Scarecrow

The first argument in the new sleeping room concerned a hook.

Cass wanted it beside the door. Edan wanted it farther along the wall, where a wet coat would not brush someone’s face when they came in. Tali thought both of them should wait until the coat rail outside had been finished.

I heard all three opinions while carrying a cup past the doorway.

Then Nara said, “We could have two hooks.”

There was a silence.

I kept walking before anyone could ask me to settle it.

At the common shelter, Sera looked up from the next room’s plan.

“Trouble?”

“Government.”

“Already?”

“They’ve reached the hook question.”

She smiled and moved a pencil out of my way.

“They’ll survive.”

I sat beside her with my leg stretched beneath the table.

It was Day 558. The rain had stopped. Water still moved through the overflow, but the lower marks had fallen far enough that the watchers could see parts of the original canyon floor again.

Nobody was returning to the flooded passages yet.

Nobody was pretending the storm had left the ground as we’d found it.

But six people had a room in which to argue about hooks.

That seemed worth a good deal.

There was no answer from Dane’s people.

The northern watch had found no one along the checked approaches. Our notice remained inside the gate. No one had moved it or written beneath it.

A clear view from the rise showed the same empty landing ground.

The marks were still there.

Holt put the latest report beside yesterday’s instead of replacing it.

Luna watched him.

“Anything from the queens?”

Dot stood near the table, one hand holding the corner of a page flat against the breeze.

“Two replies. Both report the moving pattern during the night of the departure. Neither can follow it beyond the edge of its own reach. They disagree about its direction.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Enough that I will not draw a line between them.”

Holt nodded.

“Good.”

I wanted a line.

I wanted a place on a map where the absence of thirteen people became a journey we could begin.

Instead, I helped Dot write down the two reports separately.

It was useful work.

I was getting tired of useful work that did not tell us where to go.

The northern saddle was becoming more than a watch point.

It had water, a roof, a lamp, and a place for someone to sleep if they reached it after dark. Now it also had copies of missing names and the promise we’d made to anyone who chose the path from Dane’s base.

Luna wanted it better prepared.

Not larger simply because we had become frightened.

Easier to use in the dark. More dry food. A second way to the inner ridge if the damaged outer path failed farther back. A sheltered place to signal from when the wind made the high mirror difficult.

“Someone coming up from below shouldn’t have to cross the open crest to ask for help,” she said.

I looked at the drawing.

“There isn’t a second sight line from inside the shelter.”

“Then we make a place to reach the one we have without standing in the wind.”

“A screen?”

“For the short term. And a path inspection before anyone uses the inner side as an escape route.”

Holt tapped the map.

“Keep the jobs separate. A screen doesn’t make bad ground good.”

Luna nodded.

She had been listening to him long enough to know when he was repeating something because it mattered.

Sigmund offered to go.

Luna looked at him across the table.

“You’ve been home for a week.”

“Five days.”

“Exactly.”

“I can carry supplies.”

“Yes. We need some of them carried to the new wash shelter.”

He looked towards the building work.

Then back at her.

For a moment, I saw the old argument arrive in his face. The one about who was useful, who got chosen, and who remained behind while someone else did the important thing.

He looked at me.

I raised my cup.

“There’s a very complicated hook situation.”

Risa made a noise into her sleeve.

Sigmund stared at us both.

Then he shook his head.

“Fine. Where do you want the supplies?”

Luna showed him.

He took the page and went.

After he had gone, Risa leaned against me.

“I expected that to take longer.”

“So did I.”

“He may be tired.”

“He may be learning.”

She considered that.

“Possibly both.”

I spent the afternoon on the next room’s foundation.

The work was modest enough that Toby did not need to stand over me to make his point.

I shaped the exposed base on checked ground. I left the drainage open. I gave the doorway a level approach, because the first room had already taught us that people carrying blankets did not always look down before stepping.

Then I sat while Gareth and Benedikt checked the frame positions against Sera’s measurements.

Nothing hurt behind my eyes.

My leg tired in the ordinary way.

That distinction had begun to matter more than the amount of stone I could change.

Risa arrived carrying two cups.

She gave me one and drank from the other before sitting down.

“There’s the latest complaint,” she said.

“About me?”

“The water point.”

“How disappointing.”

“The lever’s easy to reach. The place to put a full bowl isn’t, if you’re holding a stick.”

I looked towards it.

She touched my sleeve.

“Tomorrow.”

“I could do a small ledge.”

“Tomorrow, when we have the height right for the people using it.”

I looked at my own stick beside the chair.

“Yes,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

That evening, Dot brought the queen a question from the newest survivors.

How were they supposed to know which Teeming were safe?

It had been asked quietly, without accusation, by a woman who still chose an inner sleeping place as far from the nursery covering as we could arrange.

I thought it was a fair question.

I also suspected we had no answer she would find comforting.

Dot returned to the common shelter after speaking below.

“The queen says you cannot decide that from a body’s shape,” she told us.

A few people shifted on the benches.

“She can tell us which members of her brood she has sent. She can ask neighbouring queens to identify their guides. She cannot promise that every stranger means the same thing.”

“So we need names,” Gareth said.

“Names, routes, agreed signs, and time,” Dot replied.

Holt looked at the twelve human names on the edge of his table.

“Familiar enough.”

Nobody laughed.

But several people nodded.

The guide demonstrated the stop signal near the outer crossing.

Raised limb. Stillness. Space left between bodies.

We knew it now.

The new arrivals did not all know it, and knowing what a gesture meant while sitting beneath a roof was different from remembering it when a large creature came around a corner.

Luna asked us to practise.

Not as a game.

Not with anyone required to stand close to the guide if they weren’t ready.

A person raised a hand. The guide stopped.

The guide raised a limb. The person stopped.

They waited.

Then Dot helped with the next question: may I pass?

It took longer than I expected.

At one point, Sigmund lowered his hand too early and the guide remained still, uncertain whether the request had ended.

Risa told him to try again.

He did.

I watched him hold his hand steady without a spark moving over his skin.

There were many ways to be stronger than we’d been at training.

I hoped he knew I could see that one.

Luna left for the northern saddle after breakfast on Day 559.

Sera’s treatment was finished. The work for the morning had been divided. The nursery group had food, and the queen’s injured plate was improving slowly beneath her workers’ care.

There was no emergency in the departure.

I think that was why I kept watching Luna fasten her coat.

Corr would remain at the saddle from the previous watch. Ilse and Benedikt would go with Luna, carrying supplies and the fittings for the wind screen. Two workers from our queen would meet them along the permitted part of the route and help check the ground.

Dot’s hand went with the party to record the inspection.

There would be no live images from it once they moved beyond the local connection. Messages would come through the mirrors and through the guides where that was possible.

We repeated those limits before they left.

Luna caught me looking at her.

“What?”

“Nothing useful.”

“Say it anyway.”

I stepped closer.

“I’ll miss you tonight.”

Her expression changed.

Then she put both hands against my coat and kissed me.

“That’s useful.”

Risa embraced her next, and Sera made her promise to let Benedikt carry the heavier bag.

Luna promised with suspicious speed.

Sera inspected the bags herself.

Only then did they go.

Their first report arrived in the afternoon.

At the saddle. All present. Inner inspection begun. No visitors from Dane’s base.

Luna had added that the wind screen would have to stand farther back than the drawing suggested because the exposed crest funnelled gusts around its edge.

Sera read that part twice.

Then she adjusted the copy of the plan on our table.

“She’s right,” she said.

“You sound surprised.”

“I’m annoyed she found it before I did.”

I put a small ledge beside the water point that afternoon, after Nessa, Ellis, and two people using sticks had tried the height with an ordinary board.

It took less effort than arguing about it would have.

I made the edge rounded and left a rough patch beneath the place where a cup might slide.

Then I watched Ellis use it without having to pin his bowl between his hip and the post.

He looked at me.

“About time.”

“You’re welcome.”

He smiled and took his water away.

The second report from the saddle came close to evening.

The inner route was usable on foot for most of its length. One wet turn remained marked for repair or an alternate approach. Nobody would be sent along it in the dark without a guide.

The screen fittings were in place.

Luna had made a temporary curved ice barrier against the worst of the wind while Benedikt secured the covering behind it.

Wren read that line aloud.

Holt looked up.

“Ice.”

“Temporary,” Sera said.

“I heard.”

“It’s a windbreak, not a promise that the weather has become cooperative.”

He grunted.

I knew the sound. It meant he agreed but wanted someone to remember the warning anyway.

At the bottom of the page, Luna had sent three words for us.

ALL WELL HERE.

I read them more often than the inspection report.

We had a visitor below before nightfall.

Not a human.

A worker from the neighbouring brood beyond the northern ridge had come to our queen with a warning.

Dot brought it up after making certain she had understood the timing.

The unfamiliar pattern had returned to the north.

Stationary this time, or seeming so from the places where it could be felt.

Not the ordinary movements of one brood speaking with another.

Some of the neighbouring queen’s workers were distressed. Others had stopped answering simple route instructions consistently.

Liam put down the bowl he was carrying.

“Like the tower?”

“Not exactly,” Dot said. “Our tower hurt the queens. This report describes pain and interference, but also a repeated directional demand. I do not yet understand how those fit together.”

“Near the saddle?” I asked.

“The message says near the northern routes. That is not an exact position.”

I looked towards the darkening ridge.

“We warn Luna.”

Wren was already moving.

There was just enough light for the first part to go.

UNFAMILIAR PATTERN REPORTED NORTH. POSSIBLE DISTRESS AMONG BROODS. REQUEST STATUS AND RETURN IF ROUTE UNCERTAIN.

The northern mirror answered through the western point.

MESSAGE RECEIVED. NO DISTRESS OBSERVED HERE. WATCHES DOUBLED. WILL REVIEW AT FIRST LIGHT.

Luna had chosen to remain beneath a roof on known ground rather than take a party down a route with one wet turn in the dark.

I understood the decision.

I hated the distance anyway.

Risa stood beside me while Wren recorded the acknowledgement.

“She knows,” Risa said.

“Yes.”

“She has Corr and Ilse.”

“And Benedikt.”

“And the guides.”

I nodded.

Listing the people did not make them safe.

It reminded me that Luna was not sitting alone at the end of my fear.

The queen sent a guide towards the saddle during the night.

Not to order the neighbouring brood home.

She could not do that.

To carry questions, offer a familiar sign, and learn whether the new pattern could be located without anyone approaching it.

Dot explained that while we sat at the table with the lamps turned low.

Holt had gone to bed after leaving instructions about the first-light signals. Sera was asleep in our room. Sigmund had taken a late turn at the receiver so Risa could rest.

She was not resting yet.

Neither was I.

“Could the shuttle have left something?” she asked.

“Yes,” Dot said. “But we did not find it, and I cannot tell you that it did.”

“Could something else have arrived?”

“Yes.”

“Could it be one of the queens?”

Dot took longer with that answer.

“A queen could send a strong pattern. Our queen says this one has features associated with imposed signals. She has not heard enough to identify a source.”

I looked at the paper in front of us.

Nothing on it was a location.

Eventually, Risa took the pencil out of my hand.

“Come to bed.”

I did.

Neither of us slept well.

Day 560 began with a clear sky and a bad report.

Luna’s party had encountered two unfamiliar workers on the outer approach. Both stopped when signalled. One seemed unable to remain still, moving its forelimbs repeatedly against the ground as though testing something beneath it.

The guide from our queen had not reached the saddle yet.

Luna was keeping everyone inside the checked area while Corr watched the lower path.

She wanted the northern queen told exactly where the two workers were.

Dot carried the message below.

I made Sera’s treatment with my hands steady and my attention fixed on the task because it had to be.

After she had taken it, she caught my wrist.

“Now tell me.”

I told her.

She closed her eyes for a moment.

Then she stood.

“I’m getting the receiving space ready.”

“For who?”

“Whoever needs it.”

I followed her out.

The next mirror message took longer.

There were interruptions as the western watch repeated individual groups of signs and the northern point confirmed them.

A word lost could change whether we were reading a warning or a request.

We waited for the whole message before acting on it.

MORE BROOD ON LOWER APPROACH. NOT ADVANCING TOGETHER. SOME STOPPING. SOME DO NOT. NO FIRE. NO INJURIES. PREPARING INNER ROUTE.

I read the words twice.

Not advancing together.

That mattered.

Something was happening to individuals, not a single mind deciding to turn against us.

It did not make the path safer.

Liam came to stand beside me.

“Do we go?”

I looked at the map.

Then at the last part of the message.

“She has an inner route,” I said. “We ask what she needs at our end.”

Wren sent it.

While we waited, I went to check the hull.

There was nothing wrong with it.

I checked anyway.

Ordinary material. Sound joins. Enough room for me and another person with a small load, or for an injured passenger if we left most of the load behind.

Not enough to bring a whole outpost home in one flight.

I kept that fact beside every plan that tried to turn itself into a rescue before we had the information.

Risa found me beside it.

“I’ve put water and coverings by the gate,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Toby’s preparing a bag.”

I nodded.

She watched me inspect a fastening that had already passed my inspection.

“Lucas.”

I stopped.

“I know what you’re doing.”

“So do I.”

“Then come and hear the next message with me.”

I put the fastening down and went.

The queen’s answer arrived before Luna’s.

The northern queen was trying to recall her workers.

Some responded.

Some turned, then resumed moving towards the saddle as though another instruction had interrupted the first.

She could feel pain along the pattern they were following.

Our queen had asked whether they were attacking the humans deliberately.

The answer was not simple enough for Dot to give us at once.

Finally she said, “The northern queen recognizes her own people. She does not recognize the demand moving through them as hers.”

Risa pressed her palms against the table.

“The Sorn.”

“The method is associated with them,” Dot said. “The person or device using it has not been found.”

I thought of the scar beneath the queen’s plate.

Of the grey shuttle descending without a call we could hear.

Of young held hostage while their parents were made to move where someone else wanted.

“Can she stop it?” I asked.

“She is trying to reach them. It is not the same as removing the source.”

Sigmund had been listening from beside the doorway.

“Can we interfere with it?” he asked. “Electricity, a counter-signal—”

“No untested pulse,” I said.

The speed of my answer silenced the table.

I looked at Toby.

He stood beside the medical bag with one hand resting against the strap.

His face had gone still.

I made myself speak more carefully.

“We nearly lost him once doing something we didn’t understand. Our tower hurt queens because we thought a call was only a call. We don’t send another pattern into people until we know what it will do.”

Sigmund looked at Toby, then at Risa.

“All right.”

No argument.

Risa let out a breath.

“But we can prepare to cut power to something,” she said, “if we find an ordinary supply we understand.”

“Yes,” I said. “If.”

Dot recorded the distinction.

I was glad she did.

Fear made conditions easy to forget.

Luna’s next message came near midday.

INNER ROUTE BLOCKED BY MOVING BROOD. PEOPLE AT SHELTER. ICE BARRIERS HOLDING. DO NOT SEND WALKING PARTY ALONG LOWER APPROACH.

Then a count.

Four humans.

Luna, Corr, Ilse, Benedikt.

Three allied Teeming present now, including the guide who had reached them from below.

Dot’s hand intact.

No injuries reported.

I read the count until it became a set of faces rather than figures.

Luna had kept them together.

The guide had reached her.

There was still a shelter.

There was still a way to speak.

Then I read the warning again.

Do not send a walking party.

Liam had already begun taking off the larger pack he’d brought from the store.

He looked at me.

“We’d just add people she has to protect.”

“For that route, yes.”

He put the pack down.

I knew what that cost him.

I did not thank him as if obedience were the point.

I handed him the map and asked him to help me find another approach.

We had two ordinary choices.

Reach the saddle from above in the hull, if the air and the landing ground remained usable.

Or reach a more distant part of the ridge and walk in along ground we hadn’t fully checked after the storm.

Neither choice was improved by calling it simple.

Holt arrived with his support under one arm and a look that made me wonder who had told him to stay in bed.

“What’s she asked for?”

“A clear approach. We don’t have one confirmed.”

“Then ask her where she can see a landing.”

Wren sent the question.

Sera stood beside the relief supplies with a pencil tucked behind her ear.

“Can the queen move her people to make a corridor?”

“She can ask them,” Dot said. “She can also send her own people to mark where the compelled ones are moving. She cannot make a safe corridor by naming it.”

Sera nodded.

“I meant the ones she can still reach.”

“I will ask.”

The conversation continued around me.

For once, I did not have to produce every useful question myself.

I tried to let that help.

The first drawing from Luna was crude because mirrors did not carry pictures the way Dot’s camera did.

She sent bearings, distances paced from the shelter before the trouble began, and references to the known windward wall.

Wren put them on the map as they came through.

The open ground west of the shelter was occupied by moving brood.

The high crest remained visible but exposed.

A narrow patch beside the inner ridge might take the hull if it stayed clear.

Might.

Luna had made two ice walls between the shelter and the lower approach. A curved section joined the original windbreak, giving the people inside somewhere to stand out of direct view.

She had left openings for the guides and for anyone who could respond to a stop signal.

The allied workers were helping hold the damaged screen supports and keeping frightened strangers from blundering directly into the humans.

An outpost made partly of ice.

Not because Luna had meant to build one.

Because that was the material she could give them quickly enough.

Dot brought another message from below.

The queen wanted me at the upper meeting place.

I nearly said there wasn’t time.

Then I looked at the mirror, still working through Luna’s latest reply, and understood that I could spend the next several minutes staring at reflected light or ask someone who knew more than I did.

Risa came with me.

The queen did not ask us to go deep.

She met us at the nearer shelf, moving carefully around the plate still being tended.

The guide who usually carried the repaired lamp was with Luna.

Another worker stood beside her in its place.

I noticed the difference immediately.

So did Risa.

The queen indicated the empty space beside the shelf where the guide often waited.

Dot translated.

“She knows her people are there too.”

I nodded.

“I haven’t forgotten them.”

The queen’s answer came before I had finished speaking.

“She knows.”

She showed us the pattern without repeating the harmful signal.

Separate stones on the shelf.

A line between one group and the place where its queen stood.

Another line laid across the first.

A worker moved a stone towards its queen. The queen stopped the worker and indicated the crossing line.

Then the stone moved away again.

Dot listened to the accompanying explanation.

“It is using responses that belong to them,” she said. “Attention. Alarm. Movement towards something important. The pressure changes which response takes precedence.”

“Are they still aware?” Risa asked.

The queen touched the first line.

“Yes.”

The answer hurt.

I thought of a worker turning towards its own queen, then being pulled back into a movement it hadn’t chosen.

“What can we do?” I asked.

The queen moved the crossing line away from the stones.

“Find where the imposed pattern enters,” Dot said. “Stop that, if we can. Keep distance and barriers between bodies until then.”

“Without hurting the brood.”

“If possible,” Dot said carefully. “She knows you may have to protect people immediately. She is asking us to remember that those approaching may be trying to stop too.”

I looked at the separate stones.

“I’ll remember.”

The queen also gave us something practical.

A route her workers could take towards the high side of the saddle, approaching beneath the ridge rather than through the occupied lower path.

It was not suitable for humans.

It might let them reach the ground near the narrow landing patch and show us whether it remained clear.

She would send them now.

Risa touched the edge of the shelf.

“Thank you.”

The queen lowered her forelimb beside it.

“She is worried about Luna,” Dot said.

I looked up.

I knew she considered the people at Scarecrow part of her brood.

I knew Luna was included in that.

Hearing the name made the knowledge different.

“She knows the one who makes cold,” Dot continued. “The one who waited while the others crossed. She wants her home.”

For a moment, I couldn’t answer.

Risa did it for me.

“So do we.”

When we returned above, the messages had become shorter.

Not because Wren had become careless.

Because the northern point was having trouble keeping the mirror aligned.

MORE PRESSURE LOWER WALL.

Then a pause.

GUIDE INSIDE.

Another pause.

LANDING PATCH NOT CLEAR.

I stopped beside the table.

Sera looked at my face and didn’t ask what the queen had said yet.

She handed me the next sheet.

Luna had ordered everyone behind the joined ice sections. She was preserving an open space against the inner wall of the shelter, with a way to the high crest if it became usable.

The brood outside were arriving from more than one direction.

Some stopped at the ice and turned away.

Some struck it.

No human fire had been used.

Ilse had reported one worker pressing its head against the ground between movements, as if trying to get away from something we couldn’t see.

I put the sheet down very carefully.

We sent that account to the queen.

Then we sent Luna what the queen had told us.

Compelled pattern. Individuals may be resisting. Barriers and distance. Our workers approaching high side. Do not seek source on foot.

The acknowledgement came back.

Then three words.

I UNDERSTAND. HURRY.

Luna did not use words she didn’t need.

I went to the hull.

This time, I did not inspect the same fastening twice.

I checked what mattered.

The frame. The load. A clear place for an injured passenger. Water secured where it wouldn’t slide beneath my feet. Ordinary tools. Rope. Coverings.

Toby’s bag went beneath the forward seat.

No one filled the remaining space simply because empty space looked wasteful.

I would need it if I brought someone back.

Liam helped with the straps.

“Take me,” he said quietly.

I looked at him.

“I don’t know whether I can land.”

“I know.”

“I may need to set down somewhere smaller than this yard.”

“I know that too.”

I put my hand on his shoulder.

“If I can get a clear place, we’ll send for the next load. I need you here to lead it.”

He held my gaze.

Then he nodded once.

“Don’t make me come and find both of you.”

“I’ll try not to.”

It was the only honest promise I had.

Risa brought the map herself.

She had marked the known stopping places and the places we were no longer allowed to trust after the storm.

The narrow landing patch at the saddle remained circled rather than crossed out.

Unconfirmed.

Not gone.

“We’ll keep the mirrors working,” she said. “Anything new goes to the western point. If you stop there, ask before going on.”

I nodded.

There would be no voice in my ear across every stretch of empty country.

We had light, known routes, and people trying to carry messages between them.

I wanted more.

Wanting it did not build it.

Risa put her hands against my coat.

“Bring her home.”

I covered her hands with mine.

“I’ll do everything I can.”

She closed her eyes briefly.

Then opened them.

“And come with her.”

“Yes.”

Sera found me before I climbed in.

She had left her pencil on the table. There was dust on one sleeve from the new room and a small burn on the edge of a work cloth tucked into her belt.

For a moment, she looked so ordinary that I nearly broke.

Someone I loved, standing beside a home we were still building, asking me to return to it.

She put her arms around me.

I held her.

“Luna knows how to hold a position,” she said against my shoulder.

“I know.”

“She’ll be thinking. Not only waiting.”

“I know.”

Sera drew back enough to look at me.

“You think too.”

I nodded.

She kissed me once, hard and brief.

Then she stepped away so I could move.

Wren called from the signal table.

We all turned.

Another message.

I waited beside the hull while she wrote the groups as the western point repeated them.

ICE HOLDING.

FOUR HUMAN.

THREE ALLIED.

The next line came slowly.

KEEP THE INNER OPENING—

The mirror stopped.

Wren waited with her pencil above the page.

At first, I thought a cloud had crossed the sun.

There was no cloud above our ridge.

That did not tell us what the northern sky looked like.

The western point repeated its request.

No answer came from the saddle.

Wren tried again.

Then the western watch sent its own observation.

NORTHERN REFLECTION LOST DURING TRANSMISSION.

Nobody said what that meant.

It could mean the mirror had moved.

It could mean the person using it had been forced away.

It could mean ice, a body, a broken support, or something worse had come between the sun and the face we needed turned towards us.

Luna’s unfinished sentence lay on the page.

Keep the inner opening.

Keep it clear?

Keep it covered?

Keep it for the guides?

I didn’t let myself finish it for her.

Dot approached the hull with one hand extended.

“I am sending a hand with you,” she said. “The one at the saddle may not be able to return a message.”

I made space for it beside the map.

The queen’s workers were still moving towards the high side.

The guide was inside with Luna.

Four humans. Three allied Teeming.

Those were the last things she had told us clearly.

I held on to them.

I climbed into the hull.

My leg bent stiffly, then settled where I needed it.

My hands were steady.

I did not feel like a planetary queen.

I did not feel like the answer to a question someone had been asking for centuries.

I felt like a man whose lover was behind a wall of ice, trying to keep seven people alive while something made frightened bodies strike at her shelter.

I knew how to change ordinary matter.

I knew the route as far as the saddle.

I knew she would use whatever time she had.

I lifted the hull just enough to clear the ground.

Risa stepped back beside Sera.

Liam raised a hand.

Beyond them, the new room’s door was being fitted to its hinges. The nursery lamp burned under the covering. Holt sat with the map open, waiting for the next fact we could give him.

I turned towards the western ridge.

Day 558–560. The ice outpost.

Second sleeping room begun. First room occupied and arguing about hooks. Water point given a reachable bowl ledge after testing the height. Recovery continuing. No headache from small work.

Luna went to the northern saddle with Ilse and Benedikt. Corr already there. Supplies, wind screen, route inspection, continuing search for Dane’s people. Temporary ice windbreak became part of the shelter’s defences.

Unfamiliar imposed pattern returned near northern routes. Neighbouring queen reports workers failing to follow her recall consistently. Some still respond to stop. Some turn and are driven back. Source unknown. No counter-pulse attempted.

Luna’s party cut off from the inner walking route. Ice barriers holding at last complete report. Four humans, three allied Teeming, Dot’s recording hand. No human fire used. Queen sending workers towards the high side to check an approach.

Last message: ICE HOLDING. FOUR HUMAN. THREE ALLIED. KEEP THE INNER OPENING—

Northern reflection lost before sentence completed. Cause unknown. Western watch still trying.

Leaving in the hull. Light load, space for a passenger, medical bag. Dot’s second hand with me. Risa and Sera holding home. Liam preparing the next party if we can establish a route.

One hundred and four people belong at Scarecrow.

Luna is one of them.