Scarecrow

I held the mirror out.

Not far enough for the Teeming to take it. Just far enough that the lamp behind me caught the silver and threw a small pale shape onto the wall beside its head.

The creature turned toward the shape.

Then toward the mirror.

Then back down into the chamber.

“That may not mean what you think it means,” said Luna.

“I know.”

“Good.”

The Teeming lifted its leg again.

It touched the edge of the ledge. Once. Then the lower wall, below our feet. A place where a narrow shelf curved away out of sight.

I looked at the shelf.

It was too narrow for us.

It wasn’t too narrow for a mirror.

“Dot,” said Liam into the box. “Can one of the hands get down here?”

Hiss.

We waited.

“This unit has sent one,” said Dot. “It is following the wire. It carries a lamp.”

I almost laughed.

“She thought of it before us.”

“This unit has had time to think,” said Dot. A pause. “It is difficult to do anything else.”

Liam looked at the little box in his hands.

“Seven,” he said. “Still seven.”

“Thank you.”

We moved back from the edge while we waited.

The Teeming stayed where it was, with the front of its body above the lip. It didn’t climb all the way onto the ledge. When Luna shifted the lamp, it moved its head aside, keeping out of the beam.

I watched the joints in its front limbs. The wet black surfaces. A little split in one plate, old enough that the edges had grown pale.

I’d looked into bodies like that before.

Mostly for something simple enough to destroy quickly.

Air in the breathing holes. Salt in the soft parts. A leg that would stop moving if I changed the right place.

There were other things in it. Pumps. Fine valves. A pad behind the claw that flexed against the stone so it didn’t slip.

It had been putting that pad down carefully beside us.

I looked away.

Toby sat on his bag with the wall close round his shoulders.

Risa checked him while Holt drank water. Sera watched the passage. Luna watched the ceiling. Liam held the box as if it might say something if he gripped it tightly enough.

“You can put it down,” I told him.

“I know.”

He didn’t.

Below us, the pale body shifted. The thick strands tightened and the broken rib of stone lifted, a little, for another line of Teeming carrying their bundles.

I counted them without meaning to.

Eight passed under.

Then the roof settled again.

“How many more?” I said.

Nobody answered.

There was no one we knew how to ask.

Dot’s hand arrived with a small lamp gripped underneath it and mud on all six feet.

It climbed over Liam’s boot, stopped by my knee, and unfolded a little clamp.

I put the mirror in it.

“Lower shelf,” I said into the box. “On the left. Stop before the pale strand across it.”

The hand turned.

At the lip, it paused beside the Teeming.

For one very long moment, the two of them faced each other. One black and jointed. One gray and jointed. Both holding something we’d made, or been given, or learned to carry.

Then the Teeming moved.

Down. Back onto the narrow shelf. It went three steps and stopped.

The hand followed.

“That’s either helpful,” said Liam, “or very bad.”

“We’ve noticed,” said Sera.

The first angle showed me only the pool.

The second showed the underside of the ledge, including a crack I would have been happier not seeing while my knees were on it.

The third found the far side of the broken rib.

“There. Hold.”

Dot held.

I leaned into the mirror.

One turn. Clean silver. The line from behind my eyes bent and reached into a part of the chamber I’d never have been able to see from where I knelt.

For a moment it was clear.

The rib was worse than it had looked from the front. The visible break wasn’t the only one. There were small pale gaps along its underside, branching toward the wall, and behind them a layer of dark loose material that shifted whenever the strands pulled.

I couldn’t join that back together and call it sound.

There wasn’t enough sound rock left to join.

“Can you do it?” asked Luna.

I didn’t answer.

I was following the weight. Rib to wall. Wall to shelf. Shelf to something farther down, beyond the angle of the mirror.

Every place I found depended on another place I couldn’t quite see.

“Lucas.”

“Not from here.”

The words came out very quietly.

I hated them.

She nodded as if I’d told her the length of a rope.

“What would you need?”

“The floor. A place to put supports. And I need to know what’s underneath that floor before I put more weight on it.”

“So we can’t fix it by reaching down from the ledge.”

“No.”

She touched my shoulder.

“Then stop spending yourself trying.”

I let the other sight go.

The mirror became a mirror again. Wet pale stone, little lights, the edge of something enormous moving beyond the frame.

Toby held out the cloth.

I took it without arguing this time.

“Bring the hand back,” Luna told Dot. “We’re returning to the fork. We need another route and a proper look at the lower floor.”

“Logged.”

The little hand turned the mirror away.

Below it, the Teeming lifted its leg.

Touched the shelf. Then the wall. Then the shelf again.

“I know,” I said, although I didn’t know whether it could hear me. “I’m sorry. I can’t do it from here.”

Its head moved toward my voice.

I had no way to tell it that leaving wasn’t the same as not coming back.

We had just reached the narrow part of the passage when the water changed.

It had been a thin flow round our boots. Cold. Clear enough to see the pale grit moving along the bottom.

Now it came brown, carrying scraps of root.

Risa stopped so abruptly Luna nearly stepped into her.

“Upstream,” she said.

From ahead came a crack.

Not the long drag we’d heard from the chamber. A short hard report, followed by a rush like somebody tipping a cart of gravel onto stone.

Luna lifted the lamp.

The passage beyond the bend filled with dirty water.

“Back. To the wide part.”

We moved before she finished.

Holt caught the rope. Liam caught Holt. Toby drew his wall closer and turned sideways as the first surge struck his boots.

I put my hand against the wall, looked at the water, and found only water. Silt. Roots. Small stones spinning through it. Not the thing that had let it loose.

I could change the water.

I could freeze it, if I wanted a plug with more water gathering behind it in a passage full of us.

I could make a wall across the floor, if I wanted the same problem with a harder edge.

For half a second I stood there with all the things I could do and no idea which one wouldn’t make it worse.

Then Sera took my sleeve.

“Feet, Dask.”

I used them.

The wide part had a raised strip along the inside wall.

Luna put us on it. One by one. Liam lifted Toby’s bag clear of the flow while Toby climbed. Holt came last but one, swearing steadily, which I found reassuring.

I came last.

The water struck my bad leg and I almost went down. I grabbed the rope, and the anchor held, and Sera’s hand was still on my coat when I got both feet onto the strip.

Then we stood there, seven people on a shelf barely wider than a bench, while brown water ran past us toward the chamber.

The second lamp bobbed once in the flow.

Liam reached.

“Leave it,” said Luna.

He left it.

It hit a stone and went dark.

Nobody spoke for several breaths.

Then Luna counted.

Seven.

Risa found Toby’s wrist. Toby found Holt’s elbow, where he’d struck the wall. Sera pulled the wet end of her scarf out of my collar and tucked it back again with hands that were shaking a little.

“Dot,” said Liam into the box.

Hiss.

“Dot. Water in the return passage. Seven accounted for. We’re on the raised strip before the ledge.”

A click.

Then her voice, thin and broken.

“This unit... water... north side...”

Liam pressed the button harder.

It didn’t help.

“Seven,” he said again. “All alive.”

Through the hiss, very faintly: “Heard.”

The wire had pulled tight against the bend.

I could see it cutting into the soft material where water tore past. I couldn’t see the damaged place farther up, only feel the box in Liam’s hand going quieter as the signal failed.

“Don’t pull it,” I said.

“I’m not.”

He was holding it against his chest with both hands.

The water began to fall.

Slowly. Enough that individual stones showed through again, then the rope where it crossed the lower step. A thick layer of pale mud remained, steaming slightly in the warmer air from below.

Luna waited until the flow was below our ankles.

Then she looked at Risa.

“From here. Can you check the bend?”

Risa crouched on the dry strip and touched the marker we’d put beside the rope.

One small spark.

She waited.

Another, from the wet stone lower down.

“Different,” she said. “There’s still a way through for water. But the branch on the left—”

She stopped.

“I don’t know. Too much’s changed.”

Luna nodded.

“Then we look.”

She went as far as the rope would let her, with Sera beside her and the lamp held low.

I stayed where I could see their feet.

At the bend, Luna stopped.

Sera lifted the lamp higher.

Neither of them went any farther.

The passage hadn’t filled completely.

That was what Luna told us when she came back. Stone from the roof had fallen across it, and water was finding its way through the lower gaps. There was air above. A little light from one of our markers farther on.

Enough to tell us the world still existed on the other side.

Not enough to get Holt through.

Not enough for any of us without moving things that were holding other things up.

“Can you look?” she asked me.

“Yes.”

I went to the bend.

I wanted to make it simple.

A stone in the way. Take the stone away. A narrow opening. Make it wider.

I’d moved greater weights than this. I’d made a tower. I’d flown a skiff with people in it for days. I’d put bones back where they belonged and turned a field into the things Dot needed to build a town.

The blockage in front of me was smaller than the dome.

I could see its face.

I could see the first layers behind it.

Then everything became mixed and wet and crowded, and I couldn’t tell whether the long slab across the top was resting on the stone beneath it or pinning a whole roof that wanted to follow.

I pushed farther.

The pressure behind my eyes climbed.

A red drop struck the mud by my boot.

“Dask.”

Sera’s voice. Close.

“Come back.”

I took one hand off the wall.

Then the other.

“I can’t clear it safely.”

“I heard you.”

“It’s only—”

“Don’t.”

She put the lamp where I could see her face.

“Don’t tell me how small it is. We’re standing under it.”

I looked at her.

At the ash-colored line of her mouth. The damp red hair stuck to her cheek. The scarred hands holding the lamp steady while mine were trying not to shake.

“All right,” I said.

She nodded.

We went back to the others.

Luna didn’t ask me to try again.

She took the map out of its wrapping and spread it against the wall.

“The fork behind the blockage connects with the water-channel hole. Dot can approach from there. We tell her not to move anything until she’s checked it from her side.”

Liam pressed the box.

He said it once. Then again, slower.

We listened.

Hiss. A scrape. Something that might have been her voice.

Then nothing.

He lowered the box.

For the first time since we’d come down, he looked young.

“She heard the seven,” he said.

“Yes,” said Luna.

“She knows.”

“Yes.”

He nodded once, very hard.

Put the box in his bag instead of throwing it against the wall, which I could see he’d wanted to.

We could have stayed on the dry strip.

For a while.

That was the first option Luna gave us. Wait while Dot found a way to reach the blockage. Keep out of the water. Keep the air checked. Be ready if the roof shifted again.

The second was back to the ledge and the lower passage we’d seen the Teeming using along the right wall of the chamber.

“We don’t know where it comes out,” said Holt.

“No,” said Luna. “We don’t.”

Risa had her palm against the wall again.

“There’s movement behind us.”

She meant the chamber.

A lot of it, from her face.

The first one came along the passage carrying a bundle.

It stopped at the sight of us.

Behind it, another stopped. Then another, and another, until the lamp caught more black legs than I could count, all crowded into the narrow way from below.

The first one lowered its head toward the blocked passage.

Shifted its grip on what it carried.

I could see one small limb through the wrapping now. Bent close against a rounded body. A pale joint moving, slowly, as if the thing inside was dreaming about walking.

The Teeming stepped forward.

We pressed back against the wall.

It passed us and went to the bend.

It came back without trying to climb the blockage.

That frightened me more than if it had tried.

It stopped in front of the others. Its front legs touched the nearest one’s shoulder plates, briefly, then the next. Something passed along the crowded line that I couldn’t see or hear.

Risa closed her eyes.

“Faster,” she said. “All of them.”

“Coming at us?”

“No. I don’t think—”

A leg struck the wall beside Holt.

Not at him. Another creature turning in too little room.

Holt flinched anyway.

So did I.

We couldn’t stay there while they tried to turn a nursery around in a passage.

Luna saw it before I did.

“Back to the ledge. Stay together. Give them the inside.”

We moved along the outer wall, carefully, letting the Teeming turn past us one at a time. Their bodies were warm when they brushed our coats. Their legs were hard enough to break bone if somebody slipped.

One caught the edge of Toby’s wall and jerked away.

Toby drew it in so tightly the shimmer lay against his sleeves.

“Don’t drop it,” I said.

“I’m not.”

He sounded cross.

I was glad he had enough air to be cross.

At the ledge, our lamp began to flicker.

Water had found the seal while Luna was looking at the blockage. I could see where it sat inside the casing, touching two things that should never have touched.

I separated them. Dried the little chamber. The light steadied.

Then weakened again.

The cell had spent too much of itself warming its own damaged connections.

I could repair the casing. I couldn’t make it charged simply by wanting it to be.

“Spare?” said Luna.

“In the other lamp,” said Liam.

The one the water had taken.

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then Sera held out her hand.

“Move the papers.”

The flame was small.

A little orange point above her palm. It spread into a thin curve, cupped low, and the rock around us came back into view with shadows in different places.

Warmth touched my face.

I looked at the air gauge. Then into the air itself, close enough to see what we were breathing without trying to read the whole cavern.

Moving. Fresh air coming from somewhere below and to the right, carrying the sharp green smell under the damp.

“Small,” I said.

“I know how fire works.”

“I know.”

She glanced at me.

“You can stop knowing things out loud for a minute.”

Liam made a sound that might have been a laugh.

It was enough.

The chamber had changed.

Brown water ran through the shallow pool and out beneath the far arch. The shelves nearest the broken rib were empty now. The line carrying bundles had moved to the narrow route along our wall, coming up to us, finding the blocked exit, and going back down.

Below, the pale thing still held the roof.

The threads along one side were brighter than the others.

One had gone slack.

I watched it hang against the pale plates, loose and dark, and thought of a hand that had held something too long.

“We can’t put all of them back in there,” said Toby.

Luna looked toward the passage on the right.

“We need to know whether that way rises.”

Dot’s hand was waiting on the lower shelf.

Its lamp still worked.

The mirror was folded against its body, and the little feet held the stone as water ran under them. It turned toward us when Liam called, but there was no voice from the broken box.

I pointed to the lamp. Then the right-hand passage.

The hand didn’t move.

Of course it didn’t. It wasn’t Dot standing in front of me. Whatever she could hear through it, whatever instructions still reached it, pointing at a hole wasn’t the same as telling her what we needed.

Liam crouched at the lip.

“Dot. If you’re hearing us through that thing. The box is gone. We’re seven. We’re looking for another way up.”

The hand turned its lamp.

Once toward the ceiling.

Then back toward him.

He stopped speaking.

“Again,” he said very quietly. “If you heard. Again.”

The lamp lifted.

Then came down.

Liam covered his mouth with one hand.

Only for a second.

“Right,” he said. “Good. That’s good.”

Luna knelt beside him.

“We are coming down the wall route. We need that light. Stay where we can see you.”

The hand unfolded the mirror a little, then folded it back. It kept the lamp pointing up the shelf.

I didn’t know if that meant yes.

It was enough to put a foot toward.

We lowered Holt first.

Not into the chamber. Onto the next shelf, a little more than his height below us, where the wall route widened. I made a proper foothold in stone I could see, then another, and watched the edges while he took his weight off the rope.

They held.

He looked up.

“Come on, then.”

Liam followed with the bags. Risa next. Toby came slowly, keeping the wall close, one hand on the rope and the other feeling for the foothold before he trusted it.

Luna went after him.

Sera stayed with me until the end, her fire held between us.

“I can go first,” I said.

“You are going first.”

I went first.

From lower down, the pale body was no longer a shape at the bottom of a picture.

It was a wall beside us.

The plates rose above my head. Between them I could see thin membranes, translucent where the silver shone through. A fine tremor passed beneath one as the roof shifted overhead.

I stopped looking at it and looked at my feet.

The route went around the chamber in short shelves, joined by places the Teeming could cross easily and we couldn’t. I made steps where there was enough stone. Handholds where I could see the thickness. Nothing grand. Nothing that would hold a roof. Just somewhere for seven people to put their hands without falling.

Each little change cost more than it should have.

Not the amount of stone. The attention. The effort of finding one small thing in a place where every other thing pressed against it.

By the third shelf, I was shaking.

Sera moved in front of me.

“Watch the flame.”

I did.

A small steady light in her hand. Orange at the edge. Blue where she held it close. It lit a patch of stone, then another, and I stopped trying to see the whole chamber.

Step. Handhold. Step.

Behind us came the Teeming.

Not charging. Not hunting. Coming because the way we’d come from was broken, and because the other way ran where we were trying to go.

Their feet clicked close behind Liam. Their shadows climbed over ours. Every time one shifted its grip on a bundle, something hard scraped the wall.

Liam kept talking.

Nothing useful. The bad drink he’d make when we got out. Whether Priya would let him near a pot again. How he intended to complain about the accommodations.

He talked so we’d know where he was.

I knew because he’d stopped making jokes anyone needed to answer.

At the mouth of the right-hand passage, the air moved against my face.

Cooler. Less wet.

Risa crouched beside it and touched the damp seam. One little spark. A pause. Another from farther along.

“It rises,” she said.

“How far?”

“Farther than I can follow. But the first part rises.”

Luna looked at the gauge, then back along the route we’d taken. Teeming crowded the shelves. Beyond them, above the pale body, the broken rib sagged another fraction.

“We go.”

The passage bent almost immediately.

That was all it took to lose the chamber. Sera’s fire showed gray walls, wet at the bottom, dry higher up. Dot’s hand went ahead with its lamp. Behind me, Toby’s breathing sounded louder inside the little space of his wall.

Then Holt stumbled.

His stick slid on a patch of smooth mineral. One knee hit the ground. He caught himself against the wall and swore, but the sound ended wrong.

Toby was beside him before I’d turned.

“Stay still.”

“I’m all right.”

“Then stay still all right.”

Luna moved the rest of us forward enough to leave room. Liam stopped at the bend and held up one hand toward the dark bodies behind him.

They stopped too.

For the moment.

Toby checked Holt with one small opening in his wall toward the knee. His hands moved carefully. His own shoulders stayed inside the shimmer.

I knelt on the other side and looked at the bone.

The repair was whole.

Soft tissue bruised. A scrape where the cloth had torn. Painful. Frightening. Not broken.

“He can move,” I said.

“When he’s had a minute,” said Toby.

I almost answered.

Then I remembered the bag. The labels. Which one of us was supposed to be doing this part.

I held the light instead.

Holt looked from me to Toby.

“You’re enjoying this.”

“No,” said Toby. “I enjoy patients who listen.”

“You’ll have a miserable life, then.”

Toby smiled. Just a little.

We got Holt up.

He could walk. More slowly now, with Liam beside him and the stick on the other side. Luna changed the order so nobody had to wait alone behind a bend.

Dot’s hand stopped ahead.

Its lamp pointed at the ceiling.

There was a line across it.

Thin. Dark. New enough that pale dust still hung beneath it.

I lifted my head.

The other sight found the first layer. The second. A flat slab above us, resting at one end on a narrow shoulder of stone.

At the other end, nothing I could make sense of before the crowded rock swallowed the view.

“Past it,” I said. “One at a time. Don’t touch the wall.”

Luna looked at my face.

Then she moved.

The sound came from behind us.

Deep. Heavy. A weight shifting in the chamber we’d left.

The line in the ceiling opened.

Sera’s flame leaned sideways in a sudden breath of air.

For one clear moment I could see every grain along the edge of the slab, all of them beginning to leave the places they’d been for longer than any of us had been alive.

I reached for it.

Too much hidden. Too many loads I couldn’t follow. I could have changed the visible edge and brought the rest down on the people behind it.

Toby put his bag down.

“Lucas,” he said.

Very level.

I turned.

“Count them.”

Day 426. Below.

The mirror showed the far side. Too many breaks. No sound place to put the weight from the ledge.

We turned back.

Water in the return passage. Roof down beyond the bend. Seven safe on the raised strip. Dot heard seven before the box failed.

I couldn’t clear it safely. Sera: don’t tell me how small it is. We’re standing under it.

The Teeming came up carrying the small ones. Found the way blocked. Turned around.

One lamp lost. One cell damaged. Sera kept the fire small. Air moving from the right.

Dot heard us through the hand. Lifted the lamp twice.

Down one shelf. Then around. Steps, handholds. Nothing bigger. I couldn’t see enough.

They came behind us. Their way out was ours.

Holt fell. Knee repair whole. Toby checked. I held the light.

The right-hand passage rises.

Then a crack overhead.

Toby put his bag down.

He told me to count.