Page 35 of Into Orbit
I wouldn’t. Icouldn’t.
You’re here for Tessa, I reminded myself each day, with increasing desperation.
This isn’t real,I reminded myself, when I shared a sleepy kiss with Elswyth each morning.
You’re going back home, I reminded myself, when Elswyth sent a list of names to the hand screen I’d been given – one column of Tirians she liked, and one she didn’t – with an addendum beneath:Just in case.
You’re not Tirian, I reminded myself, when I studied the list, and my heart skipped a beat at two names in theyescolumn.
But the further we flew from Earth, the harder it was to hold on to those reminders. The longer I spent on the ship, the more its white corridors and beautiful Forest began to feel comfortable, feel normal – to feel likehome.
And the more time I spent with Willow in his clinic, listening to him talk, or the more often I walked through the ship with Ashton, teasing him and being teased cautiously in return, and the more time I spent with my body wrapped around Elswyth, listening to the musical cries she gave as I pushed her to the brink over and over, the more the unfamiliar warmth would spread through my chest, making me ache for something I’d never imagined before.
I spent most of my mornings with Elswyth in the Forest – Tirians always said the word reverently, with a pronounced capitalF, and so I did, too – but I inevitably got twitchy sitting still after an hour or so. Ashton had started teaching me the Tirian hieroglyphic language – the magic of the translator didn’t extend tovisualtranslation, unfortunately for me – and we spent a good deal of time sitting nestled in the roots of Elswyth’s heartree. I’d periodically reach up and touch her trunk, just in case she could feel it.
Ashton watched me do it every time, but he never touched the heartree himself.
‘I know that you need the Forest psychologically, but is that the only purpose it serves?’ I asked him one morning, as I lounged on a bed of moss beneath Elswyth’s reaching boughs.
He eyed me sideways. ‘Thinking of stealing our secrets, human?’ he said, in the deadpan way he had when he was teasing.
I snorted. ‘Yes, undercover intelligence mastermind over here, desperate to get back to her home planet with all the information she can about the space tree-elf aliens,’ I drawled. ‘I just realised that the Forest must be a huge energy suck for the ship, actually, but I’m sure that your engineers are a million times smarter than I am and have done something about that.’
He leaned back, considering. Ashton always sat painfully straight; it made me want to rumple him up, to see him curled up on a couch with corn-chip crumbs on the front of his hoodie while he watched something excruciatingly trashy on a streaming service.
Tessa,I reminded myself desperately.I’m here for Tessa.
‘I suppose it is an energy … suck,’ he said slowly. They were starting to get used to Earth slang, but it was still hilarious to watch them try to work out what I was saying. ‘But at the same time, the Forest is assisting in oxygen production, and purifying the air. We don’t need as much oxygen as you seem to – the air on Tir has larger quantities of other elements – but it’s still necessary for our survival. The Forest’s roots are part of the water filtration process, too. The water is chemically treated, but the roots assist in its cleaning as it cycles through the ship. And I think …’ He trailed off, tilting his head back and staring up into the canopy. He looked like a statue – the handsome-as-fuck, overly-muscled kind, the sort you’d stare at and wish would come to life. ‘You shouldn’t underestimate how much weneedit. The landmasses of Tir are almost completely covered in forest, and it grounds us. Balances us. Calms us.’ He dropped his eyes back to me. ‘We don’t function without it. We need it like oxygen, need it like water, need it like food. Have you ever felt something like that?’
I met his intense stare, his irises flickering between brown and gold, as my cheeks flushed. I swallowed, and, without thinking, reached out to touch Elswyth’s trunk again. Her leaves shivered, whispering in a non-existent breeze. I jerked my hand back. ‘No,’ I said, trying to convince myself. ‘No, I haven’t. But I’m sure I can imagine.’
He looked away.
I cleared my throat and willed my cheeks to cool, desperately searching for a safer topic. ‘Willow said you had arboreal DNA. How the heck did that happen?’
Ashton shrugged, studying the black of space past the glass dome. ‘There are several theories. Our kind is very old, and we started keeping written records only recently, so we might never know for sure. Some say that the trees on Tir developed sentience. Some say that both the Forests and the Tirians are evolutionary branches stemming from a creature we have no knowledge of.’ A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘Some say that our ancestors were justreallyfond of trees.’
I snorted. ‘I suppose that’s not unheard of on Earth, either. We have myths about half-human, half-tree beings, and women who transformed into trees to escape men. Anna told me about a famous poet who seemed overly fond of trees, too.’
Ashton grinned at me, a full, unreserved, overwhelming grin. He was always handsome – even with the pupil-less eyes – but when he smiled like that, my heart thumped hard against my ribs. ‘Each to their own,’ he said, ‘but imagine the bark burn.’
I tried not to.
The screen at his wrist beeped and he stood straight. ‘Speaking of injuries, the doctor can see you now,’ he said. ‘Come on, human.’
I waved to Elswyth – well, to Elswyth-heartree – and led the way to Willow’s clinic, mostly to prove that I could. The ship was fairly quiet, and had been since the light flare. I could tell that the Tirians were on edge, though I wasn’t sure why. I could guess, especially given the new daily drills we had to run through: drop what we were doing, make our way to our evacuation points, wait. Ashton had told me to carry around a bottle of water, just in case; Tirian skin could, apparently, take water molecules from air when it really needed to, which I very definitely could not. I didn’t mention that I’d die of oxygen deprivation far more quickly than thirst; it seemed rude, especially when the First Guard was so careful to make sure the bottle was always filled to the brim.
My evacuation point was with Elswyth, in the hangar next to one of the tiny Pod ships. We didn’t practise the next bit, which was to get inside and – in Ashton’s words –fly like fucking wind demons,as far away as possible.
I didn’t know what wind demons were, but I got the gist.
He and Willow wouldn’t evacuate; they’d stay with the Tirian ship no matter what, like the Captain of the Titanic. I frowned at the thought, reaching up to feel the tiny furrow between my brows.
Willow was running a spore cleaning cycle in his clinic when we arrived, so we waited outside for it to finish. The spores were magical; we didn’t have an exact equivalent on Earth, but I gathered from Willow’s explanations that they were close to a type of microbe. Though organic in nature, the ship’s maintenance staff could program spore mixes to target different things. The ones in the showers were gentle, leaving the good skin bacteria and eating up the bad; the spores used for cleaning were harsher, consuming everything in a matter of seconds. The Forest had its own special mix to ensure that rot and mould were eliminated; and there were spores that swept through the ship every night at the same time, leaving everything shiny and clean for the morning.
Every single part of the process had been designed by Willow, while he was the Tirian equivalent of an undergraduate student.
There’s a reason he’s the Head Doctor, Ashton had said wryly.His brain is bigger than almost anyone else’s on Tir.
