When she is nine years old and in Grade 4, Myka learns about the Starlings and the Archives and how they all work together to help all the people in all of the seven worlds. Because the seven worlds are very different, and people are doing different things in all the worlds, but people want to stay friends. And in order for all the people of all the worlds to get along, they need to share knowledge. So the Starlings are the people of no world: they travel from planet to planet to learn things from the people in one place and teach them to the people in the other places. The Archivists store the knowledge the Starlings bring, and they give knowledge to the Starlings take with them to other worlds. This is why, in the months after the Starlings leave, all kinds of new things happen on Terra: new technology, new medicines, new movies and books, new things to eat.
There are seven ships of Starlings, and each planet receives one ship each year for about a month.
Myka, who loves to learn and to teach, decides right then that she wants to become a Starling.
She says this to her father, who smacks her across the mouth and says "Starlings are good-for-nothing relics of older times who cause havoc and leave other people, good Terran people, to clean up their messes."
Myka touches her lip, comes away with blood on her fingers. "But you're an Archivist, Dad, you work with Starlings all the time."
"That's why I know what they're like. Go do your homework."
Myka is eleven years old the first time she notices that the ship of Starlings who have just landed is a ship she has seen before. She recognizes the man with dark skin and kind eyes, the woman with hair so light it looks white, pulled back in a tight ponytail.
It's strange, though, because they look the same, almost exactly the same, as they did when they came last time, when Myka was 4.
Myka asks Ms. Calder about it, one morning, and Ms. Calder smiles and says, "It's a good thing you asked. We'll be discussing that today."
Relativity, Myka learns, is really, really weird.
Starlings, you see, travel at lightspeed, Ms. Calder says. And when you travel at lightspeed, time moves very differently than it does when you're on a planet. Time on the planets moves much faster.
When we see a Starling ship, seven years has passed since the last time we saw that ship. But for the Starlings, it's been less than a year since the last time they left Terra.
A Starling who says she is 35 years old was born fifty years before the first person landed on Terra, and the first person landed on Terra almost 200 years ago. A Starling who says he is 65 years old was born on Earth or Durem, because nobody had moved to any of the other worlds yet, and nobody knew that Terra even existed.
This is why almost nobody ever leaves the world where they live, Ms. Calder explains. Imagine you wanted to take a vacation to Chthon, the nearest planet, for a week. It would take you two days of lightspeed travel to get there, and two more to get back, plus a week spent on the planet. But when you got back, you would find that several years had passed here on Terra. All your friends and your family would be much older than they were when you left.
This is why we have Starlings, Ms. Calder says. They have their own families and friends who travel with them, so they don't have to worry about the people on the worlds who seem, to them, to grow old very, very fast.
Myka has always dreamed of being a Starling, but she thinks of going away from Mom and Tracey and Dad and Pete, of missing years and years of their birthdays and coming back and seeing Tracey be older than her and Pete be way older than her and… the idea of being a Starling sounds a whole lot less interesting.
When Myka is thirteen years old, Christina and H.G.'s Starling ship comes back to Terra. Myka's father doesn't hold her hand, this time, but she stands beside him anyway, and Tracy is seven and standing beside her, holding her hand.
Myka recognizes H.G. the moment she steps out the door of her ship. In her arms, H.G. carries a little girl, whose fingers hang nervously from her lips. Christina.
H.G. looks around, to one side and then the other, until her eyes land on Myka's family. She smiles and walks over to them.
Myka looks at her while she walks, then she looks at her parents. They used to be about the same age but now Myka's parents look older. Her father's hairline has moved back; her mother's hair is streaked with grey. Both have little lines by their eyes and mouth.
Myka is older, too. She's taller. She got her first period six months ago. And Christina, well, Christina was just a baby, back then, and now she's taller than Myka's elbow when they stand side-by-side like this.
H.G. looks almost exactly as she did before.
So does Christina.
"My goodness, Myka, how you've grown," H.G. says. Myka brings her hands to her own face, runs her fingers over her eyebrows and down her cheeks. She understands, suddenly, why adults touch their faces when they're talking to Starlings.
"I guess so," Myka says, and shrugs.
"Christina," H.G. says, "Look at how Myka has grown up."
Myka smiles and dips her head to Christina's line of sight, as one does with children. "Hi, Christina. Do you remember me?"
H.G. says, quietly, "Of course she remembers you, but she may not recognize you. It's been quite a long time since you last saw her, but only a few months since she last saw you."
"I know who you are," Christina says. She is blinking back tears, and buries her face in H.G.'s neck.
"How old are you now, Christina?" Myka asks, as warmly as she can.
"Seven," the little girl mumbles.
Very suddenly, Myka completely, absolutely doesn't want to be a Starling anymore.
She holds her arms out to Christina, though, and says, with exaggerated energy as you do with small children, "Hey, do you want to go climb some trees?"
Christina sniffs, and then nods, and holds her arms out to Myka. Myka pulls Christina to herself, then awkwardly moves her around so she can carry her on her back. "I'll have her back to you by seventeen-thirty," Myka says, smiling. She turns to her parents. "If that's okay?"
Dad grunts. Mom smiles, and says, "Of course that's okay, honey."
She turns to face front again and H.G. is smiling at her. She reaches forward and runs her thumb down Myka's cheek and something inside Myka goes tight, very tight, and for a second she worries she might drop Christina so she blinks and blinks and, with a little hop, lifts Christina higher on her back.
"I knew you'd grow up to be a wonderful person," H.G. says. "I just knew it."
Myka smiles and bites her lip. She awkwardly nudges Tracy, beside her, with her elbow, and says, "You're coming too, right?" Tracy grins and nods and they begin their walk through the crowds together.
She is relieved, later, to see that it looks like Tracy and Christina can be friends, this time, but then she thinks about how, next time this Starling ship comes, Myka will be a an adult and Tracy will be almost a teenager and Christina will only be eight. Later that night, she touches the place on her cheek where H.G. touched her. She runs her finger over it, and over it, and over it. She feels the shadow of her touch, trailing down her skin.
When she brought Christina back, H.G. smiled at her and said she should come for dinner one night, like she used to. Myka smiled, and ducked her head, and palmed the back of her neck, and said yes, sure, okay. But when she gets home that evening and tells her Dad, he scoffs at her and says, "What, you too good for good Terran food, now, with your Starling friends?"
"But Dad—"
"Your mother is working late with the Starling for Education. Make dinner. I'll be upstairs."
Myka isn't good at cooking. She knows how to do it, a little, but not well. She pushes her fingers through her hair and breathes deep. In the pantry, she finds a packet of dried noodles and a can of sauce and reads the directions on both, but when she calls her Dad and Tracy in for dinner the noodles have clumped to one another and the sauce tastes charred because it burned a little to the bottom of the pan.
"No wonder you want to go eat Starling food if this is what you think Terran food is supposed to be," her father growls, dropping his fork on the plate. Tracy is poking at her food with her spoon.
"Here," Myka says, reaching across to cut the noodles into pieces for her, but her father reaches across and bats the knife out of her fingers. It clatters to the tabletop.
"I'm going to take her to the diner," he says. "You clean this mess up."
Myka looks at the kitchen table, at the three bowls of inedible pasta, and scrubs her hand angrily over her eyes. He's not always like this. He's not usually like this, and she can't understand, doesn't know why—
The next day, she walks with Tracy and Christina back to H.G.'s quarters in the evening, after she's finished her homework and Tracy and Christina have spent the afternoon playing. H.G. smiles wide at her when she opens the door.
"Thank you for bringing her back," H.G. says. "Will you stay for dinner?"
Myka knows she shouldn't, knows her Dad will be angry, but H.G. is smiling in a way that makes her entire body want to smile back so she shrugs and nods and steps into the entryway.
In the kitchen, something smells delicious. Tracy and Christina settle in the living room on the floor with a puzzle, and Myka takes a seat on a high stool near the kitchen counter.
"It smells good," she says.
"I learned to make this on Durem, several cycles ago," Helena says. "Such wonderful food on that world. Do you want to help me?"
Myka can't hold back her grin and she nods harder than she knows she should. H.G. grins at her. "Here," she says. She hands Myka some kind of root she's never seen before, oblong and white, and a knife. "Cut that into pieces about this size," she says, holding up her fingers. "Don't cut yourself."
Myka stands and lines the knife up carefully and brings it down slowly, one cut after the next, until she's got a stack of white disks lined up along the counter.
"I smuggled that from our last stop on Durem," H.G. says, as she tosses the food on into the mix already cooking on the stove. "It's completely against the rules. Can you keep my secret?"
Secrets are such rare things, for Myka, treasures to wrap in fluff and hold close and protect. The only time she ever had a secret before, she thinks, was when Pete was playing ball in the house and broke his mom's lamp and made her promise not to tell Ms. Lattimer that it was his fault. (To this day, she never told, even though Pete ended up telling the truth in the end).
Red flushes Myka's face and her heart thumps with pride and she can't make her throat work so she just nods yes.
H.G. tips her head to the side and smiles a funny smile that's bigger in her eyes than it is in her lips. She reaches across the counter to where Myka is frozen in place and she cups Myka's cheek fully, this time, in her palm.
"You're far too young to be looking at me like that," H.G. says.
Myka's heart stops beating while H.G.'s hand is on her and races double-time to catch up as soon as that touch moves away.
It's worth it, Myka thinks. It's worth it for the delicious dinner, and for the way H.G. asks her about school and friends but also answers all of Myka's questions about the other worlds, and she does it in a serious way, like she thinks that Myka is smart enough to understand things.
"Why are you called Starlings?" Myka asks.
H.G. smiles through her bite of dinner. "Technically, we're not. Technically, we're called Agents."
"But nobody calls you that. Everybody calls you Starlings." Myka frowns.
"On this world, yes, you call us Starlings. Different worlds call us different things. On Durem, we are called Scholars. On Earth, Anthropologists. Illyria, Travellers. And so on."
Myka ponders this for a moment: these words she hasn't heard, or has only heard in different contexts.
"I have always been especially fond of 'Starlings,'" H.G. says. "As though we are the children of the stars."
Myka still doesn't regret the visit, when she gets home to her father yelling, hollering about where on earth she's taken Tracy for the evening and then back-handing her across the jaw when she tells him that they had dinner at H.G.'s. "If you'd rather spend your evenings with some Starling than with your own family, then just stay there," he growls, so fiercely that a fleck of his spit leaps across the room and lands on her arm.
If the point of Myka's father's rage had been to get Myka to stay home the following night, it doesn't work. She goes to H.G.'s again, though she waits until after dinner this time.
"What in the seven worlds has happened to you?" H.G. says, tugging Myka into the apartment, and then directing her down the hall and into the bathroom. Christina follows along behind them, and then props herself in the doorframe, watching wide-eyed and silent. The neon light over the mirror is near blinding and H.G. tips Myka's chin up toward it, angling her face from one side to the other. "You didn't have this bruise yesterday."
Myka shrugs.
H.G. rummages through a bag on the counter and pulls out a metallic tube. "I got this on Chthon," she says. "Another secret, all right?"
Myka nods and holds still as H.G. slicks the ointment over her bruised skin. It burns, and then feels cold, and then tingles, but Myka bites her tongue and waits for the strange feelings to subside.
"There," H.G. says. Myka looks in the mirror. The bruise is still there, but the swelling is down, the color faded.
Back in the kitchen, H.G. hands Myka a warm choco drink. "Now," she says, "tell me how you got that bruise."
The choco sits in Myka's stomach and presses heat outward, toward her arms and fingers and toes. "It's nothing to worry about," she says.
"I disagree, Myka." H.G. leans forward on the counter, on her elbows. "Did something happen at school?"
"No." Myka sips her drink.
"At home, then?"
Myka looks down and palms the back of her neck. A long, hissing breath pushes through H.G.'s teeth and Myka swears she can feel it tracking down her own spine.
"It's a violation of the Seven Worlds' Treaty for an adult to harm a child, Myka, and as an officer of that treaty I must—"
Her words are getting faster and more pressured and higher in pitch and suddenly Myka doesn't feel them in her spine anymore, she feels them in a different way, tightening around her wrists and her ankles and pulling like she could be pulled apart. "It's not a big deal, H.G.," she says. "He gets stressed out when there are Starlings around and he doesn't act like himself but he's fine the rest of the time."
"Myka—"
"I should go home." Myka drains her mug and sets it on the counter. She doesn't look at H.G. as she walks through the living room toward the door, palming the back of her neck the whole time.
A young voice says: "Bye, Myka."
Myka can't help smiling as she turns to look down at Christina, who is tugging at the hem of her dress where it's a little frayed from when she and Tracy were playing in the trees.
"Bye, Christina," Myka says, ruffling the little girl's curls. "I'll see you soon."
Myka is turning to the door handle when H.G. says: "It's funny, the way you smile at her, the way you touch your neck, you remind me…"
Myka looks back over her shoulder to where H.G. is looking at her, contemplating, her head tilted to one side, arms crossed over her chest. She looks just in time to see H.G.'s eyes narrow and her head cock to the other side.
"How old are you now, Myka?"
"Thirteen," Myka says.
"Thirteen," H.G. echoes. "Tell me, again, the year you were born?"
Myka tells her, and H.G. inhales sharply and nods.
"Why?" Myka asks, but H.G. just shakes her head and says "Walk home safely."
By the next morning the bruise on her face is gone, but something about yesterday's H.G. has scared her, the way the sky at night can scare her: mostly it's just beautiful and vast and exciting but sometimes Myka feels like it could swallow her whole. So that night she doesn't go to H.G.'s for a visit. She goes to Pete's and they spend a long time kicking a ball in his backyard.
"You're, like, in tight with that one Starling lady," Pete says. "I'm jealous."
Myka shrugs. "She's… nice?"
"She must be nice if you spend so much time over there, man oh man. I haven't seen you in days."
"Sorry. I won't go over as much anymore."
"No! No. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, I'm saying the opposite, because that lady is fi-iiiiine. Think you could bring me sometime?"
Myka picks up the kickball and, with a laugh, throws it at Pete's head; Pete nabs it out of the air just before impact and rolls his eyes at her. "I'm just saying," he says.
Myka rolls her eyes back at him. "Yeah. I know you are."
When she goes home that evening she is surprised to see a man in Starling-style clothes knocking on the door. From afar, she sees her mother open it and let him in.
By the time Myka gets to the door the voices inside are loud, and she recognizes this Starling's voice: it's the man, Will, the younger one who came to talk to her family that day of the landing when she was six. He's yelling, and so is her mother, and Myka is used to yelling from her Dad but Dad isn't home now and this is different. She presses her ear to the closed door.
"Is she mine, Jeannie?" the Starling, Will, is shouting. "Is she? Because H.G. says she thinks she's mine, and she's right that the timing works out."
These are words that come to Myka, in her ear and into her brain, but somehow they don't turn into meanings.
"What the hell does it matter, Will?" Myka's mom answers, quieter.
"It matters to me if she's my child! It matters to me if I'm her father!"
Myka blinks into the darkness and the cold, outside the door.
"Why, Will? What kind of father could you have been for her?" Now Myka's mother is loud, angry-sounding.
There is a slamming noise, like somebody hit the wall or the top of the table.
"I could have taken her with me," Will says.
"She wasn't born until eight months after you left," Myka's mother answers.
"You could have told me the next time I came. She was only six."
And now the words have meaning.
They had meaning from the beginning, Myka knows, but now, when he says that—'she was only six'—there is no mistaking who they're talking about.
Myka feels like she wants to vomit.
"And what, you would have stayed here with her? With us? Given up the glamorous Starling life?"
Things are quiet for a long time. Myka's ear is cold against the metal of the door, and her breaths come in and out, shakily, through her nose.
"She had a father by then, Will," Myka's mother says. "And a sister. A family. There was no reason to upset that."
Will's voice is calmer now, his words drooping at the edges, rage turning into sadness. "Does he know that she's not his?"
"Of course he knows. I was three months pregnant when we met."
"And he knows that I'm—"
"Yes."
There is a long, drawn-out pause.
"Does she know?" Will asks.
"Absolutely not."
And this is when something inside Myka caves, falling to pieces like an over-weighted bridge. The sob that bursts out of her chest feels like a bubble heaved intact out of her lungs, pressing and expanding until it needs to burst out or have her chest explode. She pushes on the door, pushes herself away from it and turns around and starts running, back up the walk and down the road to Pete's house and she will ask Ms. Lattimer if she can stay there forever because she never wants to see her mother or father or any of those stupid Starlings ever, ever again.
She doesn't think about how the door is thin and her footsteps are heavy and both her mother and Will heard them. She ignores the footsteps pounding behind her. She hears Will's voice calling, "Myka! Myka, wait!" but the last thing she wants to do is wait for him.
Then her mother's voice, "Myka, honey. Myka." Her footsteps lighter, but still chasing.
Myka can't breathe, she's crying and running at the same time and that doesn't leave space for breath and now she's tripping, stumbling over her own shoes and Myka's mother is the one who catches her, catches her and pulls her into her warm, familiar chest, wraps her arms around the outside of Myka's flailing limbs and murmurs "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over again into her head while Myka sobs "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," until the words are garbled in her spit and her tears and her snot and all she can do is sag helplessly against her mother's grip and cry and cry and cry.
When Myka is too exhausted to cry anymore, her mother pulls her to her feet and steers her back toward the house. Will is still standing there, hands in his coat pockets, looking completely lost.
"When she's ready," Myka's Mom says to him. "You can talk to her when she's ready and not a moment before."
At the house, Myka is so tired she can't do anything but take off her shoes and curl up around her bear in her bed, still wearing her clothes. Her mother leans down and presses a kiss to her hair but Myka jerks away from her and musters the energy to growl, "Don't touch me."
She doesn't get up for school the next day. She barely gets out of bed except to use the toilet. Her Mom doesn't make her. In the evening she hears a knock on the door downstairs and the sound of Will's voice, just for a minute, and then, through the window, his footsteps walking away.
The next morning she wakes long after the sun has come up. Her mother is sitting on the edge of her bed.
"Myka, honey," she says, "I know you're angry. I know you are, and we can talk about it, but you can't miss another day of school."
Myka rolls her eyes and sits up and goes to take a shower without a word.
It helps, though, to go to school. At recess, she tells Pete what happened.
"Wait, so you're, like, half Starling?" he says. "That's so cool!"
"I don't know if it's cool or not, Pete."
At the end of the day, when she leaves to start her walk home, Will is waiting outside the school. She tries not to look at him but she can't help it, and she sees it, the way they look alike: their hair is the same color and they both have light eyes, a little wide apart, and tall foreheads.
He falls into step beside her as she walks. He clears his throat nervously.
"So," he says.
Myka swallows. "So."
It's strange to look at this man and compare him to her father at home. Will still has his full head of brown hair and smooth, wrinkle-less skin. Her dad is greying and is starting to get those freckles on the back of his hands that you get when you get older.
"Could I take you to the diner?" Will asks.
Myka shrugs.
"Just—just for an after-school snack," Will says.
Myka sighs, and chews her lip, and then nods.
They don't talk much while they sit, both picking at their own bowls of noodles.
"You're in Grade 8?" Will asks.
Myka nods.
"H.G. told me you want to be the next Archivist for Literature, like—like your—"
"Like my dad," Myka says.
"Right." Will lets a breath slip out through his nose. "Myka, it's important to me that you know that I—"
"I get it," Myka interrupts. "You have your life. And I have mine. And they don't work for you to be my actual dad and I have my own dad anyway so it's fine."
Will's mouth opens and then just hangs there for a moment. "I heard your dad hits you," he says, eventually.
Myka scoops a big bite of her noodles onto a fork and shovels it into her mouth. Chews, swallows. "H.G. doesn't know what she's talking about."
"She worries about you."
"Good for her."
"No adult should ever hit—"
Myka slams down her fork. "It's only when you guys are here," she says. "He's completely fine when there are no Starlings around. So I guess I know why, now."
Will sags against the back of his bench. "I—I'll stay," he says, eventually. "I'll stay here, to be here for you."
In front of her eyes, the bowl of noodles starts to wobble and twitch but it isn't until the tear slides down off her nose that Myka realizes she's crying. "I don't want you to," she says.
"Myka—"
"It will just make things worse. And weird. I don't want you to stay."
The Starlings leave a week later. Myka does not hold her mother's hand or her father's, but she lets Tracy hang onto her finger. As the Starlings make their way toward their ship, Myka spots H.G. holding a sobbing Christina to her chest and she feels a surprising tug, that pull she has felt before, for H.G., and for her little girl.
She hasn't seen H.G. since that day with the bruise.
H.G.'s eyes come up and snap to Myka's, where Myka stands in the front row of the watching crowd. Myka is surprised, completely caught off-guard when H.G. breaks her line and walks over to her. She ignores Myka's parents completely, but she bends down to kiss Tracey on the head and then reaches out, like she does, to cup Myka's cheek.
"I'm sorry," she says, quietly. "I didn't mean to cause such—I'm so very, very sorry."
"It's okay," Myka says, and shrugs. She reaches out and squeezes Christina's shoulder, but Christina, as children do, shrugs her away and presses her face further into her mother's chest.
H.G. smiles wetly at Myka, and then turns to walk back to the ship. She steps into line behind Will, who is looking at Myka now, too. He lifts a hand and waves, nervously, at her. She lifts a hand and waves, nervously, back.
She goes home with her family that afternoon relieved that the ship has gone, relieved that her home will go back to the normal, happy place that it usually is when there are no Starlings on the planet. Her father will pull out a chess board, or he'll pull up a program for them to watch together on the net, or she'll play hide-and-seek with Tracey.
It doesn't happen that way, though.
Her father looks at her with the same anger he's held for these past weeks.
"Is your mother's cooking good enough for you?" he sneers at her, "or are you spoiled by all those nights of eating Starling food?"
"Mom's is great," Myka says through her mouthful, swallowing just in time for her father to reach across the table and swipe his fingers, hard, across her cheek. "Manners," he growls. "Swallow, then talk."
"Warren!" Myka's mother warns, reaching for his wrist. "What's gotten into you?"
Myka rubs her jaw, the same spot that's still a little sore from last week. What is this? She thinks. He isn't usually like this.
"What's gotten into me?" Warren roars, toppling his chair in his rush to stand up. "This isn't about me! It's about what got into you and landed me with responsibility for that eighth-world soulless half-Starling bastard you call a daughter!"
Myka had thought she was done crying for the week. Or the month. But no, here she starts again, and then Tracey, frightened by Myka's tears, is crying too, and their father is storming out of the house in a rage.
This is the kind of thing that becomes normal.
When she is fifteen, Myka falls asleep at the kitchen table while doing her homework. Her head drops onto her open science textbook. Her father grabs the free side of the open book and slams it shut over her face, growling "Get up and go to bed if you're too lazy to do your homework." But what jolts her awake is the sudden, throbbing pain behind her eyes and the wetness on her face and she sits up and it's blood, flooding down from her nose, soaking the pages.
The Chthonic bruise cream, the secret stuff that H.G. had used on her face, is widely available on Terra now, but when the nurse spreads it over her face it doesn't make her feel the way it did when it had been H.G.'s hands coating her skin with healing balm.
The bruising on her face heals quickly, but that doesn't help the broken cartilage of her nose. She will need to wear a splint over her face for three weeks.
It's finally enough, though, to drive Myka's mother to take Myka and Tracey and move to a new apartment over near the Archives.