The Smallest Sprout
The storm below had just blown itself out. Bree pressed her nose to the round window and watched the clouds unknit over a dark sea. Sunlight came back across the water in one long stripe. Plum sat on the handrail beside her, lids half down, tufted brows soft. "Look," said Bree. "It found the sea again." The stripe slid up the glass and warmed her hands right through it. Then Space Station Nine turned, the way it always turned, and the light slipped away down the corridor without them. Bree pushed off the wall and went after it, and Plum came too.
The garden bay smelled of wet green things. Four trays of beans stood under four lamps, and three of the lamps were awake. The fourth had gone the colour of old honey and gave almost nothing at all. Under it the beans sat small and pale, their leaves folded like hands. Bree tapped the tired lamp with one finger. It hummed back, but it did not brighten. Plum shuffled along the rail and blinked at it, slow as a clock. "You're not broken," Bree told the lamp. "You're just tired." She floated right around the tray, looking for a switch she had not tried.
She found no switch. But she found the smallest sprout of all, down at the edge of the tray, no taller than her thumb. It had turned its back on the tired lamp. Both leaves were open toward the round window, where the sunlight lay in a thin bright bar across the floor. Bree watched it a long time, holding the rail with two fingers. The bar of light crept sideways, the way the station crept, and the little sprout leaned after it. "You're not waiting for the lamp," Bree said. Plum opened one eye wider. The sprout leaned a hair further.
Bree went to the supply net and came back with a round polished lid. She held it up in the window light and tipped it until a coin of brightness appeared. The coin landed on the ceiling. Then on the door. Then on Plum, who shut her eyes and bore it. Bree edged nearer the tray, and the coin slid down the wall, across the pale beans, and sat there, small and shaking. Her arms began to ache. Then the station turned a little more. The bar at the window thinned to a thread, and the coin went out in her hands.
Bree looked at the smallest sprout again. It had not chased anything. It had only turned, and waited, and turned. "You're not bringing the light here," she said. "You're going to it." She unclipped the tray from under the tired lamp. It rose as easily as a cushion. Bree steered it across the bay with one hand on the rail and Plum gliding just ahead of her, and she set it on the wide window ledge and looped the cord twice around. "The light goes round, so we go round," she said. Plum settled beside the tray and tucked up one foot.
Earth swung below them, dark and quiet, the sea like spilled ink. Then a thin gold wire appeared along its edge. The wire widened. Light came into the bay all at once, apricot-coloured, warm on the floor, warm on the glass, warm on Bree's cheek. Every bean leaf in the tray lifted. The smallest sprout opened its two leaves flat, the way you hold out both hands for something. Plum's feathers went from grey to copper, and she blinked at Bree, slow and pleased. "The light goes round, so we go round," Bree said, and she said it quietly, so the beans could listen.
The gold slid along the ledge, and Bree walked the tray after it, window by window, padding the corners with a folded cloth so nothing knocked. At the last window she turned the tray so the smallest sprout sat at the end where morning would arrive first. Behind her the tired lamp hummed on over nothing, and she let it rest. In ninety minutes the sun would come up again, and she knew exactly where she would be standing. Plum drifted after her, wings barely moving, and settled on the ledge with her back to the dark and her face to the glass.
Bree's eyes grew heavy before the next sunrise came. She yawned, and her fingers loosened on the rail, and she floated up off it like a leaf off water. Plum took the hood of her sleep-suit gently in her beak and towed her down the dim corridor, past one round window, past another, past the long turning shine of the sea. Bree felt the soft tug and let it carry her. "The light goes round," she whispered, "so we go round." Plum tucked her under the bunk strap, folded herself small at Bree's shoulder, and the station hummed them both to sleep.
