The Last Cuentista

Petra pleads with Voxy to stay on the shuttle and wait for someone to rescue him, but he refuses. He says that he doesn’t want to be part of the Collective anymore or live in a world without cuentos. Petra relents but cautions him that his skin can’t handle sunlight and tells him to stay in his space suit until they find shelter. He agrees.

The planet experiences eight-hour wind cycles, and the group must struggle through a headwind to reach the cave where Petra stored supplies. When they arrive, she finds that all their food has been eaten by animals. The others start to question her orders, and Suma is still wearing a tracking device that would lead the Collective to their location.

Petra takes Suma aside and shows her the unicorn sweater that belonged to her before her memory was wiped. There is also a photo album of Suma with her family. She instantly remembers who she is and agrees to help Petra lead the others to safety. Once the wind subsides, they plan to take the shuttle to the other side of the lake, where waterfalls mark the target location of the First Arrivers settlement. Petra says, “We walk toward the lake. Without the typhoon of dust and water, the spot where the shuttle should be is visible. It’s gone” (292).

Petra is unnerved because the missing shuttle means that the Collective has already repaired the controls in the shuttle bay. They will be coming soon. She tries to hurry her little band along, but they must walk several miles to reach the waterfalls. As they trudge along the lakeshore, the group hears a swarm of drones approaching. Petra realizes that they have come to spread the toxin and exterminate all human life on the planet. Even though Petra neutralized all the samples in the lab, she forgot about the toxin that was already loaded on the drones.

The group dives under the waters of the lake as the drones fly over. They see a green mist spreading over the land near the waterfalls. Without alarming the others about the poison, Petra tells them to rest because she wants to wait until the air has cleared. She is sure that any human life near the waterfalls is now extinguished. Feathers is shivering from the cold water, and Petra gives her Javier’s old clothes to wear, which she took from the seed vault. Simply donning Earth gear again seems to jog Feathers’ memory about her own past.

The mothership arrives on the planet and hovers over the land while the little group hides. No one disembarks, and Petra concludes that the Collective merely came to witness the end of humanity. The ship rises in the air and departs for a more habitable planet. Petra speculates that the Collective may never return to Sagan.

The group waits a while longer, and Petra tells everyone a cuento that she has made up about the blind fire snake. After colliding with the Earth, he traveled to Sagan to look after the humans there, offering a warm wind to keep them alive. Petra is determined to tell all the stories she knows to this little remnant of humanity left on Sagan. It will be a new beginning for the five of them.

Petra is ready to continue their journey to the waterfalls, assuming that nobody will be alive when they arrive there. But Suma uses her spyglass and notices what appears to be a human settlement on the far shore of the lake. Then, they smell smoke, and Petra hears a soft sound that she identifies as someone playing a guitar. She hears laughter, too. Petra assumes that Javier used his final hours to neutralize the toxin on the drones, too. The First Arrivers are still alive, and the survivors have found their new home.