“They do?”
“Yeah.” Elise rested her head back against Juliette’s shoulder and gazed up with her a moment. The unknown thing in the woods howled. “See those?” Elise asked. “Don’t those look like a puppy to you?”
Juliette squinted and searched the sky. “Could be,” she said. “Yeah, maybe they do.”
“We can call those ones Puppy.”
“That’s a good name,” Juliette agreed. She laughed and wiped at her eyes.
“And that one’s like a man.” Elise pointed at a wide spread of stars, tracing the features. “There’s his arms and legs. There’s his head.”
“I see him,” Juliette said.
“You can name him,” Elise told her, giving her permission. Deep in the woods, the hidden animal let out another howl, and Elise’s puppy made a similar sound. Juliette felt tears roll down her cheeks.
“Not that one,” she said quietly. “He already has a name.”
????
The fires settled down as the night wore on. Clouds swallowed stars and tents gobbled children. Juliette watched shadows move in one of the tents, other adults too jittery to sleep. Somewhere, someone was still cooking strips of meat from the animal Solo had shot with his rifle – the long-limbed deer. Juliette had marveled at Solo’s transformation these last three days. A man who grew up alone was now a leader of men, more prepared for surviving in this world than any of them. Juliette would ask for another vote soon. Her friend Solo would make an excellent mayor.
In the distance, a silhouette stood over a fire and prodded it with a stick, coaxing more heat from dying embers. Clouds and fire – these two things her people had only ever feared. Fire was death in the silo, and clouds consumed those who dared to leave. And yet, as the clouds closed in overhead and flames were agitated higher, there was comfort in both. The clouds were a roof of sorts, the fire warmth. There was less here to fear. And when a bright star revealed itself through a sudden gap, Juliette’s thoughts returned as ever to Lukas.
He had told her once, with his star chart spread across that bed in which they made love, that each of those stars could possibly hold worlds of their own, and Juliette remembered being unable to grasp the thought. It was audacious. Impossible. Even having seen another silo, even having seen dozens of depressions in the earth that stretched to the horizon, she could not imagine entire other worlds existing. And yet, she had returned from her cleaning and had expected others to believe her claims, equally bold—
A stick cracked behind her, a rustle of leaves, and Juliette expected to find Elise returning to complain that she couldn’t sleep. Or perhaps it was Charlotte, who had joined her by the fire earlier that night, had remained largely quiet while seeming to have much she wanted to say. But Juliette turned and found Courtnee there, white smoke steaming from something in her hand.
“Mind if I sit?” Courtnee asked.
Juliette made room, and her old friend joined her on the bedroll. She handed Juliette a hot mug of something that smelled vaguely of tea … but more pungent.
“Can’t sleep?” Courtnee asked.
Juliette shook her head. “Just sitting here thinking about Luke.”
Courtnee draped an arm across Juliette’s back. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay. Whenever I see the stars up there, it helps put things into perspective.”
“Yeah? Help me, then.”
Juliette thought how best to do that and realized she hardly had the language. She only had a sense of this vastness – of an infinite possible worlds – that somehow filled her with hope and not despair. Turning that into words wasn’t easy.
“All the land we’ve seen these past days,” she said, trying to grasp what she was feeling. “All that space. We don’t have a fraction of the time and people to fill it all.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Courtnee asked.
“I think so, yeah. And I’m starting to think that those we sent out to clean, they were the good ones. I think there were a lot of good people like them who just kept quiet, who were scared to act. And I doubt there was ever a mayor who didn’t want to make more room for her people, didn’t want to figure out what was wrong with the outside world, didn’t want to suspend the damn lottery. But what could they do, even those mayors? They weren’t in charge. Not really. The ones in charge kept a lid on our ambitions. Except for Luke. He didn’t stand in the way of me. He supported what I was doing, even when he knew it was dangerous. And so here we are.”