Astra by Naomi Foyle Read Free Book Online Page B

unexpected. Astra opened her mouth, then closed it again. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed to ask Gaia for Her wisdom: Klor and Nimma always said that was only for emergencies. They said the Pioneers had asked all the main questions about how to live in Is-Land and they were happy to follow the guidance She had given them. Because if everyone was out in the woods all the time pestering Gaia with personal dilemmas, what would happen to the kitchen dishes and all of Or’s IMBOD contracts, not to mention the Boundary? The best way to commune with Gaia, Klor and Nimma said, was to work hard to revere and defend Her: if Gaia really wanted to speak to you individually, She would visit you in a dream.
    But Sheba had been an emergency, and Klor had asked Gaia for help then. Was this an emergency too? If so, no one had properly prepared Astra for it.
    ‘I don’t know how to do that,’ she said doubtfully.
    ‘That’s okay. I’ll teach you.’ Hokma stood. ‘Come on. We’ll go up on the roof.’
    Astra put Silver down gently back inside the box and scrambled to her feet. ‘Can Tabby come?’ she asked. ‘Gaia might help make him better.’
    ‘Okay. But he has to stay in your pac until we get to the top.’
    Housecoats off, sandals and boots on, Tabby secured in his transport, the mission was back on the move.

1.4
    ‘I like to sit there when I’m speaking to Gaia.’ Hokma pointed at a clump of poppies near the middle of the roof meadow. ‘Beside Her vision plant.’
    They had climbed the ladder at the side of Wise House to get up to the roof. The sky was paler now, the sun a diffuse orb, and even though it was only ten past five, Hokma had let Astra come outside without her flap-hat. All around them the early evening light was gilding the long grasses and wildflowers that first Ahn, then the forest winds, had seeded for Hokma. At the Earthship Nimma kept the outer botanical cells full of white flowers, daisies and lilies and yarrow, transplanting anything else that seeded; here though, within the gilded border of wallflowers and wild cosmos, was a whole Tabby paintbox splattered all over the L-shaped roof. Disturbing damselflies and red admirals, Astra bounded through blue flax and cornflowers, pink-tinged daisies, yellow dandelions, magenta sweet williams, purple and crimson and gold baby snapdragons and a host of other blossoms she couldn’t identify yet. At the tall poppy crown she grasped a hairy stem and pulled its flimsy scarlet flower to her face. ‘I love you!’ she declared and settled herself down on the grass. Hokma joined her, arranging herself in half-lotus.
    ‘Look – Or’s flower!’ Astra pointed at a stand of spider orchids, the plant Or was named for.
    Hokma smiled. ‘Ahn brought them up from Core House lawn. What’s an Or building without orchids?’ She paused. ‘And Or-kids. It’s wonderful to be able to invite you here at last, Astra.’
    Astra didn’t know how to say how much she loved being here. Instead she bent over an orchid and gently fingered its lime-green sepals andbig brown velvety lip. When Klor had given the Or-kids their first orchid lesson at Code House, he’d said that the mouths of the flower were called ‘labella’. They enticed insects deep inside to the anther lobes, which were pollen sticks that got stuck on the bugs’ heads – standing up like antlers at first, but then falling down like Yoki’s floppy fringe – so that when the insects flew away they carried the orchid’s pollen to the stigma of another flower. Torrent and the older boys had teased Yoki all day after that.
    ‘Klor says the orchid is one of the most efficient flowers in the meadow,’ she told Hokma. ‘Not like us Or-kids, he said.’
    ‘They’re certainly one of the most beautiful. I love the purple H on the lip: H for Hokma, Ahn says.’
    The labellum’s three shiny purple stripes did make an H shape: Astra had never thought of it as Hokma’s flower before but of course it