Stardust

The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep...

—The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgeson Burnett

     After a full 24 hours passed without so much as a glimpse of Axel, July was starting to get antsy.

     Normally, he made a point of seeking her out at every opportunity—meals, hunting her down after her shifts, the occasional midnight tryst in her bunk (smothering her moans as to not wake up Cass; the embarrassment she would feel over interrupting her bunkmate’s sleep because she wanted to get some head would be unbearable). After Cass came to relieve him of his watch shift, July hadn’t seen him for the rest of the day.

     She didn’t think much of it at first; Cass distracted her entirely with the incredibly detailed and lengthy tale of the hottie she got to question. But once the hours dragged on and she went through dinner, a full night’s sleep, breakfast, and a subsequent morning watch shift without any sign of him—something seemed off.

     July contemplated this as she sat next to Cass on the very edge of a subway platform, this one loosely retrofitted for food distribution. To call it a cafeteria would be vastly overselling it—it basically consisted of some camping stoves and plastic tables for prep, a few dozen smaller sets of collapsible tables and chairs to eat at, and several large tubs of hand sanitizer dotted around the location—but it fulfilled the same purpose, and the members who ran it were endlessly proud of their work. Today’s lunch was some kind of chunky stew, which July picked at absentmindedly as she swung her feet back-and-forth in the air.

     Cass nudged her side gently. “Eat.”

     She rolled her eyes, but obligingly shoved a hunk of unidentifiable meat in her mouth. “Have you seen Axel today?” she asked around her mouthful.

     “No.” A muscle in Cass’s cheek twitched.

     July huffed. “Don’t be a dick. I’m worried, I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”

     “I’m not being a dick,” Cass said. She then promptly shoveled an uncharacteristically heaping spoonful of stew in her mouth, preempting any further discussion in a way that really, really did not beat the “being a dick” allegations, in July’s opinion.

     “You’re always a dick when it’s him,” July continued doggedly, but her persistence fell flat in the face of one of the guys from the crash site suddenly walking up to squat beside Cass and give them an awkward little wave.

     “Am I interrupting?” At least he had the grace to sound apologetic.

     “Of course not,” Cass said, very quickly. “July—this is Micah. I interviewed him yesterday.”

     The guy in question dropped down from his heels to sit cross-legged on the concrete. He had a big, sheepish grin, the size of which was only rivaled by the size of his arms under his t-shirt. “Actually, sorry, but my real name,” and here he leaned in conspiratorially, “is Jasper.”

     Jasper let that sit for a few silent moments, still grinning like an idiot. July watched Cass’s face closely for any hint as to how they should be responding to this information, but her expression was very carefully neutral and still.

     “Why on earth did you lie to me if you were going to nigh-instantaneously tell me the truth?” Cass finally said, which got a small giggle out of July. She relaxed slightly—if Cass wasn’t worried, it was probably fine.

     “Clearly I wasn’t thinking,” Jasper said, leaning back to prop himself up on his hands. “I wanted to come over and introduce myself, for real this time. And to thank you, Cass.”

     July scooted back from the edge of the platform, drawing her legs up underneath her. As she adjusted far enough back so that she could see both of their faces at once, Cass turned to face away from the train tracks, forming somewhat of a triangle with the three of them facing inward.

     Once settled, Cass shot Jasper a look—searching, tinged with mild confusion. “I truly do not think you have anything to thank me for.”

     “You were nice,” he said. “I appreciate that. Hey!”

     Jasper waved at someone behind July. She looked over her shoulder to see the other guy, the tall one, approaching, bowl in hand. His looming, lanky frame stood out awkwardly against the backdrop of people at least half a head shorter than him; thankfully, someone had apparently gotten him a new t-shirt, but it somehow both hung loosely off the bony planes of his torso and stopped just shy of his waistband, showing a bare centimeter of vitamin-deficiently pale skin. He waved back and, without even asking, sat down next to July.

     “This is Lake,” Jasper said. “Lake, this is—“

     She cut him off. “July.”

     Cass leaned over and stuck her hand out for a handshake; Lake stared at her proffered hand blankly for a few awkward silent moments. She withdrew her hand at the exact moment that he reached out in a spastic, jerky movement; he immediately pulled his hand back and Cass made an awkward attempt at a friendly laugh. “I’m Cass,” she said, a bit too loudly, and began busily scraping her spoon on the bottom of her bowl.

     Lake made a noise in the back of his throat, the intention of which July couldn’t quite understand, and shot a smirk towards Jasper, who chuckled and reached over to shove him on the shoulder.

     “July.” Lake turned his attention back towards her, eyeing her up-and-down with a startlingly keen gaze. His social faux pas didn’t seem to be affecting him. “Thank you for the gun. I’m sorry, but I had to give it to someone—I’m not sure who, but—“

     “It’s fine, they all come from munitions anyway,” July said. Maybe she did get a little attached to the guns she carried on missions, but she was used to giving them up at the end of the day. Besides, that one was just her regulation pistol, and munitions had already replaced it. “Cass said you guys were on a Dusty ship? How’d you get away?”

     “I have magic powers,” Lake answered promptly.

     She wrinkled her nose at him. “Alright. I mean, you can just tell me to stop being nosy.”

     He shrugged.

     “I doubt they want to talk about any of that,” Cass said. She reached over to run her fingers along July’s back, just in-between her shoulderblades: a light warning. “Jasper, Lake—are either of you considering staying in the Resistance?”

     “Not like we have much choice,” Lake muttered.

     Jasper shot him another unreadable look. “If it’s between this and getting picked up off the streets and sent back to a Dusty ship, this seems better to me. I mean, it was pretty cushy up there, but I’d rather not have my DNA fucked with by aliens, thanks.”

     July perked up. “DNA? Like, they were cloning you or something?” Cass’s hand tightened on the scruff of her jacket; July swatted her side, keeping her eyes fixed attentively on Jasper.

     “Oh. I don’t actually know. They just did, fuckin, uh, tests…” Jasper waved one hand in a vague gesture, with the air of someone suddenly expected to give a presentation on a field in which they were only familiar with a handful of facts, all of which they’d read on the back of a cereal box. “I just don’t like not knowing what’s happening to my body. I might get alien mega-cancer in ten years or some shit.”

     “Or you might develop magic powers,” Lake said.

     “If I’m gonna be Superman, I want to decide to be Superman. None of this ‘greatness thrust upon me’ shit.” Jasper punctuated his statement with a few swings of his spoon. His enthusiasm sent a glob of stew flying; it hit Cass’s knee and dripped slowly down her pant leg. “Oh, fuck. Sorry!”

     To July’s surprise, Cass giggled. It could have even been called girlish. “It’s alright. Clumsiness isn’t a sin.” She rubbed ineffectually at the glob on her pants, succeeding in sending most of it to the platform floor, but not making a dent in the dark splotch it left behind.

     Feeling the intense need to derail whatever was happening right then, July launched directly into her question of the hour. “Hey, have either of you seen Axel since you got back? The redhead.”

     Lake looked totally blank; Jasper shook his head.

     Cass huffed dramatically. “He’s fine, Jules. He was most likely sidetracked by whatever General Flynn wants him to do in debriefing.”

     As the conversation quickly turned back to something else trivial and stupid, July stared glumly into her stew bowl.

     “She’s right,” June said. July took another heaping spoonful of stew and tried to ignore her.

###

     That night, July woke up to Axel under the sheets with her, nuzzling his face into the crook of her neck and cupping one of her tits in his hand.

     Her brain registered his smell first, a mix of the spicy-sweet deodorant he used and artificially sweet handsoap from the restrooms, all overlaid in a blanket of earthy musk; making a pleased little noise in the back of her throat, she rolled over to bury her face in the comforting scent. As her brain slowly dragged itself out of the void of unconsciousness, Axel started pressing warm, wet kisses to her neck, hands ghosting over her torso beneath the blanket.

     After a moment, a few synapses fired and July shot fully into wakefulness, propping herself up on her pillow by one elbow. She batted his hands away and hissed “Axel.”

     He laid back, grinning lazily up at her from her spare pillow. “Hey, love.” His voice was low and drowsy, his eyelids drooping, long pale eyelashes dripping over the porcelain of his skin and almost brushing his cheeks.

     “Don’t ‘hey, love,’ me.” Even whispering, her voice had a steely edge. “Where have you been?”

     “There’s things happening,” he said, reaching back up to trace the rounded edge of her cheekbone with two soft fingers. “Not sure if I should tell you.”

     She hastily swatted his hand away again. “Why?”

     “It’s all big-time classified.”

     “That’s never stopped you before.”

     His hand came back up to comb through her hair, idly stimming by pulling locks flat between his fingers. Instead of addressing her point, he whispered “I missed you” and cupped the back of her head to tug her down for a long, deep kiss.

     July let herself relax into his touch for a moment, focusing on the movement of his mouth against hers and the slow repetition of his fingers through her hair. He moved his other hand to her hip, rubbing gentle circles with his thumb into the exposed skin where her shirt hiked up. As his hand traveled further up her torso, skimmed over the rounded hills and valleys of her curves and over the bare skin of her breast, she found it increasingly difficult to focus.

     His tongue ran over her bottom lip as his fingers found her nipple, and it was really, seriously not doing it for her right then. She broke the kiss off with an exasperated “Look—Axel, you’re killing me, man.”

     His lopsided grin came back as he lightly pinched her nipple. “Let me take care of you, then.”

     “Not like that, dipshit,” she said, shoving him slightly with her free arm. Thankfully, he dropped his questing hand back to rest on the hard mattress. “I’m not horny. I want to know what’s going on.”

     With the lights outside the subway car on their night cycle, it was dark enough that his pale skin practically glowed; the smatterings of freckles splattered across the bridge of his nose looked like dark holes in his skin by contrast. His eyebrows furrowed slightly. After a longer silence than July was comfortable with, he finally said “I’m going to assassinate the President.”

     She couldn’t help it; she smothered a giggle. He just lay there, silently, his eyebrows still drawn together and his easygoing grin nowhere to be seen.

     “Oh. You’re serious.”

     He nodded once, giving her hair a slight ruffle before dropping that hand, too. He lay sprawled like that, his hands to either side of his head, palms up, and for one wild moment July saw them strapped down and covered in violently purple bruises and mangled skin. Only for a moment, though. “I’m on a strike team. Tyler’s been getting us prepped for the last couple of days. That alien bugger? He knows about the Dusties, he’s been in the White House, he’s got all kinds of intel. He’s exactly the chance we’ve been waiting for.”

     The whole time Axel was speaking, July’s bile was rising in perfect sync with her heartrate. “When are you leaving?” she managed.

     “Tomorrow.”

     “Tomorrow?” she said at full volume. He clapped his hand over her mouth, eyes immediately flicking up toward the bunk above them. They stayed like that for a few seconds, nothing but a couple of creaks coming from the top bunk, until July impatiently clawed his hand off her face and hissed “When were you planning on telling me, ten minutes before you left? How long are you gonna be gone, anyway?”

     “Only a couple days. We’ll be in and out, it’ll all be over before you know it—“

     “What the fuck,” July said, not bothering to lower her voice anymore. She sat fully upright, her heart racing. She felt very jittery and small and rash all of a sudden, and her mouth was moving faster than she could keep up with it. “So you were just going to come in and fuck me, disappear for a few days--”

     “It’s not like that—July, love, quiet down—“

     “I will not quiet down,” she said, digging her nails into the palms of her hands. It usually helped to stop them from shaking, but at the moment it felt like the tenser her muscles got, the more they jerked around frantically, entirely out of her control. “You could die! I doubt Tyler gives a shit about that, but you should!”

     “What’s your problem with him?” Axel’s voice started to get high and pitchy. “Every time I do anything for him, you’re over here rolling your eyes and bitching about it—“

     “He’s a fucking cunt,” July informed him, “and he doesn’t give a shit about you, and he hates me.”

     “Oh, that’s what this is.” He barked, one sharp sound that could only loosely be called a laugh. “You’re jealous. You think he should have picked you, and he only didn’t because he’s got some kind of vendetta.”

     The acid in the back of July’s throat burned with a vengeance; the room began to spin slowly in the edges of her vision and she wondered if it would be justified to puke all over Axel’s chest. “I am not jealous of a fucking suicide mission!”

     A few sparks of electricity jumped down July’s spine and into her clenched fists as she heard Cass’s sleep-heavy voice from above. “Can you two quiet down?”

     “He’s going to assassinate Taner!” she called back.

     “You can’t—“ Axel spat in a hushed tone, but Cass was already talking over him.

     “I don’t care if he’s performing fellatio on your father , you can argue about it when I’m not trying to sleep.” Then, with a strange, quiet finality, she added “Assholes.”

     July turned her gaze toward Axel. It was physically painful to make eye contact with him right then, even in the dark—literally, it made the back of her head throb and the half-moons on her palms sing with electric agony. “Go away,” she said, whispering again.

     His jaw tensed visibly. “I’m still leaving tomorrow.”

     “Fine.” In her delirium, July was fine with never seeing him again, if it meant she didn’t have to pay attention to the freckle-holes on his face opening up into gaping wounds to match the mangled flesh of his arms.

     Axel motioned like he was going to reach back out to her face, but she jerked away the second his arm moved and he didn’t even try, just looked at her helplessly. “… I’ll be at the Amsterdam entrance at five.”

     With that, he extricated himself from the damp, cool sheets, leaving July to wrap herself in the pathetic wet polyester and feel sorry for herself. She did this with gusto and lay back down to face the wall of the subway car, skin buzzing and racked with tremors. It took her a very long time to get back to sleep, which wasn’t helped by Cass starting to snore.

###

     The corridor was seemingly endless, rows upon rows of doors all lit in an ambient sourceless half-light, stretching out into a baffling horizon in the distance. Despite how little this meshed with your concept of reality, you accepted it wholeheartedly, just as you accepted that your name was July, that down was down and up was up, that you were perceiving the world through your eyes and ears and skin. If you had stopped to think about it, this might have tipped you off that you were dreaming, but humans of your age so rarely pause to interrogate their lucidity in dreaming, and you had always been less lucid than most.

     The floor was cool and colorless, the walls no specific texture or shade, but the doors—the doors were gleaming solid steel panels and thick oak slabs with heavy engraved bronze knobs and sweeping archways of stone with leering faces and fat cherubs carved into their surfaces. They were red and green and brown and gray, so tall they towered into the nonexistent sky and so short even a child would have to stoop down to make use of them, and some of them were all of these things at once, immaterial representations of numerous realities that skidded cleanly off your mind even when you looked directly at them.

     You padded barefoot down the corridor, trailing one hand over the doors that called to you as you went. Some of them were so hot they left welts on your fingertips, some were so cold they sent chilly shocks up your arm and deep into your torso. You found yourself drawn to a garden gate set into the wall, a wrought iron fence with an arched top and swirled pickets extending high over your head.

     The gate was unsecured. You swung it open and stepped through into a blinding burst of sunlight, an explosion of color and light like you hadn’t seen in years; as the light hit your face, it lit your hair up in a halo of gold and highlighted the pallid, sickly hue of your sun-deprived skin. You couldn’t help but squint against the blazing intrusion, struggling to see the effulgent scene around you.

     The ground burst with flowers, brilliant shocks of red and pink and purple; crumbling brick walls surrounded the greenery, themselves dripping with ivy and moss. Trees loomed overhead, dappling the overgrowth with overlapping patterns of light, some of them drooping heavily with cloyingly-sweet-smelling blossoms. The air was hot and wet and thick.

     Directly in front of you sat an old mossy stone birdbath, filled with stagnant mucky water, and equally moss-covered stone benches. June was sitting on one of them.

     She looked older here, maybe your own age, which did not surprise you. She was wearing a blazer unbuttoned over a lacy bra, and her mouth was perfectly made-up in a blood-red shade of lipstick. As she turned to face you, you saw her eyes—smooth, black voids, no whites, no pupils, just a pair of featureless black ovals that could have been shiny marbles set into her eye sockets, or just as easily holes bored into her face looking into a field of null.

     “Oh,” June said. “You haven’t been here in a while.”

     “I still love you,” you said, because it was the right thing to say. Your toes felt warm and comfortable in the pillowy dirt as you walked towards your sister.

     June laughed, a harsh, gratingly sarcastic sound. “Yeah.”

     You sat on the bench next to her, tracing one finger over the damp carvings in the stone. They seemed to shift under your gaze, but not under your touch—as you followed the lines with your fingers, your understanding of the shapes they made kept changing, first a dog straining at its leash, then an angel wielding a blade nearly half its own size, then a confusing mass of mouths and teeth and squidlike appendages overlapping with one another.

     June stood up and leaned down to grasp your chin and tilt it up; heart banging against the hollow of your throat, you made eye contact with those glassy black voids and held it as June clasped your face in both hands. “I know what you’re going to do.” Her thumbs rubbed your cheeks, burning hot where they brushed the sensitive edges of your top lip.

     “Can I stop it?” you asked.

     June pressed a long, firm kiss to your forehead, a move that momentarily sucked the air from your lungs and left you gasping in the heat; with that, she turned around to regard the birdbath. “Daddy won’t see us if we keep meeting here.”

     This was not what you asked, but you accepted it anyway. She reached into the birdbath, just barely breaking the surface tension of the algae-ridden water with her fingers. Swirls of crimson that exactly matched her lipstick bled out from where her fingers met the water.

     The cool stone under your fingers suddenly pinched you; looking down, you saw the carvings on the bench now resolved into a house on fire. This made sense; it was what was supposed to happen, but you did not quite understand that. You were abruptly struck by an overwhelming wave of guilt.

     “Go ahead,” June said. “Wake up. See if I care.”