Scarecrow

Dot woke us before dawn.

She did not come into the room. One hand tapped the door twice, waited, then tapped again.

Luna was moving before I had properly opened my eyes.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The queen’s lower chambers have flooded. Everyone assigned to those chambers was moved. Water is entering the next passage.”

I pushed myself upright.

Risa caught the blanket before it fell from the bed.

“How long?” Luna asked.

“I do not know.”

Dot used those words often enough now that I had stopped hearing them as a failure.

This morning, they frightened me anyway.

“Is she trapped?” I asked.

“Not yet.”

I reached for my boots.

Sera put a hand on my arm.

“First things first.”

For a moment, I stared at her.

Then I understood.

Her treatment.

The storm had not stopped the need for it. Neither had the queen, or the young sleeping beneath our spare coverings, or the river working its way into places a river had no business being.

Luna took her coat from the peg.

“I’ll go to Holt. Risa, find out what Dot knows. Lucas, stay here until you’re finished.”

There was no argument in her voice.

It helped.

I sat beside Sera and put my hands where I could see them.

They were steady.

I had slept. I had eaten. Yesterday’s ache was gone.

That ought to have felt like good news.

Instead, I wondered how much of it the day would use.

Sera watched me work.

“You’re doing it already,” she said.

“What?”

“Deciding what you can afford to lose.”

I looked up.

She was pale in the thin light, with her hair caught behind one ear and the blanket around her shoulders.

“I don’t know what we’re going to find.”

“Neither do I.”

“If there’s something I can do—”

“Then we’ll find out what it is.”

She moved her hand over mine after I had finished.

“We. You keep forgetting that part when you’re frightened.”

I looked down at her fingers.

“I remember eventually.”

“I’d prefer earlier.”

I leaned over and kissed her.

She held me there for a moment, then let me go.

“Bring the cup back,” she said.

“That’s your instruction?”

“It’s a very good cup.”

I took it with me.

Holt had moved the map to the inner table.

The outer edge of the common roof was shaking in the wind, and he had apparently decided there was no virtue in getting the only useful drawing wet.

Luna stood beside him. Ilse and Corr were marking a route across the high side of the canyon. Risa had brought Dot’s notes and a bowl I was expected to eat from while listening.

The obstruction lay beyond the bend we could see from the upper shelf.

A fall of stone, trees, and mud had lodged where the canyon narrowed. Water still passed through it, but not quickly enough. Behind it, the river was spreading into the lower openings and pushing up through the queen’s connected passages.

“Can her people clear it?” I asked.

Dot stood beside the table, two hands resting against its edge.

“They have tried from the margins. The centre is moving. They cannot work beneath it without being carried away.”

“And if I remove it?”

Holt looked at me.

“You’d release everything behind it.”

I studied the map.

“Downstream.”

“Very quickly.”

Dot turned one hand towards a mark beyond the blockage.

“There are other broods there.”

That settled it.

Whatever we did, we were not going to save our queen by throwing the river at someone else’s young.

I put down the spoon.

“Show me the high route.”

Corr had found an old overflow cut above the constriction.

She had seen it during an earlier patrol, when it had been a dry hollow full of loose stone. Now water was reaching its lower end, but a raised shoulder still separated it from the backed-up river.

Beyond the shoulder, the hollow ran down into a broad, empty gravel basin before rejoining the canyon farther along.

On Holt’s drawing, it looked simple.

A second way for the water to go.

I had learned to distrust simple things on maps.

“How much of it can we see?” I asked.

“The shoulder and the first run from the high spur,” Corr said. “The basin from farther along. I haven’t been to the lower end today.”

“Then we need that checked.”

“Ilse’s taking the guide.”

Dot shifted.

“The queen has asked the brood beyond the obstruction to clear the outlet and confirm the ground around it is unoccupied. She is waiting for an answer.”

Luna looked at the window.

The darkness was becoming grey.

“How much time does she have to wait?”

Dot did not answer at once.

Then she said, “She is keeping the water out of one passage with her body.”

The room seemed to become very quiet.

“What?” Risa said.

“She is braced in the opening. Workers are packing the gaps. There are people still moving through the chamber behind her.”

I remembered the weight of her forelimb on the shelf beside my hand.

The care she had taken touching Risa.

Now I imagined that great pale body pressed against a dark opening while water rose on the other side.

Luna folded the route page.

“We move to the spur. We wait for the answer there.”

We did not take everyone.

Corr went ahead with a worker who knew the upper ground. Risa and I followed with Dot’s hand connected to the field cable the others were laying behind us. Liam carried rope and tools. Ade carried coverings, water, and the sort of food Priya said we would actually eat when tired.

Luna stayed at Scarecrow.

I wanted her beside me.

I also wanted someone at home who could make decisions without waiting for a message from a wet hill.

She knew both things.

At the crossing, she took my face between her hands.

“Tell us what you find. Tell us before you change the plan.”

“I will.”

“If you can’t do it, come back.”

I looked at her.

“Lucas.”

“I heard you.”

She kissed me, then stepped back.

Risa touched her hand as we passed.

“We’ll tell you,” she said.

The high route took us away from the nursery shelter.

I looked back once.

A worker stood beside the repaired lamp. Beneath the coverings, the carriers had drawn close around their young. Human figures moved along the inner path, carrying warm food and water towards the sleeping shelters.

From above, the two routes looked like parts of the same place.

Then the rain hid them.

I kept my eyes on the ground in front of me.

The route was steep in short stretches. My left leg managed them if I placed the foot carefully and gave it time before asking it to take my weight.

Liam pretended to be interested in a knot whenever I needed to stop.

After the third time, I told him he could simply wait.

“I am waiting.”

“With great subtlety.”

“It’s a talent.”

Risa glanced back from the next level place.

“Save some of it for the return.”

He grinned.

I was grateful for that too.

The spur was broader than I expected.

A strip of bare stone stood above the overflow hollow, sheltered on one side by a low ridge. Corr had marked the safe edge with rope between two sound projections.

From behind it, I could see the raised shoulder below us.

Water pressed against its far side.

Not a clean blue surface. Brown water carrying branches, leaves, pale foam, and things I couldn’t identify quickly enough as they turned.

The old overflow cut ran away to our right.

Its upper length was open to the sky. Loose stones lay along its floor. Farther down, it widened into the gravel basin, then turned out of sight.

I could see enough to understand the work in front of us.

I could not see enough to begin it.

“Nothing yet?” Risa asked.

“Nothing that opens the river.”

She nodded and settled beside the cable connection.

Liam helped me lower myself onto a flat stone.

There was no pride left in pretending the climb hadn’t tired my leg.

I needed what strength remained for something else.

The queen sent us a message while Ilse was still checking the outlet.

Dot’s voice came from the hand beside Risa.

“She asks whether you have reached the place.”

“Yes.”

Risa passed the answer through the connection.

The next reply took longer.

“She says you must not open the way before those below are clear.”

I looked at the water.

“She knows we won’t.”

Dot paused.

“She wants to be certain you know she has not changed that instruction because the water is reaching her.”

I swallowed.

The queen was holding a passage shut with her own body, and she was worried we might hurt the people on the other side of the blockage to save her.

“Tell her we understand.”

Risa watched my face as she sent it.

Then she reached across and took my hand.

For a moment, I held on harder than I meant to.

She didn’t complain.

I began with the part that would not release anything.

The overflow cut needed a clear floor. It also needed to survive the first rush without shedding enough loose material to block itself farther down.

Corr and the worker moved back beyond the marked edge.

I took the stones I could see and joined them into the sides of the cut, leaving the centre open. The large pieces stayed large. There was no reason to remake everything just because I could.

Beneath them, the exposed floor was uneven.

I shaped it into a shallow curve.

Water would spread across that curve rather than strike one narrow point. The outer side rose a little, directing it towards the basin instead of the spur beneath our feet.

I stopped often enough to look at the whole visible section.

Not a series of small repairs now.

One continuous thing.

Longer than anything I had made since the queen began teaching me.

The thought made my pulse quicken.

I let it pass before changing the next section.

The rain lightened for a few minutes.

That gave me a clearer view of the lowest part I could reach.

I used the time.

The stone there was softer, with a pale seam crossing the floor. I could read the ordinary material, but I didn’t like the way the current would strike it when we opened the shoulder.

If it began wearing away, the rest of the channel might follow.

I thought of the hardest surface I knew how to make.

Then of how badly a hard thing could fail if I treated hardness as the only property that mattered.

“Risa,” I said. “Tell Dot I need to ask about the bottom curve.”

She passed it on.

The queen could not see through my eyes.

I could not send my sight down the cable and make her understand the stone as I did.

So I described what I saw, and Corr made a little model in the wet grit beside us. Risa used Dot’s hand to send the image for discussion. The image could help explain the plan. It could not become a place where my power worked.

The queen’s answer came back in pieces.

Broader support beneath the turn.

Less thickness in the surface.

Do not join the hardest part rigidly across a place that must settle.

I looked at the seam again.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

That was the difference.

I had been thinking about making something that would refuse to break.

She was thinking about where it should be allowed to move.

I made the supporting stone first.

Then I changed a shallow layer along the exposed curve into diamond.

It was not a shining floor laid across a canyon.

Under the grey light, it looked almost disappointingly ordinary. A pale, wet strip following the lowest turn of the new channel, with separate joins where the support beneath it changed.

But I knew what it was.

I knew what I had asked the substance to become.

The strain arrived deep behind my eyes, a gathering pressure that made the rain seem briefly too loud.

I stopped.

Risa put a hand on my shoulder.

“How much?”

“More than the stone.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Enough that I’m stopping for a while.”

She nodded.

That was an answer she could use.

I ate what Ade handed me and drank without looking at the river.

The cup trembled once against my lip.

I set it down until my hand was steady again.

Ilse’s report reached us after the rain thickened.

The basin was empty. The lower channel was clear as far as it rejoined the canyon. She and the neighbouring workers had found no people or young along the banks that would take the first flow.

The neighbouring queen had moved her watchers to higher ground.

She would accept a measured release.

Not an uncontrolled break.

“How do we tell her when?” Liam asked.

Dot answered through the hand.

“The workers will carry the signal. We wait for their return confirmation before the first opening.”

We waited.

The water behind the shoulder rose high enough to begin spilling through a notch near its edge.

A narrow tongue of brown water ran down the cut I’d prepared.

It struck the lower curve, spread, and continued towards the basin.

For the first time that morning, I felt something other than dread.

It worked.

Not enough to change the river yet.

Enough to show us what the river might do.

Corr watched the thin flow reach the wider ground.

“Good line,” she said.

I nodded.

Then the queen’s next message arrived.

The packing beside her had begun to fail.

Her workers were replacing it. The chamber behind her was almost clear, but the way out narrowed farther up. If the water broke through too quickly, those still moving would lose the passage.

I could hear Risa trying to keep her voice level as she repeated it.

“How many?” Liam asked.

Dot did not give a number she couldn’t support.

“One group. Adults carrying young and food. They are moving as quickly as the passage allows.”

I stood.

My leg objected sharply enough that Liam reached for my elbow.

“I have you.”

“I know.”

The signal had not returned.

I looked at the shoulder.

At the water pressing against it.

At the narrow flow already taking the route we had made.

I could do it now.

That was the terrible part.

Nothing physical stopped me from opening the whole shoulder and letting the backed-up river find the new channel at once.

My power did not ask whether anyone was ready.

It never had.

Risa stepped into my line of sight.

“She asked us to wait.”

“I remember.”

“I know you do.”

She stayed there anyway.

I was glad.

When the confirmation came, I almost missed it.

A worker appeared on the far side of the basin, above the wet ground. It held its forelimbs in the agreed position, then moved clear.

Corr saw it first.

“Ready.”

Risa repeated it to Dot.

The queen’s acknowledgement returned through the connection.

Only then did I open the shoulder.

A small opening first.

I changed the exposed stone at the notch, lowering it by less than the width of my hand. Water pushed through, wider now, carrying loose grit ahead of it.

The sound changed.

The cut began to speak with the river’s voice.

We watched the flow reach the lower turn.

It struck the pale strip, spread into the wider curve, and rushed towards the basin.

No pieces came away.

The outer side held.

Corr raised an arm towards the watcher below.

The watcher signalled back.

Still clear.

I widened the opening.

The second release was louder.

Water lifted a branch from the old hollow and carried it along the channel. It turned broadside at the lower curve, struck the outer edge, and went over into the basin.

My breath caught until it was past.

Liam watched the shoulder.

“Can you stop it if it goes wrong?”

“Not by putting a wall in front of all of it.”

“Then?”

“I leave enough of the shoulder to control what comes through. Small changes. Keep the opening where I can see it.”

He nodded.

That was the plan.

It remained a plan even when the river became frightening enough to make me want something simpler.

I lowered another short section.

The water rose in the new channel, then settled as the flow spread across the basin below.

Risa counted the intervals aloud while Corr watched for the downstream signal.

I hadn’t asked her to.

It gave me something steady to follow.

For a little while, nothing improved.

The new channel was full of moving water.

The shoulder was open wider than my outstretched arms.

The backed-up river still pressed against the same mark on the far wall.

I stared at that mark until I could see it when I blinked.

“It takes time,” Corr said.

“I know.”

The words came too quickly.

I made myself look away.

Below us, the lower curve had become a white-edged rush. Mist rose from the place where it entered the basin. The hard strip beneath it was invisible now.

I could not alter what I could no longer see clearly.

If it failed, I would have to work somewhere else.

That mattered.

I told Liam and Risa, so the limit existed outside my own head.

Then I waited for another downstream signal.

When it came, I lowered the next visible part of the shoulder.

The stone on the left side split.

Not all of it.

A thin face peeled away above the opening, struck the water, and vanished into the flow.

The edge it left was wider than the one I had made.

For one moment, the river chose the size of the release instead of me.

Corr shouted.

Liam caught the back of my coat as I leaned forward.

I saw the new face.

I saw another crack running towards the top.

There was no time to rebuild the whole shoulder.

I took the exposed stone around the crack and drew it into a broad brace against the sound ridge beside it.

The first attempt was too narrow.

I felt it in the way the load met the shape, a concentration that made every part of my attention pull towards one point.

The queen’s lesson returned without words.

Wider.

Let it rest.

I spread the brace along the face, thickened the foot where I could see it meet solid ground, and let the centre become lighter.

The crack stopped moving.

Water hammered through the opening beneath it.

I held still, watching.

Nothing else fell.

Then something warm touched my upper lip.

Risa saw it before I did.

“Sit down.”

“It’s holding.”

“I can see that. Sit down.”

Liam helped me back from the rope.

The world seemed to move a fraction later than my head.

I sat hard enough to jar my leg and swore.

Ade put a dry cloth in my hand.

Blood marked it when I pressed it beneath my nose.

Not much.

Enough.

Risa crouched in front of me, her face very still.

“Look at me.”

I did.

“Are you seeing properly?”

“Yes.”

“Pain?”

“Behind my eyes. My leg when I sat.”

“Anything else?”

“Tired.”

She waited until I met her eyes again.

“How tired?”

“I can’t do another brace.”

The words hurt more than I expected.

Risa took my free hand.

“Then you don’t.”

Dot asked for the opening to remain as it was.

The neighbour’s watchers needed time to see what the extra flow was doing farther down. Our queen needed to know whether the pressure in her passages was changing.

For once, everything everyone needed was the thing I could still do.

Nothing.

I sat behind the rope with a cloth beneath my nose while the river used the shape we had given it.

Liam watched the brace.

Corr watched the basin.

Ade kept the coverings over our supplies and made sure the cable stayed clear of the runoff.

Risa watched me until I asked her to look at something more interesting.

“No.”

“There’s a river.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“A very large one.”

“Still no.”

I leaned my head back against the dry side of the ridge without tipping it upwards.

She adjusted the cloth in my hand.

The bleeding slowed.

After a while, it stopped.

The water kept moving.

The first change was small enough that Corr wasn’t certain.

She called Liam over.

They both looked at the mark on the far wall.

Then she asked me what I could see from where I sat.

“A pale edge above the water.”

“Was it there before?”

“No.”

Liam let out a breath so slowly that I realized he’d been holding it.

The river had fallen.

Only a little.

Enough to show a strip of wet stone beneath the mark.

Risa squeezed my hand.

We did not celebrate yet.

There was too much water still between that strip and the queen.

But when Dot passed the observation below, I heard something change in her voice.

She no longer had to say only that we were working.

She could say the work had begun to help.

The queen withdrew from the flooded opening before the middle of the day.

We learned it through the hand beside Risa.

The group behind her had cleared the narrow passage. Her workers had reinforced the temporary packing. The pressure was easing enough for her to move without surrendering the whole chamber to the river at once.

“She is clear?” I asked.

Dot answered carefully.

“She has reached the higher chamber. She is tired. There is damage to an outer plate. Her brood is attending her.”

I closed my eyes.

Risa’s hand tightened.

“Lucas?”

“Just a moment.”

I had been imagining her dying against that opening for so long that being told she had moved did not immediately remove the picture.

I needed a moment to replace it.

Alive.

On higher ground.

People around her.

When I opened my eyes, Risa was crying quietly.

She laughed when she saw me notice.

“Don’t look so alarmed.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

I lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.

The rain ran down the ridge behind us.

Neither of us moved for a while.

We stayed until the watchers confirmed the lower channel was carrying the release without flooding their occupied ground.

Then Corr and the worker took over the spur.

The opening would remain where it was. Nobody would go down into the cut. If the shoulder changed again, they would warn the people above and below and keep clear.

I wanted to make the brace larger before leaving.

I said so.

Risa looked at me.

Then at the blood on the folded cloth.

“No,” I said before she had to.

She nodded.

Liam helped me stand.

My leg trembled when I first put weight on it. Not new damage. Too much climbing, too long sitting in the cold, too little left in the rest of me to make up the difference.

We waited until it steadied.

Then we took the high path home.

The return took longer.

I did not enjoy it.

At one point, I had to sit on a flat stone while Liam stood below me and Risa held the rope above.

There was no elegant way to get to the next step.

I moved my good leg first, shifted my weight, and let Liam help with the rest.

“Very heroic,” I said.

“I’m impressed,” he replied.

“You’re a poor liar.”

“Anja says that too.”

Risa snorted.

The sound made the hillside feel a little less steep.

We stopped twice more before the crossing.

By the time Scarecrow came into view, I was concentrating on the chair waiting beneath the roof rather than the river behind us.

That was probably sensible.

It was also the only thing I had enough energy to do.

Luna met us at the crossing.

She took one look at my face and put a hand beneath my elbow.

“How much?”

“Too much for today.”

“Blood?”

“Stopped.”

Risa gave her the rest while Liam helped me sit.

The crack. The brace. The small fall in the water level. The queen reaching the higher chamber.

Luna listened without interrupting.

Then she crouched in front of me.

“You told them when you couldn’t do more?”

“Yes.”

Her hand settled against my cheek.

“Good.”

I had expected anger.

Perhaps she saw that.

“You don’t need me to tell you what your face already knows,” she said.

“No.”

“Then let Toby look at it.”

Toby was not impressed by the size of the channel.

He was interested in whether I could follow his questions, whether the headache was worsening, whether the bleeding had returned, and whether the pain in my thigh had changed from the old familiar pull.

I answered him.

Risa corrected me once when I described the climb as manageable.

“It was manageable,” I protested.

“With two people and a rope.”

Toby looked at me.

I accepted the correction.

He kept me sitting, gave me water, and asked someone to bring food.

No more power that day.

No trip below to inspect the queen.

No deciding that a shorter distance made an exception.

“You’ve become very specific,” I said.

“You’ve given me practice.”

Wren appeared beside him with a clean cloth and a bowl for herself.

She sat down, pulled his untouched food closer, and waited.

I watched him look at the bowl.

Then at me.

“Don’t,” he said.

“I hadn’t said anything.”

“You were thinking loudly.”

I ate my food.

So did he.

The queen’s message reached us while Sera was changing the wet cloth beneath my coat.

Dot stood at the edge of the shelter with all four lights visible.

“She would like you to rest,” she said.

Sera looked up.

“We agree.”

“She also says the passage is holding. No one remains behind the flooded opening. The neighbouring queen reports that the new water has reached the lower river without entering her nursery.”

Holt lowered his pencil.

“That’s the report I wanted.”

“So did I,” Dot said.

I looked at her.

There was something in her voice that had nothing to do with the accuracy of the message.

She had been afraid too.

I reached out, and one of her hands met mine.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I did not make the channel.”

“You made it possible to wait.”

Her hand stayed against mine.

After a moment, she said, “I will keep that distinction.”

Later, the queen asked whether I had been injured.

I told Dot the truth.

The strain. The bleeding. My tired leg. Toby making me sit where people could observe me without pretending that was what they were doing.

Dot passed it on.

The answer came back after I had nearly fallen asleep.

“She says the great queens did not work alone.”

I opened my eyes.

Sera was sitting beside me with the house drawing on her knees. She put it down.

Dot continued.

“They had broods to carry, watch, warn, and remember. Other queens argued with them. Some plans took many seasons. Their size did not make every change wise.”

I stared at the floor.

“Is that a memory?”

“A teaching passed to her. She is clear about that.”

I nodded.

“She says you listened today. That matters to her as much as the substance you changed.”

Outside, someone called for help moving a full water container.

Two people answered.

I thought about the worker holding the downstream signal. About Corr watching the basin while I stared at the brace. Risa putting herself between me and the shoulder before the confirmation came.

The work had been larger than anything I could have done alone.

Not because anyone had made me more powerful.

Because they had made it possible to use what I had without losing the reason for using it.

“Tell her I heard,” I said.

Dot’s lights shifted.

“I will.”

The water continued falling slowly through the afternoon.

Not all the way back.

The blockage remained, and the storm was still feeding the canyon from beyond our sight. The new cut gave the water somewhere else to go. It did not remove the need to watch it.

Ilse relieved Corr at the spur. The neighbouring brood kept its own watchers downstream. Dot recorded the changing marks and the times they were seen.

The nursery group stayed above with us.

Their lower chambers would need checking before anyone carried young back into them.

Nobody complained about the spare coverings remaining in use.

Brin brought another dry cloth to the outer shelter herself.

She did not go close to the carriers.

She left it with Ade, looked at the little shapes beneath the covering, and returned to the common roof.

I watched her sit down beside Tali.

There were things changing at Scarecrow that I had nothing to do with.

I found that comforting.

Risa came to sit with me after the evening meal.

Sera had gone to check the sleeping spaces with Priya. Luna was finishing the watch arrangements. The common shelter had grown quieter, though the rain had not.

Risa rested her feet on the low support beside my chair.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Then she said, “I was angry at the blood.”

“Not at me?”

“A little at you. Mostly at the blood.”

“That seems fair.”

She looked down at our joined hands.

“I know why you did it.”

“I know that doesn’t make watching easy.”

“No.”

Her thumb moved slowly across my knuckles.

“I don’t need you to promise you’ll never be frightened or hurt. I need you to keep telling us when you are.”

“I did today.”

“You did.”

There was warmth in the answer.

I leaned towards her.

She met me halfway, careful of the angle of my leg, and kissed me until I stopped thinking about the river.

Then she rested her forehead against mine.

“The baby still needs its shelf.”

“Tomorrow.”

“When Toby says.”

“When Toby says,” I agreed.

Luna and Sera helped us back to the room before the next watch changed.

I walked. Slowly, with my stick, and with someone close enough that I could ask for a hand without making it a ceremony.

The little bird stood on the window ledge.

Sera had added a second line to the shelf on the drawing, a small raised edge so nothing could roll off.

I looked at it for a long time.

“What?” she asked.

“Good design.”

She smiled.

“I’ve been learning.”

Luna closed the door against the wind.

Risa put the used cloth away where Toby could see it in the morning if he wanted to, then came to bed.

No one asked me to explain again what had happened at the shoulder.

No one asked what I might be able to do next.

For that night, I was allowed to be someone who had come home tired and needed the people beside him.

Below us, the queen was alive.

Beyond the bend, another queen’s nursery was dry.

The river had somewhere to go.

I slept.

Day 547. What I can do.

Opened a controlled overflow above the canyon obstruction. Existing cut cleared and shaped where visible. Supported the lower turn and changed a shallow wear surface to diamond. Separate joins. No blind work beneath the water.

Neighbouring brood cleared the outlet area and confirmed before release. Ilse checked the basin. Corr watched the flow. Queen held her passage while we waited. She insisted we wait for those downstream.

Shoulder face split during the release. Built a brace against visible sound stone. Strain too high. Nose bled briefly, headache, leg exhausted. Stopped. Returned with help. Toby says no more power today.

Water falling slowly. Queen reached higher ground. Outer plate damaged; her people caring for her. All cleared from behind the flooded opening. Neighbour’s nursery remains dry.

Channel and downstream ground need continued watches. Obstruction still there. Storm still feeding the river. Nursery group remains with us until its own ground is safe.

The queen says the planetary queens did not work alone.

Neither did I.

Sixty-four people home. No new arrivals. More dry space needed after the storm, and proper room to rest.

One small shelf still to make.