the vicars provided, a more efficient way to harvest wheat, machines to automate the spinning of yarn—but these were infrequent and rare.

  With so much effort and so few results, Nathaniel grew restless. The other scholars urged him to join their meetings, but he’d had enough of talk. When they voted him a hero of the revolution, he walked out. A hero by sitting in a chair and talking? Not my Nathaniel. I worried he might return to Little Pond without me.

  I set out to find us a common purpose. While I searched, I calmed myself by listening to the keepmasters’ stories, not only the ones read by helpers from the screens, but those presented in what they called videos, tales told in moving pictures. People (actors, as I later learned, those pretending to be others) roamed beautiful places pursuing adventures to the strains of stirring music. Like Nathaniel, I became especially fond of videos about explorers. One about a hero named Jeremiah played a song as he rode a horse across snow-covered mountains. The words stuck in my head, because they reminded me of Nathaniel: “Sunshine and thunder, a man will always wonder where the fair wind blows.”

  Where had that longing gone among my people? Why did it beat so strongly in the one man I loved? Perhaps, despite all my caution, it was the reason I loved him.

  Then, true to his nature, Nathaniel conceived of a new idea. He’d talk about it whenever we were together. What else in the world was left to do?

  To cross the great ocean, of course.

  At first, I raged at him. We knew little of oceans and boats, and less about what awaited us on the far side. Such a quest was madness, but Nathaniel was never one to let a notion go. His twentieth birthday came and went, an age when the elders claim a person should accept who they are. There’d be no acceptance for Nathaniel. I was prepared to choose a life of learning, centered on the keepmasters’ wisdom, but he paced the keep from anteroom to anteroom as if trying to master all subjects at once and none at all. I knew where his heart lay, so I chose for myself and for him—for we were one now—the study of boats, how to build them and, once complete, how to guide them across the sea.

  To my delight, we studied together every day, obsessed by the ocean and the means to cross it. Most of the methods we found were too complex. Others relied on sources of power beyond our reach. Only one kind of boat lay within our grasp—a vessel with a tall mast and white sheets that billowed like clouds, one that ran on the waves before the wind.

  The notion progressed from dream to reality as Nathaniel worked on the design of the boat and the materials needed. He drew diagrams, built models and tested them on a nearby pond. He learned how to set the sails to best ride the wind.

  My challenge was to figure out how to guide our boat to a safe harbor on the far side of the world.

  First, I needed to learn how to chart our course. The answer lay in the magic of numbers and the laws of mathematics that held them together. These had once led the keepmasters to the stars; they could certainly guide me across the sea.

  When I asked how to track our speed and location, the helpers proposed complex thinking machines and trackers talking to ships in the sky. I had no more chance of constructing these than of building one of their flying machines. Then I realized people had been sailing the ocean since ancient times, long before the keepmasters, so I focused instead on older methods.

  I learned to determine speed by casting a log off the stern attached to a rope with knots tied at regular intervals. By counting the knots as they slipped through my fingers, I could calculate how fast we went.

  For direction, I rediscovered the compass. As children, Nathaniel and I used to play with magnets—despite the vicar’s prohibition—making a toy with a floating needle that pointed to the same place no matter how we spun it around. From the helper, I learned the needle always pointed north, a reliable way to tell direction.

  The next problem was location. I hoped to record our progress on a map as I had from Bradford to Riverbend, but no landmarks existed on the vast and featureless sea. I printed charts and drew a black circle around our departure point. From there, using direction from the compass and speed from the log, I could track where we sailed, a technique the old mariners called dead reckoning.

  Still, over such long distances, the smallest of errors would leave us lost forever at sea. I asked for a more precise way to validate our position. The helper told me every location on Eart
h was specified by two numbers called latitude and longitude. To measure these required a pair of devices—a chronometer for the exact time and a sextant for the angle of the sun. Thankfully, these and other inventions had been preserved in the museum, an obscure room in the depths of the keep. With these wonders in hand, I set to work, learning to master their use.

  Once Nathaniel and I gained sufficient confidence in our new quest, we badgered the elders for support—the undertaking was too complex for the two of us alone. We needed woodsmen to cut down trees and slice them into boards, coopers to curve the staves, and carpenters to saw the planks and hammer them into place; then roofers to boil the tar, caulk the cracks, and make the wood waterproof, and seamstresses to sew the canvas into sails. Most of all, we needed strong backs to lug the sails and wood, the barrels filled with water and tar, and sacks of provisions up and over the treacherous trail to the shore.

  Once the boat was built, we spent months practicing within sight of land, testing the accuracy of my instruments and getting a feel for the currents and the winds. Soon all that was left was to stock the hold with provisions and sail away.

  Only one obstacle remained. The elders and vicars refused to give their blessing unless we married.

  The whole village of Little Pond came to the ceremony, performed on the near side of the mountain so those too old for the climb could attend. Our former enemy, the recently named Grand Vicar, traveled from Temple City in a fast wagon to give us our vows. Yes, he bore this responsibility as the human embodiment of the light on earth, but despite the changes we’d forced on the Temple of Light, I liked to believe he’d developed an affection for us. I couldn’t help but smile when this grim leader, who’d once threatened to sunder us apart, joined us forever.

  After toasts with freshly brewed wassail made from the autumn’s crop of apples, the townsfolk placed wreaths of flax upon our heads though our race had not yet been run. All those able-bodied enough to climb the newly constructed path over the mountains came to see us off. The grand vicar demurred, too old for the trek, and perhaps reluctant to acknowledge the forbidden ocean whose existence he’d once denied.