Scarecrow

Teo put two bowls on the ground.

One beneath the broken watercourse. One beside it, where he could reach without leaving the marked path.

Then he looked at me.

“Don’t fix anything.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You had the face.”

Behind me, Risa made a small noise.

I decided not to ask what face she thought that was.

It was the morning of Day 432. The sun had reached the wheat, and the little stream that should have been feeding the lowest bed was slipping through a widened seam in the stone instead. Some went down into darkness. Some spread across the bare rock and disappeared into loose gravel farther along the terrace.

Teo watched the first bowl fill.

When the water reached the scratch inside it, he lifted it away and put the empty one in its place.

Risa marked the time.

We did it again.

The answer wasn’t a number I liked.

“Enough to matter,” Teo said.

“How long before the wheat suffers?”

“It already has. Look at the lower row.”

I looked.

The plants were smaller there. Not dead. Still green, still reaching upward, but thinner than the rows above them.

“We can carry water,” I said.

“We are carrying water.”

He didn’t sound angry. That made me listen more carefully.

“I need you to count the carrying before you decide what can wait.”

I looked back up the path. Toward the camp, the jars, the people whose knees and backs and hands were already doing more work than they should.

“All right.”

Teo took the second bowl away from the stream.

This time, he handed it to me.

I carried it to the wheat.

Not far. Just along the safe part of the path, to where he showed me the shallow hollow beside the roots.

I knelt badly, held the bowl with both hands, and poured too quickly.

Water ran away from the first plant.

“Slower,” Teo said.

I slowed.

He waited until I had finished, then took the bowl back.

“There. Now do the bed.”

I looked along the row.

Then at the rows behind it.

Risa had stopped smiling.

“I’ll write the carrying down,” she said.

We didn’t close the leak.

We measured it, caught what we could from the shallow surface spill, and put that water where Teo asked. Corr came down with more vessels. By the time we returned to camp, my sleeve was wet and my bad leg had begun to ache.

Luna listened to the report without interrupting.

“Two days of carrying while we try,” she said. “Then we look at what we’ve learned. Nobody promises a week of someone else’s back.”

Teo nodded.

“I can do two days.”

“Not alone.”

She took the slate from Risa and began putting names beside the trips.

Ellis leaned forward from his board.

“I can count what comes back full.”

Lena held out a hand.

“I can tie the marks on the handles.”

Anja watched them, then asked for the cord.

It wasn’t everybody going down to the field.

It was everybody making the journeys possible.

The little water model sat on a flat stone beside the shelter.

Risa had made it from two pieces of gutter and a shallow basin. I’d shaped the joints the previous evening, only enough to stop them leaking. Water poured into the basin divided into two narrow channels, each ending above a cup.

A movable piece could stop either side.

Nothing complicated.

We’d made it three times before it was that simple.

The first version had looked like the canyon from above. The second had included an arch, a pool, and something I thought resembled wheat until Liam asked why we’d grown a brush in it.

Sera had looked at both and said, “We don’t know whether it understands pictures.”

So now there was water, two channels, and two cups.

You could see what happened without knowing what any of it stood for.

Toby examined the edges before we packed it.

“Not sharp.”

“No.”

“Not hot.”

“No.”

“Doesn’t explode?” Liam asked.

Toby didn’t look at him.

“The cups come off?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. In case it wants to hold one.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

We left the cups loose.

Wren came back from the dawn line while we were fastening the model into a carrying frame.

“Eight answered.”

I looked up.

“Still one?”

“Still one. Southern ridge, below the split rock. Says the old approach is blocked. Come from the river.”

Luna took the slate.

Wren pointed to a second line.

“Food and water adequate for now. Asked whether the twenty-one includes the kits.”

Liam smiled.

“What did you tell them?”

“Twenty-one people. Two kits. Space for more.”

I tightened the last fastening on the frame.

“Day four hundred and thirty-three?”

“If you’re fit to fly,” Luna said.

“I will be.”

She looked at me.

“I expect to be,” I corrected.

Wren nodded.

“I’ll send the plan. And confirm at dawn.”

We took the water model to the upper opening after the morning meal.

Sera, Risa, Luna, and me. Dot came with us. Corr stayed at the field to help Teo. We didn’t need to bring everyone who had touched the thing in its making.

Dot carried it as far as the opening. Her hands helped us down the steps, taking the weight where the passage narrowed so nobody had to choose between holding the model and holding the wall.

At the upper shelf, the arch looked familiar now.

That bothered me a little.

Familiar could make you forget to look.

I checked the feet, the broken rib, the water beside the inner shoulder. Everything I could see was where it should have been.

Then I turned toward the queen.

The light came first.

We answered.

The small dish Sera had warmed sat on a ledge below us. Empty now. A Teeming stood beside it, its front limbs folded close.

Sera showed her hands.

It lifted one limb.

Risa went very still beside me.

She’d seen the recordings. It was different in front of you. I knew that now.

Luna asked quietly whether she wanted room.

Risa shook her head.

“I’m looking.”

We waited while she did.

We put the model on the broad inner part of the shelf.

It stood well away from the edge and clear of the silver strands. I placed an empty basin beneath the cups to catch spills. The water we brought would stay in our own vessels until we knew what we were doing with it.

Sera poured.

The first little stream ran down one channel. Then the other caught and both cups began to fill.

The Teeming came up two steps.

Stopped.

I moved back from the model.

It came closer.

For a while, it looked at the falling water.

At least, its head was directed toward it. I didn’t know whether the movement meant the same kind of looking I did.

Then it put a limb beneath one stream.

Water ran over the dark surface and dripped into the cup.

The other cup continued filling.

Sera stopped pouring before either overflowed.

The Teeming touched the dry inlet basin.

Then lifted its limb toward her vessel.

She looked at Luna.

Luna nodded once.

Sera poured again.

That was the first part.

Not understanding the field. Not agreeing to anything. Just noticing that one action began the water and another stopped it.

We emptied both cups back into our vessel and did it again.

The Teeming stayed beside the model.

Below, a strand lifted from the queen’s body and settled against the wall beside the track. Its light brightened slowly.

Another creature came up and stopped behind the first.

Nobody crowded us.

I found myself grateful for that before I remembered we’d been trying to do the same.

Risa moved the little gate across the left channel.

This time, all the water went right.

The Teeming touched the empty cup.

Then the channel above it.

Risa opened the gate.

Water entered the left cup again.

She waited until Sera had stopped pouring before closing the other side.

The creature followed the movement.

It touched the new empty cup.

Then put its limb against the gate.

Risa took her hand away.

The gate moved.

Not far enough at first. Water still went to only one side when Sera poured.

The Teeming pushed again.

Both channels ran.

It left its limb resting on the small piece of stone that divided them.

I looked at Risa.

Her face had changed.

Not a smile yet.

Something just before one.

Then the queen moved.

A pale plate rose beyond the lower ledge. One thick strand lifted after it, slowly enough that I could see the strain in the smaller threads beneath.

Luna’s hand touched my sleeve.

We moved back.

The Teeming left the model and went down the first step, out of the way.

The strand reached the edge of the shelf.

Stopped.

Silver light ran through it, bright near the floor and dimmer toward the tip.

I could see the fine divisions in its surface. Not a rope. Not a root. Something living that had held the weight of a stone roof because there had been nothing else beneath it.

Now it was reaching toward two cups of water.

“Leave the way,” Luna said.

We already had.

Still, I shifted another pace, and Sera moved with me.

The strand crossed the clear strip of stone.

Touched the outside of the near cup.

Then the far one.

It didn’t seize them. Didn’t pull them into the chamber. The tip rested against each curved side, then withdrew a little.

Sera held the pouring vessel where it could be seen.

“Again?” she said.

The word was for us.

Risa nodded.

Water ran into both cups.

The silver tip moved from one to the other while the level rose. Stopped between them when Sera stopped pouring.

Then it touched the inlet basin.

The place the water had come from.

Sera poured a little more.

The strand lifted away.

I could hear my own breathing.

We’d come looking for an intelligence in the dark and nearly made it a thing that needed killing because that was the only kind of problem we’d expected.

Here it was, examining our badly made little watercourse.

I wished Holt had come.

Then I remembered he could choose to watch the record, and let the wish go.

Risa closed the left gate.

She did it slowly, with the queen’s strand still above the cups.

One stream stopped.

The other grew stronger.

The tip touched the empty channel, then moved along it toward Risa’s hand.

She took her hand away.

The strand rested against the gate.

Pushed.

The piece slid crookedly and caught.

I nearly reached to fix it.

Luna’s fingers tightened on my sleeve.

I stayed where I was.

The queen tried again.

A smaller movement. Pressure from the other side.

The gate came free.

Water entered both cups.

The strand withdrew from the mechanism and settled between the two streams.

Sera stopped pouring before the cups filled.

Nobody spoke.

Then Risa said, very softly, “It saw what changed.”

“Yes.”

“It changed it back.”

“Yes.”

We didn’t need a grander sentence yet.

Those two were large enough.

On the next trial, Risa closed the right side.

The queen opened it.

Then we left both open and waited.

The silver tip touched the gate once, without moving it. Went to the inlet basin. Came back to the cups.

I thought of the leak above the wheat.

I thought of all the words we hadn’t earned the right to put in its movements.

Both could mean balance. Both could mean curiosity about two falling streams. Both could simply be what it had seen first and wanted restored.

But it was choosing a result and changing the thing we’d made until it got that result.

We could begin there.

Sera set the vessel down.

“We’re nearly out.”

There was water in both cups and a little caught in the basin below. Enough to repeat the demonstration, but my leg was beginning to shake, and Risa had been crouched in the same position for too long.

Luna saw both.

“Finish this one.”

We let the last water run.

The queen’s strand touched each cup, then lifted clear of the shelf.

I held my hand near the model, waited, and drew it toward us a little.

The strand remained back.

We emptied the cups, lifted the frame, and left the small dish where it had been.

Before we turned toward the stairs, the light passed through the arch.

Sera answered with the lamp.

We went up together.

Outside, Risa sat on the warm rock and laughed.

Once. Sharp and surprised.

Then she put both hands over her face.

Luna sat beside her.

“What?”

“It got the gate stuck.”

I looked at her.

“So did we,” she said through her fingers. “Three times at camp. And it tried the other side.”

I sat down too.

We’d spent so long noticing the strange things. The silver. The deep notes. The great body wired into the planet beneath us.

Risa had noticed it working out a stubborn piece of stone.

I started laughing as well.

Not because it was small.

Because it was something we could recognize.

We told the camp exactly what had happened.

Dot showed the record. Holt watched the gate move and asked to see it again. Ellis leaned forward from his board, eyes fixed on the narrow silver tip. Anja watched until the strand reached the shelf, then asked us to stop while she took a breath.

We stopped.

After a while, she nodded.

The record continued.

Teo waited until it ended before asking the question that mattered to him.

“Does that mean we leave both ways open?”

“It means it opened both ways in the model,” I said. “We haven’t shown it which water is ours or where the field is.”

He nodded.

“Then we keep carrying tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

He took the trip slate and began checking the afternoon names.

There was something I could do that afternoon without going below again.

The collecting bowl near the field was awkward to reach. Teo had been lifting it from a crouch, with the full weight held away from his body. I could see all the loose surface stone around that little spill. It wasn’t part of the deep crack.

With Ilse watching from the path, I made a shallow lip that guided the surface runoff into the bowl from above, then a flat place where the filled bowl could slide toward waiting hands.

The water entering the deeper seam stayed as it was.

We measured before and after.

Same flow into the crack. More of the exposed spill caught instead of lost among the gravel.

Teo tried the slide.

Lifted the bowl without bending so far.

Set it back.

“That,” he said, “helps.”

I liked that answer better than the ones I’d been trying to make him give in the morning.

Dov was making a figure when we returned to camp.

Two thin pieces of wood tied across one another. A folded scrap of cloth for a coat. No face yet.

He held it up as we passed.

“Too narrow?”

“For what?” I asked.

“The shoulders.”

Liam leaned over my arm.

“If it’s Lucas, they’re generous.”

Dov looked at me, then at the figure.

I decided to ignore both of them.

“What’s it for?”

“Teo said something for the edge of the path. So people can see where to stop before they reach the wet ground.”

I looked at the outstretched wooden arms.

A scarecrow.

Of course.

“Will that frighten them?” Sera asked.

Dov lowered the figure.

“The Teeming?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Neither did we.

We could put a post beside the path. We could put a figure there. To us, one might mean a warning and the other a person watching. To them, either might mean nothing at all.

I thought about Luna’s arm across the steps.

About the foot that had gone back where it had been.

“Keep it on our side,” I said. “At the start of the field path. It tells our people where the carrying begins.”

“Not to drive anything away?” Dov asked.

“No.”

He turned the figure in his hands.

“All right.”

We made it bigger.

Not a monument. Two pieces of sound timber from the stores, tied where we could undo them. An old shirt that had been patched too often to fit anyone well. A head made from a bundle of dry fibers wrapped in cloth.

Liam wanted to give it my stick.

I kept my stick.

Lena felt the knot at its shoulder and told him to redo it before the first wind took the arm off. Matthias held the strips of cloth on his lap and passed them to her one at a time.

Ellis suggested a broad foot so it wouldn’t have to be driven into ground we hadn’t checked.

I shaped a loose stone into a stand.

By the time it was finished, half the camp had done something to it.

Anja watched from her bedding.

“Does it need a face?” she asked.

Dov looked at the blank cloth.

“I hadn’t decided.”

“Leave it.”

“Why?”

She shrugged a little.

“Then it can be anyone keeping watch.”

So we left it.

We put it at the beginning of the safe path, where the ground was firm and the water carriers could see it from above. Its right arm pointed toward the waiting vessels. Its left pointed back toward camp.

On the stand, I wrote SCARECROW.

Beneath it, Teo asked for one more line.

PUT FULL BOWLS HERE.

Liam stood back to admire it.

“A very serious office.”

“It has useful instructions,” Teo said.

Holt came down before sunset.

He stood beside the figure for a while, looking along the field path. Then toward the upper opening, out of sight beyond the broken ground.

“I used to think you chose the name to frighten them,” he said.

“I didn’t choose it.”

“Aye. Names happen to people.”

The shirt moved in the wind.

“Do you think they’ll understand what it is?”

“Not unless we show them.”

He nodded.

“Same as the water, then.”

“Yes.”

He touched the wooden arm lightly, checking the knot.

“Good place to begin.”

We didn’t put anyone’s name on it.

Not that evening.

There were people we’d lost. People who were silent. People on Earth whose names still came through the dawn in a way we couldn’t yet answer properly.

They weren’t the same list.

Ellis had made that clear with his crate of empty spaces.

I looked at the figure and thought there would have to be room for all those different kinds of remembering, when we made something for them. No turning the missing into the dead because waiting hurt. No leaving the dead out because the names were difficult.

But this one had a job already.

A place to bring water.

Somebody watching the path.

I let it be that for the night.

Wren found me there with the southern route.

“Eight tomorrow, if the morning stays clear.”

I took the slate.

The river. The split rock. The lower approach the survivor had asked us to use.

“Same crew?”

“Luna wants to stay for the next water visit. Sera says she’ll come south if Corr goes with Risa and Dot.”

“And you?”

“I know the flashes.”

“And Liam has the bag.”

She nodded.

We would trade places again. Nobody had to carry both the journey and the chamber at once.

I looked at the figure’s empty face.

“We should tell eight what it looks like.”

“The scarecrow?”

“Yes. So they know where they’ve come.”

Wren smiled faintly.

“I’ll see how much morning we get.”

I wrote before supper this time.

My hands were tired, but not shaking. The water model sat beside the shelter, drying. There was a faint mark on the gate where the silver strand had pushed it from the other side.

I left the mark alone.

At the field path, two people exchanged a full bowl for an empty one beneath the scarecrow’s outstretched arm.

Below the ground, the queen had found a way to make both streams run.

We still had to show it what our streams were.

We still had to find out what it needed from them.

But tomorrow, someone besides me could carry the question down the steps.

That felt almost as important as the answer.

Day 432. The scarecrow.

Measured the leak. Measured the carrying too.

Two days while we try. Everyone helps in the ways they can.

The model: one basin, two channels, two loose cups. A gate.

A Teeming opened both ways. Then the queen reached the shelf itself.

Touched both cups. The inlet. Opened the gate when Risa closed one side. Got it caught. Tried from the other side. Opened it.

Did the same on the other channel.

Both flowing. That is what it chose in the model. We don’t know what it means about the real water yet.

Caught more of the surface spill. Left the deep flow unchanged. Teo said it helped.

Made a scarecrow at the safe path. A place for full bowls. No face. Anyone keeping watch.

No names of the missing written as though they’re dead.

Eight tomorrow. River approach below the split rock. Wren, Sera, Liam, me, if the morning allows.

Luna, Risa, Corr, and Dot will keep working on the water.

The queen opened both ways.