She stared at him.

Distantly, she registered that the air was beginning to smell of burning, melting flesh.

“Are you alone?” the human boy called out.

He thinks I’m human, she realized. He thinks he just rescued a human girl. He thinks we’re allies.

She nodded. Yes, she was alone.

“Well, not anymore,” said the human boy. “We’re camped nearby. Come with us. You can warm up, get something in your belly. No offense, but you look like you’re about to keel over. Both you and your horse.”

Crier found her voice again. “Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll come with you.”

She said it like a human.

A,

In the beginning, you told me about the law of falling.

How did I reply? Did I reply? I remember everything, yet I do not remember that. Surrounded by the familiar, you’d caught me off guard. As with the night before—you on the cliffs, you in the sea spray, you, saving me, the first of many times. You touched the tears on my cheek. You touched my face and even then, in the beginning, I did not pull away.

A law for a paradox. I’ll trade you.

We believe the Universe birthed an infinite number of stars. By this logic, you could stand anywhere in this world and look up at the night sky and your line of sight would inevitably end on a star. By this logic, the night sky shouldn’t be dark at all; it should be a blinding wash of starlight. Therein lies the paradox. The problem is the assumption that the Universe is static, unmoving; that every star has always occupied the same space in our sky. The paradox doesn’t account for the fact that the Universe, like all things, was born and has been growing ever since. Expanding outward—pushing, pulling, as you told me. Celestial bodies floating in a black sea, carried by a current older than life. Drifting farther and farther apart. The nature of the Universe is that everything inside it becomes lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. Some nights I can think of nothing else, and nothing more terrifying. Some nights I lie awake, thinking of this, and it makes me unspeakably sad.

Not as often, these days.

Because it’s you.

It’s you, the wash of starlight, the old paradox: if the Universe were static, I could stand anywhere in this world and I swear my line of sight would end on you. I swear I’d find you in the dark.

—FROM AN UNSENT LETTER BY CRIER OF FAMILY HESOD, 9648880130, YEAR 47 AE

7

“Storme,” said Ayla, and watched as shock rippled across Storme’s face when he realized exactly who he’d just saved from a nasty fall.

“Ayla?” he said, gaping at her.

He let go of her waist, taking a step back. Ayla found her footing on the grassy lawn of the sculpture garden. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you weren’t due back for another week.”