Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Really? So soon?’ Poppy glanced at the date on the dashboard. She’d calculated that, in the best-case scenario, the rescue shuttle could arrive in six weeks. ‘That’s amazing. Thank you…’ Poppy strained to remember the name of the leader of the Russian expedition. ‘Is this Vera Petrov?’

‘No,’ came the voice, ‘It’s Xiao lin.’

‘Xiao Lin He?’ Poppy repeated, hardly understanding what she was hearing.

‘Yes, from the Shēngmìng. We’ve been watching you. We’ve been wishing you luck on your endeavour. We’re on our way to help.’

Chapter 57 JUNO

^25.02.13

TEMPERATURE: -21°C

O₂: 58% SEA LEVEL

DAYS UNTIL RESCUE: 4

JUNO COULDN’T HELP FEELING as if the rest of the crew were avoiding her. She’d seen it on their faces when she opened her eyes, aware only of the beep of the machines as they indicated her heartbeat. Two days before they’d given her up for dead, and now here she was, staring back at them.

Sometimes she heard their voices outside the door as they trekked to the kitchen and she longed to be well enough to join them, but she was still too weak to get out of bed. It reminded her of the autumn that she’d broken her ankle falling out of a tree, and the interminable days that followed; watching her sister out in the garden collecting buckets of Cox apples, or carving pumpkins by the treehouse, haunting the town dressed as a ghost for Halloween, having fun while Juno was bed-bound and envious. Juno had watched the pumpkins rot on the windowsill, turn green and implode.

‘Astrid!’ Juno opened her eyes to find her sister slipping out of the room.

‘I thought you were sleeping,’ Astrid said.

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’ Juno didn’t try to hide her resentment. ‘I’m getting better,’ she went on. ‘Fae says the Dexamethasone must have worked.’ She held up the arm that was still attached to the IV. ‘So can everyone stop acting so strange around me now?’

‘What do you mean?’ Astrid asked, pulling her scarf tighter around her neck.

‘You know what I mean,’ Juno said.

‘Well…’ Astrid’s gaze was still fixed firmly on the floor.

‘Where’s Jesse?’ Juno asked. He had not come to see her since the night she first awoke. Juno wondered if everything would be different between them now that he’d witnessed her crying in the midst of her nightmares, feeble and confused and calling out for death.

‘Maybe he’s a little frightened,’ Astrid said. ‘We all are. I mean… you were dead.’

‘You thought I was dead.’

‘And then you opened your eyes.’ Astrid shuddered. ‘And for just a minute it was like it was someone else.’

‘I was alive, you know? The whole time,’ Juno said. ‘It was just a machine glitch.’

‘That’s what Fae says.’

‘But you don’t believe her.’

Astrid looked down at Juno. ‘You were dead,’ she insisted. ‘Jesse saw you. I saw you. You weren’t breathing.’

‘So you think, what? I came back to life?’

Astrid looked away again.

‘That it was a miracle, like Lazarus,’ Juno said, sneering. ‘That I came back from the dead.’ Astrid still didn’t respond. ‘I suppose it was a kind of miracle. The miracle of modern science. Like penicillin or—’

‘Are you making fun of me?’

‘What else can I do?’ Juno sighed, and leant back in the bed, the old weakness coming over her. ‘I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes or a white light or the face of God.’ Astrid flinched. ‘I know I didn’t actually die, but it was strange. I do feel as if…’ She spread her gloved fingers out in front of her face and watched the lamplight seep through them. ‘As if something happened to my body. As if I went somewhere.’ She stopped herself. ‘It’s crazy, though. I know it’s crazy.’

‘It’s not.’ Finally, Astrid turned around to face her. Her cheeks were wet. ‘I saw you Juno; you were dead, actually dead. Your heart stopped beating. I could feel it, then I couldn’t. And your eyes, they were still open but they were…’ She looked as if she was about to cry again. ‘I’ve seen death before. I dragged Ara’s cold body right out of the water, so I know.’

Juno looked away from her and tried to swallow the bile she could taste in the back of her throat. She wanted to make her voice sound light when she spoke. ‘So that’s why you’re treating me like a leper?’

‘Juno…’ Astrid was going to cry.

‘I’d have thought you might be a little happier to see that I didn’t actually die.’

‘I am. But…’ she frowned. ‘What if I told you that I brought you back to life?’

‘I’d say no wonder everyone is worried about you. So what are you now? A magician?’

Astrid tried to laugh. ‘I made a bargain with God.’ She sighed and closed her eyes. Maybe she hadn’t slept for a long while, there were shadows under her eyes and dirty tear stains streaked her hollowed-out cheeks.

‘It was something Jesse said,’ she began, ‘about Abraham, and how he had to kill his son.’