Crystal Magic

Chapter 1. Borderlands

When starships leapt into the atmosphere, they almost looked like shooting stars. With a flash of light, they would appear in the night sky overhead. Then with faint trails of stardust in their wake, they would continue to the spaceport, often flying right over the city of Hoffman.

"Make a wish."

Sorrel could hear her father's voice as clearly as she could see the stars above her, even though it had been over ten years since his death. If she just looked at the sky, she could imagine that she was seven years old again and sitting by her father on the slanted roof outside of her parents' bedroom. He'd point out the constellations to her, and tell her the stories behind the stars.

Sometimes they would be stories of grand knights who ventured to defeat an evil witch in a castle, of a princess who ran away with a pirate, of a queen who lived in a castle made of ice. Other times, they would be stories about spacer trading routes and those who'd ventured beyond the borders of the Society of Worlds to undiscovered planets. Or they'd be more mundane explanations of the gases and chemical reactions that made the light seen beyond space and time.

Sorrel preferred the fairytales or the spacers' tales.

She found her hand drifting toward the bronze compact in her pocket, cold from the winter air even in the flannel-lined pocket of her winter jacket. The engraved letters of V. M. were intimately familiar to her, as was the little heart beneath it. She knew that if she took it out, she would see the cracked glass, and the little ticking hands of the clock. In fact, even now she could feel the ticking like a heartbeat beneath her fingertips.

But she did not take it out now. Instead she sighed and continued scavenging the broken ship at the top of the heap for parts, adding the parts that weren't completely cracked or decayed from exposure to the elements to the large burlap bag slung across her upper body and over her shoulder.

"I think that's about the last of what we can expect from this one." Across from her, on the other side of the open side-panel of the fallen starship, her sister wiped her hands on her stained coveralls. "This one's pretty old. Vintage parts can go a pretty crown or two—but the problem is they're so worn down, we'll be lucky if even half of what we found will actually function once they're cleaned up."

"If that's the case, then we return the rest for scrap, as usual." Sorrel shrugged.

Next to the open panel into the innards of the ship, she could start to see the faded purple paint of letters on the side. Eternity, the ship had once been called. The irony wasn't exactly lost on her.

"What kind of ship do you think this was?" Sorrel brushed her hand over what remained of the ship's name. "Maybe this belonged to pirates who were headed for the edge of the system—or it could have been a merchant ship, that belonged to a traveling family who brought in goods from the Inner Worlds?"

Gwynn hummed noncommittally and tucked a black curl behind her pale ear. "This is a Rosebrier AT-426 model. A smaller, cheaper cargo freighter, but fairly sturdy. The name suggests it wasn't owned by one of the larger companies."

She looked up at Sorrel, meeting her matching eyes—one of the few things the twins had in common, both in appearance and otherwise. She smiled faintly. "I'd say your guess about a smaller, independent merchant is likely. Maybe it was a family heirloom, passed on through the ages before it wrecked here."

She looked back down at the worn metal, her smile deflating. "It feels like everything from space wrecks and dies here."

Sorrel knew she wasn't just talking about the ship. She placed her hand over Gwynn's and didn't say anything. She didn't need to.