The Stars Never Rise

“That’s a bit simplistic as a summary….” The discovery of demons was a particularly grisly time in human history, and the various factions of our former government didn’t disband voluntarily or peacefully. “But probably good enough for a tenth-grade history test. Eat your toast.”

We could see the school compound by then, behind its tall iron gate. She couldn’t take food inside, and we had only minutes until the bell.

“Here. Take half.” Mellie ripped her bread in two and gave me the bigger piece. “I can’t eat it all.”

I shoved the bread into my mouth and chewed as fast as I could—we couldn’t afford to waste perfectly good food—and I’d just swallowed the last of it when the bell started ringing.

“Come on!” I pulled her with me as I raced down the sidewalk, and we slid through the gate a second before it rolled shut behind us.

“Cutting it close again, Nina,” Sister Anabelle said as she locked the gate, her skirt swishing around her ankles beneath the hem of her cassock.

“My fault!” Melanie called over one shoulder, racing toward her first class in the secondary building, her hair flying behind her. “Gotta go!”

“What do you have this morning?” Anabelle fell into step with me as she tucked her key ring into a pocket hidden by a fold in her long, fitted Church cassock—light blue for teachers. Anabelle’s robes were very simple and plain because she was still a pledge, but once she was consecrated, they would be embroidered in elaborate navy swoops and flames, signaling her status and authority to the entire world.

“Um … I have kindergartners today.” All seniors began the day with an hour of service. I’d been selected as an elementary school aide because I already had experience with kids, from working in the children’s home on weekends.

“Have you given any more thought to making an early commitment to the Church? I think you’d make a wonderful teacher.”

I glanced at the brand on the back of her right hand—four wavy lines twisting around one another to form a stylized column of fire, burned into her flesh the day she’d pledged. A permanent mark to seal a permanent choice.

Anabelle’s brand was a simplified version of the seal of the Unified Church, displayed on flags, official documents, currency, and the sides of all public vehicles. Each individual flame represented one of the sacred obligations, and together they formed the symbolic blaze with which the Church claimed to have rid the world of evil.

Except for the degenerates roaming unchecked in the badlands and the demons still resisting purification in several volatile regions in Asia.

But no one was worried about any of that. Not openly, anyway. The Church had it all under control—they told us so every day—and the only time willful ignorance didn’t qualify as a sin was when the Church didn’t want us to know something.

Which was why Melanie couldn’t understand my determination to pledge. But Mellie and I were living different lives, with different obligations and responsibilities. She had three more years to read illicit books and pretend to care about math while she tutored Adam Yung while wearing stolen mascara.

I had a deadbeat mother to hide from the Church, utility bills to pay, and a decorum-challenged little sister to shield from the watchful eyes of the school teachers. The Church represented my best shot at holding all that together until Melanie was old enough and mature enough to fend for herself.

The catch? Church service was forever. Mellie would grow up and have a life of her own, but I would not. I would belong to the Church until the day I died, and even when that day came, they would decide what would become of my immortal soul.

I’d been mentally fighting the choice for months, scrambling to find some other way to make things work, but my miracle had failed to materialize, and wasting the rest of my senior year wasn’t going to change that.

I couldn’t officially join until I turned eighteen, which was still a year and four days away, but early commitments were encouraged, and the earlier I pledged, the more likely I was to get my first-choice assignment.

Teaching. In New Temperance. Near Melanie. That was the whole point of pledging, for me.

“I was thinking of doing it during the afternoon service.” I took a deep breath and swallowed a familiar wave of nausea. “Today.”

“Oh, Nina, I’m so happy for you!” Anabelle threw her arms around me as if nothing had changed since I was a needy twelve-year-old, desperate for friendship and advice, and she was a senior, already pledged to the Church and assigned to mentor the girls in my seventh-grade class. Anabelle knew about my mother’s problem—she’d known even way back then—but she hadn’t told anyone. She trusted me to take care of Melanie and to ask for help when I needed it.

Sometimes talking to her still felt like talking to an older classmate, but the powder-blue cassock and the brand on the back of her hand were stern reminders of her new reality.

She was Sister Anabelle now. The Church owned her, body and soul.

Soon it would own me too.

“I have to admit, I’m happy for me too,” Anabelle said, and her smile was reassuring. If she loved her job so much, pledging to the Church couldn’t be that bad, right? “I was hoping you’d decide to pledge before the consecration. I didn’t want to miss your big day!”

“Oh, I completely forgot!” Anabelle had been selected for consecration into the leadership levels of the Church just five years after she’d joined, much sooner than the average. Unfortunately, after the annual ceremony—just a few days away—she would be transferred to another town, to learn under new guidance and to experience more of the world than New Temperance had to offer.

I could hardly imagine school without Anabelle. Even with our age difference and her Church brand standing between us, she was the closest thing I had to a friend.

We were three doors from the kindergarten wing when the rain started, an instant, violent deluge bursting from the clouds as if they’d been ripped open at some invisible seam. Even under the walkway awning, we were assaulted by icy rain daggers with every gust of wind. Anabelle and I sprinted for the door, but the knob was torn from my hand before I could turn it.

The door flew open and Sister Camilla marched past us into the rain, dragging five-year-old Matthew Mercer by one arm. If he was crying, I couldn’t tell—he was drenched in less than a second.

“Blasphemy is an offense against the Church, an insult to your classmates, and a sin against your own filthy tongue!” Sister Camilla shouted above a roll of thunder.

Yes, Matthew Mercer was a brat, and yes, he had trouble controlling his mouth, but he was just a kid, and everything he said he’d probably heard from his parents.

I stepped out from under the awning and gasped as the freezing rain soaked through my blouse in an instant. Anabelle pulled me back before I could say something that would probably have landed me in trouble alongside the kindergartner.

“Blasphemy is a sin,” Sister Anabelle reminded me in a whisper.

Of course blasphemy was a sin. A lesser infraction than fornication or heresy, but a grievous offense a strict matron like Sister Camilla would never let slide. Even in a five-year-old.

Especially in a five-year-old who’d already demonstrated a precocious gift for profanity.

Anabelle and I could only watch, shivering, as Sister Camilla dragged Matthew onto the stone dais in the center of the courtyard, then forced him to kneel. She was still scolding him while she flipped a curved piece of metal over each of his legs, just above his calves, then snapped the locks into place, confining the five-year-old to his knees in the freezing rain.

The posture of penitence. Voluntarily assumed, it demonstrated humility and submission to authority. And contrition. Used as a punishment, it was a perversion of the very things it stood for, just like anything accomplished by force.

In third grade, I’d once knelt in the posture of penitence in the middle of the school hall for four hours for turning in an incomplete spelling paper.

I’d never failed to finish an assignment again.

Sister Camilla marched toward us in the downpour, wordlessly ordering us inside with one hand waved at the building. At the door, I looked back to see Matthew Mercer bent over his knees, his forehead touching the stone floor of the dais, his school uniform soaked. He’d folded his arms over the back of his head in a futile attempt to protect himself from the rain.

“Pray for forgiveness,” Sister Camilla called to him over her shoulder. “And hope the Almighty has more mercy in his heart than I have in mine.”

Well, I thought as the door closed behind us, he certainly couldn’t have any less.

THREE

“Okay.” I crossed my legs and angled them to one side, trying to get comfortable in a chair built for five-year-olds. On the other side of the room, one of my fellow seniors had her own group of six kids assembled at the reading center while Sister Camilla taught math to six more at a table covered with little plastic counting cubes. I was in charge of the faith unit. “Who can name one of the four obligations of the people to their Church?”

Five chubby little hands shot into the air; five eager faces stared at me, hoping to be called upon. At some point between the ages of five and fifteen, that eagerness would be replaced with indifference, but in kindergarten, they still cared. They still wanted to please and to be rewarded for their effort.

“Elena.”

All five hands sank and four frowns emerged, while Elena beamed at me from her chair in the semicircle. “Devotion!” Her brown eyes sparkled with triumph. “That means we love the Church and we’ll love it forever!”

“Good!” But on the inside, some vulnerable part of me shriveled a little more at her enthusiasm for a child’s happy lie, which would surely mature into an adult’s bitter burden. “Who else?” The other four hands shot up again. “Dillon?”

He picked at the cuff of his white school shirt. “Obedience.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means you have to do what the Church says, even if you don’t want to. Just like at home, when your mom says you have to eat your peas, even though they’re yuck.”

I smiled at him, and my knee banged the underside of the short table when I tried to uncross my legs. “That’s exactly right.” But the Church’s “peas” were usually much more difficult to swallow. “And the third obligation?” The last three hands went up. “Jessica?”

“Penti … Penna … Pen …”

“Penitence,” I finished for her. “Good. And what does that mean?”

“It means that when you do something wrong, you have to feel bad about it. Real bad. And you gotta try to fix it.”

“That’s right. And—”

“Like with Matthew.” Elena’s smile faded and her little forehead furrowed. “He didn’t feel bad about what he said, so Sister Camilla made him feel bad.”

I glanced at Matthew Mercer’s empty chair, at the end of our semicircle. The rain was coming down so hard that I couldn’t see him through the window. I could only see gray misery and the steady pelting of rain against the glass.

“Okay, there’s one more.” I dragged my attention back to the kids in front of me, in their white shirts and navy pants, smaller versions of my own uniform. “The people owe the Church devotion, obedience, penitence, and what? Robby? Can you tell us?”

“He got the easy one …,” Jessica whispered, and I frowned at her.

“Worship,” Robby said. “That means you gotta love the Church.”

“Good.” At their age, faith was more about memorization than anything. Fortunately, five-year-olds have great memories. “Now let’s move on to something more fun. Who can tell me what we learned yesterday about soul donors?”

Hands shot into the air, and for the next few minutes, the kids explained to me that since the Great Purification a century ago, donors were necessary because babies without souls die within an hour of their birth.

“Who can tell me why there aren’t enough souls to go around anymore?”

Robby spoke quietly. The tone of our unit had changed, and he looked scared. “Demons ate them.”

I nodded solemnly.

Actually, demons consumed the souls of those they possessed. But that distinction was hard to explain to small children.

Degenerates were easy to identify. Fresh demonic possessions were much, much more difficult to recognize, because when a demon possesses a human, it has access to its victim’s memories. Most demons are very good at impersonating their victims. They do it for years, until the soul of the victim has been completely devoured.

Once that happens, if the demon can’t find a new host, it becomes stuck in the soulless body, which begins to mutate and degrade, both physically and mentally. Eventually, those soulless, end-stage possessions become degenerates—mindless mutated monsters with inhuman strength and speed, and demonic appetites. They stalk the shadows in search of new souls, but because they’ve lost most mental function, instead of simply possessing a new host, they tear the poor victim to pieces, literally devouring human flesh in search of that vital soul.

But those details aren’t taught to five-year-olds. In kindergarten we keep it simple.

“Today we’re going to talk about the shortage of souls and the generational obligation of the people.” That was a mouthful for a five-year-old, but even kindergartners had been hearing those phrases for most of their lives. “Do you all know who your donors were?”

Robby’s hand shot up, but he answered before I could call on him. “My grandpa was my donor. I’m his namesake, so I get to put flowers on his grave every year on my birthday. But my mom cries, even though I got to live.”

“I’m sure they’re happy tears.”

I was lying. People don’t cry in graveyards because they’re happy. But sometimes you have to lie to little kids. Sometimes you have to lie to not-so-little kids too.

I turned to Jessica, who was twirling a thin strand of dark hair around her finger. “What about you, Jessie? Do you know who your donor was?”

She shook her head. “My donor was from the public registry.” She said the words slowly. Carefully. Reverently.

I blinked at her in surprise. “Well then, you’re extra lucky, aren’t you?” I tried not to think about how nervous her mother must have been toward the end of her pregnancy.

Family donations are the norm, and most donors are memorialized in the new child’s name, or by the celebration of the donation along with the child’s birthday every year.

It’s considered an honor for the elderly to give up their lives and their souls at the moment of a child’s birth so the next generation can live. It’s also considered an obligation. In fact, in most cases, the Church won’t grant a parenting license until the prospective parents have a family donor lined up. The public registry is for emergencies. For cases when the donor dies before it’s safe to induce the baby’s birth, and for rare accidental pregnancies, when there is no family member willing to donate a soul for a child he or she will never see.

People who haven’t already promised their souls to a family member’s child are added to the public registry at the age of fifty and instructed to get their affairs in order. It’s a short list. Most people want their souls to stay in the family, and those who want to grow old sometimes promise a donation to the child of a niece or nephew who’s still several years away from marriage, and even farther from parenthood.

Selfish? Yes. But until the Church comes up with a law to stop it, donor procrastination is also perfectly legal.

When a baby nears birth without a promised soul, it’s assigned a donor from the top of the public registry. Rarely—tragically—a town’s public registry will sit empty for a few days, and inevitably during that time, babies are stillborn for lack of a soul.

“Do you do anything special for your donor on your birthday?” I asked Jessica.

“We give thanks and set a place for her at my birthday party. No one sits in that chair, even though she’s not really there. Mommy says it’s symbiotic.”

I hid a smile. “I think you mean ‘symbolic.’ “

“Yeah.” Jessica turned to her classmates with an air of authority. “ ‘Symbolic’ means no one can sit in that chair, even though it’s empty.”

Across the room from our learning center, the classroom door opened and I glanced up from my group of kindergartners to find Sister Anabelle standing in the doorway.

“Sister Camilla, could I please borrow Nina for the rest of the hour?”

Sister Camilla nodded, and Anabelle gestured for me to hurry, so I passed out parable-themed coloring sheets and crayons for my group, then scurried into the hall.

Anabelle closed the door behind me. “They’re about to start the sophomore class physicals. I thought you might want to spend your service hour there today, since Melanie’s …” She frowned at my blank look. “Mellie didn’t tell you?”

“No.” But with that new bit of information, the pieces fell into place in my head. No wonder my sister was nervous that morning. The problem wasn’t her history test, it was her physical exam.

My sophomore physical was the single worst day of my life. Even compared to a degenerate attack in a dark alley.

“Come on.” Anabelle grabbed my arm and tugged me down the hall. “They’re about to start the assembly.”

We got there just as the last of the tenth-grade girls filed into their seats in the auditorium, wide-eyed and obviously scared. The boys would be addressed separately, and I wondered if they would be half as nervous as the girls were. There was no whispering or nudging in line. No one played with anyone else’s hair. No one scribbled on incomplete homework papers or rushed to finish the assigned reading. They just stared at the stage, where a nurse in her pristine white slacks and matching cassock—the bloodred embroidery meant she was consecrated—stood next to the acting headmaster, Sister Cathy.

The girls looked terrified.

I knew exactly how they felt.

Anabelle and I stood against the back wall with several other teachers and volunteers, all staring out over the mostly empty auditorium. The sophomore girls took up less than three full rows.

When Sister Cathy stepped up to the podium, my stomach began to churn.

“Good morning, girls,” she said, and we all flinched when the microphone squealed. Sister Cathy repositioned it, then started over. “Good morning, girls. As you all know, today is your annual physical. As you may also know by now, the tenth-grade physical is a little different from the exams you’ve gotten in previous years. Today, in addition to assessing your general health and development, we will also be conducting your first reproductive assessment.”

My hands felt cold. And damp.

Sister Cathy made it sound perfectly reasonable. Civilized. Routine. As if there were no emotion involved. But the truth was actually brutal for the girls sitting in those chairs, hands clenched in terror. By the end of the day, every girl in Melanie’s class would be declared either fit or unfit to procreate.

Those declared fit would be given a second assessment before marriage, and a third when they applied for a parenting license.

Those declared unfit would be scheduled for sterilization. Immediately.

My stomach twisted again, as if my breakfast wanted to come back up. I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, and when I looked at the stage again, I realized I’d missed the introduction. I had no idea what the nurse’s name was, or when she’d stepped up to the podium.

“The important thing to remember today, girls, is that the reproductive assessment isn’t personal.” She said it with an air of authority. As if that made it true. “It’s not an assessment of you as a person, or of your ability to love and raise a child. Or even your ability to carry a child. It’s a simple issue of numbers.”

Numbers.

The Church was all about the numbers. I guess they had to be, since our population had been decimated by the horde a century ago. We couldn’t recover most of the souls devoured by the Unclean, and since no one knows how or even if new souls can be created …

“There aren’t enough souls to go around anymore.” The nurse finished my thought out loud, and I realized it didn’t matter what her name was, or what the name of the nurse who’d spoken to my class was, because ultimately, they were both Sister Nurse. This was the same speech countless Sister Nurses all over the country were saying to thousands of fifteen-year-old girls in every town that had survived the onslaught. The same thing Sister Nurses had been saying for more than eighty years, ever since the Church imposed restrictions on reproduction.

“The Unified Church has a responsibility to make sure that the available souls go to the babies with the best chance of survival. That way, virtually all our children live.”

That was a nice way to put it. The truth was that, rather than choose which infants lived or died—because that would be cruel—the Church chose which infants could be conceived.

“The decision is completely fair,” Sister Nurse continued. “It’s based on math and science.”

I wanted to laugh. But I kinda wanted to scream too.

At fifteen years old, I was disqualified for procreation based on a history of allergies, my flat feet, and mild myopia—conditions it wouldn’t be fair to pass along to the next generation. Especially when there were other girls my age with fewer health issues, who could theoretically produce healthier children.

I wasn’t alone. Nearly a third of the girls in my class were declared unfit. We were sterilized that afternoon, in matching white hospital gowns.

Sister Nurse spoke for another five minutes, explaining what the reproductive assessment would entail and reiterating that the girls should not be scared. Then she asked them to stand and form a single-file line.

Nothing good ever happens in a single-file line.

“Nina?” Anabelle put one hand on my shoulder as we followed my sister’s class into the bright hallway. “Are you okay?” I nodded, and she got a good look at my face while the line filed slowly toward the gym, which had been set up with several exam stations separated from one another by thin curtains. Anabelle tugged me into an alcove near the restrooms and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. I completely forgot.” Her frown deepened. “Is that why you want to pledge? Because of your disqualification?”

“No. I’m fine. Really.” Melanie filed past us, near the middle of the line, and my gaze followed her. She looked pale.

She looked terrified.

“You know this isn’t your only choice, right?” Anabelle said. “The Church wants pledges who want to be in service. And you have other options. I know you don’t want retail or factory work, but what about technical school? Cooking? Gardening?”

“I nearly burned the toast this morning, and I killed the bean sprout we planted in second grade.” I dragged my focus from the back of Mellie’s head and made myself look at Sister Anabelle. “And anyway, those aren’t careers. They’re jobs. Dead-end jobs, if you hate what you’re doing.” Like the dead-end existence that was killing my mother slowly, from the inside out.

“Okay, what about college? How are your scores?” Anabelle was irrepressible. “You could wait for the recruitment fair …?”