Prologue

There were rules at school. Rules for where to walk. Rules for what to eat, or not eat. Rules for sitting still. Rules for games in the courtyard. Rules for rainy days. But above all, rules about touching anything that grew outside the farming halls.

Moma followed all the rules easy enough, except for one. A tiny green plant had popped up in a crack in the asphalt behind the jungle gym. It had been overlooked by the teachers when they made their usual scans of the yard, but Moma had been drawn straight to it like a spider riding the wind. It boasted a single white blossom, which faded within a few days leaving behind a green nub that grew until it glowed, pink and tempting. When the teachers weren’t looking, she ran a finger over the fruit, feeling its velvet skin. Without thinking twice about the rules, she plucked it and plopped it into her mouth, where it exploded in flavor, both sweet and sour. 

A teacher yanked her away from the wall.

“I need a toxicity kit! Now!” he shouted across the yard.

 They carried her to a cramped room lined with sharp, metal shelves and glass vials, and someone stuck a needle into her arm. Wide eyes and frowns and shaking hands swirled around her, and then her parents arrived and they, too, were frowning and bowing heads to apologize for her actions.

At home, Moma listened at the crack behind her parent’s bedroom door. 

“She could be contaminated,” her mother hissed.

“They gave her an antidote, and the tests didn’t show anything,” her father replied.

“But sometimes, it develops later. It could be dormant.” Her mother’s voice was muffled, like she was talking through a whole pile of scarves.

“We’ll just have to keep an eye on her.” Her father walked across the room, his footsteps clacking on the parquet. “They should have been more careful, more observant. This never should have happened.”

“We’ll need to do more than keep an eye on her,” her mother said.  “We need to protect her while they sort it out. At least for a while.”

Moma pressed her ear against the door while her mother paced on the other side.

“She’s always been so bright—why would she do something so foolish?”

Frustrated and embarrassed, she got up off the floor and wandered to the living room window to watch the birds as they fluttered from feeder to feeder, never staying long because there was nowhere for them to rest.

She’d eaten a rainberry. It didn’t look anything like the lumps in jam. How did they know what it was, if it was the only one growing in the city?

One of the birds paused on the feeder and tipped its head at her. What if the bird knew what rainberries were and where they came from?

Quickly, before her parents could come out and before the bird could fly away, she twisted the handle and pulled the window open. But she’d moved too fast, scaring the bird and sending her mother’s favorite little pot crashing from the window sill to the floor.

It shattered, and her whole world did, too.

Her mother dashed into the room and froze at the sight of the opened window and  the broken pot in a hundred tiny pieces at Moma’s feet.

“It was an accident! There was a bird, and—"

“What have you done?” Her mother cried.  She knelt down and started gathering the larger pieces, placing them into her soft palm.

“I’m sorry,” Moma choked out before running to her bedroom and covering  her head with a pillow. She tried to block out the sight of her mother’s broken face and the tears running down her cheeks.

 Had her mother been crying before she saw the pot? Or after?

There were rules at home, and one of them was that they didn’t keep “things.” When they were done with something, or they’d had it for a long time, her father took it away. It kept their home calm, he said. But there was one thing her mother had never given up--the little pot she’d bought in a mountain village before Moma was born. It reminded her of “the wildest place in the world,” and she had promised to take Moma there some day.

And now she’d broken it.

That night, her parents told her bedtime stories and tucked her into bed. No one said anything about the rainberry, the window, or the pot, and for that one little slice of time, she believed they loved her, they had forgiven her, and they would protect her always.

Instead of going to school the next day, her parents told her they were going to take a trip. Finally, she would see the wild place!

They rode two trains just to reach the bottom of the mountain. When they disembarked, they had to wait on a platform until the Light Gondola had warmed up enough to carry their weight. Meanwhile, Moma and her parents walked across the dirt road to a grassy field, where they played tag and everyone laughed.

“See that?” her father asked while he panted, bent over his knees. He gestured at the trees lining the other side of the field. There were so many trees, there wasn’t any space left for flower beds or benches, like at the city park. They pressed in on each other, smothering both shadows and sunlight, so all that was left were leaves, wooden trunks, and a heavy, old feeling. 

“That’s a real forest. There used to be one right outside the city, but now you have to take the train to see one.”

“Is it haunted?” Moma asked.

Her father laughed. “No, honey. But it’s just as wild as the Wilting Slopes,” and this time, he pointed up the side of a stony mountain, right along the blue Light Gondola trail. There was a darker patch near the top, and he tapped his finger at it. “That’s where we’re headed.”

 “The gondola is ready!” her mother called, and Moma and her father turned their backs on the forest. Then they climbed into the glass capsule and rode the light beam up the slope.

The Wilting Slopes was small and everyone there was old. Older than anyone she’d ever seen before, nearly bent over, their skin wrinkled and spotted, their stringy, silver hair weighed down with droopy hats. But they smiled, so she relaxed against her father’s legs, waiting for him to start the talking like he always did, except he took her to the side where a clump of grass grew tall as her head, and her mother went with an old lady into one of the houses, into the dark.

“What kind of grass is this?” she asked her father. She didn’t really care what it was, but she needed an excuse to talk, to get him to act normal again.

“I don’t know, but I suppose you’ll find out.” He sounded like he had peanut butter in his mouth and was trying to talk around it. He picked a blade of grass and handed it to her. “You can touch all the plants here. But maybe you shouldn’t eat them without asking someone first.”

Tentatively, just in case it was a trick, she brushed the shiny blade of the grass with her finger. It was soft and cool. The birds from home would like it here, she thought. They’d hop and fly around the rocks and grasses, and swoop through air.

“Moma.” It was her mother, and when Moma turned to see her, she found an old woman standing beside her, a deep, serious frown between her brows. “What do you think? Would you like to stay here?”

“For the night?” Moma’s mind rushed like water, imagining what it would look like at night, when they turned out the lights. Would she see stars? Would there be other animals that only came out in the dark?

Her mother coughed. “For a bit longer than that. They are going to teach you about plants. Wouldn’t you like that?”

She nodded, but there was a twisty feeling in her stomach. Something bad was happening.

Moma’s father smiled, hiding his teeth. “You won’t have to go to the school anymore,” he said.

“Never ever?”

He shook his head.

They could live here, in her mother’s favorite place, and she’d never get in trouble again.

“Alright.” She smiled with teeth, so they’d know she meant it. Maybe they would live in one of the little stone houses, and her parents wouldn’t have to leave for work every morning.

They ate dinner with everyone from the village around a fire, which she’d never seen in real life before. Someone told a story and she curled up between her parents to listen, warm and safe. A little later, one of the older women asked her to come look at the stars. They went higher up the slope to a large, flat rock, where the woman showed her the sparkling shapes in the sky.

When they climbed back down to where everyone sat around the fire, her parents were gone.

Moma ran from house to house, faster than the old people could keep up with her, but none of them held her parents. Then she went to the Light Gondola capsule, but it wasn’t there and the light rail was growing cold.

She screamed down the mountain, but it didn’t change the facts: her parents had left her. 

With one last, weak cry, she sank to the ground, wrapped her arms around her knees, and shut out the world. Above, she felt the sky crack. One by one, all the stars were sucked into the cracks until there was nothing around but her, the dry dirt, the tufts of grass, and the stone village at her back.