Shadows Cast by Stars - Softcover

Knutsson, Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442401923 ISBN 13: 9781442401921

Verlag: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Old ways are pitted against new horrors in this compellingly crafted, “atmospherically beautiful” (Kirkus Reviews) dystopian tale about a girl who is both healer and seer.

Two hundred years from now, blood has become the most valuable commodity on the planet—especially the blood of aboriginal peoples, for it contains antibodies that protect them from the Plague ravaging the rest of the world.

Sixteen-year-old Cassandra Mercredi might be immune to the Plague, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe—government forces are searching for those of aboriginal heritage to harvest their blood. When a search threatens Cassandra and her family, they flee to the Island: a mysterious and idyllic territory protected by the Band, a group of guerilla warriors—and by an enigmatic energy barrier that keeps outsiders out and the spirit world in. And though the village healer has taken her under her wing, and the tribal leader’s son into his heart, the creatures of the spirit world are angry, and they have chosen Cassandra to be their voice and instrument...

Incorporating the traditions of the First Peoples as well as the more familiar stories of Greek mythology and Arthurian legend, Shadows Cast by Stars is a haunting, beautifully written story that breathes new life into ancient customs.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Catherine Knuttson lives on Vancouver Island, on which the fictional Island of her debut novel, Shadows Cast by Stars, is based. She divides her time among teaching, singing, and writing. Like her narrator, she is a member of the Metis nation.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

CHAPTER ONE

We live the Old Way. Our house, constructed of wood timber and roofed with asphalt shingles, straddles the boundary where the wasteland and the northernmost edge of the Western Population Corridor meet. This land was once my great-grandfather’s farm. Once was. Hasn’t been for a long time.

Every morning, my brother and I rise before dawn, make the trek to the mag-station, and ride into the Corridor to attend school, where we plug into the etherstream via the chip in our forearm. By law, our chip-traces can’t display any information about race, religion, or sexual orientation, but our classmates have always known that Paul and I are Others, of aboriginal descent, marked by the precious Plague antibodies in our blood.

Every afternoon, we make the return trip, riding the mag-train to the end of its line before walking back home along the old dirt road. Behind us, smog from the Corridor reaches north, stretching its ugly yellow fingers as far as it can as it tries to snatch up the last of the habitable land. Not long ago, a reserve was here, lodged in the Corridor’s throat, but all that remains now is our home. We are the only ones who have stayed, clinging to what little is ours, defiantly living as we always have, without computers and etherstreams and data-nets in our home, without food gels, without central heat. This is our choice. This is what it means to live the Old Way.

Today the walk seems longer than usual, because Paul isn’t talking to me. He got into a fight earlier in the day, but it’s not his split lip or his gashed knuckles that have me so worried. Paul’s on disciplinary action for fighting and truancy as it is, which is tough on both of us. Why can’t you be more like your sister? the teachers always say to him.Why can’t you help your brother? they say to me. We’re twins, Paul and me, but we’re not alike—not anymore, at least. Paul’s always had a short fuse, but lately it’s gotten shorter.

Now he walks beside me, slump-shouldered as his battered raven flies next to him. The raven is Paul’s shade, his spirit animal, and it always shows up after something bad happens to him. Today it was some kid who was looking for a scapegoat to blame for his brother dying of Plague. The rest who joined in? Well, no one in the Corridor needs an excuse to stick it to an Other.

Paul notices me watching him. “What’s wrong?” he asks as his shade casts him in the wavering light where spirit and flesh merge. The raven looks as beaten and bruised as Paul.

“Your raven. He’s back.”

Paul glances over his shoulder, but there’s nothing there for him to see. Only I can see the shades, even though I don’t seem to have one of my own. Paul’s gifts run a different path. “Well,” he says with a sigh, “at least it’s here and not at school.”

He’s right. When shades come to me, they sometimes take me under into the twilight world of spirit. More than once, I’ve been trapped there, unable to find my way back to my body. I fear that one day I’ll drown in the heavy darkness of the other side. But not today. Today I watch Paul’s raven and worry, for there’s one thing I know: When a shade comes to visit, something is about to change.

We round the last corner of the road, and the moment our house comes into view, Paul’s raven takes flight, leaving my brother lighter, unfettered. Paul may not like it here, but this place is good for him. Under the watchful eyes of the old windows, my brother is whole. He races inside to change out of his school clothes, the old floorboards creaking under his movements. It’s not long before he pounds back downstairs and flies through the kitchen, grabbing the last biscuit from breakfast before disappearing outside.

I always leave the last one for him.

I wait until I hear the sound of Paul’s ax striking wood before I go inside and close the door, leaning against it to seal the Corridor, school, the Band, the entire world outside. We have made it through another day. Our family is still together, if not whole.

For one complete minute, I allow myself to pretend we’re safe. The minute ends, as it always does, and reality sets in. Time for chores, but first I need to hide the contraband in my schoolbag: twine, twigs, old pencils, paper clips, elastic bands, tossed-away shirts, a red ribbon, a bundle of rusted keys. The family magpie, my father calls me. He doesn’t like that I take castaway items hiding in the school basement or in the lost-and-found, forgotten, homeless. No one may want them, but it’s still stealing, he says.

I do it anyhow. One day I might need an elastic, or a scrap of leather, or a length of wire. That’s what I tell myself, but most of these things, ancient and obsolete, will end up in a weaving, or a basket, or a dream catcher for Paul. This is how I pass my time when the night falls and we’re left in the dark, because I don’t need to see to work with my hands. I need only to feel.

The twine and paper clips and the other cast-off junk spill onto the table the moment I unbuckle my school bag. Sunlight glints off the keys, and for a moment they seem to wriggle like bright blue herring, a fresh catch, ready to be devoured.

I blink and they are keys again.

The Old Way is a way of work. We have no electricity, no running water, no garbage collection. Our luxuries are born of our own hands. The Old Way keeps us honest, my father says. It keeps us connected to the earth.

That doesn’t stop me from thinking about a day, a week, a lifetime in the Corridor. Even with the rolling blackouts, they have heat in the dead of our brutal winter. Their bones don’t ache when the rains come, nor do they have to haul in wood when squalls descend from the north, blanketing the world with snow—not to mention it’s a lot easier to hide from the searchers among the millions in the Corridor. Here, we’re exposed, and there’s not much stopping them from coming to gobble us up.

In the Corridor I would find a job, and with the money I earned, I would buy my father a new armchair so he had somewhere comfortable to sit after a hard day of work. I would buy myself a new wool coat and a pair of boots to keep my feet warm in the winter.

And for my brother?

For Paul, I would buy peace of mind and freedom from the dead, except that’s not for sale in the Corridor. That’s not for sale anywhere.

But we don’t live in the Corridor. We live here, on this farm, with its aging roof, its slumping porch, its sorry, sorry garden that I go outside to tend. Paul and my father have no talent for coaxing food from the depleted soil, so the task is left to me. I weed, I till, I plant, I nurture, and if I am lucky, the earth rewards me with a meager bounty in the fall: some squash. Apples, if the spring was warm enough for bees. Turnips, cabbage—there’s always enough of those. But not like the old days, when this land was among the richest on earth. The rivers ran so thick with fish a man could walk from one shore to the other without ever getting his feet wet, they say. Bears gorged themselves on berries until they were food-drunk. Sweet rain fell like manna from heaven.

Now our squash vines are stained with white mildew. Tomatoes won’t grow. Potatoes do, sometimes, if blight doesn’t get them first. But still, we stay. This is our land. This is home.

Our father refuses to supplement our diet with...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1442401923
• ISBN 13: 9781442401921
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 464
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; AA Utrecht; 3584; Niederlande