Astra Read Free Page B

needles and adult indifference.
    ‘We’ll prove it one day, Constable Tabby,’ she swore. ‘After I get my Security shot.’
    ‘
Astra
.’ Hokma was nearly at the brook now. Astra glared at the top of the tree and stuck out her tongue. Then she spun on her heel and raced after Hokma.
    ‘
Wait up
,’ she shouted. ‘Wait for me!’

1.2
    Astra jumped into Hokma’s footprints then skipped through the pines after her Shelter mother. She was going to Wise House, to
Wise House
, where no one except Hokma, Ahn and IMBOD officers were allowed to go. The officers came twice a year, to inspect the Owleons and take the fully grown and trained birds away. Since Astra had started school she hadn’t seen them arrive or leave, but every few weeks she spied Ahn in his canvas-topped boots and old straw hat, his Tablette tucked in a scroll beneath his arm, striding out towards West Gate of an evening. He and Hokma were Gaia-bonded, Nimma said, a bond of more than twenty years, though it was hard to believe because they never even sat together in Core House at mealtimes, let alone held hands or kissed like Klor and Nimma did. Still, Nimma said that some people liked to kiss each other when no one else was watching.
    Ahn’s lips were so thin they were nearly invisible, but still it was just conceivable that Hokma might want to kiss them and give him permission to visit Wise House; what was nearly impossible to accept, however, was that Or-kids – even
her
, Hokma’s own Shelter daughter – were strictly forbidden. Or-kids were noisy and galumphing, Hokma said, and ran around and frightened the birds. ‘
I’m
not galumphing,’ Astra had complained to her last year. It wasn’t fair. Hokma was her Shared Shelter mother so why couldn’t Astra visit her? Peat and Meem went to stay with their Birth-Code-Shelter parents sometimes, and Yoki often stayed with his Birth-Code uncle. In fact,
all
the other Or-kids except her got to stay with
all
their Shared Shelter parents. Especially considering that she didn’t have a Birth-Code mother or aCode father, it wasn’t right that she should be stuck with Klor and Nimma all the time.
    ‘You’re the biggest galumpher of the lot, Astra,’ Hokma had laughed. ‘You’re always knocking into people. Better save all that energy for the Kinbat track for now.’
    It
wasn’t true
. She could run fast, and sometimes her elbows jabbed into adults who didn’t get out of the way. But she was light, and she knew she could be a silent tracker in the woods if she tried, even with her sandals on. But when she’d tried to explain, Hokma had got cross, and told her to stop arguing or she’d be running extra laps for the next two weeks.
    I wish you weren’t my Shelter mother
, Astra had nearly shouted. But what if Hokma had said,
Fine, I’ll stop now
? So instead Astra had stormed off to the orchard, where she’d sat under a fig tree nestling the hurt like a dead bee in a puff of cotton. Later, she’d carefully placed the bee-hurt in a little drawer inside her heart. She didn’t like to open the drawer very often, though, because even though the bee-hurt was dead, it could still sting her.
    But now, at last, she was going to visit Wise House. As Astra followed Hokma down to the brook, the drawer in her heart flew open and like a small miracle, the bee took flight.
    * * *
    Ahead of her, Hokma crossed the small wooden bridge Klor and Ahn had built twenty years ago, when Or was new and the brook little more than a dried-up ditch. The water was deep again now, a smooth umber current nearly as deep as Astra was tall. She bent down, ripped open her Velcro sandal straps and, arm back behind her head like she’d been taught in cricket practice, hurled her shoes across to the opposite bank. The second one landed short of the first and rolled dangerously down towards the water.
    ‘Astra!’ Hokma’s hands were on her hipbelt again. But the sandal didn’t fall in. Hurriedly, before Hokma could object,