Scarecrow

The washing dried before Priya had finished hanging it.

She stood in the courtyard holding the last wet sheet while Sera looked at the others with an expression of innocent concentration.

“Too much?” Sera asked.

Priya touched the nearest sleeve.

It was warm and dry.

“No.”

“Good.”

“But next time ask whether I’ve finished straightening them.”

Sera looked at the sleeves twisted around the line.

“Oh.”

I kept walking.

That seemed safest.

Liam was at the wash shelter, helping warm the incoming water. He had spent most of breakfast explaining how he could maintain different temperatures in different parts of the same tank.

Anja had listened patiently, then asked him to make sure the hand basin did not scald anyone.

He had gone straight there.

Across the square, Toby was standing beside Wren while she spoke from one end of the schoolroom to the other.

Her voice reached the far wall clearly without becoming loud enough to disturb the people outside.

Toby adjusted something I could feel only as a small change in the air.

Wren tried again.

“That,” she said. “Keep that.”

He smiled at her.

Nobody was making a firestorm.

Somehow, the morning still felt extraordinary.

Luna found the leak beneath the second wash shelter without lifting a stone.

She stood beside the wall, frowned, and pointed.

“There.”

I looked through the ground.

A joint had shifted where two older sections met. Water was escaping into the earth instead of reaching the lower basin.

“You’re right.”

“I know.”

I repaired the joint.

She drew the escaped water out of the damp ground and sent it into the drain, leaving the foundations dry.

The whole thing took less time than fetching a shovel.

She stood with her hands on her hips afterwards, looking pleased.

Then her expression changed.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s more water below the western houses.”

“A leak?”

“No. Deeper.”

I followed the place she indicated.

A narrow natural flow moved beneath the stone, separate from the systems we had built. It had always been there. I had not needed it and had not gone looking.

Luna could feel it from where we stood.

“We could use that,” she said.

“We could.”

She looked towards the houses.

“After the trip.”

I nodded.

The mother of the eighteen was still waiting.

We inspected the route before carrying the young along it.

Keir took the smaller aircraft. Luna, Toby, Dot, and I went with him. Risa and Sera stayed at Scarecrow, where the remaining preparations were already keeping everyone busy.

The mother had sent a guide to a broad ridge beyond the old descending country. Our queen carried the last agreement between us before we left.

The guide would wait beside a split stone.

We would approach from the south.

No one would mistake an unfamiliar aircraft for the return of the people who had taken the young.

It sounded simple when written down.

I was glad we had written it down anyway.

Keir flew while I watched the ground and Luna watched the sky.

She could feel the moisture gathering in the low places long before we saw the fog.

“There’s a hollow ahead,” she said. “Full of it.”

Keir looked at the map.

“That’s where the old route crosses.”

Toby sat forward.

“Water moving underneath too.”

He could feel the vibration through the air and the nearby rock as we descended, a deep irregular movement beneath the quieter sounds of the aircraft.

I looked through the ground.

The crossing was gone.

A flood had cut beneath the old shelf and left a thin roof over open water.

It would have held a person for a little while.

It would not have held a loaded transport.

Keir circled once and brought us down on solid ground above it.

“That’s why we look first,” he said.

Nobody argued.

The guide arrived while we were examining the broken crossing.

It stopped beside the split stone and waited until Dot answered its greeting.

Then it led us to the edge of the ridge.

Beyond it lay a basin of pale rock that caught the light like old glass.

I understood the name the mountain queen had tried to give us.

It was not a mountain made of glass.

It was a mountain that shone as though someone had poured a dull, greenish glaze across its shoulders.

Luna shaded her eyes.

“That’s beautiful.”

The guide tapped the ground.

Dot listened.

“The mother is beyond the lower ridge. This route was used before the flood.”

I looked at the open channel below us.

“We can make another crossing.”

Keir stepped beside me.

“Or land above it and use the old path on foot.”

We followed the guide far enough to see that path.

It was narrow, broken in two places, and steep enough that attendants carrying young would have difficulty turning.

I looked back at Keir.

He nodded.

“A crossing, then. Wide.”

Luna held the water aside while I worked.

She did not freeze it into a dam.

She drew the flow into two clear streams and carried them around the place where the supports needed to go. Water curved through the air, bright in the sunlight, then returned to the channel below.

I built the bridge from sound material beneath the loose edges, joining it to stable ground on both sides.

Toby listened while the structure settled.

He could feel a faint uneven vibration near the far support before I had finished checking it.

I looked where he pointed.

A pocket beneath the rock was taking the load differently from the rest.

I filled and strengthened it.

The vibration changed.

Toby nodded.

“Better.”

Luna let the water return beneath the bridge.

It ran freely, without backing up towards anyone’s home.

Keir walked the crossing with the guide. Dot followed, checking the turning space against the transport’s nursery exits and the attendants’ movements.

At the far end, we found enough open ground for a landing place.

I strengthened that too.

By the time we finished, the route was ordinary enough to use without any of us standing there holding it together.

I liked that part best.

The mother met us beyond the lower ridge.

Her body was scarred along one side. Not fresh wounds. Old damage from places where silver had been taken and never properly restored.

I felt my attention catch on it.

She noticed.

*You see the missing places.*

“Yes.”

*Can you mend them?*

“I can help, if you want.”

She looked towards the route behind us.

*After mine return.*

I nodded.

“After.”

She asked the count again.

Eighteen young. Five familiar attendants.

All alive.

The five adults had been taken with them and kept near the nursery because they knew how to feed and settle the smallest.

Three other attendants remained at Scarecrow with the thirteen whose mother we had not found.

Dot repeated the numbers until there was no uncertainty between us.

Then the mother asked whether she could prepare anything for the journey’s end.

I thought of Priya’s kitchen list.

“Water. A quiet place. Room for the adults to stay close.”

She showed us a chamber beneath the ridge, dry and sheltered, with an opening wide enough for the attendants to pass together.

It would do very well.

Before we left, she asked one more question.

*Do they remember me?*

I looked at Dot.

It answered more gently than I could have.

“They answered your pattern.”

The mother lowered her head.

We left her preparing the chamber.

At Scarecrow, Risa had moved the afternoon shower away from the landing ground.

Not far.

Just enough that it fell over the growing beds and the dry ground beyond them instead of on the loading teams.

She stood beneath the covered walk with Sera, both of them watching the rain.

When we came down, she let the cloud spread naturally again.

“You’re showing off,” I told her.

“A little.”

Sera kissed my cheek.

“How’s the route?”

“Ready.”

“And the mother?”

“Waiting.”

Risa’s smile softened.

“Then let’s not make her wait longer than we have to.”

We left the next morning with the eighteen young and their five attendants.

Keir flew the large transport. Aster worked beside him. Luna and I travelled with the brood, while Dot helped the attendants understand the journey ahead.

We had brought food, water, and the familiar feeding containers again.

Nobody put those containers on the return list this time.

The smallest young rested beneath an adult near the rear door. One of its limbs was bent oddly from an old injury.

The attendant had asked about it before boarding.

I had offered to help, but it wanted the mother to decide with them.

So the young travelled as it was, comfortable and carefully supported.

Having the ability to repair something did not make every other person’s decision disappear.

Luna sat beside me while the aircraft moved over the broken country.

She watched the cloud outside for a while.

Then she took my hand.

“I keep expecting it to hurt.”

“Using it?”

She nodded.

“I’ll reach for something, and part of me waits.”

I understood that too well.

“It gets easier.”

She looked at the silver lines along our joined wrists.

“You should have told me how good the easier part was.”

“I tried.”

“No. You mostly smiled at things.”

I looked towards the window.

She laughed.

“Like that.”

The mother was waiting on the far side of the new bridge.

She had kept the landing place clear.

Her brood stood beneath the pale ridge, their bodies dark against the shining stone. None moved towards us until the aircraft had settled and Keir opened the nursery door.

Then the mother heard the young.

I felt her recognition through the connection she had offered me.

The nearest attendant answered her.

The sound that followed from beneath its limbs was small and uneven.

The mother came forward.

Slowly at first.

Then she stopped trying to make the movement look calm.

Luna and I stepped away from the ramp.

The young came down in their familiar groups, some carried, some walking beneath the adults. The mother lowered her body until they could reach her easily.

One climbed halfway up a forelimb and stopped there.

Another pressed itself against the scarred side of her chest.

The young with the bent limb remained beneath its attendant until the mother reached towards it.

Then it moved.

Awkwardly, carefully, but towards her.

She lowered herself farther.

Luna’s hand found mine.

We stood beside the bridge while a family learned how to be together again.

The mother asked me to look at the injured young once they had settled.

Its attendant stayed close. Dot explained what I intended, and the mother helped the little one remain calm while I examined the old injury.

A joint had healed out of place. The surrounding tissue had adapted to it, making every movement harder than it needed to be.

I restored the proper shape and the living connections around it.

The young pulled the limb close at first.

Then it touched the ground.

Its mother made a soft sound.

The limb moved again.

A moment later the little body hurried towards the shelter, stopped as if surprised by its own speed, and turned back.

The attendant followed.

The mother watched until they were beneath the ridge.

Only then did she turn her damaged side towards me.

*Now mine.*

I put my hand against the old scar.

The missing silver had left more than an empty space.

It had interrupted the work of her body, narrowed the paths through which she spoke to her brood, and forced movements around injuries that should never have been allowed to heal that way.

I showed her what I could restore.

She agreed.

I worked through the old damage, growing the missing structures from what remained and returning the tissues around them to their proper condition.

Luna stood nearby with Dot. Keir waited at the aircraft, checking the weather for the return flight.

There was no need for a dramatic struggle.

The work was clear to me.

The mother stayed still until the last damaged pathway settled.

Then she moved the forelimb on that side.

Raised it.

Lowered it.

Her attention reached towards the shelter more easily than before.

I felt the answer from her young.

She remained silent for so long that I began to wonder whether she wanted me to step away.

Then she asked, *What did you lose to do that?*

“Nothing.”

She considered my answer.

*The ones who took said every gain must come from another body.*

“Not this one.”

I showed her the restored structure, how it had grown without anyone being cut or emptied elsewhere.

She looked at my silver markings.

*Your queen gave you the way.*

“Yes.”

*Then tell her I know what she gave.*

I promised I would.

Before we left, the mother asked about the thirteen still at Scarecrow.

Their attendants had shared what they remembered of their own home. A long passage with warm stone beneath it. A shallow basin where the young had fed. A broken ridge that caught the morning light.

Those details had not been enough to find their queen.

The newly reunited mother knew the region.

She did not know whether the queen remained there.

But she remembered a route through the old dry country and a neighbouring brood that might have heard more recently.

Dot recorded what she could tell us.

We did not promise the thirteen an answer before we had one.

We did promise to keep looking.

The mother touched the ground beside the bridge.

*This path remains?*

“Yes.”

*Then yours may use it when they ask.*

Luna nodded.

“And yours can come to us the same way.”

The agreement was small enough to understand.

A crossing. A place to land. A promise to ask before arriving.

I thought it was a good beginning.

On the way home, Keir let Luna sit beside the controls while he explained what the aircraft told him about the air.

She could feel the moisture moving beyond the windows. He could read the instruments and the response of the craft.

Neither made the other unnecessary.

They compared what they knew.

Aster listened and added notes where their descriptions matched.

I sat farther back with Dot.

“Good day,” I said.

“Yes.”

Dot adjusted one of its smaller limbs.

Then it asked whether I wanted to hear the latest attempt at the thirteen’s home pattern.

I did.

It played the quiet sequence, keeping the volume low enough that it belonged only to our little part of the compartment.

I listened to the spaces between the sounds as carefully as the sounds themselves.

A question at the beginning.

A familiar place in the middle.

Something like waiting at the end.

I told Dot what I thought.

It remained still for a moment.

“Closer.”

I smiled.

“That sounded almost encouraging.”

“Do not become dependent on it.”

I asked to hear the sequence again.

Scarecrow had acquired a public bath while we were away.

Not a grand one.

Sera objected when Liam called it grand, pointing out that there were still tools on the floor and no hooks beside the changing spaces.

But there was warm water, privacy, a dry place to leave clothes, and separate basins so nobody had to wait for one person to finish before everyone else could wash.

The heating remained useful after Sera or Liam walked away. They had worked with the builders to give it ordinary controls and a safe supply, then used their abilities to bring everything to the right temperature for testing.

Luna inspected the water routes as soon as we returned.

She found one place where a drain would have carried too much moisture towards the outer wall.

Sera handed me the drawing without a word.

I corrected it.

Priya came in carrying towels.

“Can we use it now?”

Liam looked at Sera.

Sera looked at Luna.

Luna looked at me.

“Yes,” I said.

Priya set the towels down.

“Then everyone who doesn’t intend to wash can get out.”

We got out.

Toby had spent the afternoon helping the schoolroom.

There was a younger child among Sigmund’s group who covered his ears whenever too many people spoke at once. Wren had noticed. Toby had asked the child whether he wanted the room quieter.

The answer had been immediate.

He had not made silence.

He had softened the sharp overlapping noise while leaving the teacher’s voice clear, then worked with me later to put ordinary sound-damping surfaces where they would help when he was elsewhere.

The child sat through the next lesson without leaving.

Toby told me about it while we carried the new panels inside.

He tried to sound casual.

He failed.

Wren watched him from the doorway, smiling in a way that made me think she had already heard the story twice and would happily hear it again.

After we finished, Toby made a little sound like rain against a roof.

Several children looked up.

Then he made it stop.

Nessa raised her hand.

“Can you make a bird?”

Toby considered that.

“I can try.”

His first attempt sounded like a door hinge.

Nessa told him so.

He looked deeply wounded.

The second was better.

At supper, the thirteen’s attendants asked to speak with us.

Our queen carried their question through Dot while we sat beside the remaining occupied court.

They had watched three other groups leave.

They wanted to know whether being last meant their mother was dead.

I looked at the small bodies resting in the sheltered space behind them.

“No,” I said. “It means we haven’t found her yet.”

Dot translated carefully.

Our queen added what she knew of the new route and the neighbouring brood the mother of the eighteen had remembered.

The attendants listened.

One asked whether the young would be sent somewhere else if the search took too long.

Sera answered before I could.

“No.”

She sat on the low wall so she was nearer their height.

“You can stay here while we look. You can stay afterwards if you need to.”

The queen repeated it in her own way, adding the warmth of an invitation from the one whose home lay beneath theirs.

An attendant moved slightly aside.

A young one came to the opening and tapped the ground.

I answered with the pattern Dot had taught me.

I would remain where I was.

This time I knew what I was saying.

Before we left the square, Holt called us over to the workshop.

He and Toren were standing beside a door laid flat across two supports. Gareth had a pencil in his mouth and the expression of a man whose work had acquired too many advisers.

Toren held up the hinge he had brought from the mountain.

Finished now.

The edges were straight. The pin moved smoothly. There were small marks from his tools along one face, where he had chosen to leave them.

“Try it,” he told me.

I took it and moved the two halves.

They turned without catching.

“Good.”

He watched me closely.

“Not as smooth as you could make it.”

“It works.”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

I looked at the tool marks again.

“No,” I said. “But it’s what matters.”

Holt took the hinge from me and put it against the door.

“This one’s for the quiet room,” he said. “People keep having to push the old door with their shoulders.”

Toren knelt beside the frame with both hands free to work.

I watched him set the hinge in place.

A small thing, compared with the mountain.

It held my attention just as firmly.

Gareth took the pencil out of his mouth.

“Now all of you can stop standing in the light.”

We moved.

Holt came outside with us, walking easily over the uneven patch beside the workshop.

I still noticed that.

He still noticed me noticing.

“Don’t start,” he said.

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You’ve got that look.”

Sera smiled beside me.

“He has several.”

“This one is particularly irritating.”

He stopped near the covered bench and looked towards the remaining nursery court.

“Any word?”

“A better place to look,” I said. “No answer yet.”

He nodded.

“Then tell them that much. Waiting’s worse when people decide you’re too fragile to hear what’s happening.”

“We did.”

“Good.”

He sat on the bench and stretched his leg, plainly enjoying the movement even while pretending not to.

Across the square, Dov and Priya were carrying an empty tray between them. It could easily have been carried by one person.

Neither seemed interested in that solution.

They stopped near the kitchen, where Priya said something that made Dov laugh. He leaned close and kissed her before taking the tray inside.

Holt watched them go.

“Place has changed,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Keep some of the empty ground.”

I looked at him.

“For what?”

He gestured towards the square.

“For people to decide later. You can’t draw every useful thing before they know they want it.”

Sera tucked her drawing beneath her arm.

“I’ve been telling him.”

“I assumed somebody had.”

I sat beside Holt for a moment, looking at the little patch of open ground between the workshop and the tree.

I had already imagined three different buildings there.

For once, I let them all remain imagined.

A breeze moved through the open space. Two children crossed it on their way to the schoolroom, taking the shortest route without asking anyone where a street ought to go.

Risa found me back beside the court after the lamps came on.

She sat beside me without speaking at first.

The young had settled. One attendant remained near the opening, watching the quiet street.

“Did you tell them the good part?” she asked.

“The new lead?”

She nodded.

“Yes.”

“And the uncertain part?”

“Yes.”

She leaned against my shoulder.

“Then you can come home.”

I looked towards the court.

“I know.”

“You keep trying to finish everything before you stop.”

“I can do more now.”

“That doesn’t make all the answers yours.”

I turned towards her.

She looked tired in an ordinary way, after a long day of doing useful things. Her silver markings caught the lamplight when she reached for my hand.

“I know,” I said again.

This time I meant something slightly different.

We stood together and wished the attendant a quiet night.

Dot supplied the last part when I got the ending wrong.

Risa waited until we were out of hearing before she laughed.

The house was warm when we reached it.

Sera had made sure of that, then complained that everyone was going to start expecting it.

Luna had cleaned the windows by drawing the water across them and taking the dirt away with it. She was very pleased with herself until Sera pointed out the dry streak she had missed in one corner.

Luna fixed it without getting out of her chair.

I thought it best not to comment.

We ate late, with our feet close beneath the table and the little room’s curtain moving in the breeze.

I told Risa and Sera about the repaired young, the mother’s question, and the bridge that would remain after we had gone.

Luna added the part where Keir had told me to stop leaning forward every time the aircraft descended.

“I was checking the ground.”

“You were worrying about his landing.”

“Both can happen.”

Risa smiled over her cup.

“You’re learning.”

Sera reached across the table and took my hand.

“Slowly.”

I was outnumbered and comfortable with it.

Later, Luna brought the new water-source drawing to the porch.

She spread it between us with a stone at each corner.

The natural flow beneath the western houses could feed a separate reserve if we opened it carefully and kept it apart from the drainage.

Sera added space for another courtyard. Risa suggested moving the reserve closer to the medical building so a damaged main line would not leave it dependent on water carried across the square.

I looked at the places they had marked.

All sensible.

All things I could have built badly if I had started before asking.

“We should show this to the people using those rooms,” I said.

Sera looked up.

Then she smiled at me.

There was no teasing in it this time.

“Yes,” she said. “We should.”

We left the drawing on the table for morning.

Nobody needed the reserve built before we went to bed.

The message from the old dry country arrived before dawn.

Our queen reached me gently, waiting until I answered.

I sat up without waking the others at first.

The neighbouring brood had been found.

Its queen remembered the mother of the thirteen.

She had last heard her beyond a ridge of dark stone, near an old receiving place where humans had once brought supplies.

More recently, her people had seen a living brood there.

They had not approached closely enough to know whether the queen herself remained.

I asked for the route and the time of the last sighting.

The answer would take a little while to travel back.

Luna stirred beside me.

“What is it?”

I told her.

Sera opened her eyes while I was speaking. Risa pushed herself up on one elbow.

No one said we had found the mother.

No one said we should stop hoping either.

Luna reached for the little notebook beside the bed.

I made a soft light above the table so she could write without leaving us in darkness.

Then we waited together for the rest of the message.

Day 587–588. Glass mountain.

Route to the mother of the eighteen inspected before transport. Flood-damaged crossing replaced with a permanent bridge. Luna diverted the water while I built; Toby identified an uneven vibration in the far support, corrected before use. Landing ground prepared. Mother reunited with all eighteen young and five attendants. Old limb injury in one young repaired with agreement of mother and attendant. Mother’s harvest damage and missing silver pathways restored by consent.

Thirteen young and three attendants now remain guests at Scarecrow. They have been assured their shelter does not expire while we search. New information from the reunited mother led to a neighbouring queen in the old dry country. Recent brood activity reported near the missing mother’s last known territory and an old human receiving place. Her own survival remains unconfirmed. Route details being gathered.

New abilities helping ordinary life. Luna located and cleared a water leak and found a potential independent reserve source. Sera and Liam helped complete warm washing facilities. Risa directed useful rain over the growing ground. Toby helped make the schoolroom easier to hear in and is learning bird sounds at Nessa’s insistence.

City water and courtyard improvements drawn with Sera, Risa, and Luna. Residents to be consulted before work begins.

One hundred and seventy-five on the human and kit roster. No human or kit arrivals today. Brood departure recorded separately.

The bridge is still there even when we aren’t.

I want more of what we build to work that way.