Act II, The Free LandChapter 23
Chapter 23: Made ’Em Myself
Selrick Academy. The year before Fanny came.
Two handmade gold stars, a summer of firsts, and fireworks from a roof.
Guinevere had talked for twenty minutes. Vexana had answered with two words.
They sat on a sunny rooftop with green guardrails. They were already the strongest duo in the Combat Division, and Guinevere had never once stopped talking.
Every night Vexana called to make sure she was asleep.
“I’m asleep,” Guinevere’s voice would say, with the training hall echoing behind it.
“Go to bed.”
Guinevere had asked about Vexana’s family once. “I don’t talk about that,” said Vexana. Guinevere never asked again.
Today Guinevere’s left drone hung beside her, listing, one ear bent flat. It had come back from training with a dent in its shell.
“It won’t hold its height,” said Guinevere. “I told it twice. After everything I’ve done for that drone!”
Vexana held out her hand. The drone drifted into it. She opened the shell on her knee with a thumbnail, straightened a bent bracket with two fingers and clicked the shell shut. It rose, ears up, before Guinevere finished complaining.
“A bracket,” said Vexana. “It was bent.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes.”
Guinevere dug in her pocket. “Here! I made ’em myself, ya know!”
Two small gold stars lay in her palm, the Emblems of Hope. She pinned one to Vexana’s collar and one to her own. Vexana turned hers with a fingertip. The seams were hand soldered, and one was a hair crooked. She knew hand work. Nobody had ever made her anything.
Guinevere held out her phone at arm’s length and took a picture of them. “Look, they light up when our powers are in sync.”
Both stars glowed, soft and gold.
“And I built in one more trick.” Guinevere pointed. “Go to the far guardrail.”
Vexana went. Both Emblems stayed silent. She walked back, and halfway across the roof both stars gave a small beep.
Vexana went to the rail again and came back. Silence, then beep. She did it three more times, with a straight face.
“Stop that,” said Guinevere, delighted.
Weeks later a swarm caught them in a ruined street. A claw raked Guinevere’s arm. She clamped her other hand over it, swayed and went down on one knee. Her drones still burned bright. Her arm would not close.
Vexana was beside her before the thought finished. She held out a hand.
“Stay with me, Guinevere.”
Guinevere took it and stood. They fought back to back, and the swarm did not get through.
That summer Guinevere took her to the girls’ house, to the amusement park, to the fireworks.
At the park a woman in a gray coat walked two steps behind them all day. “That’s Hester,” said Guinevere. “Ignore her.” On the teacup ride Hester sat in the next cup, upright and spinning, with no expression at all.
Guinevere held a strawberry-jam doughnut out to her mended drone. It circled the doughnut twice.
“Nothing can resist a strawberry-jam doughnut. Even robots are the same.”
At a stall she bought two chibi keychains, a pink-haired doll and a black-haired one. She gave Vexana the pink one and hung the black-haired one on her own belt. “Now you have me on yours.”
In her dorm room Vexana kept a box. Into it went every small thing Guinevere gave her: the ticket stubs, a paper fan, the napkin from the doughnut. She never told Guinevere about the box.
On the last warm night they watched the fireworks from a roof, holding hands. Guinevere pointed at the sky. Vexana watched her face.
“We’ll be just like fireworks, shining at our absolute brightest!”
A burst lit the sky red and gold. Don’t get used to this, Vexana told herself. She smiled, a little, and her Emblem brightened.
“It’s not only shooting stars that shine. Vexana, your smile does too.”
A new burst opened overhead and bloomed again in the two small gold stars at their collars. Both were lit.