Scarecrow

Eight had packed already.

We found the bundle before we found her. It sat on a flat stone beside the river, tied with three different kinds of cord, with a mirror laid carefully on top.

Wren pointed it out from the bow.

“There.”

I brought the skiff lower.

The split rock rose above the bank, exactly where the dawn message had said it would. Behind it, a narrow path disappeared into the growth. Farther upstream, an old fall of stone blocked the slope beneath a broken ledge.

The approach we hadn’t used.

Liam leaned over the rim.

“Where is she?”

We didn’t know it was a woman yet. Perhaps he had seen the movement before I did. A figure coming along the narrow path, one hand on a rope stretched between posts, the other holding a crutch.

She stopped when our shadow crossed the water.

Then lifted the crutch and pointed to the flat place beside her bundle.

No waving.

She had a landing place ready, and she wanted us to use it.

I set the hull down.

The woman watched until it was still.

“Which one’s Wren?”

Wren climbed out.

“I am.”

“Good.”

She came the last few paces with the crutch under one arm, following the rope until it ended beside the flat stone. One trouser leg was tied below the knee. Beneath it, there was nothing.

She lowered herself onto the stone without accepting the hand Wren offered.

Then looked at us all in turn.

“Nessa Ward.”

“Lucas.”

“I guessed.”

Her eyes went to my stick, then back to my face.

“We’ll get along.”

Liam brought water.

Nessa took the cup, drank, and passed it back.

“The bag goes with me.”

“Of course.”

“And the things in the shelter.”

Wren glanced at the small bundle.

“All packed?”

“Most.”

Nessa looked toward the path behind her.

“I kept remembering things.”

For the first time, something uncertain moved across her face.

Sera sat on the other end of the stone.

“We can take time.”

Nessa nodded quickly, as though she’d been waiting for somebody to say that before allowing herself to need it.

The shelter was beneath the split rock.

Liam and Wren went to collect the rest while I stayed with the skiff and Sera stayed with Nessa. There was no reason for all of us to follow her possessions into the dark and leave her waiting beside an unfamiliar boat.

She watched the river.

A small frame rested in the shallows, tied to the bank with cord. A covered jar sat in it.

“You pull it back full?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Does it ever tip?”

“It did.”

I looked at the frame again. The two broad pieces beneath it. The weight fixed on one side. The rope running through a worn notch in the stone.

It had taken thought.

And repetition.

“How long have you had it?”

“Long enough that I don’t like leaving it.”

I nodded.

Sera looked from the frame to the skiff.

“We can tie it behind the seat.”

Nessa turned toward her.

“It isn’t much.”

“It carries water.”

Nessa looked back at the river.

“All right.”

She let me look at her leg before we moved her.

The loss was old. The end had healed, but the crutch had rubbed her underarm raw, and one hand was swollen where she’d been asking it to do too much of the work of walking.

I could help with some of that.

I couldn’t give her the missing part back by wanting it badly enough.

She watched my face while I looked.

“Don’t make the expression.”

“What expression?”

“The one where you’re about to tell me something I already know.”

I sat back.

She reached for the cup again.

“I want a way to get around that doesn’t hurt my hand. Start there.”

“All right.”

It was a better instruction than anything I’d been preparing to say.

Wren returned carrying a folded mat and a little case.

Liam came behind her with a cooking pot, two wrapped tools, and a bundle of dry fiber under one arm.

“That’s everything we could see,” he said.

Nessa looked through the things.

Then at the path.

“The pegs.”

Wren waited.

“Inside the door. Above the shelf. The little wooden ones.”

“I’ll get them.”

Nessa caught her sleeve before she turned.

“There are seven.”

Wren nodded.

Seven came back in her hand.

Nessa counted them twice before putting them in the case.

I didn’t ask what they were for.

We left the shelter with food, water, and a stone message beside the path.

Nessa read it before we brought her aboard.

NESSA WARD. F-8. ALIVE AT SCARECROW.

Day 433 beneath it.

She touched the word alive.

“I haven’t got there yet.”

Wren looked at the lettering.

Changed at to going to.

Nessa nodded.

“Now it’s true.”

Getting her into the skiff was easier than I’d expected and harder than she wanted it to be.

She knew how to move her weight. Knew where to put her hands. But the rim was higher than her stone, and the vessel rocked a fraction when she leaned on it.

I held it still.

Liam put one hand where she asked and kept the other out of the way.

Sera moved the blanket beneath her.

Then she was seated, breathing quickly, with the crutch across her knees and the bundle beside her.

Nobody congratulated her.

She looked relieved by that.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Wait.”

We waited.

She looked once more at the rope along the path, the river, the empty place where the water frame had been.

Then down at the frame tied behind her seat.

“Yes.”

We rose above the bank.

Nessa gripped the rim, then deliberately loosened her fingers one at a time.

I kept us low until the ground rose. Turned gently around the split rock. Followed the river north, where Wren said the air would be easier than over the bare ridge.

For a long time, Nessa said nothing.

Then she looked at Wren.

“That’s all of us?”

Wren rested the route slate on her knees.

“Everyone who was answering on the known line.”

“Twenty-two?”

“With you.”

Nessa counted something on the fingers of one hand.

Not twenty-two. I couldn’t tell what.

Then she folded the hand against her blanket.

“Keep flashing.”

“We will,” Wren said.

“Even if nobody answers.”

Wren looked straight at her.

“We will.”

At the rest stop, Nessa asked about the others by number.

Twenty-two. Twenty. Thirty. The mountain light.

Wren gave her names.

Anja. Ellis. Ade and Benedikt. Juno.

Nessa repeated each one, quietly, as though fitting the person into the little patch of horizon where she’d watched their light.

When we reached thirty-one, I told her about Old Son.

She listened without drinking.

“Dunmore’s gone?”

“Yes.”

She looked down at the cup.

“How long?”

I told her what Old Son had told us. The illness. The cairn. The long keeping of the signal afterward.

She closed her eyes.

“I thought it was him.”

“So did we.”

For a while, the wind moved through the grass beside the skiff and nobody said anything.

Then she asked whether Old Son still flashed.

“Yes.”

She nodded.

“Good.”

We talked about the camp before we lifted again.

The high ground. The broken terraces. The people who could help with the crutch and the path. The fact that we were trying to make contact with the Teeming beneath the canyon.

Nessa listened to that last part with her mouth pressed into a thin line.

“Trying how?”

I told her about the water model.

About the queen getting the gate caught and trying it from the other side.

She looked toward the river.

“Anything that lives has to get water from somewhere.”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t make it safe.”

“No.”

She glanced at the frame tied behind her seat.

“It’s somewhere to start, though.”

We came home with daylight left.

The scarecrow stood beside the path in its patched shirt, arms spread over the waiting vessels. Nessa saw it as we descended.

“Wren said there was a man made of sticks.”

Liam looked offended.

“An excellent likeness.”

“Of whom?”

“Still under discussion,” Sera said.

Nessa watched the figure until the skiff touched down.

Then she looked beyond it, toward the shelters.

People waited there. Not rushing. Not calling over one another. Giving her a chance to see them before asking her to know them.

Her fingers closed round the crutch.

I kept the hull still until she was ready.

Juno came to meet her.

Nessa stared at her face, then at Wren.

“The mountain.”

Juno nodded.

“You kept saying the same thing.”

“Yes.”

“Every morning.”

Juno crouched beside the skiff.

“We said we’d come.”

Nessa looked away very quickly.

For the first time since we’d found her, she didn’t have the next thing ready to say.

Juno stayed beside her until she did.

There was no grand welcome.

There was a place for her mat. Water within reach. A way between the beds wide enough for the crutch. Ellis came over on his board and told her which joins in the path still caught, which made her laugh before she looked quite ready to.

Anja asked whether she’d brought a mirror.

Nessa showed her.

Holt said her name once, softly, then sat nearby without asking her to explain where all the time had gone.

Toby looked at her hand when she offered it. He and I worked out a better padding for the crutch, something we could change tomorrow if the first try wasn’t right.

She tested it seated.

Pressed down.

Let go.

“That helps.”

I was learning to like those two words.

Luna waited until we had eaten before bringing the water record.

I expected another account of the gate opening.

Instead, she said, “They took us somewhere.”

I put the bowl down.

“Who went?”

“Dot’s hand. We stayed on the shelf.”

She sat beside me and unfolded the slate.

“Look before you decide what happened.”

That sounded enough like something I’d needed telling that I kept quiet.

The recording began at the arch.

Both model channels ran. The queen’s strand touched the cups, then the inlet, as it had before. Risa poured. Corr held the catching basin.

Then Luna lifted one cup and took it a short way toward the stairs.

She brought it back.

Took it again.

The Teeming beside the model followed the movement, turning between the cup and the passage.

“What were you showing?” I asked.

“That we carry water away. Nothing more.”

On the screen, she returned the cup and set it beside the other one.

Then the Teeming lifted the second cup.

It carried it down the track.

Not far. To the first small pool. Tipped some water in. Came back with the rest.

Luna stayed still.

The creature set the cup down where it had been.

Risa’s voice came faintly through the recording.

“Well.”

The queen’s strand rested beside the two cups.

A pale light moved along it toward the lower ledge.

The Teeming picked the cup up again and turned toward the track.

This time, it stopped and waited.

Dot’s hand followed.

We watched it descend.

Past the pool where the little ones had been washed. Along a broader ledge behind the queen’s body. The hand stopped whenever the guide stopped, keeping the same distance.

Then the lamp found a shallow stone gutter.

Water ran through it in a narrow thread.

Above, a wet seam came down the wall from somewhere beyond the picture. Below, the gutter divided, one branch going toward the nursery pools, the other ending in broken stone.

The Teeming put the cup beneath the broken end.

Waited until it filled.

Then carried it across the gap and emptied it into the continuation of the channel on the other side.

Went back.

Filled it again.

I leaned forward.

Luna put one hand against my chest without looking at me.

I sat back.

On the screen, water ran through the break and disappeared among loose stones below the gutter. The guide filled the cup again and tipped it into the far side.

Nothing about the movement was hurried.

Nothing looked like a threat.

It was the same work I’d watched Teo doing beneath the field.

Taking water from where it was to where it needed to be, because something between those places had failed.

Risa had written four words beside the image on the slate.

THEY ARE CARRYING TOO.

“Did you repair it?” I asked.

“No.”

Luna watched my face.

“We couldn’t see what was below the broken part. We left the hand where it could look. Risa didn’t try to map it from the shelf.”

I nodded.

The guide carried another cup across the gap.

Behind it, a second creature arrived with a curved piece of plate holding more water.

“Does the seam come from our leak?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“But the water they’re losing is visible.”

“Yes.”

“And there’s room for a bridge across the channel.”

“Possibly. In the gutter. Not beneath the wall.”

She let me watch the whole recording again before taking the screen away.

“We go tomorrow. Rest first.”

That evening, Nessa met Old Son.

He had come down after the dusk flash, moving slowly along the path beside Dot. Nessa watched his mirror arm until he stopped.

“Thirty-one,” she said.

“This unit carries that designation.”

“I saw you.”

The rivers in his shell brightened a little.

“Many mornings,” she said. “When the others were behind cloud, sometimes there was still thirty-one.”

“This unit was instructed to continue.”

“I know.”

She shifted the crutch beside her bedding.

“I’d like you to know somebody was watching.”

Old Son remained still for a long time.

Then he said, “Logged.”

Dot stood beside him, close enough that their arms nearly touched.

We made the new list after supper.

Not because there were no more people to find. Because the old slate still said one beside eight, and that person was sitting within reach of our fire.

Wren wrote the names on a board while Dot read them back from the camp record. Twenty-two people. She checked every one with somebody who could answer.

Nessa corrected the shape of one letter in hers.

Ellis asked for enough room beside each name to add where they could be found if the camp moved again.

Lena wanted the board placed low enough that someone could read it to a person sitting down.

Everyone had an opinion.

That seemed a better way to make a list than most of the ones we’d been on.

We placed it beside the scarecrow.

HERE, Wren wrote across the top.

Not saved. Not safe forever.

Here.

Below it, on a separate board, she put the places still needing a search. Numbers from Ellis’s records. Dates of the last messages he could stand behind. Empty spaces where we had no names.

Holt brought a third, smaller piece of wood.

“Dunmore,” he said.

I looked at him.

“We know.”

“Yes.”

We wrote Rafe Dunmore’s name and the place of his cairn. Old Son watched while I cut the letters deep enough that rain wouldn’t wash them away.

Then I held the board where he could read it.

“Is that right?”

“Yes,” he said.

Liam looked at the boards beneath the figure’s arms.

“A whole field of names,” he said.

“Not yet,” Wren answered.

He glanced at her.

“Some of them are only numbers.”

She touched one of the empty spaces on the search board.

“We have work to do.”

No one argued.

Behind us, Teo and Corr set down the last full vessels for the evening. Water splashed softly against the sides.

For the moment, that was work too.

On Day 434, we went to the broken gutter.

I took a narrow piece of glass shaped like an open trough, made from loose material at camp. No grand construction. Just something we could set across a small gap, see clearly, and remove if it caused trouble.

Risa carried a measuring cord. Sera carried the lamp. Luna carried the slate with yesterday’s picture scratched beside the measurements we thought we understood.

Dot stayed at the opening with the recording equipment. Her hand went ahead.

At the upper shelf, the queen’s strand touched the arch.

We answered.

The Teeming beside the model lifted the cup.

Then waited at the track.

Luna looked at each of us before nodding.

We followed as far as the lower ledge together.

The gutter was smaller in front of me than it had seemed on the screen.

That was often the trouble with pictures. You could make a thing enormous by looking at it for long enough.

The broken ends lay less than the length of my forearm apart. Water fell between them onto loose fragments, then ran into a dark opening too small to see through.

The continuation of the gutter stood dry beyond the gap.

Above it, the wall looked whole. I checked as much as I could, then made myself look back at the part we had come to change.

No repairing the whole chamber because we had been invited to one broken channel.

Risa measured.

The trough would fit.

I held it where the guide could see.

Then over the gap, without setting it down.

The Teeming moved close.

Put a limb across the space in front of my hand.

I stopped.

Luna touched my shoulder, but I had already drawn back.

We waited.

The creature reached below the broken edge and lifted something pale from a shallow hollow I hadn’t noticed. A bundle, small enough to fit against its front limbs.

It carried it toward the pools.

Sera lowered the lamp until we could see the hollow clearly.

Empty now.

My mouth had gone dry.

We hadn’t frightened it out.

We hadn’t poured water over it.

Because somebody had asked us to wait, and this time we had known how.

The guide came back.

It put its limb against the dry continuation of the gutter, then withdrew.

I held up the trough again.

No limb across the way.

I lowered it slowly.

The first water ran into the glass, slid along its shallow curve, and spilled over the far end into the old channel.

A little escaped at the near joint.

I could see the whole place where the two surfaces met. I changed the edge of the trough, making a small lip that rested against the stone without closing the channel above it.

The spill stopped.

Water ran across.

The guide followed it.

Sera’s lamp moved with it, showing the stream turn toward a pool farther along the ledge. A thin dark line on the pool’s rim marked where the water had been before.

The level began to rise.

Slowly.

I watched the gutter. Risa watched the pool. Luna watched the guide and the way back.

Nobody sang. Nobody put anything through the silver in the walls.

We let water do the part it understood.

The queen moved nearby.

A strand lifted from the ledge and rested against the outside of the new trough.

I kept my hands clear.

The silver tip traveled along the glass, following the water toward the pool. It paused at the far edge, then withdrew and touched the old stone channel.

Light moved through it.

The guide set the cup down.

Empty.

For the first time since we’d seen the break, it didn’t go back to fill it.

I looked at Luna.

She nodded once.

We had changed something real, together, and could see what it had done.

We stayed until the level steadied at the pool’s old overflow.

The water found the next channel and continued along it. No pool filled beyond its rim. No new stream appeared under our feet.

That didn’t tell us everything.

It told us enough to leave the trough in place and come back to check it.

Before we went, Luna picked up our cup.

Held it out where the guide could see.

Then carried it toward the stairs.

The Teeming watched.

At the first step, she stopped and looked back.

It picked up the other cup.

Came after her.

We didn’t lead it straight into camp.

We went up slowly, stopping when it stopped, keeping the way back open. At the upper opening, it crouched beneath the slant of daylight and remained there for several breaths.

Dot moved aside.

The creature came out.

I looked at Sera. Her hands were empty, the lamp hanging from its loop against her wrist.

Beyond the broken ground, the scarecrow’s shirt moved in the wind.

Luna lifted the cup.

The guide held its own close to its body.

Then we began the walk toward the place where our people were carrying water.

Day 433–434. Field of names.

F-eight. Nessa Ward. River approach. She’d packed. We brought the water frame too.

Twenty-two people. Two kits. Everyone on the known answering line is here.

Keep flashing.

Nessa told Old Son she’d been watching thirty-one. He logged it.

Names beside the scarecrow. Here. Search places separately. Rafe Dunmore remembered by name, with the place of his cairn.

Luna carried one model cup toward the stairs. A Teeming carried the other to a pool.

Then it showed Dot’s hand a broken gutter. They were carrying water too.

Day 434. Glass trough. The guide stopped my hand before I set it down. A little one beneath the edge. It moved the bundle. Then we continued.

Water across the gap. Pool rising to its old overflow. No one carrying that cup now.

The queen touched the trough. Followed the water with its strand.

We will check again.

Luna brought our cup upstairs.

The guide brought the other.

Now we can show it the field.