It was almost certainly not going to be the time of their lives.
The second Zuri stepped from the train, a wave of hot, humid air enveloped her like a cloud; her hair was frizzing and sticking to the back of her neck before the group had even made it off the platforms. Everything about Sinje was bright: the ceaseless glare of the white-hot sun, the reddish-pink cobblestone streets overgrown with lush green weeds, the glittering, cerulean river that wound through the middle of the city like a ribbon given life. The Celestials left the train station and were immediately entrenched in a new, shimmering world of spice-scented air and jovial voices and somewhere, the calming twang of a banjo.
Zuri stood frozen in place for a moment, clutching the straps of her pack, watching the massive riverboats roll slowly down the waterfront, wooden turnstiles lapping up water like a dog's tongue. Naino was a landscape painting: monochrome, simple, standard. Sinje reminded Zuri more of a piece of cubist art—it was vivid with color and not everything about it entirely made sense together, but that was the allure.
"Aldric, you okay over there, buddy?" Jem asked, and everyone's eyes swiveled towards the ice wielder, whose forehead was already beaded with fine drops of sweat.
He did look a little faint, Zuri thought, but nevertheless he spared them all a weak smile. "Fine. Just not very used to heat, is all."
Chike frowned. "Can't you just...cool yourself off?"
"And give myself frostbite, not to mention blow our cover?" Aldric said, and shook his head. "No thank you; I'll just have to rough it. Kalindi, where's this shop of his?"
Kalindi shrugged her shoulders back, stepping out of the way of incoming foot traffic as the train horn whistled shrilly. "A little further in," she answered, "but I figure you might want to set your things down first."
"Oh, forget that!" Jem exclaimed, winding her dark hair into a neat bun at the base of her neck, her eyes shining with fervor beneath the spectacles. "I want to get going. We've been sitting still for like, three hours."
"Minus the hostage situation," Zuri pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "Sure."
The look Kalindi gave Jem then wasn't exactly of disdain, but surrender, like she knew arguing with Jem would be both fruitless and enervating. Zuri couldn't fight a smile. The princess learned fast.
"Fine," Kalindi said. "It's this way. And don't get lost, either. I'll leave you behind."
So they walked. The further they got into the city, the denser the crowds grew, a sea of people in bright clothes mingling among the squat, brick buildings and the motley of merchant stalls set up between them. If Kalindi weren't walking so fast, Zuri would have stopped to examine the fruit selection. The air was bright with the sweet aromas of crisp red apples, mangoes, pineapples. Maybe she would send a crate back to Baba later, she thought. Perhaps the sweetness would keep him from worrying too much.
At the city center, the crew crossed a high-arching bridge right over the river, the bridge's iron bars twined with emerald ivy. On the other side, the crowds thinned again; they walked another half an hour before Kalindi drew them to a stop at a storefront at the very edge of the inner district that reminded Zuri a lot of the haunted-looking hotel she'd been in just days before.
She shuddered. Everything that was bright and green about this strange, foreign place, and then there was this dilapidated structure, like a dismal exhale captured in stone.
"Here," Kalindi said. "This is where Schmitt was last spotted."
Aldric leaned close, straining to peek within the wooden slats that covered the grimy windows. "When? Five hundred years ago?"
"Very funny," Jem said, nudging Aldric aside. She removed her glasses, hooking them on the collar of her blouse. "Let me take a look."
The other three Celestials stood back in silence as Jem peered through the slats, her fingers braced against the sill. A moment later she stood back up, blinking at them. Without the glasses her eyes were bigger, twitching with attentiveness, like a bird's. "It's pretty damn empty. A bunch of cobwebs and an old loom, it looks like. Still want to take a look?"
Zuri nodded. "We might as well."
Kalindi grunted in confirmation and jiggled the knob, but it didn't give. "Aldric," she said, and Aldric blinked, as if he was surprised he was being spoken to. "Can you do something about this?"
"I—oh. Yeah, sure," he said. Kalindi moved aside, giving him ample space as he grappled the doorknob, ice crackling over the brass in a thin, crystalline layer. Aldric exhaled a puff of white air, gave the knob a jerk, and watched as it tore free of its fixings entirely.
He rested the doorknob awkwardly on the windowsill. "There," he said, looking back at them. "That should do it."
"Thanks," Zuri said, then lifted her gaze to the princess. "Kalindi? After you?"
"Why do I have to go first?"
"Because you're the one who led us here," said Jem, and grinned, leaning forward to poke Kalindi's cheek. "Oh, don't tell me Her Royal Highness is scared?"
Kalindi swatted Jem's hand away. Without another word, she vanished into the darkness beyond the abandoned shop's threshold. After a breath of mixed disbelief and laughter, Zuri and the others followed suit.
A shadow of movement arced across Zuri's vision; she blinked, meeting eyes with a soot-colored stray cat as it curled itself on the windowsill, spotlit by a sheaf of sunlight. Besides the cat, however, Jem was right. The shop's only patrons were the spiders who'd made their homes in the dim corners, twining their silklike threads between the mildewing bricks. The floor and walls were bare save for a fine film of dust; the only evidence of what the shop had formerly been used for was the old weaver's loom sitting like a museum exhibit in the center of the aging wood floors.
The wood framing was cracking, the warp threads hanging from it frayed and thin. Zuri ran a finger over the loom's base, jerking it back again when a splinter punctured her skin.
Jem noticed. "You okay?"
Zuri sucked on her finger, nodding her head. "Fine," she said, and looked up at Kalindi. "But you were right; he does move fast. Do you think he knew we were coming?"
"He probably left here years ago," Kalindi explained, a thoughtful finger perched against her chin. "But still, I do believe he does know he's being sought after and has an idea of when we're near. It wouldn't be so difficult to locate him otherwise."
Jem exhaled, tracing a hapless circle around the loom before throwing up her arms in defeat. "Well, that's just fantastic, because there's clearly nothing here," she said. "What are we supposed to do now?"
A thick silence filled the room, as the realization set on Zuri and likely the rest of them that they didn't know the answer to that question.
Then Aldric said, his voice quivering with concern, "We could start by finding Chike, actually."
"Chike? What do you mean—" Zuri stopped, glancing about. Sure enough, Chike was missing, the air seeming to vibrate ceaselessly with his absence the second Zuri noticed it. "Oh, by Kiro. Where's Chike?"
"Shit," Jem exhaled. "Did he get lost somewhere?"
"He's from here," Kalindi reminded them calmly, but there was an exhaustion in her eyes—in all of their eyes. It was barely the afternoon and already it had been a long day. "He's not lost. Still, we'd be better off finding him sooner rather than later, wherever the hell he's run off to."
Jem rubbed her eyes, starting for the door. The cat on the windowsill slipped silently out onto the street the moment she swung the door wide. "Find me some higher ground," Jem said, lingering in the doorframe with a proud smile on her face, "and I'll find him."
Chike stood, frowning, outside of his childhood home, his fist raised above the sycamore door.
But he hesitated, and lowered his hand again. This had seemed like a much better idea a few minutes ago.
When he'd waded into the main street crowds along with the other Celestials, still a bit in shock that he was truly back home in Sinje, a place he never thought he could return to—he'd caught a glimpse of a familiar street name. Before he knew it his body was moving separately of his brain, leading him down a thin, winding backstreet, which deposited him on Artisan's Row, in front of the homely cottage where he'd grown up.
For the first thirteen years of Chike's life here, everything had been fine. Days he spent studying under his mother's watchful eye or playing in the streets with his younger brothers and sister; nights he spent in his parents' workroom, watching the thin, silver needle rise and fall through the fabric, memorizing the stitch work, running his fingers over polyester and cotton and wool until the feel of them was very well burned into his skin.
Once the meteor hit, it didn't seem like anything had changed at all. An earthquake shook Sinje that afternoon and the sky was an ashen gray for two days, but Chike and his family, or so he thought, had been spared. Only when he accidentally jabbed his thumb with a sewing needle and watched the blood curl back into his skin did he realize that nothing would ever be like it was before.
Chike curled and uncurled his fists, shaking his head at himself. What was he thinking? He'd left here for a reason. Coming back, and unannounced, at that—
The door swung open, a whoosh of air following it. Suddenly Chike was face to face with his sister.
He almost didn't recognize her. She was much older than when he'd seen her last—he did the math quickly in his head, and put her at about fifteen years old—her high cheekbones visible now that they weren't hidden behind baby fat.
Neither of them said a word; they just stared at each other in silence.
Until Chike coughed. "Hi, Dalia."
She darted forward, closing him in a hug so fierce it made him cough again. "No way," she gasped, stepping back, only to hug him again with even more force than before. "No way. You're real. You're real? Mama! Chike's back. Chike's back!"
Chike winced. "Hang on, Dalia! You don't need to shout so loud..."
But there was no point. He could already hear the pounding of footsteps, and in the next moment his family had spilled outside to greet him: his brothers Muda and Hasani leading the way, trailed by their teary-eyed mother, and finally their father, who stopped and stared at his eldest son in mute disbelief.
"Chike," said his mother, framing either side of his face with her hands, "where in the world have you been, love?"
"I'm sorry, Mama," he said softly, so that it was almost a whisper. "I had to go. If anyone found out about me it would have put you in danger. So I had to go."
Though she said nothing, his mother's lips curled into a frown, as if she were considering whether or not the answer pleased her. Then she exhaled sharply, thwacking Chike on the side of his head. "You foolish boy!" she sighed, taking him by the hand and dragging him towards the door. "You worry too much about us. That, I've always told you. Now get in here; you look starved."
Chike strained, trying to dig in his heels. "I'm here with some others, Mama, and they're probably already wondering where I am, so I can't really stay long—"
"Shh, now," his father interrupted with a playful smile, patting Chike's back. "The woman's been waiting five years now to cook a meal for you. You'd best sit down and eat it."
So Chike sat down and ate. As his mother braised beef over the stovetop and stirred rice in a pot, he sat around the table with his siblings and his father. Only the second oldest, Ngozi, was missing, but Hasani explained that he was at work in the city bank. They wanted to know everything Chike had been up to over the past five years (which wasn't much, until Zuri and Jem had showed up on his front door), what Naino was like, if he'd met anyone cool or interesting (not really, until Zuri and Jem had showed up on his front door).
Dalia collapsed in her seat with a groan. "You go all the way to a different city-state and you don't do anything? How boring is that?"
"That was the point, Lia," Chike said, amused. "I was trying to avoid anything that would stir up any attention."
Muda, ten years old and the youngest of the Lee siblings, screwed up his nose. "Sounds tiring."
Their father laughed, a warm, hearty noise that Chike didn't realize he'd missed so much. He went quiet again, his face solemn as he reached for Chike's hand. "We missed you terribly, Chike," he said, holding his son's gaze so intently that Chike had to fight the urge to shudder. "I mean it. I wish you would've spoken with us before you left."
Chike started to protest, but his father shushed him. "No—no, that note does not count. Besides, your handwriting's absolute chicken scratch. Only Ngozi could make out what you were saying."
That made his siblings roar with laughter. Chike frowned.
"I didn't have a choice," Chike said. "Sinje is much smaller than Naino, after all. Word travels faster. It's not as safe for a Celestial here, or their family, for that matter. I was trying to protect you all."
"Chike," his father said with a short, tired sigh. "Listen to me. That is not your job, son."
Chike swallowed, letting the words sink down into his being, marinate in his heart. Had he been foolish to leave, after all? The thought was freeing and terrifying at the same time.
"Now, I know you're not back here for no reason at all," said his mother, dropping a steaming plate of food in front of him, the meat swimming in a hot, gravy-like brine. She handed everyone else their plates and only then did she take a seat, cleaning her hands on her apron. "Tell me what you're here for."
Chike had a vague inkling that he was probably not supposed to tell them anything at all. But his mother was glaring at him and everyone else was watching, expectant, so he didn't really have a choice in the matter.
"Everything I'm about to tell you," he began, "you cannot repeat to anyone, alright?"
His family members all nodded their agreement, so Chike started from the beginning, with the surprise visit to his tailor's shop in the Naino shopping district. As they ate, he told them about Jem and Zuri, about Aldric, and finally about the princess. He was here to find a talented weaver, he explained. As for what happened once they found him and brought him back to the Queen of Naino, he wasn't sure.
"I'm sorry," he said once he was done, twirling his fork aimlessly through his rice. "I know I'm failing Sinje by doing this. But if I don't, they might throw me in jail for my involvement with Aldric's crimes. I had to weigh which option was best, and well...here I am."
"Failing Sinje?" his mother said, and scoffed. "That sort of blind, undying loyalty to your city is why all of Kiro can't ever be united. It doesn't make any sense. And anyway, by keeping a war from breaking out, you're not failing Sinje. You're saving it."
Chike straightened his shoulders a bit at that. "Oh. I hadn't thought of it that way."
"What did you say the weaver's name was, again?" asked his father, his brows knitted with thought.
Chike watched his father's expression carefully, trying to keep himself from getting his hopes up. Could he already have a lead? "Schmitt," Chike said. "Um. Vernon Schmitt."
Chike's parents exchanged a look.
"Speak of the devil," said his mother. "I just spoke to him not too long ago."