Scarecrow

Maura sent the invitation through Liam.

Not on paper. Liam just came back from a call home on the Tuesday, sat down on the end of my bed, and said, ”Mum says Friday. Last one. She says if you don’t come, she’ll come down here and get you, and she’s never been down here, and she doesn’t know the way, and she’ll ask every soldier she meets, and it’ll be your fault.” He considered it. ”She’d do it, as well.”

”I’ll come.”

”Toby too. She said bring the quiet one.” Liam lay back on my bed with his hands behind his head. ”She says it’s not a goodbye. She says we’re not allowed to call it a goodbye. It’s a dinner.”

”What’s the difference?”

”Mum says you can come back from a dinner,” said Liam.

The thirty-first floor of Hearth Block was the same.

The narrow corridor. The worn red carpet. The doors close together, with noise behind every one. The furnaces humming somewhere far below, very faintly, like a house breathing.

The third door on the left was open before we got to it.

Pip was in it. Seven, with her red curls tied up on top of her head in a way that someone had clearly tried very hard to make neat and then given up on. She looked at the three of us coming down the corridor. At Liam. At Toby. At me.

At my eyes.

I didn’t have the dusk on. Not for this. Take them off for the people who love you. I’d decided on the lift.

Pip had never seen them. She’d only seen the dusk, last time. You look like an owl.

She looked at my eyes for a long time. With her mouth slightly open. Her heart did the skip. Of course it did. She was seven.

And then she said, very seriously:

”Liam said you can find things. With your eyes. From anywhere. Even if they’re hiding.”

”Sometimes.”

”Can you find Biscuit?”

”Who’s Biscuit?”

”Our dog,” said Pip, as if I were very stupid. ”He hides. Under beds. In the laundry. Once in the oven, but it wasn’t on.” She stood very straight. ”Liam says you made everyone in your squad a thing. A lighthouse. So you can find them.” She held out her hand. ”Biscuit wants one.”

So I made Biscuit a lighthouse.

He was under the big table, as it turned out, with his nose on his paws and one eye open, watching me. A brown dog of no particular kind, with a gray muzzle and a tail that thumped on the floor every time anyone said his name. He had a collar, with a little steel tag on it. BISCUIT. HEARTH 31-3. IF FOUND PLEASE RETURN, HE IS VERY STUPID.

Pip held his head while I looked at the tag.

A grain of iron. From the back of the tag. Perfectly simple. One flaw.

”Is that it?” said Pip.

”That’s it.”

”It doesn’t look any different.”

”It isn’t. Not to look at.”

Pip considered Biscuit’s tag for a long time. Then she let go of his head, and he licked her face, and she didn’t seem to mind.

”Twelve,” she said.

I looked at her.

”Liam told me,” said Pip. ”Five for your squad. One for the sergeant with the metal face. Three for your sisters and your mum. One for the diamond. One for the lady with the spectacles.” She counted on her fingers, and ran out, and started again on the other hand. ”And Biscuit. Twelve.”

”How does Liam know about the lady with the spectacles?”

”Liam knows everything,” said Pip, ”and then he tells me.”

From the kitchen door, Liam said, very loudly, ”I do not.”

”You do,” said Pip. ”You told me about the girl who brings him coffee.”

There was a crash from the kitchen. Something being dropped.

”Liam,” said Seraphina’s voice. From somewhere inside. Very dangerous.

Dinner was loud.

It always would be. That was the thing about Hearth Block. Ten people at a table for six. Rory at one end, big and slow and quiet, like a hill that had decided to sit down. Maura at the other, getting up every three minutes to fetch something. Roan and Bree, the cousins, arguing about the heat plant. Their mother, who was Maura’s brother’s wife, and who looked at my eyes once and then very carefully didn’t look at them again, and then, halfway through the potatoes, looked at them on purpose, and kept looking, and smiled.

Pip on my knee. Eating my potatoes.

Toby at the corner, between Rory and Roan, very red, being asked enormous serious questions about whether you could use a wall of sound to stop a furnace flue from backdrafting. And answering them. At length. In whole paragraphs. While Rory listened with his big hands folded on the table and nodded slowly at every one.

And Seraphina next to me. On my left. With her elbow almost touching mine. Like last time. Like it was where she always sat.

Nobody said anything about it. Everybody noticed.

Maura noticed from the kitchen door, with a pie in her hands, and stopped, and looked, and then came in with an expression of tremendous innocence and put the pie down in front of me.

”Calder pie,” she said. ”Hotter than anybody else can make it. Liam’s grandmother’s recipe. Don’t touch the dish.”

I didn’t touch the dish. I could see how hot it was. Seraphina reached across and moved it an inch further from my hand without looking, the way she’d set my water upright last time.

Her hand was warm.

It was Liam who did it.

At the end. After the pie. When the plates were pushed back and Pip had gone to sleep on my shoulder and Biscuit had come out from under the table to lie on everyone’s feet at once.

Liam stood up.

He did it the way he did everything. Too fast. Knocking his chair. Holding up his cup of water as if it was something better.

”I want to say something,” said Liam.

”Liam,” said Seraphina.

”I’m saying something, Sera. It’s allowed. It’s a dinner.” He looked round the table. At his mother. His father. The cousins. Toby. Me. His sister. ”I just want to say. Before we go. That I’m going to come back.”

The table went quiet.

”All of us,” said Liam. ”Me and Sera. And Toby. And Lucas. And Luna, who isn’t here because her father’s a general, but she says to say hello and she’s sorry and she’ll come next time.” He held up his cup a little higher. ”We’re going to go to Avalon, and we’re going to build bases, and we’re going to find each other, because Lucas has made us all lighthouses and Okafor’s taught us the rules. And then we’re going to come back. And we’re going to have another dinner. Right here. With pie.”

He stopped. He was going very pink.

”So it’s not a goodbye,” said Liam. ”Mum said. It’s a dinner. You can come back from a dinner.”

He sat down.

Nobody said anything.

And then Maura put both her hands over her face, at the end of the table, and started to cry.

Not quietly.

I’d thought she would. I’d thought Maura Calder was the kind of mother who’d cry in the kitchen, with the door shut, with the tap running. The way Mrs. Osei must have, the day the letter came.

She wasn’t.

She cried at the table. In front of everyone. With her hands over her face, and her shoulders shaking, and her hands shaking worse than her shoulders. Big, loud, wet, helpless crying, the kind I’d only ever heard from the twins when they were very small. The kind that comes up from a long way under everything and doesn’t care who’s watching.

Calders burn hot, Liam had said. When we’re sad, we’re very sad.

Nobody moved.

Liam was standing halfway up from his chair again, with his face gone from pink to white. Pip had woken up on my shoulder and was staring. The cousins had stopped arguing. Toby had gone very still.

Seraphina, beside me, had put her hands flat on the table. And the wood under them had started, very faintly, to smoke.

And Rory got up.

He didn’t hurry. Rory never hurried. He got up from the far end of the table the way a hill would get up, if a hill could, slowly and all at once. And walked round the table. Past the cousins. Past Toby. Past Liam, who was still half standing, and whose shoulder he touched as he went by, once, without stopping.

And he knelt down beside Maura’s chair.

He was so big that kneeling, he was still nearly as tall as she was sitting. He didn’t say anything. He reached up, and took her hands away from her face. Both of them. Very gently. And held them.

They were shaking so hard I could see it from the other end of the table. Without my page. Just with my eyes.

Rory held them still.

Not with any gift. Not with fire. Just with his own two hands, round hers, big and steady and burned on the backs from twenty years of furnaces. He held them until the shaking slowed. Not stopped. It didn’t stop. It never stopped anymore. But slowed.

And Maura cried for a long time, with her husband kneeling beside her holding her hands, in front of everybody, at the dinner that wasn’t a goodbye.

And then she stopped. All at once. The way Calders did. And took her hands back. And wiped her face with her napkin. And looked round the table at all of us. At Liam, still half standing.

”Sit down, love,” said Maura Calder. ”You’ve knocked your chair over.”

Liam sat down.

”That was a very good speech,” said Maura. ”I’m very proud of you. Now somebody fetch the custard before it gets a skin.”

She asked me to help with the dishes again.

The guest helps. That was the rule. And the guest gets the good tea towel. She gave it to me again. The faded one, with the picture of a lighthouse on it.

I looked at it for a long time.

”What?” said Maura.

”It’s a lighthouse.”

”It’s been a lighthouse for thirty years. It was my mother’s.” She filled the sink. ”Why are you looking at it like that?”

So I told her. While she washed and I dried. In the kitchen you could touch both walls of, with the door shut, and the noise of the big room coming through it, muffled. Rory singing. Pip singing worse.

I told her about the grains of iron. About the one flaw. About the twelve.

Maura washed a plate very slowly.

”So you’ll be able to find them,” she said. ”Liam and Sera. Wherever they are. On that world.”

”Yes.”

”Even if they can’t find each other.”

”Yes.”

She put the plate down in the rack. Her hands, in the water, were shaking.

”Give me the towel, love,” she said.

I gave it to her.

She held it in her wet shaking hands for a moment, looking at the faded picture. The lighthouse on its rock, with the beam going out over the sea.

Then she gave it back.

”Take that one,” said Maura. ”Make it one of yours. Thirteen.” She looked at me. ”So that wherever you are, there’s something from this kitchen. And I’ll know it’s gone with you.”

I looked at the tea towel. Cotton. There was no iron in it.

But there was a tiny steel hook sewn into one corner. For hanging. Rusted. Thirty years old.

I made it simple. One flaw.

”Thirteen,” I said.

And then I told her the other thing.

I hadn’t been going to. I’d promised myself, on the lift, that I’d let her have a dinner. That I’d say I’m still looking and leave it there.

But she’d asked me last time. Properly. Inside. I’m asking. And she’d said but you will. As if it were a fact. As if she’d decided.

And I couldn’t stand in her kitchen holding her mother’s tea towel and let her go on thinking it.

”The silver,” I said. ”In your nerves. I said I’d find out what it was.”

Maura stopped washing.

”I looked,” I said. ”Two weeks ago. In a vial of my mother’s that my sister brought me. All the way. As far as I could go.” I made myself say it. ”I can’t see into it. It’s the only thing I’ve ever found that I can’t see into. It’s like fog. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how it’s made.” I looked at the floor. ”I don’t know how to get it out of you.”

The kitchen was very quiet.

”I’m sorry,” I said. ”You said you will. And I can’t.”

Maura didn’t say anything for a long time.

She took her hands out of the water. She dried them, slowly, on her apron. And then she reached up, a long way, the way she had the first time, and took my face in her hands.

They were shaking. I could feel it, on my cheeks. Fast and fine and steady, like a leaf in a wind.

”Not yet,” said Maura Calder.

”What?”

”You can’t yet.” She held my face. ”You’re eighteen next month. You’ve been reading about nerves for six weeks. You’ve just found out the one thing in the world your eyes can’t do.” She smiled. It was a wet smile. ”That’s not can’t, love. That’s not yet.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

”Now,” said Maura. ”Bring my children home. And when they’re home, you can come back and have another go at my hands. And I’ll make the pie. And you’ll still not be allowed to touch the dish.” She let go of my face. ”That’s the deal. That’s the only deal. You hear me?”

”I hear you.”

”Good,” said Maura. And turned back to the sink. ”Dry, love. That plate’s not going to dry itself.”

Rory found me in the corridor afterward.

I’d gone out to stand by the lift for a minute. Because the big room was very loud and very warm and very full of people who loved each other, and I’d wanted a minute where nobody was looking at me.

He came out of the flat and shut the door behind him. Quietly. For such a big man, he did everything quietly.

”Come and see the furnace,” said Rory.

The heat plant was at the bottom of Hearth Block. Thirty-one floors down, below the street, below the cellars. A long, low, dark hall, full of pipes, and in the middle of it, behind thick doors with little round windows in them, the furnaces.

They burned the waste from the whole eastern side of the city. Everything nobody wanted. And the heat came up through the pipes into Hearth Block and the blocks round it, so that the families who lived there were warm all winter, even when the dome’s own heating failed.

Rory had worked them for twenty years.

He stood in front of the biggest one, with his hands in his pockets, and looked at the fire through the little round window. It was white at the center. Very, very hot. I could see it. Every point. Moving.

”I keep it at the temperature,” said Rory. ”By hand. The machines are supposed to. They don’t. Not well. So I stand here, eight hours a day, and keep it where it should be. With this.” He held up one big burned hand. A small flame came up out of the palm. Steady. Blue at the bottom. ”Not much of a gift. Not like Maura’s. Not like Sera’s. But it’s steady.”

”That’s what Okafor says matters.”

”Okafor’s right.” He put the flame out. ”Okafor’s usually right.”

He was quiet for a while. The furnace roared, very low, behind the door.

”I was at the gate,” said Rory. ”In the snow. The first winter. When Maura carried Liam eleven kilometers with the pneumonia. I was behind her in the queue. Holding Sera. She was one. She was asleep.” He looked at the fire. ”Maura got down on her knees in front of the soldier. In the snow. And I stood there behind her with Sera in my arms and couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t burn anything. Couldn’t fight anyone. Just stood there and held the baby.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Somebody took a picture,” said Rory. ”You’ll have seen it.”

”Liam told me about it.”

”Liam’s only heard about it. He’s never seen it. I made sure. I burned every copy I could find.” He was quiet. ”But I’m in it. At the back. Behind her. Holding Sera, with my face turned away.” He looked at me. ”That’s the only picture there is of me holding my daughter. And I’m not looking at her. I’m looking at the gate.”

The furnace roared.

”I’m not going to ask you to keep them safe,” said Rory. ”I’m not a fool. I’ve seen the map. Liam drew it for me on a napkin. A hundred miles apart. Next to the gray dots.” He took his hands out of his pockets. ”Nobody can keep anybody safe a hundred miles away.”

I didn’t say anything.

”So I’m going to ask you something else.”

He turned. And looked at me. All the way. At my eyes. Black, in the white light from the furnace window. And his heart, which I could see, didn’t skip. Not once. It was going very slow. Very steady. Like a man keeping a fire at exactly the right temperature, by hand, for eight hours a day.

”Bring my children home,” said Rory Calder.

I’ve thought about that moment a great many times.

What I should have said. What would have been honest. I’ll try.I’ll do everything I can.I don’t know what’s on that world, Mr. Calder, nobody does, and it took thirty-four of them, and I’m eighteen next month, and I can’t even see what’s in your wife’s nerves.

Those would have been honest.

”I will,” I said.

And I didn’t know if I was lying.

I want that on the record. I stood in the heat plant of Hearth Block with the furnace roaring behind the door, and a man who’d stood in the snow holding his baby and couldn’t do anything, looking at me with his slow steady heart. And I said I will. And I didn’t know if it was true.

Rory looked at me for a long time.

”Good,” he said.

”I don’t know if—”

”I know you don’t.” He put his big burned hand on my shoulder. It was very warm. ”That’s why I believe you. If you’d said it like you knew, I’d know you were lying.” He squeezed, once. ”You said it like a man who’s going to find out.”

He took his hand back. He looked at the furnace one more time. Then he turned toward the stairs.

”Come on,” said Rory. ”Maura’s made custard. If we don’t go up, Pip’ll eat yours.”

They walked us to the lift. All of them. Maura and Rory and Pip and Biscuit, who sat on my feet in the corridor and wouldn’t get off. The cousins at the door. Roan and Bree’s mother, who smiled at my eyes again.

Maura hugged Liam for a very long time. Then Seraphina, who held still and let her. Then Toby, who went red to the ears. Then me.

Her hands were shaking on my back.

”Not yet,” she said, very quietly, into my shoulder. ”Remember. Not can’t. Not yet.”

”I remember.”

Rory didn’t hug anybody. He shook my hand. And Toby’s. And then he stood in front of his son and his daughter, and looked at them both for a long time, with his hands at his sides.

And then he reached out and put one big hand on top of Liam’s head. And the other on top of Seraphina’s. The way you’d put your hands on two children, a long time ago, to check they were still there.

”Steady,” said Rory Calder.

That was all.

The lift doors closed.

Nobody said anything all the way down.

At the bottom, when the doors opened, Seraphina didn’t get out straight away. She stood in the corner of the lift with her arms folded, looking at the floor.

”He said steady,” she said.

”Yes.”

”He’s never said that to me.” Her voice was very level. ”He says it to the furnace. Every morning. Steady. Like it’s a person.” She was quiet. ”He’s never said it to me.”

Liam put his arm round her. She let him.

We walked back to the cave.

Day 255. Hearth Block. Not a goodbye. A dinner.

Biscuit. Twelve. Pip counted on her fingers.

Liam’s speech. Maura cried at the table. Rory knelt and held her hands still.

The lighthouse tea towel. Her mother’s. Thirteen.

I told her I can’t see the silver. She said: ”Not yet.”

Rory at the furnace. The gate in the snow. The picture he burned.

”Bring my children home.”

”I will.”

I don’t know if I was lying. He said that’s why he believes me.

”Steady.”