Scarecrow

The first morning with a hundred and four people began with a queue.

Not for food.

For the wash shelter.

I came around the corner with my stick and found six people waiting beneath the roof, each holding some combination of cloth, cup, and clean clothing. A seventh stood a little farther away, apparently hoping the queue would become shorter if he refused to acknowledge it.

Risa looked past me.

“We need another one.”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps two.”

“Yes.”

She took my hand before I could start considering the ground beside it.

“Breakfast. Then the drawing.”

“I was only looking.”

“I know how expensive looking can become.”

Behind us, someone laughed.

It was Sigmund.

He stood beside the water point with two full containers, looking almost as surprised by the sound as I was to hear it.

Risa went over and took one from him.

He began to object.

She raised an eyebrow.

He closed his mouth.

I decided he might settle in faster than I’d expected.

Day 552 was mostly numbers.

Bowls. Blankets. Portions. Sleeping places. How many people could wash before the water needed changing. How many dry clothes remained that fitted someone who had arrived wearing almost everything they owned.

Priya’s food page grew columns.

Wren’s list of names acquired marks beside the people who needed help reaching the latrine at night.

Toby asked for another table and got two people offering him theirs before he’d finished the sentence.

Holt watched it all from his chair.

“People,” he said when I sat down beside him.

“That is a fair assessment.”

“Always more complicated than roofs.”

“Roofs don’t usually complain.”

“They do. You just hear it later.”

He pushed the sleeping plan towards me.

We had agreed where the first additional rooms ought to go. Now Jonas and Benedikt were checking the ground after the storm, opening shallow inspection points where they could do so safely and keeping clear of the outer slope.

No one was moving into a room because I liked the look of the wall above it.

The ground had to carry it first.

For once, waiting for someone else’s report did not feel like doing nothing.

There were enough numbers to keep me occupied.

Sigmund brought Gareth to the table after breakfast.

Gareth Tull was older than us, with a flattened section on one ear and hands that looked as though they had spent most of his life finding difficult work.

He had helped keep the forty together after their shelter failed.

Now he stood with his cap between his hands and looked at our drawing.

“I used to fit partitions,” he said.

“In buildings?” Sera asked.

“No, in soup. Yes, buildings.”

She smiled.

He seemed relieved that she had.

“We’ve got people who can help with that,” he continued. “Not all of us need a bed and a bowl and nothing else.”

“Nobody said you did,” I told him.

“No. But people start doing it to themselves if they sit too long.”

Holt made a small approving noise.

I ignored him.

Sera turned the plan so Gareth could see the entrance.

“Tell me what you’d change.”

He pointed at the space behind the door.

“You’ll lose half that shelf whenever someone comes in with a coat on.”

Sera looked at me.

“I said that.”

“You said it would be inconvenient.”

“I was being kind.”

By midday, three of the new arrivals were helping plan the partitions, and Gareth had drawn a coat rail that nobody needed power to make.

I did not build anything large that day.

Toby’s opinion of my recovery had improved. His opinion of my ability to judge it had not improved at the same rate.

I walked the covered rail. I sat when my leg tired. I made Sera’s treatment and left the rest alone.

When I wanted to see how the new rooms were progressing, I went to look at the stakes and string instead of trying to turn them into walls.

Risa came with me.

She had started carrying a small piece of dry bread in her pocket for the mornings when food seemed less welcome than it ought to be.

She ate some while we stood beside the marked entrance.

“Where will the window be?” she asked.

I pointed.

“Morning light. High enough for privacy. A seat beneath it if the room’s occupants want one.”

“Everyone will want one.”

“Then we’ll need more seats.”

She looked at the ground, then up towards the inner ridge.

“I like thinking about that.”

“Seats?”

“People choosing things. Instead of being grateful for whatever keeps them dry.”

I put my arm around her.

We stood there long enough that Gareth came over to ask whether we were holding up the string or admiring it.

“Admiring,” Risa said.

“Good. I’ve got another job for you if it’s the first one.”

The mirror line returned to service on Day 553.

Not all of it.

The western mast had survived, though one fastening needed replacing. The shelter beneath the northern saddle was dry. A strip of path beyond it had lost its outer edge and remained closed until it could be inspected properly.

Wren sent our updated count through the points that could see one another.

One hundred and four.

Forty recovered from the east.

Warnings about the damaged paths.

A reminder to keep high-power ground calls off until a safe method had been agreed.

The last part took longer to explain than the numbers.

We sent it anyway.

By afternoon, a message from Harrow Dane reached the northern mirror.

It was short.

ALL ACCOUNTED FOR. LOWER GROUND DAMAGED. OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE NOT REQUIRED.

Holt read it twice.

“Did we offer assistance?” he asked.

“We asked if they needed anything,” Wren said.

“Efficient answer.”

I took the page.

Dane had helped us once when we needed a carrier more than we needed to be proud.

I had not forgotten that.

I also remembered the receiving code on his supplies, and the agreement he had wanted me to sign before he could tell me who decided whether our work became medicine.

Those memories did not cancel one another.

“Ask whether all twelve are still there,” Luna said. “And whether they have a safe route out.”

Wren went back to the mirror.

Sigmund listened while we discussed the reply.

He had been helping Gareth move a stack of finished boards and had stopped near the table when he heard Dane’s name.

“You know him?” I asked.

“Not well. We heard his base had transport. Asked about moving some of our injured before the storm.”

“What did he say?”

“That he needed confirmation of the load and somewhere safe to land. By the time we had both, the weather had turned.”

I nodded.

It was useful to know.

It was not proof that Dane had refused to help.

Sigmund glanced at me.

“You don’t like him.”

“I don’t know who he’s working with.”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

“No,” I admitted. “It wasn’t.”

Sigmund rested the boards against the wall.

“Our receiver started getting station instructions before anyone answered our request for a lift. We were told to remain available for collection. Nobody would tell us when.”

Luna looked up.

“The exact words?”

“As close as I remember. Gareth wrote some of it down. I’ll ask him.”

I thought of the pilot telling us to hold while seven people waited in the cleft.

Similar words did not make every situation the same.

They were worth putting beside one another.

Dane answered before the light failed.

TWELVE PRESENT. TRANSFER ARRANGED. KEEP APPROACH CLEAR.

There was no destination.

No time.

No request for our carrier, which we didn’t have, or our hull, which had never been large enough to carry twelve safely with their belongings.

Luna tapped the word transfer.

“We ask where.”

We did.

The light went before an answer came.

That evening, the queen sent us a different concern.

A brood beyond the northern ridge had felt an unfamiliar pattern moving above the ground.

Not the broad, painful blow of our tower call.

Something narrower. Repeated. Difficult for Dot to put into our words because the description contained direction and feeling in the same part of the message.

“Near Dane?” I asked.

“Near the country between his base and the ridge,” Dot said. “I cannot make the location more exact from this report.”

“Is anyone hurt?” Risa asked.

“No injury has been reported. The queen beyond the ridge is keeping her young deeper within her territory.”

Luna looked at the northern route.

“Could it be a shuttle?”

“It could be associated with something moving. That is all I can say.”

I remembered the spine beneath Meridian.

The answering movements below us when it had been in orbit.

I did not put that memory into the report as if it were evidence.

Dot knew the difference.

So did I.

Most of the time.

The first new sleeping room took shape on Day 554.

The ground had been checked. The drainage was marked. Gareth and Sera had argued the entrance into a position both could tolerate.

Toby watched me work from the shelter edge.

I shaped the ordinary stone for the base and the lowest part of the wall. Nothing hidden. Nothing deep. A broad footing on the exposed ground where we had agreed the load should go.

Then I stopped.

No headache.

No shaking hand.

My leg was tired from standing, but the feeling eased when I sat.

Toby waited a little longer before nodding.

“Keep it there for today.”

“I can do more.”

“I know.”

That made it harder to argue than if he’d doubted me.

Gareth came over, looked at the new base, and put his boot on the place where the door would sit.

“Good. Now the rest of us can be useful.”

He said it with a smile.

I let him.

Sera found me watching the work after midday.

The first frame was going up. Ordinary hands held ordinary pieces in place. People who had arrived needing help now argued about which end of a board was supposed to be up.

She sat beside me with her shoulder touching mine.

“Are you sulking?”

“Quietly.”

“Very considerate.”

“I wanted to finish it.”

“I know.”

She held out her hand.

I took it.

“I wanted to build the whole thing yesterday,” she said. “Then I wanted to help lift the frame this morning. My hands were tired after the smaller work, so I sat down and drew the shelves.”

I looked at her.

She didn’t make me say what I was thinking.

“I hate that it’s still difficult,” I said.

“So do I.”

We watched the frame rise.

Gareth called for someone to stop pushing before they made the doorway narrower than a person.

Sera laughed.

Then she leaned over and kissed me, slowly enough that I forgot the wall for a little while.

When she sat back, she said, “Come and look at my shelves.”

I went.

Dane’s next message arrived that afternoon.

TRANSFER CONFIRMED. NO OVERLAND MOVEMENT. NO VISITORS.

Luna read it in silence.

Risa stood beside her.

“Still no destination?”

“No.”

“And we’re supposed to stop asking?”

“That appears to be the intention.”

Holt took the page.

“People under pressure often sound unpleasant. Doesn’t make them prisoners.”

“No,” Luna said. “But they can still tell us where they expect to go.”

She asked Wren to send one more message.

We could receive all twelve if their arrangements failed. No material agreement required. We wanted confirmation after they reached their destination.

It took several exchanges to send clearly.

We waited for the reply.

It came just before the cloud covered the sun.

ACKNOWLEDGED. DO NOT INTERFERE.

I looked at those last three words for a long time.

Keir called the northern mirror station on Day 555.

Not by radio.

He came up the checked part of the path on foot and spoke to the people on watch.

His message reached us in pieces as the light allowed.

Dane’s carrier was grounded after damage to a landing support. The base’s lower retaining ground had shifted. One of the water-tank supports was being emptied before it failed.

An outside transport was expected the following day.

Keir wanted to know whether Scarecrow still had room if someone chose not to take it.

Luna did not wait for anyone else to speak.

“Yes.”

Wren repeated the answer back to her before sending it.

Yes. Room for any of the twelve. We would help arrange a route.

Keir had already gone down before the reply reached the watch.

They would send it at the next contact.

Risa sat back in her chair.

“Why ask that if everyone wants to go?”

“Perhaps someone doesn’t,” I said.

“Perhaps he doesn’t.”

“Perhaps.”

I wanted to know which possibility belonged to a real person.

The page did not tell us.

We decided to go to the northern saddle.

Not into Dane’s base.

The watched shelter at the saddle was ours to reach by the route we had already used, and it gave us a place from which to offer help directly if the transport failed to arrive.

Luna would come. Corr would meet us there after checking the approach. Dot would send a hand, with recorded information and local contact while within range.

I would take the small hull.

Before anyone agreed to that part, Toby made me test what I was proposing close to home.

We did it without passengers first.

A low lift. A short, level movement above clear ground. The ordinary hull always in sight, no attempt to carry myself without something beneath me.

Then Luna stepped in, and we repeated the short movement.

I put it down before the effort became a strain.

My head stayed clear.

Toby watched me climb out and sit.

“You’re not going there to build anything.”

“No.”

“Or repair his whole base because you dislike the way he’s asking for help.”

Luna folded her arms.

“I’ll remember that wording.”

“So will I,” Toby said.

I looked from one to the other.

“I was hoping to survive this conversation with some dignity.”

“Ambitious,” Risa said from behind me.

We left after Sera’s treatment and breakfast on Day 556.

Risa stayed at Scarecrow with the receiver, the new arrivals, and her brother, who had discovered three separate jobs that needed doing near wherever she happened to be sitting.

She was beginning to find it irritating.

I suspected she also found it comforting.

Before I climbed into the hull, she caught my sleeve.

“Keir helped bring Neri and Pella here.”

“I remember.”

“If he wants out, bring him.”

“We’ll offer.”

She nodded.

Sera kissed me next, then touched Luna’s shoulder.

“Both of you. Answers, if they’re available. Back before you’re too tired to make good decisions.”

Luna smiled faintly.

“That last part may be difficult to measure.”

“I’ve asked Corr to measure it for you.”

We went before she could add anything else.

The flight was slow and low.

There was no storm to fight now, only damp air and the occasional crosswind over the exposed ground. I kept the hull along the route I knew, with stopping places in mind rather than a straight line drawn through everything between us and the saddle.

Luna watched me as much as the ground.

“You’re doing that deliberately,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Subtle.”

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

We passed the western mast. A figure beside it raised an arm, and Luna answered.

Farther on, I set the hull down in a clear place and rested before the last stretch.

We drank.

We said very little.

For a while, it was simply pleasant to sit beside her without a river rising somewhere beneath us.

Then we went on.

Corr was waiting at the saddle shelter.

The damaged outer path remained marked and closed. The safe route towards the observation rise followed the inner shoulder instead.

From the shelter, we could see Dane’s high signal point when the cloud shifted.

The base itself lay beyond a fold in the ground.

Corr gave us the morning’s report.

Two people had been seen working beside the gate. One had carried packed bags from the storage building to the main building. The water tank on the damaged side was empty now.

No transport had arrived.

“Any reply to Keir?” Luna asked.

“The watch sent it. Someone at the base acknowledged. We don’t know who.”

I looked towards the signal point.

“Then we ask for him by name.”

We did.

For a while, there was no answer.

Dane answered instead.

He would meet us at the outer gate for ten minutes.

No entry.

No Teeming escort.

Luna read the message, then looked at Corr.

“Safe approach?”

“Wet in places. Clear enough to walk if we take the inner line.”

I looked down at my leg.

It would take time.

We had time for that much.

Luna sent our acceptance, including the fact that I would be walking slowly.

Dane’s reply was a single acknowledgement.

We left the hull at the saddle and followed Corr along the checked ground.

Dot’s hand travelled with us, quiet and watchful.

The gate was new since my last visit.

Or at least more substantial.

A fitted frame crossed the entrance between two sections of raised boundary wall. Behind it, the familiar buildings stood above a lower stretch of ground that had slumped towards the drainage cut.

The carrier sat beneath its screen, tilted slightly onto a temporary support.

I could see the problem with the landing leg from where we stopped.

I did not walk over and repair it without being asked.

Dane came to the gate wearing a coat I hadn’t seen before.

It was dry. Properly fastened. A small detail that annoyed me before I could stop it.

He looked at my stick.

“You’ve had trouble.”

“Yes.”

“Then you understand why we’re leaving.”

“I understand leaving,” I said. “I don’t understand where you’re going.”

His expression tightened.

“That’s arranged.”

Luna stood beside me.

“With whom?”

“The people providing transport.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the answer I have.”

I wondered whether he meant it was all he knew or all he intended to tell us.

His face did not help.

We told him the offer again.

All twelve could come to Scarecrow. We were crowded, but there was food, care, and room under cover. More permanent sleeping space was already being built.

No work agreement.

No payment for being allowed to arrive.

Dane looked past us towards the ridge.

“You’ve got over a hundred now.”

“Yes,” Luna said.

“And those things under your shelters.”

“People who helped bring survivors home.”

He gave a short shake of his head.

“You don’t know what you’re inviting in.”

I looked through the gate at the bags stacked beside the main building.

“Then tell us what you’re expecting.”

For the first time, he seemed to understand why we had come.

Not to argue about whether his base was better than ours.

Not to ask for his supplies.

To see who was taking twelve people away, and whether those people knew enough to choose it.

Dane’s hand closed around the gate frame.

“We have guaranteed onward transport.”

“To where?”

“A receiving facility.”

“On Avalon?”

He hesitated.

That hesitation frightened me more than any of his sharp answers had.

Keir appeared beside the carrier.

He saw us and stopped.

Dane looked back.

“Finish the securing.”

Keir remained where he was.

Luna raised her voice just enough to carry through the gate.

“Your message reached us. The answer is yes.”

Dane turned back quickly.

“What message?”

Keir came a few steps closer.

“I asked if there was somewhere else to go.”

“You know where we’re going.”

“I know there’s transport.”

The two of them looked at one another.

I could feel the narrowness of the gate between us, though it was wide enough for the carrier.

I looked at Keir.

“We can take you to the saddle now. We can arrange the rest from there.”

He glanced towards the main building.

There were people inside. I saw a woman standing near the doorway with a bag against her knee.

“I need to talk to the others.”

“All right,” I said.

Dane opened his mouth.

Luna spoke first.

“We’ll remain at the saddle until the transport arrives or until the light goes. Anyone who wants the overland route can ask for it.”

Keir nodded.

Dane’s face had gone still.

“The approach must be clear when the shuttle comes.”

“We won’t stand in it,” Luna said.

I wanted to stay at the gate.

I also knew staying there would turn a conversation into a confrontation without giving us any more information.

Keir had heard us.

So had the woman in the doorway.

We went back along the inner path.

At the first resting place, Luna sat beside me.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“That Dane doesn’t know as much as he wants us to believe.”

“Or knows more.”

“Yes.”

Neither possibility was comforting.

Corr kept watch along the path while I drank.

Dot’s hand rested on the stone between us.

“His wording resembles the station’s material documents,” Dot said.

“Receiving facility?”

“Guaranteed onward transport. Transfer confirmed. Some phrases recur. That does not establish the identity of the arriving craft.”

“I know.”

I looked towards the base.

“But it tells us which questions to keep.”

We waited on the observation rise above the saddle.

From there, part of Dane’s landing area was visible between the nearer ridges. Corr had brought the field glass from the watch point.

I looked through it once, then lowered it.

Dane’s people were still moving bags.

Keir stood beside the gate with another person I couldn’t identify at that distance.

Nobody came up the path.

Luna sat with the mirror notes on her knee and wrote a message for Scarecrow: contact made, offer understood, twelve present by Dane’s statement, outside transfer still expected, destination unconfirmed.

The light allowed the message to go through the northern point and on towards the western mast.

No private words spoken at the gate were made into facts we hadn’t established.

I found myself grateful for that care.

Fear made a convincing storyteller.

I had enough stories of my own without letting it write the report.

Dot’s hand stirred against the stone.

“Local contact from the queen.”

I looked up.

The message had reached the saddle through the guide waiting at the edge of our ally’s territory and the short connection to the watch.

The unfamiliar moving pattern had returned.

Closer now.

Our queen had recognized something in the description passed by the northern brood. A carried signal associated with old captivity. She could not tell us who was using it.

Luna put down the notes.

“Is she asking us to leave?”

“She asks us not to approach it.”

I looked towards Dane’s landing ground.

The air above it was empty.

For another few seconds.

Then Corr pointed.

The shuttle came over the far ridge without a call we could hear.

Small enough to fit the marked ground.

Larger than Dane’s carrier.

It moved with a steadiness that made me think of something sliding along a line no one else could see.

There was no bright station marking on its side.

The hull was grey.

Luna handed me the field glass.

I lifted it carefully.

Ordinary glass. Reflected light. The craft itself in my line of sight, enlarged enough that I could follow its shape as it turned.

For an instant, I tried to understand the surface the way I understood the stones beneath my boots.

Nothing resolved.

The familiar fog met me.

I lowered the glass.

Luna saw my face.

“The metal?”

“Yes.”

“Certain?”

“The same failure to read it. That’s what I’m certain of.”

I did not know its composition.

I knew I could not change it.

I knew I had met that refusal before.

The shuttle turned above the landing marks.

Three forms lay along the side of its hull near the lower edge, dark against the grey.

Not painted numbers I recognized.

I asked Corr to look before saying what I thought.

Corr studied them through the glass, then drew them on the page beside Luna’s notes.

A hooked line.

Two close strokes beneath a larger curve.

A shape broken by the angle of the descending hull.

I opened the copy of the marks we had brought from Scarecrow.

Two matched clearly.

The third might have, but we had not seen all of it.

Meridian.

Holt’s old ship memories.

The marks associated with the people who had taken silver from queens.

Luna looked between the two pages.

“Keep the uncertainty on the third.”

I nodded.

My hand had become cold around the pencil.

We sent a warning towards the base.

The signal point was still manned.

Unknown craft. Material and marks match objects already associated with danger. We recommend delaying departure and confirming destination. Our offer stands.

The reply came quickly enough that someone must have been waiting.

TRANSFER AUTHORIZED. KEEP CLEAR.

“By whom?” Luna said aloud.

The mirror could not hear her anger.

It could only carry the question we sent next.

No answer came.

Below, the outer gate began to open.

Dane stood beside it.

I could see him clearly enough now to recognize the way he held one shoulder a little higher than the other when he wanted to appear relaxed.

Keir was no longer beside the carrier.

I searched the visible ground for him.

The main building blocked part of the view.

I could not find him.

That did not tell me where he had gone.

It did not make me feel better.

The shuttle settled inside the boundary.

Its landing feet touched down without the heavy movement I expected from something that size. Dust lifted around them, damp enough that it fell again almost at once.

A seam appeared along the side facing away from us.

The main building hid most of it.

Luna watched through the glass.

“Can you see anyone?” I asked.

“No.”

Dane went through the gate.

Two of his people carried bags after him.

Then the gate closed.

Not hurriedly.

Not as if something had burst through behind them.

It closed with the ordinary movement of a person pulling a gate shut because they had decided they wanted it shut.

That was worse in a way I didn’t know how to explain.

Corr checked the path behind us.

Still empty.

Nobody had chosen our route while we could see it.

Or nobody had reached it.

We did not know which.

I stood too quickly.

Luna caught my wrist.

“What would you do?”

“Go back to the gate.”

“And then?”

I looked at the shuttle.

At the hull I could not read.

At the closed entrance and the twelve people we had offered to take with us.

“Ask again.”

“We can ask from here.”

“They may not be answering.”

“No.”

She stood beside me.

“If someone calls for help, we move. If someone comes up the path, we meet them. But we do not force our way into a landing ground with an unknown craft and make twelve frightened people stand between us and whoever is aboard.”

I hated that she was right.

I hated more that being right did not make the waiting harmless.

Dot’s hand touched the stone beside mine.

“The queen is asking whether you are still outside the boundary.”

“Yes.”

“She asks you to remain there.”

I sat down.

Not because I had stopped wanting to go.

Because wanting was not a plan.

We stayed until the light began to go.

The shuttle remained on the landing ground.

No clear view of its open side returned. The people at the signal point left their post. Our final request for confirmation went unanswered.

At the saddle, the watch kept the shelter open and the overland offer ready.

Corr stayed with them.

Luna and I returned to Scarecrow before tiredness and darkness made the flight an additional problem.

I stopped once along the way.

The hull settled on clear ground, and I sat with my hands flat against its edge while the evening cooled around us.

Luna didn’t ask whether I was angry.

She knew.

After a while, she put her hand over mine.

“We’ll check in the morning.”

“Yes.”

It was not enough.

It was what we had.

Risa met us at the crossing.

She had the written message in her hand.

“Keir?”

“We spoke to him,” I said. “He heard the offer.”

“Did he come?”

“No.”

She looked at Luna.

“We don’t know what he decided,” Luna said. “We couldn’t see everyone after the shuttle landed.”

Risa folded the paper carefully.

Behind her, the new room had part of its roof in place. Someone inside was laughing about a fastening that had gone through the wrong hole.

A child called for a cup.

The nursery lamp glowed beside the outer path.

I had spent the afternoon watching a closed gate.

Coming home to all those unfinished, ordinary things hurt more than I expected.

Sera reached us a moment later and put a hand against my cheek.

“You’re back.”

“Yes.”

She didn’t ask me to make that sound like a victory.

We gave the report at Holt’s table.

Dane’s words.

Keir’s question.

The damaged carrier.

The grey shuttle.

Two clear matching marks, one incomplete.

No visible occupants. No confirmed destination. No proof of anyone boarding beyond the parts of the ground we could see.

Holt listened without interrupting.

When I finished, he looked at Dot.

“And the queen?”

“She recognized a pattern associated with captivity. She did not identify the people aboard.”

He nodded.

“Write that exactly.”

We did.

Sigmund stood near the doorway, silent until the others began moving away.

Then he asked, “You offered to take all twelve?”

“Yes.”

“And he said no.”

“Yes.”

Sigmund looked towards the new sleeping room.

For a moment, I thought he would tell me that was the end of our responsibility.

Instead, he said, “Keep the beds available until we know.”

That night, Risa put the little bird back on its shelf after wiping dust from it with her sleeve.

Sera had fallen asleep with one hand tucked beneath her cheek. Luna sat beside the bed, removing the last of the mud from her boots.

I watched Risa set the bird so its uneven feet both touched the wood.

“Keir waited,” she said.

I knew what she meant.

When Neri and Pella had needed time to get into his carrier. When someone had been afraid of moving. When the journey had taken longer because people hurt.

“He did.”

“I hope someone waits for him.”

I held out my hand.

She came and sat beside me.

We left the lamp burning a little longer than usual.

At the northern saddle, another lamp was still burning for anyone who came up the path.

Day 552–556. Dane’s gate.

First additional sleeping room under construction. Ground checked. Base and lower wall shaped on Day 554; others doing frames, partitions, roof, and fittings. More washing space planned. Food and water measures revised for one hundred and four.

Recovery continuing. Short controlled hull test before journey. No headache during flight. Rested both ways. Sera’s treatment continued each morning.

Dane reports twelve present and transfer arranged. No destination supplied. Keir asked whether someone could come to us instead. Answer yes. Spoke to him directly at the gate. He wanted to talk to the others.

Carrier grounded with landing-support damage. Lower ground at base shifted. Water tank emptied. Offer to receive all twelve made directly and repeated by mirror. No agreement or payment required.

Grey shuttle arrived Day 556. Surface unreadable in the same way as the spine material. Two marks match our copies; third incomplete. Queen recognized reported signal as associated with captivity. Occupants unknown.

Dane opened the gate. Shuttle landed inside. Side opening obscured by building. Gate closed. No clear observation of boarding. Final messages unanswered. Craft still there when light failed.

Northern shelter remains open. Check at first light.

Keir once waited for our people.

We are keeping a place for him.