Chena swallowed. Here it came. Mom walked another few angry strides before she turned on her oldest daughter.
“I get home from my first day on my new job, and I find your sister down by the dock, practically in tears, saying you had not come to meet her and that you’d probably been dragged off to be chopped into bits. I look for you in the dorm, and you are not there. I look for you in the dining hall and the library, and you are not there. Where do I finally find you? In the superior’s office for having attempted to get your hands on an illegal substance!”
“No, Mom, that’s not what happened!” Chena took two steps forward, pleading. “I just wanted something because I hurt, that’s all. I was told I could get some aspirin up there. I thought she was a doctor!”
Mom’s face didn’t soften a bit. “And who told you this?”
“Sadia, but she’s okay, Mom, she really is.”
“Did she warn you where you were going?”
“No, but—”
“Then she is not okay!” Chena cringed from the force of Mom’s shout. In the next second, Mom straightened up and pressed her hand against her forehead. “I’m sorry, Chena, but you had me extremely worried. This is the second time in as many days you’ve wandered away I-don’t-know-where, and this time when you specifically promised to be there for your sister.”
“I didn’t mean to be late!” Even to Chena the apology sounded wispy, but it was all she had.
“I’m sure you didn’t. But you should be aware you are breathing very thin air right now, young lady.”
Chena subsided. There wasn’t much else she could do. She looked over the rail, down at the darkening village. It would be evening soon and all the living roofs were dimmed and edged in gray.
“Teal, will you do me a favor? Will you meet us down in the dorm’s common room? We’ll be right there.”
“Okay, Mom.” Chena turned in time to see the smug sweetness on Teal’s face as she trotted obediently away.
But Mom didn’t give Chena much time to be angry about it. As soon as Teal was down the nearest set of stairs, she met Chena’s gaze. Her eyes had sunken in behind a pair of dark circles that hadn’t been there when they had left the station.
Mom studied her for a long time. Chena didn’t know what she was looking for. She kept thinking Mom would speak, but she didn’t. She just turned away again and rested both hands on the railing, watching the river below them slip between its mossy banks.
Chena felt her chest tightening as she tried to guess what Mom would say. Would she be grounded? Would she say Chena had let them all down? How much better Teal was acting, even if she was just the baby? Would she maybe say something about Dad? Or how long they’d have to stay here?
“Why are you doing this?”
The question was so soft and so distant that for a minute Chena wasn’t sure Mom was talking to her. But she turned her head and focused her tired eyes on Chena. Chena dropped her own gaze and shurgged. She didn’t know what Mom wanted to hear. She didn’t even really understand the question.
She heard Mom sigh. “Let me rephrase. What do you want to do?”
Chena shrugged again. “I don’t know. Get out of here.” The words were out before she knew she was going to speak them, but she knew at once they were true. “Go somewhere, somewhere that’s not planned or scheduled.”
Mom nodded slowly. “Show you something.” She jerked her chin in toward the center of the village.
“Okay.” Chena followed her mother along the crooked network of walkways until they came to a gap in the trees where they could see the four gleaming rails stretching away into the forest.
Mom pointed down at the rails. “I found out yesterday that you can rent pedal bikes that run on those rails. They let you ride down to the next town, Stem, which is on the shore of a major lake. In fact, it’s where the dirigible came in. There’s a market there, and a theater.” She faced Chena. “You give me one solid month of absolutely perfect behavior—no wandering off, no reports of being late or being where you’re not supposed to, no complaining about sleeping in the dorms or public bathing, no going off with this Sadia when you’re not sure what’s going on, and at the end of it, you can take one of those bikes out on your own. If that goes well, we can make it a regular thing. Do we have a deal?”
A month. A whole pissing month… but at the end of it, a little freedom, some time out from under. Maybe there’d be a chance in there to keep her promise to herself, to find a way to help Mom and to get them free of the fear and the debt, a way to get them all out of here.