The Cerulean (The Cerulean Duology #1) - Amy Ewing Page 0,38

body felt different—her arms and legs didn’t have the lightness she was used to. Breathing wasn’t as uncomfortable as it had been when she was falling, but it wasn’t quite like breathing in the City either. The air around her was hot and sticky but the dirt was bone-dry.

What was that mist, and where had it gone? Why hadn’t she broken the tether like she was supposed to? Why could she not even get dying right?

“Oh, Mother Sun,” Sera said, collapsing back to the ground and pressing her palms against her eyes. “I failed.”

There were so many shades of awfulness, Sera did not know how to process them all. She had not wanted to die, but she had been meant to die, and now here she was, alive and alone, with no idea where she was or what to do. The only home she had ever known was miles and miles away. She felt sick at the thought of letting her City down. Surely they would have noticed the tether hadn’t broken. Sera wished she could be back in her bed with the star mobile and her purple mother’s embrace. She would gladly fall again—she’d get it right this time, if she could just have another chance—if it meant one more moment with her mothers and Leela.

She didn’t know how long she sat, giving in to the overwhelming despair, before she heard voices approaching. Hopelessness melted away in the face of a new fear. There was no place to hide. What should she do?

“The wind blew the dirt this way,” she heard a girl’s voice say. “See, it left a trail.” Another voice responded, but it was too low for Sera to hear. She waited, still as a statue.

When the heads popped up over the lip of the hole, Sera couldn’t make out their features in the dark. They were black outlines against the sky. She shifted slightly, trying to see them better.

“There!” the girl said. “Something moved.”

Sera cursed herself internally.

“Where? I can’t see anything. Give me the flashlight.” The second girl had a deep voice, like Koreen’s orange mother, who was very old. Except this girl didn’t sound old at all.

Then another star lit up. This one was much brighter and closer than the others, right at the edge of the crater. It cast a thin cone of light over the sloping dirt until it reached Sera’s feet. She quickly backed away from it.

The girls above stopped bickering.

“Did you see that?”

“There’s something down there,” the low-voiced girl said.

Sera didn’t much like being called something.

“Of course there’s something down there,” the normal-sounding girl said. “Those looked like feet.” Then, in a louder voice that was entirely unnecessary, she said, “We come in peace!”

That made Sera feel a bit better. She decided to risk speaking—maybe these girls could help her. She certainly had no idea where she was.

“Me too!” she called back. Something about her voice sounded wrong.

“Do you think it’s a wounded animal?” the low voice said.

“What sort of animal sounds like that?” the girl replied.

“I’m not an animal,” Sera said indignantly, without thinking. “I am a Cerulean!”

“I think it’s getting angry,” the low voice said.

“Shhh,” the girl hissed, and then the cone of light swung up right into Sera’s eyes.

“There it is!” the low voice shouted, as Sera scuttled away from the strange starbeam. “It’s moving, get it, get it!”

“Shut up, Leo,” the other girl said. “You’re scaring it.”

Sera was scared. She didn’t like that low-voiced girl, or the strange star, or the fact that she felt and sounded different. Maybe the girl had been lying when she said they came in peace. People on planets lied all the time, her green mother had said. Telling the truth wasn’t important to them like it was to the Cerulean. That was how the Great Sadness had happened, lies and deceit, humans trying to steal Cerulean magic.

Sera’s heart plummeted. Would these girls try to take her magic away? Oh, why had she spoken up at all in the first place? Why had she not run when she had the chance?

Well. She wasn’t the best climber in the City Above the Sky for nothing. She grasped the crumbling earth, finding balance on the balls of her feet, judged the angle of the slope, and raced up it. The dirt disintegrated beneath her, but she was always one step ahead, until she shot upward and landed silently on solid ground.

It was lighter up here than in the hole. The moon was bright and