Stars Above: A Lunar Chronicles Collection

At nine years old, Crescent Moon was the youngest infantry soldier in Luna’s great warrior army. She stood at perfect attention in the front line of her platoon—back straight as a pin and arms locked at her sides. She was proud of her service to the queen. Already she had been hailed for her bravery and even honored with a medal of courage from Commander-General Sybil Mira after the battle of—

“Crescent.”

Mistress’s voice interrupted the fantasy, and Cress snapped a fist to her heart in salute. “Yes, Commander—um, I mean, Mistress?”

Some of the older kids snickered down the line and Cress felt her cheeks flame. Though she had pinned her gaze respectfully to the bunk beds against the opposite wall, she tore them away now to look at Mistress Sybil, who stood at the end of the long, narrow dormitory. Her lips were thinned and white.

Cress swallowed hard and lowered her hand. Her body shrank, mimicking the same meek posture the other kids had when they lined up for the monthly blood withdrawals. Of course, she wasn’t really a soldier. She wasn’t even sure what the word infantry meant. But that didn’t keep her from fantasizing, from imagining herself somewhere better than here. Anywhere but here.

She couldn’t understand why the other shells were so content to accept their stifled existence, why they mocked her for trying to escape, even if the escape was only in her own mind. Yet mock her they did. At least, until they wanted something from her; then they were sweet as syrup.

Sybil’s nostrils flared as she inhaled an impatient breath. “Did you hear what I said, Crescent?”

Cress racked her brain, even though she knew it was useless. Her face grew hotter as she shook her head.

“I was just telling the rest of your peers that we have received evidence that someone recently hacked into the feed of the educational programming intended for Luna’s most promising youth.” Her gray eyes narrowed at Cress. “I was unsurprised to find that the feed had been copied, and was now being broadcast here, in the shell dormitories. Can you explain this, Crescent?”

She swallowed and shrank back again, and her shoulder bumped into the boy beside her. “I … um…”

“It was my idea,” said Calista, who stood near the front of the line. Sybil’s piercing eyes shifted to her. “Don’t be mad at Cress. I put her up to it. I just thought … we just thought…”

Sybil waited, expressionless, but Calista seemed to have lost her gumption. A silence filled the dormitory, and though the temperature was static, Cress began to shiver.

Finally, Arol spoke. “We thought it could teach us how to read.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, those of us who don’t know how…”

Which was most of them. Cress had managed to download a Beginning Readers app to their shared holograph node a few years ago, and she and a couple others had made it through the entire course before Sybil had found out and blocked it from them. They had tried to teach the others—those who wanted to learn—but without paper or portscreens it was a slow, tedious process.

Most of them wanted to know, though. There was something liberating about it. Something powerful.

She thought Sybil knew that too; otherwise she wouldn’t have been opposed to it.

Sybil began to pace down their line, eyeing each of them in turn, though most of the kids dropped their stares as she passed. She moved like a cat. A proud, spoiled one, who hunted for sport, not survival. The guard who had accompanied her waited by the door, attention pinned on the distant wall, ignoring them all.

“If it was important for you to have the skill of reading,” said Sybil, “do you not think I would have ensured that you were taught? But you are not here to be educated. You are here because we have hopes of curing you. You are here to supply us with shell blood so that we might study your deficiencies and, perhaps, someday we will know how to fix you. When that day comes, you will be reintroduced as full citizens of Luna.” Her words turned sharp. “But until that day, you have no place in civilized society, and no purpose beyond the blood that runs through your veins. Reading is a privilege that you have not earned.”

She stopped in front of Cress and turned to face her. Cress cowered, though she wished that she hadn’t. There would be no medal of bravery today.

Reading was a privilege she had not earned. Except … she felt that she had. She had learned the language of computers and networks and she had learned the language of letters and sounds and she had done it all on her own. Wasn’t that earning it?

It didn’t matter now. Knowledge was something that Sybil could never take away from her.

“Crescent.”

She shuddered and forced herself to look up. She braced herself for a reprimand—Sybil certainly looked angry enough.

But instead, Sybil said, “You will have your blood taken first today, and then you will prepare for a departure. I have a new assignment for you.”

* * *

Cress held the bandage against her elbow as she followed Mistress through the underground tunnels that connected the shell dormitories to the rest of Luna’s capital city. The shells were kept separated from the rest of society because supposedly they were dangerous. They couldn’t be manipulated by the Lunar gift, which meant they posed a threat to the queen and the rest of the aristocracy, those Lunars who were able to manipulate the minds of people around them. It had, in fact, been an enraged shell who had assassinated the previous king and queen, leading to the banishment of shells in the first place.

Cress had heard the story a hundred times—this proof that people like her weren’t fit to be around other Lunars. That they needed to be fixed before they could be trusted. But still she couldn’t understand it.

She knew that she wasn’t dangerous, and most of the other shells were children like her. Almost all of them had been taken from their families when they were newborns.

How could someone as powerful as Queen Levana be afraid of someone like her?

But no matter how many times she tried to get a better explanation from Sybil, she was rebuked. Don’t argue. Don’t ask questions. Give me your arm.

At least, since Sybil had learned of Cress’s affinity for computers, she had started to pay a bit more attention to her. Some of the other kids were starting to get frustrated. They said that Cress was becoming a favorite. They were jealous that Sybil kept taking her out of the dorms—no one else ever left the dorms, and Cress had even gotten to go to the palace a few times, a story that the younger kids never tired of hearing about, even though Cress had only gone in through the servants’ passages and been taken straight to the security control center. She hadn’t seen the throne room or anything interesting like that, and she certainly hadn’t seen the queen herself. Still, it was more than most anyone else in the dormitories had seen, and they loved to hear her tell the tale, over and over again.

She suspected that Sybil was taking her to the palace again this time, until Mistress took a turn that she had never taken before. Cress almost tripped over her own feet in surprise. The guard, pacing an arm’s reach from her (because, again, she was dangerous), cast her a cool glare.

“Where are we going, Mistress?”

“The docks,” Sybil answered without pretense.

The docks.

The spaceship docks?

Cress furrowed her brow. She hadn’t been to the docks before. Did Sybil need her to program special surveillance equipment into one of the royal ships? Or update the parameters for the ships that could enter and exit Artemisia?

Or …

Her heart started to thump, although she did her best to temper it. She should not hope. She should not let herself be excited. Because the thought that Sybil might be taking her on a ship … that she might be going into space …

Her eagerness was almost too much to bear. She knew that she shouldn’t let herself wish for it, but she wished anyway. Oh, the stories she would tell. The little kids would crowd around her to hear all about her space adventure. She started looking around the corridor with new eyes, trying to mentally record every last detail that she could take back to them later.

But these corridors were so bland, with their polished-smooth stone walls, that there wasn’t much to tell. Not yet.

“Mistress,” she ventured to ask, “what will you have me do at the docks?”

Sybil was silent for so long that Cress began to regret asking. Maybe she’d angered her. Sybil didn’t like being asked rudimentary questions. She didn’t like it much when Cress talked at all, other than Yes, Mistress and Of course, Mistress and I would be happy to complete this task for you, Mistress.

And though Cress had never been fond of Sybil—had, in fact, been terrified of her since before she could remember—she still wanted Sybil to be fond of her. She wanted Mistress to be proud. She imagined Sybil bragging about her to the queen, telling Her Majesty of the young prodigy in her care, who could be so much more useful to the crown if she weren’t trapped in those awful dormitories all the time. Cress hoped that if she could impress Sybil enough, someday the queen would have to take notice of her. Maybe she would be offered a job and she could prove that shells weren’t dangerous after all. That they want to belong and be good, loyal Lunars just like anyone. Maybe, just maybe, the queen would listen to her.

“Do you remember,” said Sybil, jolting Cress from a daydream in which Queen Levana herself was praising Cress for her brilliance and essential service to the crown, “when I asked you about conducting more extensive surveillance on the leaders of the Earthen Union?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“You told me then that our current software was unsuited for the surveillance we had in mind. That the feeds were too easily disrupted or dropped. That the very act of obtaining live audio feeds from Earth would no doubt be noticed, and likely traced back to us. Is that correct?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Sybil nodded. “Your work has been invaluable to me of late, Crescent.”

Cress’s lips parted. It was rare to hear anything remotely resembling praise from Sybil, and her chest warmed at her words. They turned a corner and the corridor ended at an enormous set of double doors.

“I believe,” Sybil continued, not looking at Cress as she pressed her fingertips to a scanner on the wall, “that I have resolved all of the dilemmas that were keeping us from achieving our objectives.”

The doors slid open. Cress followed Sybil onto a wide platform that encircled a cavernous domed space, filled with the shimmering white bodies of royal spaceships. The floor beneath them was glowing, casting the shadows of the ships onto black ceilings. At the far end of the dock, the massive barrier between the atmosphere-controlled area and outer space was sealed tight.

What was more—there were people.

Not many, but a dozen at least, mingling around one of the larger ships. They were too far to see clearly, but Cress could make out vibrant-colored clothing, and one of the men was wearing an enormous hat and—

Sybil grabbed Cress’s elbow and yanked her in the opposite direction. Cress gasped and stumbled after her.

“Do not look at them,” said Sybil.

Cress frowned. Her arm was stinging but she resisted the urge to rip it out of Sybil’s grip. “Why? Who are they?”

“They are members of Artemisia’s families, and they would not appreciate being gawked at by a shell.” She dragged Cress down a ramp to the dock’s main floor, releasing her elbow once they were separated from the aristocrats by the svelte forms of the spaceships. It was disconcerting to be walking on the glowing floor. It felt like walking on a star. Cress was so distracted that she crashed into Sybil when she came to an abrupt stop.

Sybil looked down at her, lip twitching, and didn’t respond to Cress’s hasty apology. She just turned and nodded to the guard, who opened the door to a small podship. It couldn’t have fit more than three or four passengers, but while it was small, it was also luxurious. A faint strip of lights curled around the ceiling. A holograph node was projecting the image of a burbling water fountain in one corner. The benches behind the pilot were covered in a fabric that made the blankets in the dormitories look like animal feed sacks.

Sybil gestured for Cress to get in, and the invitation was so unexpected that Cress could only stand and stare at the podship’s interior in disbelief. “Really?” she whispered. “I’m … we’re leaving Artemisia?” She felt momentarily dizzy—with elation, but perhaps also a bit because of the blood taken before.

“We are leaving Luna,” said Sybil. “Now get in.”

Cress’s mouth ran dry. Leaving Luna? It was more than she had dared to hope. A ride in a spaceship. A real trip into space. The other shells would be so jealous.

Pulse hammering, she climbed into the ship and settled into the farthest seat. Sybil sat facing her and immediately switched off the fountain holograph, as if she found the sound annoying. The guard took the pilot’s seat, and within moments Cress could feel the subtle hum of the engine vibrating through the soles of her feet.

Her mounting excitement was met with almost equal amounts of anxiety as the ship lifted, hovering over the other stationary vehicles. It began to glide toward the massive exit. Mistress Sybil still hadn’t given her any indication as to what this new job was that she was meant to do. Though she had managed to successfully complete every task given to her before, she could sense that something was different about this one. Bigger. More important.

This could be her chance to prove to Sybil—to everyone—that she was more than just a shell. She was valuable. She deserved to be a citizen of Luna.

She couldn’t fail.

With a shaky breath, she pulled her hair over one shoulder and began twisting the ends around her wrists. She’d thought of cutting it a year ago, but the other girls had talked her out of it. They told her how beautiful it was, how lucky she was that it grew so thick and strong. They said she would be crazy to cut it, so she didn’t. Now she supposed it had become a sort of security blanket for her. She often caught herself fidgeting with it when she was nervous.

The massive doors had opened, making the entire dock rumble, and now they were sitting in a holding chamber, waiting for the doors to seal closed again before they could be released into space. The anticipation was choking her.

She was leaving Luna. Leaving Luna. Never in all her dreams had she thought that she, a lowly, forgotten shell, would have the chance to see life beyond Luna’s protective biodomes.

But here she was, only nine years old and setting off on her first great adventure.

The enormous, ancient metal doors cracked open and slowly, slowly peeled back. They revealed the barren white landscape of Luna first, crater-pocked and desert-still. And beyond them … beyond the horizon … beyond Luna …

Stars.

Stars like she had never seen, had never imagined seeing. The sky was alive with them. And in their midst, proud and beautiful and right before her eyes, was planet Earth.

Their ship began to coast forward again, gradually at first, but picking up speed as they abandoned Luna’s weak gravitational pull and soared away from its surface.

Cress didn’t realize she’d put her hands on the windows until her breath fogged against the surface. She pulled back, revealing two handprints that perfectly framed the blue planet.

Sybil’s cryptic words churned in her head. Was she taking Cress to Earth?

It would indeed solve all the issues Cress had pointed out with regards to spying on the Earthens. She had to get closer. She needed better equipment and more time, but mostly she needed to close the physical distance between them.

Was Sybil asking her to be a spy? Earthens wouldn’t suspect a child like her, and she was a shell—perfectly suited to fit in with the ungifted Earthens. She could infiltrate government databases. She could commandeer every media feed on the planet. She could obtain secrets from every government official and private comms from every citizen. She could be the best spy in Lunar history.

And best of all, she would no longer be just a shell, trapped in a dormitory and forced to give blood every four weeks. She would have a blue sky. She would walk with bare feet on real grass. She would splash through ocean water and climb to the tops of skyscrapers and go to the theater and dance in the rain and—

She noticed Sybil watching her, and only then did she realize she had an enormous grin on her face. She smothered it as quickly as she could.

“How long will it take to get there?” she asked.

“Hours,” said Sybil, unclipping a portscreen from her white thaumaturge coat. “Your first objective will be to access the notes from the weekly meetings between Emperor Rikan and his advisory cabinet. I suggest you begin planning how you will accomplish this.”

Cress pressed her lips together and nodded eagerly, her thoughts already churning with ideas. No doubt the meeting had an android secretary recording the notes, possibly even taking an audio or video recording, and as long as that android had net connectivity …

She leaned her head against the bench and turned to look at the planet again while she mulled it over—coding and security hacks buzzing through her thoughts.

Stars, but the planet was beautiful. More breathtaking than she’d imagined it. The projected images from the holograph nodes didn’t begin to do it justice. How it sparkled and glowed and moved, always moving, the wisps of clouds always churning. It was as though the planet itself were a living organism.

She started to hum as she thought and dreamed and planned. She hummed a lot when she was working. It helped her channel her thoughts sometimes, but today her thoughts were too disjointed to be focused. How different her life looked from just this morning. How quickly everything had changed.

The journey passed in silence but for the quiet tap of Sybil’s fingers on the portscreen and Cress humming to herself. The pilot never spoke. It was almost as if he weren’t even there, but then, that’s how all the guards acted. Invisible. She didn’t blame them. Working for Mistress Sybil often made her wish she were invisible too.

Her gaze reattached to Earth. It reminded her of a lullaby one of the older girls had taught her years ago, one that Cress still loved to sing to the children at lights-out.

Sweet Crescent Moon, up in the sky,

Won’t you sing your song to Earth as she passes by?

Your sweetest silver melody, a rhythm and a rhyme,

A lullaby of pleasant dreams as you make your climb.

Send the forests off to bed, the mountains tuck in tight,

Rock the ocean gently, and the deserts kiss good night.

Sweet Crescent Moon, up in the sky,

You sing your song so sweetly after sunshine passes by.

Cress caught sight of the guard peering at her in the window’s reflection. She stiffened, realizing she’d been singing aloud. He quickly looked away, but Sybil was watching her now too.

Not just watching. Glowering.

Cress gulped. “Sorry.”

Sybil set her portscreen on her lap, fixing her attention more fully on Cress. “You probably don’t realize how old that song is. A lullaby that’s been sung on Luna perhaps as far back as colonization.”

“I did know that,” Cress said before she could stop herself. It was her favorite song. She’d researched it once.

Sybil’s eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly. “Then you must know that the song was written at a time when Earth and Luna were allies. Some consider it to be a song symbolizing peace between the two planets. Some feel that it is unpatriotic today—that it suggests Earthen sympathizing.”

Heat rushed to Cress’s cheeks again and she sat straighter, shaking her head. “That’s not why I like it,” she said. “I just like … I mean, it has my name in it. Crescent Moon. Sometimes I think … I wonder if maybe my parents named me for the song.”

The thaumaturge gave an abrupt snort, startling Cress. “That is highly unlikely,” Sybil said, looking out the window. “From what I recall of your parents, they were not given to such flights of fancy.”

Cress stared at her. “You knew my parents?”

Sybil was quiet for a time. Expressionless but for a smug tilt of her mouth. Finally, she slid her attention back to Cress. “The only thing you need to know of your parents was that they willingly gave you up to be killed in the shell infanticide.” Her eyes glinted, pleased with her own cruelty. “Your mother herself put you into my arms. All she said was, ‘A shell. How mortifying.’”

The words struck Cress harder than they should have. Of course she’d known that her parents had given her up to be killed. That was the law—even though shells weren’t actually killed, just hidden away, but most civilians didn’t know that. Her parents would have believed she was dead, and Sybil never tired of reminding the shells how unwanted they were. That if it wasn’t for her saving them, they would all be dead, and no one would mourn them.

But Sybil had never told her that part before. Mortifying.

She sniffed and turned away before Sybil could see the tears building in her eyes.

Out the window, Cress saw that they were approaching something—another spaceship? She squinted and leaned forward. It was spherical, with three enormous winglike appendages tilted away from it.

“What’s that?”

Sybil barely turned her head. “It’s a satellite.”

Cress squeezed both fists around her hair. “We’re going to crash into it.”

A wisp of a smile flitted over Sybil’s mouth.

The podship began to slow. Cress watched, enraptured, as the satellite grew larger in the window until it was taking up her entire view. There was a clamp on one side, pre-extended. The guard latched onto it on his first attempt, and the podship shuddered around them. A cacophony of noises followed—thumps and rattles and whirring machinery and hisses and thuds. A hatch was extending from the satellite and suctioning against the side of the podship, creating a tunnel for them to exit into.

Cress furrowed her brow. Were they stopping to refuel? To pick up supplies? To outfit her with her new secret Earthen identity?

The podship door opened, and Sybil stepped out into the tunnel, beckoning for Cress to follow. The guard kept his distance behind her.

The hatch was narrow and smelled of metal and recirculating air. A second door was closed at the end of the corridor, but opened upon their approach.

Cress found herself in a small round room. A desk circled the space, and the walls above it were covered in invisi-screens, angled to be seen from anywhere in the room. Only one wall was empty—noticeably empty.

A sense of dread settled in Cress’s stomach, but she couldn’t tell what it meant. Sybil had stepped aside and was watching Cress, waiting, but Cress didn’t know what she was waiting for.

There was a second door identical to the one they had just entered through—perhaps another hatch for a second ship, she thought. And a third door led to …

She stepped forward uncertainly.

It was a bathroom. A sink. A toilet. A tiny shower.

She turned back. Goose bumps covered her skin.

“There is a recirculating water system,” said Sybil, speaking as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation. She opened a tall cabinet. “And enough nonperishable food to last for six to eight weeks, though I will replenish your supplies every two to three weeks, or as needed, as I come to check on your progress. Her Majesty is hopeful that you’ll be making great forward strides in our Earthen surveillance now that you’ve been so meticulously outfitted with the exact requirements you specified. If you find you need anything more for your work, I will obtain it for you.”

Cress’s stomach was knotting itself now, her breaths coming in shorter gasps as she took in the invisi-screens again. The holograph nodes. The processors and receivers and data boards.

State-of-the-art. All of it.

It was exactly what she needed to spy on Earth.

“I’m … to live here?” she squeaked. “Alone?”

“For a time, yes. You said you needed to be closer to Earth, Crescent. I’ve given you what you requested in order to serve Her Majesty. That is what you want, isn’t it?”

She started nodding without realizing it. Tears were gathering in her eyes, but she brushed them away with the palm of her hand. “But where will I sleep?”

Sybil paced to the too-empty wall and hit a switch. A bed lowered out of the wall. It was larger than the bunk Cress had in the dormitories, but that did little to cheer her.

Alone. She was being left here, alone.

“You have your first orders,” said Sybil. “Is there anything else you require?”

Cress couldn’t remember what her first orders had been. She’d been so focused on going to Earth. So excited about trees and oceans and cities …

And now she didn’t have any of that. She didn’t even have the dormitory or the other shells anymore.

“How long?” she asked, her voice wavering. “How long do I have to stay here?”

When Sybil was silent, Cress forced herself to look up and meet her gaze. She hoped for sympathy, kindness, anything.

She shouldn’t have hoped. If anything, Sybil looked only irritated at Cress’s weakness.

“You will stay here until your work is done.” Then, after a moment, her features softened. “Of course, if your work is satisfactory, then perhaps when you are finished we can discuss your return to Artemisia … as a true citizen of Luna.”

Cress sniffed loudly and tilted her head back as much as she dared to hold in the tears.

A true citizen of Luna. Not just a shell. Not a prisoner. Not a secret.

She looked around the room again. She was still horrified, but also more determined than she had ever been.

“All right, Mistress. I will do my best to please Her Majesty.”

A glimmer of approval shone in Sybil’s eyes. She nodded and gestured at the guard, who turned without ceremony and marched back toward the podship.

“I know you will, Crescent.” She turned to follow him out the door. There were no parting words, no reassuring smile, no comforting embrace.

The door slammed and Mistress Sybil was gone and that was that.

Cress was alone.

She gasped and exhaled and moved toward one of the small windows, intending to watch them debark from the satellite and return to Luna.

A glow in the opposite window caught her eye. She turned and drifted to the other side of the tiny room instead.

Earth was so big it nearly filled up the entire frame.

Her whole body was trembling as she crawled up onto the desk and curled against the cabinet, staring at the blue planet. Blue and green and gold. She would sing for a while before she began her work. It would calm her. Singing always made her feel better.

Sweet Crescent Moon, up in the sky …

That was all she could get through before the tears came in earnest, drowning out everything else.