Among the Nameless Stars

and he just shrugged.
    Jin, too. “They gave me up a few years back,” she said. “Always new girls coming up.”
    Kai shook his head in disgust. “Reduced girls, too?”
    Jin clucked her tongue. “Depends how pretty they are. Most around here don’t count the Reduced as much more than animals.”
    That phrase again. Was that really the way of things on this estate? Once, when Kai was very young, a Luddite on the North Estate had messed with one of the Reduced girls. The Baron had banished him. Elliot’s father had some standards. These men, these Miner Luddites, they were the animals.

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    Kai was relieved when Jin finally pronounced his leg healed enough to walk on again. “I hope your limp goes away as you get stronger,” she said. “But I can’t make any promises. Try to hide it when you’re looking for labor. Folks might pass over a gimp.”
    Kai cringed at the word. “I won’t be looking for physical labor, unless I get desperate. I was a mechanic, back on my old estate.”
    Jin’s eyes widened. “A mechanic who can read and write?” She whistled through her teeth.
    “Best you’re leaving today before anyone here gets wind of that. You’d never get away.”
    He thought back to the night he’d fallen down the ravine. Had the Miner Luddites known his skills then, when they’d chased him? Or had they just seen an able-bodied laborer?
    “Bet your old master’s looking for you hard.”
    “No,” Kai replied, swallowing. “None of the Luddites on my old estate are looking for me.”

    Dear Elliot,
    You aren’t looking for me, are you?

    Sometimes, at night, Kai would lie on his back and rename the stars. The ones he’d learned from the books Elliot had smuggled out of her family’s library were all so long and ornate, like a Luddite’s name. He rechristened them with names more like the Posts he knew, like the Posts he missed, back on the North Estate: Mags and Dee, Gill and Jef, even his father, Mal. All except one, the bright blue one that greeted him every morning, the one that used to be called Venus.
    That one he named Elliot.
    How did anyone see the stars and not wish for more than the confinement they were born to?
    How could anyone know that lands lie beyond their shores and not wish to find them for Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
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    themselves? The Luddite lords said that nothing remained of the world, that they were the only survivors. And maybe they were right, but they were also Luddites. Luddites never wanted anything to change.
    Kai was done with that.
    Now that he was off the roads, he counted on the stars to show him the way. South of the fire fields, the land was much more familiar, though still hillier and more open than the wooded, rocky beaches where Kai had been raised. His progress was slow, due to his leg, but it was progress nonetheless. He slept each night on thick, pillowy beds of grass and plodded each day through endless, rolling fields, punctuated here and there by baby mountains or glass-smooth lakes. He avoided any sign of settlement.
    And he wondered what would happen if Elliot did come looking for him. What if she’d changed her mind? He didn’t want her crossing the fire fields on her own. Who would protect her from the Miners? Would they care if she claimed she was a Luddite? And how would anyone ever know? Even if they both made it to Channel City, how would they ever find each other? Kai thought about the poor Post girl Bess, who’d very nearly failed to let her man’s family know about his death and their baby. How many other Posts down in the enclaves were dead or married or had babies and had never gotten word back to loved ones on their old estates?
    Oh, he didn’t care if she did come after him. His mind was filled with fantasies—Elliot, travel-weary and tired, traipsing the streets of Channel City in search of Kai, who’d grown rich and successful. Or maybe one day, one day when he was the richest Post on the island, he’d write to her:

    Dear Miss Elliot,

    Among the Nameless Stars by Diana Peterfreund
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    In his fantasy, she never married.

    Dear Miss Elliot,
    I am sure you don’t remember me, but long ago, I lived in the loft above your barn.

    Wait, no. He wanted her to remember him.

    Dear Elliot,
    Though it has been a long time since I’ve thought of myself as the boy who lived in your barn, I felt duty-bound to repay your kindness over the