Scarecrow

The guide stopped at the scarecrow.

Not beneath it. A few paces short, where the shirt moved in the wind and the wooden arms cast a thin cross over the path.

Luna stopped too.

The creature lifted its cup. Lowered it. Turned its head toward the blank cloth face.

I looked at Dov’s work and understood, too late, that we had put something shaped like a person at the entrance and then expected a visitor to know it wasn’t one.

Sera moved beside me.

“Do we take it down?”

“Wait,” Luna said.

She went to the figure, touched the wooden arm, and let it go. The sleeve shifted. Nothing else happened.

Then she stepped back.

The guide remained where it was.

Dot came along the path behind us, carrying the lamps and the little water model. She stopped far enough away that the way back stayed open.

Nobody called from camp.

Dot had sent a wing ahead. For once, the first warning people received wasn’t someone shouting.

After a while, the guide approached the figure.

It touched the stand.

Then the wooden leg.

The shirt moved again. The creature withdrew its limb, waited, and touched the same place once more.

I stayed still.

There were names on the boards beside it. Twenty-two names of people here. Numbers and dates of people we hadn’t found. Rafe Dunmore, whose kit watched from farther up the path.

The guide passed them without stopping.

Of course it did.

They weren’t names to it yet. They were marks in wood, put there by something that built little people beside its fields.

Luna lifted her cup.

The guide turned toward her.

Then followed.

Teo was waiting at the first bed.

He’d put down the full bowl he was carrying. Both hands rested against his thighs.

I could see him trying not to stare.

“This is the one from the gutter?” he asked.

“The one that came with us,” I said.

He nodded.

The distinction mattered. We couldn’t tell everyone below apart, but we’d watched this one walk the whole way.

Luna stopped beside the bowl and gave Teo room to come forward.

He looked at the cup in her hand, then at the one the guide held.

“All right,” he said softly.

He picked up his bowl.

He poured water beside the first row.

Slowly, the way he’d made me do it. Let it sink before moving to the next plant. Kept his feet on the path.

The guide came closer.

One front limb lifted over the edge of the bed.

Teo put his arm across the way.

I felt the whole group go still.

The guide stopped.

Teo pointed to the path. Put his own foot down firmly on the bare stone. Then touched a stem without bending it.

The creature lowered its limb onto the path instead.

Teo breathed out through his nose.

Luna’s shoulders eased a little.

Nobody praised him. Not while he was trying to keep doing it.

When the bowl was empty, Teo carried it back to the collecting place.

The guide followed with its cup.

Water ran over the lip I’d made and into the next waiting vessel. Beside it, the deeper crack swallowed its share with a quiet, steady sound.

The guide crouched.

It put one limb near the wet seam. Not in it. Near enough that the water touched the edge.

Then it turned toward the field.

Teo filled his bowl again.

The creature lowered its cup beneath the spill.

Waited.

Lifted it when it was full.

We followed it back along the path.

At the first row, it stopped beside Teo.

He poured.

It tipped the cup.

Too high. Too quickly. Water struck the soil and ran across the surface, just as mine had the day before.

Teo lowered his own bowl until it was almost touching the ground.

Poured a little.

Waited.

The guide looked between his hands and the wet soil. Then lowered the cup.

The next little stream went where the roots were.

Sera touched my sleeve.

I looked at her.

She was smiling, though there were tears in her eyes and I didn’t think she knew about them.

I didn’t say anything.

They watered four plants.

Four, while the rest of the bed waited and the morning went on and people kept themselves from crowding the path to watch.

It wasn’t efficient.

Teo didn’t hurry.

At the fifth plant, the guide put down the empty cup and touched the damp soil with the edge of a limb. Then touched the dry soil farther along.

Wet. Dry.

It went back to the collecting place.

Teo stayed where he was.

This time, the creature returned without him showing the way.

Luna let it finish the cup before she moved.

She pointed toward the upper opening. Lifted the model from Dot’s hand and set it on the flat stone beside the collecting bowl.

Both cups beneath it.

Sera poured.

Water divided, two little streams in the daylight.

The guide touched the cup nearest the field.

Then the other one.

It picked up the second and turned toward the opening.

“Do you think—” I began.

“I think we follow far enough to see,” Luna said.

Teo looked at the bed, then at the model.

“Leave the carrying list here.”

Ilse came down the path to take it.

There were jobs that didn’t stop just because something important was happening.

We didn’t all go below again.

My leg had begun to complain, and Risa had already spent enough time on the steps. Luna took the model with Corr. Dot sent her hand. Sera and I stayed where the screen could show us what happened.

Teo returned to the field.

Before he went, he looked toward the upper opening.

“Tell me if it does anything with that cup.”

“I will.”

He nodded and picked up a full bowl.

I watched him lift it.

Two days, Luna had said. Then we’d look at what we’d learned.

It was the second day.

We needed to bring him back something more useful than wonder.

On the screen, the guide entered the chamber.

It carried the cup to the queen’s strand.

The same strand that had touched the trough. It rested along the lower ledge now, silver moving beneath the surface.

The guide set down the cup.

Then put one limb inside it.

I leaned forward.

There was something dark in the bottom.

Soil.

A little of the damp earth from beside the wheat. I hadn’t seen it take any. Not enough to damage the bed, but enough to leave a smear against the pale inside of the cup.

The strand touched the rim.

Moved toward the soil.

Stayed there.

Luna set up the model on the upper shelf.

The guide returned to it. Put the soil-marked cup beneath one channel.

The clean cup beneath the other.

Luna didn’t rearrange them.

Corr poured.

Both streams ran.

Below, the queen shifted. The strand came up to the shelf, slowly, and touched the first cup. Then the second.

The light in its surface changed.

I couldn’t hear a thought in it. Couldn’t see a word. I didn’t know whether the guide had brought a message or a thing the queen was curious about.

But one cup had gone to the field and come back carrying a piece of it.

The other had been emptied into a nursery pool.

We were beginning to put real places beside the things we’d made.

Then the guide moved the gate.

Closed the side above the soil-marked cup.

The queen opened it.

The guide closed the other side.

The queen opened that too.

Luna kept her hands on her knees.

Corr stopped pouring when the cups were nearly full.

The queen’s strand stayed between them.

For a moment, I thought that would be all.

Then it moved toward the inlet basin.

Touched it twice.

The guide picked up both cups and poured their water back into the top.

Both streams began again.

Sera looked at me.

I looked at the picture until the water stopped.

“It did that without us,” she said.

“Yes.”

“They’re working on it together.”

“Yes.”

I wanted a hundred words for what we’d just seen. Agreement. Sharing. Understanding.

I wrote down the actions first.

Then, beneath them, I wrote something I could stand behind.

It wants water in both.

There were still questions about how much. About which pools, which plants, which seasons. But for once, leaving those questions open didn’t make the thing in front of us smaller.

It wanted water in both.

So did we.

Luna returned before noon.

Corr carried the model. The guide came with them again, cup against its body. A second Teeming followed as far as the opening and waited there.

Luna stopped beside the screen.

“You saw?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s see what we can actually give Teo.”

She went to the collecting place with the guide beside her.

I stood, found my stick, and followed with Sera.

Dot brought the model.

This time, we put it beside the real water.

The deep flow was still disappearing through the seam.

The exposed spill ran over my little lip and into the waiting vessels. Beyond it, a thin fan of water escaped down a slope of bare rock into gravel. We’d caught more yesterday, but not all of it.

I could see that entire surface.

Its edge. Its slope. The place where it passed within reach of the old field channel before turning away.

Teo had put a stick there with a piece of cloth tied to it.

“That’s what I wanted to show you,” he said.

We all looked.

“Before the terrace moved, that water went into the bed. It doesn’t need taking away from the crack. It needs getting past that dip.”

I followed the line with my eyes.

The distance was less than two meters.

I had spent yesterday measuring what went down and hadn’t properly looked at what went sideways.

“We can bridge that,” I said.

“Can you leave it open enough to clear?” Teo asked. “If you make another little tube, it’ll fill with grit.”

“An open trough. Like below.”

He nodded.

“And I want to see where every drop goes.”

“So do I.”

The guide moved to the wet rock.

Touched the surface spill.

Then the rim of the collecting bowl.

Luna lifted the model and placed it where the creature could see the two channels beside the two directions of the real water.

I couldn’t tell whether that helped.

We showed it anyway.

I began with loose material from above the path.

A wide, shallow length of glass. Low sides. A broad foot at each end so it would rest on the sound stone without driving weight into the damaged edge.

Nothing beneath the crack changed.

Sera held one end while I shaped the other. Corr brought a second block to support the middle. Teo checked the fall with a little water before we let the stream into it.

The first trickle stopped halfway.

“Too flat,” he said.

I raised the near end a fraction.

The water moved.

The guide crouched beside the far lip.

I waited until it had moved its limb clear before doing anything else.

It was becoming a habit.

I wanted to keep that one.

We brought the surface spill into the trough a little at a time.

Not by closing the seam. By extending the lip beneath the fan that was already running away over bare rock.

Water entered the glass.

Crossed the dip.

Reached the old field channel.

Teo walked beside it, watching the leading edge darken the dry stone.

At the bed, it entered the shallow hollow he’d cleared that morning.

Then the next.

I stayed by the crack with Risa.

She held the collecting bowl at the deeper flow for the same measured interval as before, while I watched the surface for any change we hadn’t intended.

The mark in the bowl was the same.

We hadn’t made the lower stream smaller.

“Again,” Risa said.

We measured again.

Then Ilse took the bowl and did it herself, because we all wanted the answer badly enough that it was worth letting someone else check.

Same mark.

Below, Dot’s hand watched the nursery pool from the ledge beside our first trough. The picture showed water crossing the glass and running through the pool’s overflow, steady as before.

There was a delay between any change above and whatever happened below. We didn’t know exactly how long.

So we waited.

Teo sat on a stone and watched the lowest bed drink.

For the first time in two days, there wasn’t a full bowl in his hands.

The guide followed the water to the field.

It lowered the cup into the last collecting hollow, lifted it, and carried it back toward the model.

The second Teeming came down from the opening.

People near the path moved aside.

Not everyone comfortably. Tamsin went farther back than she had meant to, then stopped with both hands empty at her sides. Ilse went with her without making it a conversation anyone else could hear.

The two creatures faced each other beside the model.

One put its cup beneath the field-side channel.

The other touched the wet glass of the real trough.

Then they both went toward the opening, leaving our cup on the stone.

I watched until they were gone.

“Will they come back?” Sera asked.

“I hope so.”

It was a strange thing to hear myself say.

By midafternoon, Teo could give us an answer.

“Not all the water we used to have,” he said. “Enough for the lowest bed if we keep the little channels clear. The upper two still need carrying in the dry part of the day.”

“How much?” Luna asked.

He showed her the new count.

Less than half the journeys.

No one cheered.

Lena, sitting at the table with the marked cords, simply untied several knots and set the spare lengths aside.

Ellis crossed out the trips we no longer needed.

Anja lifted the next empty vessel and put it back with the stores.

That was what the answer looked like.

Work people didn’t have to do anymore.

Nessa asked whether she could see the new trough from the upper turn in the path.

We checked the way before bringing her down. There was enough room for the crutch, and a flat stone where she could sit without having to stand again immediately.

She watched the water for a while.

“Put a mark there,” she said.

I followed her finger.

“On the side. Where the water is now.”

“For checking the flow?”

“And another below it. The level where Teo says the bed stops getting enough. Then the person looking doesn’t have to be the person who built it.”

I glanced at Teo.

He came over and crouched beside the glass.

“The lower mark will take a little watching. We can do the first now.”

I scratched a short line where he pointed.

Nessa leaned back against the rock.

“My jar on the river frame had one. If it came back below the mark, I knew something had caught under it. Saved pulling it in three times before I noticed.”

“Show us the frame tomorrow,” Teo said.

She looked at him, surprised.

Then nodded.

It had been hers to bring. Now it might have something to teach us.

I added the upper line on the far side too, where someone coming from the opening could see it.

I wanted to call it finished.

Luna made me sit beside the water slate and tell her what would happen if the new trough clogged, or shifted, or if the pool below stopped overflowing.

“We stop changing things,” I said.

“And?”

“We tell each other. We look before we close anything.”

She glanced toward the opening.

“How do we tell them?”

I looked at the two cups on the model.

“We carry the cup to the place that’s wrong. Like they did.”

“And if one of us puts an arm across the way?”

“We stop.”

Luna nodded.

It wasn’t a treaty written in words.

It was a way to begin having the next argument without hurting someone before they could show us the problem.

The guide returned before the light left the field.

It came alone, carrying the small curved dish Sera had warmed.

Behind it, near the opening, the second creature waited with our clean cup.

The guide put the dish beside the model.

Inside was a short piece of pale fiber, wet at one end. The same kind of material we’d seen around the little ones below.

It touched the fiber.

Touched the clean cup.

Then touched the cup with the last smear of soil still inside.

Luna sat very still.

Sera crouched beside her.

“Pool,” she whispered, looking at the fiber.

“Perhaps,” Luna said.

We didn’t throw the fiber away.

We set it beside the clean cup and left the soil in the other one.

The guide stayed while we ran water through both channels again.

This time, when the model was empty, the creature lifted one limb across both gates.

Held it there.

Luna stopped reaching for the pouring vessel.

The limb lowered.

The guide touched the two cups, one after the other.

Then the inlet basin.

It might have been asking for another turn. It might have been showing us what not to close. I couldn’t force certainty out of a few movements because I’d had a good day and wanted an ending for it.

So Luna offered the water vessel and waited.

The guide touched it, then moved aside.

She poured.

Both streams ran.

That, at least, was something we could agree to keep doing.

We carried the model back to the upper shelf together.

Not everyone. Luna and Corr went with the guide. Dot’s hand followed. I stayed at the screen, my leg up, while Sera brought food.

The queen’s strand touched the clean cup with its pale fiber beside it.

Then the soil-marked cup.

Both were full.

The guide put a limb against the open gate.

The strand rested on the other side of it without moving it.

Light passed along the silver, through the glass arch, and faded.

Luna withdrew her hands.

The model stayed between them.

For once, we didn’t pack it up and bring every piece home.

We left something there that both sides had learned to use.

At supper, Holt asked whether we were calling it peace.

People went quiet in different ways.

Nessa stopped turning her cup. Tamsin looked down. Toby watched Luna, then me.

“A beginning,” I said.

Holt nodded slowly.

“What’s that mean tomorrow?”

“We check the water above and below. We keep the paths clear. We stop when they ask us to stop, and show them the trouble before changing something that reaches them.”

“And them?”

“They stopped for us. They showed us their broken gutter. They came to see our field.”

I looked around the fire.

“I can’t promise what every one of them will do. I can’t promise what every one of us will do. But we’ve done something together that leaves both places better.”

Holt considered that.

Then he lifted his bowl.

“All right. I’ll take a beginning.”

Toby asked to see the field after supper.

He took his fork and stayed inside the small wall. I went with him because I wanted to see the water again, and because he asked whether I was coming, which was different from me deciding he shouldn’t go alone.

We stopped beside the scarecrow.

The names were still readable in the evening light.

Twenty-two here.

The search board beside them.

Toby looked along the trough toward the wheat, then toward the opening beyond the broken ground.

“You didn’t need a song.”

“No.”

“Good.”

He said it without shame.

I was glad enough that I had to look at the water for a moment before answering.

“Yes,” I said. “Good.”

We stayed until the first stars appeared.

Old Son’s dusk signal had finished. Somewhere above us, Wren and Ellis were discussing an old message whose date didn’t fit the others. Tomorrow, they would keep working on it.

There were people on Earth still beyond the small dawn window. People somewhere on Avalon who might never have seen our light. Anja’s ankle. Ellis’s knees. Nessa’s crutch. Matthias learning how much his repaired body could do.

None of those things had disappeared because two channels were running.

For once, I didn’t feel that meant the channels weren’t enough to be happy about.

Toby touched the scarecrow’s sleeve.

“It’s wet.”

“People carrying bowls.”

He looked at the dark patches down the old shirt.

Then smiled.

“Useful job.”

“Yes.”

We went back to camp before the path grew hard to see.

Day 434. Both ways.

The guide stopped at the scarecrow. Looked. Touched the wood. Came past.

Teo showed it the path and the roots. It stopped at his arm. Learned to pour slowly. Went back for more without being led.

Soil in one cup. The other emptied into their pool.

The queen opened both gates again. The guide refilled the basin from both cups. They worked the model without our hands on it.

Recovered the exposed surface spill across the dip. Didn’t close the deep seam. Measured before and after. Nursery overflow steady.

Less than half the carrying now. Still some. Teo knows how much.

A pale fiber beside the clean cup. Soil in ours. Keep both.

If something’s wrong, carry the cup to it. If an arm crosses the way, stop.

Left the model on the shelf. Both cups full. Both gates open.

Holt will take a beginning.

Toby came to see the field. We didn’t need his song.

Water above. Water below.

Tomorrow we check again.