Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

Part II. Águila's Star

Lying slowly down on the bed that could be the one she would die on, Águila pictured red shoes running past — strappy dancing shoes. Two pairs, playing moon beam chase under the star dial. They played in here all the time. The shoes were hers and Sueño's.

Their minder, Aria, a chubby redheaded scientist with curls that bounded in every direction, had never been able to keep them out of the star dial chamber. In Águila's memory, Sueño's matching pair of red strappy shoes would always be toddler small. It didn't matter that her sister survived to adulthood, or that they had played the game well into adolescence and through many pairs of run down shoes, and that her feet grew to the same size as Águila's. The memory girl always stayed a child.

That way the memory worked, dividing them in her mind as one adult and one little, seemed contrary to everything people always said about the connection between twins — the intuition and all. But what did they know? Águila and Sueño were the only twins in the Solari Empire.

Despite growing up in an apartment-sized test tube in the Constellation building, the sisters grew to be different. Águila felt at home in the residence on the sixtieth floor of the floating Alcyone Tower. Perfectly content with the books and toys provided to her by the lab workers. Alcyone's lab windows caught the entire city in a revolving view. Soliara, a metropolis of floating skyscrapers and buildings that were constantly taking off and landing as suited their business hours. The Alcyione stayed up. It was one of seven towers that orbited the grounded Constellation building.

And Sueño used to sit in the window for hours, watching the elevators to the levitating stores and theaters, some light vehicle traffic, restaurants navigating pre-plotted flight paths, expensive condos sweeping across the sky, all of it a galaxy of bodies swinging past each other on their own paths and orbits — and occasionally, occasionally, colliding in a fatal explosion of sparks and starfire.

It was never enough for Sueño to watch from above. To be brought any toy she could imagine, conjured delicacies and an infinite menu of magically invented foods, and a library containing every story ever written if you just asked the stars nicely.

Sueño wanted out. The stories only made her crave the feel of the sidewalk under her strappy shoes.

The revolving view only gave her a taste for more varied angles; she wanted to see Pleiades tower from below; she wanted to ride in a flyer; she wanted to see the sky when she looked straight up and not the projection spell that sent a mirage of clouds and the occasional rainbow across the lab's ceiling.

She wanted to ride an elevator to the Cloud, a popular brunch spot Aria had once made the mistake of overhyping — "I slung plates there before I got a magic license. I used to sneak a gulab jaman every single break. I'd eat six or eight on a dies Solis shift. It almost makes me miss those days."

Bringing Sueño a gulab jaman, a leche frito, or a mochi from the Cloud Cafe never satisfied the craving. She wanted to be there.

And she wanted to go to school. Which Águila could never understand. "Why do you want to go to school?" she asked a million times. Every story ever told said school was the worst. It was a prison where you were forced to read books that were boring, instead of the ones with good stories, and you had to ask to use the bathroom. You'd be strapped into a desk and not allowed to leave until they commanded you to go into the yard and participate in "gym class," which every child in the history of Soliara — according to the stories — hated, and would do anything to get out of. "I forgot my gym shorts." "I have cramps." "My doctor says my asthma will kill me if I run."

A million times, Águila tried to convince Sueño that she didn't really want to go to school. She just wanted what she couldn't have. As soon as she went, she would hate it.

"Everyone else gets to go," Sueño would say. "We're the only ones who have to stay inside a lab all day, every day. I want to run on the track. I want to climb in the playground. I want to be with the other kids."

Of course Aria had a solution. With magic, anything was possible. Aria turned their tutoring sessions into a real school. With real children. Every morning, a dozen schoolmates poured through links from their homes. The lab technicians who had children sent them to be educated with Águila and Sueño in what became a primary. Now the girls had companions, schoolmates, and playmates. Problem solved.

The lab in the next room was converted into a play area with a swing set and a climbing frame. The library became a study hall. The girls had friends, enemies, and rivals.

After twelve grades of primary, their friends, enemies, and rivals began applying to Magicians' College.

"I fucking want to go to college," Sueño said a million times.

She got a starpowered discipline for the swear, her voice muted for an hour every time, and Cuidadora Aria had a solution ready for that request too. "A magical education was the first stipulation of the contract your madre made with Constellation. You'll be educated here, by the top Constellation engineers, in the field of your choosing."

"Miércoles," Sueño said, a mild slang she could get away with to mean bullshit, mierda. "Don't think you're getting away with this farce a second time, Cuidadora." She went on from there in a sing song mocking tone, "We'll start a primary of our own, it'll be just like real school. You can run laps around the star dial, just don't get yourself killed playing relay moonbeam chase with other kids. Wouldn't want to lose one of the test subjects before you've solved the Immortality Problem."

Sueño wasn't a little girl anymore, and her desires burned inside her. "I want to go to Bar Volo and meet Bay Xia. I want to learn to drive. I want to see the Lilywoods from the ground."

It was Aria's fault for telling stories of the legendary Bay Xia restaurant, and describing the floraltrees Sueño could only see from afar as sentient creatures exploding with floral petals, reaching and stretching their limbs almost as high — only not even close — as the tops of the campus towers.

By this point, Águila was on Sueño's side. She had been scalded by the heat. When Ne and Harmony went to Magicians' College, they wouldn't have time to come to the lab anymore. They would rave about the bars where they went dancing. The raving had already begun.

"We'll have star powered gnomons, and we'll be able to summon craft brews and sweets."

It would be quiet then, like it had been before. A small world of grownups in lab coats. Everything they could ever want would be theirs if they asked for it — except for the whole world outside the sixtieth floor of Alcyone Tower.

Thank you for reading Part II of Águila's Star. This story will update on Friday with the conclusion. Please leave a star and let me know what you think of the story so far!