Scarecrow

The first night nobody slept in their boots, I couldn’t sleep at all.

That wasn’t quite fair.

There were probably people somewhere in Scarecrow who had kept theirs on. Toren still liked his chair near the door. Eren woke whenever a latch moved outside his room. Some habits did not leave simply because we had built better walls.

But in our house there were four pairs beside the bedroom door.

Mine stood nearest the old stick.

Sera’s coat hung from a hook instead of lying across the end of the bed. Luna had put her map case in the other room. Risa had fallen asleep with one hand beneath her cheek and her book safely on the shelf, which meant somebody had persuaded her to stop reading before the last possible moment.

I lay awake between them, listening.

Water moved through the new reserve.

Wind passed beneath the porch roof.

Farther away, an attendant called softly to one of the neighbouring brood’s young.

Nothing answered with an alarm.

I waited anyway.

The change had begun at breakfast.

Ilse brought the night roster to the table where Holt and Luna were eating. There were fewer marks on it than usual.

“Everyone’s expecting me to fill the old spaces,” she said.

Holt read it.

The walls still needed watching. Aircraft still needed someone to receive them. People still became ill, pipes still leaked, and a strange sound in the dark deserved somebody awake enough to find out what had made it.

But we did not need half the camp lying dressed beside their doors, waiting for the other half to shout.

We were no longer a camp with one narrow way out.

The queens knew the ground around us. Their broods used agreed paths. The distant coercion devices we had identified were quiet, and none of our neighbours had reported a new hostile signal.

That was not the same as saying nothing bad could ever happen.

It was enough to change how we lived tonight.

Luna turned the page around.

“Keep the staffed gate and the ordinary night watch. Take everyone else off emergency readiness.”

Ilse looked at Holt.

He nodded.

“Give people a full night’s sleep.”

I was sitting beside Luna when she said it.

I agreed with every word.

Apparently, agreeing was easier than sleeping.

I got up carefully.

Risa stirred when I moved, then settled again. Sera made a sleepy complaint at the loss of warmth and moved closer to Luna.

I put on my trousers and took my boots to the porch instead of carrying their noise through the room.

The street was empty.

A lamp glowed at the turn towards the medical building. We had made the lamps easy to dim, and somebody had taken advantage of that. The light was soft enough that I could see the stars beyond the roofs.

I sat on the porch step with one boot in my hands.

For a while I did not put it on.

There was nowhere I actually needed to go.

That felt stranger than it should have.

I could raise walls, clear mountains, carry a queen through the sky. I could look into the material beneath my feet and understand the paths of water, stone, and living silver.

None of it told me what to do with an empty hour when everyone I loved was safe.

I set the boot down.

Across the street, a door opened a crack.

Toren looked out.

He saw me sitting there.

“Something wrong?” he whispered.

“No.”

He stayed in the doorway.

“Then why are you up?”

I looked at the boot beside me.

“Probably the same reason you are.”

He considered that.

Then he closed the door without moving his chair against it.

Luna found me a little later.

She had brought a blanket, which she dropped over my shoulders before sitting beside me.

“You’ll wake up cold.”

“I haven’t managed the first part.”

She tucked the edge of the blanket beneath her leg.

For a while we watched the empty street together.

“Did the watch call?” she asked.

“No.”

“The queen?”

“No.”

She nodded.

Then she looked towards the little lamp by the medical building.

“I keep thinking I’ve forgotten to tell someone something.”

“You probably haven’t.”

“I know.”

There was a pause.

“Probably,” she added.

I laughed quietly.

She leaned against me.

The silver lines on her wrist looked pale in the starlight. A little moisture had gathered along the porch rail, and I watched it draw away from the place where she rested her hand.

She noticed me looking.

“Habit.”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

“No.”

She turned her hand palm upwards, letting the little beads of water settle along her fingers.

“I like being able to do something without preparing to pay for it afterwards.”

“So do I.”

The water became a small clear ring, then spread into mist and disappeared.

She put her hand in mine.

“Come back to bed when you’re ready. You don’t have to earn it first.”

I looked at her.

She stayed beside me until I stood.

In the morning, Sera announced that we were going out.

I looked towards the window.

“Where?”

“Somewhere that isn’t a repair.”

Luna lifted her head from the table.

“There’s a visit to prepare for.”

“There’s a room with chairs in it and a stack of records taller than Risa’s books. Your father isn’t arriving this morning.”

“He might send—”

“Wren can receive a message.”

Risa was cutting bread. She put down the knife and pointed it nowhere near anyone, which I appreciated.

“I agree.”

“With which part?” I asked.

“All of it.”

I tried another approach.

“Do I need to build something when we get there?”

“No.”

“Carry something?”

“The food.”

That seemed manageable.

Sera had already asked Ilse about the watch, Toby about the medical room, and both queens about the path she wanted to use.

She looked pleased when Luna discovered there was nothing left to arrange.

I admired her preparation.

I suspected she had learned it from living with us.

The path followed the ridge above the growing ground, then bent towards a shelf overlooking the canyon.

We had passed it often on journeys that mattered too much to stop.

Sera stopped there.

“That one.”

There was a broad flat stone beneath a low overhang. Sparse plants grew in the sheltered cracks. Far below, water moved through the channel we had opened during the floods.

No buildings.

No equipment.

No one waiting for a decision.

I looked around automatically for anything that needed changing.

Risa caught my sleeve.

“Leave it.”

“I wasn’t—”

She raised an eyebrow.

I set down the food.

Luna walked to the edge, staying well back from the drop. She stood there with her face turned towards the moving air.

Sera spread a blanket over the stone.

Then she sat down, took off her boots, and stretched her feet into the sunlight.

I looked at Risa.

She was already doing the same.

Apparently this was serious.

For the first few minutes, we all behaved badly.

Luna found a place where rain would collect behind the shelf and began explaining how a small channel could prevent it.

Risa noticed a change in the distant cloud and told us what it would do by evening.

I suggested putting a seat beneath the overhang.

Sera listened to all three of us, then lay back and covered her face with her sleeve.

“I’ve brought the wrong people.”

Risa laughed.

Luna sat down at last.

I opened the food before I could find another useful thing to say.

Priya had packed more than we needed. There was bread, fruit, a pot of something warm, and four little cakes wrapped separately.

I held one up.

“Did she know this was a rescue?”

Sera uncovered one eye.

“Yes. She said not to bring you back until you stopped looking for structural faults.”

“That could take a while.”

“We have cakes.”

I passed them around.

Risa fell asleep first.

She did not announce that she was tired or apologise for it. She put her head in my lap, closed her eyes, and was asleep before Luna finished a story about a disastrous childhood boating lesson.

Sera lowered her voice.

Luna stopped entirely when she noticed the change in Risa’s breathing.

I rested my hand lightly against her hair.

There was nothing to check.

She was asleep on a warm day, among people she trusted.

I let that be all it was.

Sera moved closer and put her shoulder against mine.

“What did your sisters do when they were little?” she asked.

I looked out over the canyon.

“Conspired.”

Luna smiled.

“Against you?”

“Usually.”

I told them about Genny and Garnet finding ways around rules neither would have bothered breaking alone. About the certainty with which two small people could decide an older brother existed chiefly to reach high things and accept blame.

The memories came unevenly at first.

Then easier.

Sera laughed at a part I had forgotten was funny until I heard myself say it.

Luna asked questions that made me remember details instead of distances.

For a little while, thinking about home did not only hurt.

I had letters I had not finished.

Some began with the things we had built. Others began with the people we had found. None seemed to contain the part I wanted Mother and Father to understand.

I told Sera that.

She considered it while Risa slept against me.

“Then stop trying to explain the whole place.”

“What should I explain?”

“This.”

She touched the blanket beside us.

“The food. The fact that you’re sitting down. Risa snoring.”

“She isn’t snoring,” Luna said.

“Not yet.”

I smiled.

Sera’s expression softened.

“If my mother could hear one thing from me today, I wouldn’t start with the dimensions of the water reserve.”

“No.”

“I’d tell her I’m well. That I don’t need the medicine anymore. That I went somewhere because I wanted to.”

She looked towards the canyon.

“And that there were cakes.”

Luna leaned back on her hands.

“That part should be in every report.”

I looked at the three of them and began to understand why none of my unfinished letters had sounded right.

I had been writing as though home needed an inventory of my usefulness.

Father had never counted how many useful things I had done before making room beside him. Mother had asked whether I was hungry even on days when the answer was obvious.

Maybe they needed to know whether I had eaten lunch.

When Risa woke, she accused us of eating her cake.

“We saved it,” I said.

“That sounds like something people say after eating a cake.”

Luna handed it to her.

Risa accepted it with dignity and ate half before sitting up properly.

Then she noticed Sera’s bare feet and smiled.

“You look comfortable.”

“I worked hard at it.”

We stayed until the shadow of the overhang reached the edge of the blanket.

Luna eventually finished her story. Sera told one about Liam trying to hide a scorch mark beneath a rug and forgetting that the rug could also burn.

Risa defended neither her brother nor mine when I suggested siblings existed chiefly to collect evidence against one another.

She had plenty of evidence.

The canyon below us did not need defending for those few hours.

The water kept moving without my attention.

When it was time to leave, I packed the food containers and left the stone exactly as we had found it.

No seat.

No improved drainage.

Sera looked pleased enough that I almost offered to carry her home.

I decided not to ruin my progress.

Scarecrow had continued without us.

It was inconsiderate and reassuring.

The medical room was quiet. The watch had nothing unusual to report. Gareth had found someone else to argue with about the direction of a door.

Wren handed Luna a small page as we passed the schoolroom.

“Your father’s office. Preliminary arrangements.”

Luna read it standing beside the doorway.

One shuttle. A small accompanying party. Arrival requested for the morning two days from now, subject to the pilot confirming the final approach.

No troop transport.

No instruction to empty the city or remove the queens from sight.

There was a request for a landing signal on the standard channel.

Luna crossed out the frequency and wrote the one we had already established as safe.

Then she handed it to Dot, who had come to meet us.

“Send the correction through the next scheduled contact. Explain why.”

Dot accepted the page.

Luna kept the original.

For a moment I thought our afternoon had vanished from her face.

Then she looked at Sera.

“We still had today.”

“Yes,” Sera said.

Luna folded the page and put it in her pocket.

We went home.

I started the letter after supper.

Mother. Father.

Then I stopped, because the next sentence in my head was about the water reserve.

Across the table, Sera looked up from her own page.

“Don’t.”

“I haven’t written it.”

“I know your face.”

I crossed out nothing, because there was nothing to cross out yet, and tried again.

I am well. I mean that properly this time.

That stayed.

I wrote about my leg. About walking without thinking of every step. I wrote that a friend had helped change the silver in me and that the pain from using my ability had gone.

I warned them about the hair before describing it.

Risa read that sentence over my shoulder and told me to stop making it sound as though I had suffered an unfortunate grooming accident.

So I rewrote it.

Luna sat near the window with her knees drawn up on the chair. She was not writing to her father. That conversation was coming soon enough.

She watched us while Sera described being healthy without a daily dose and I tried to explain the household we had made together.

There was no version of that explanation which did not matter.

I put down the pencil.

Risa rested her hand on my shoulder.

“Tell them the truth.”

“I was going to.”

“Then stop trying to make it sound simple first.”

I wrote their names.

Seraphina. Risa. Luna.

I wrote that I loved them, and that the four of us had chosen to build our life together. That it was not something happening because the world had ended around us and there was nobody else nearby.

It was the life we wanted.

Sera read that part when I offered her the page. Luna came over too.

Neither suggested changing it.

Then I asked Risa about the baby.

The news belonged to her as well as to me. A letter sent through station hands might be read by people we had never met before it reached anyone we loved.

She thought about that.

Then she nodded.

“I want them to know.”

I made room beneath the paragraph about our house.

Risa is pregnant. We want the baby. She is well.

The words looked surprisingly small.

They contained a room, a curtain, a future chair by a window, and a heartbeat I had listened to with permission.

They contained my parents becoming grandparents if the world allowed the news to reach them.

Luna put a hand on the back of my chair.

Sera kissed my temple.

I kept writing.

I wrote to Genny and Garnet separately.

That was harder in a different way.

I did not want to make everything sound frightening. I also did not want to write as though nothing difficult had happened and I had simply been away somewhere pleasant without remembering to call.

In the end, I told them about the house, the children, and Toby making music without an instrument.

I told them there were people here who would like them very much, and that I had warned those people about the danger of believing either sister looked innocent.

Sera approved that sentence.

Risa asked whether the sisters would recognise themselves in it.

“They’ll each think I mean the other one,” I said.

Luna laughed.

I told them about the baby too, after asking Risa again whether she wanted that news in both letters.

She did.

I did not promise when they would meet anyone.

I promised to keep trying to find a way for us to speak.

That was something I could mean without pretending the channel to Earth had reopened.

When I finished, my hand was stiff from writing.

It felt good to have tired an ordinary part of myself doing something ordinary.

We did not give the letters to the visiting general as though he were already a route home we could trust.

Luna asked the pilot, through the established local channel, what forwarding arrangements were actually available.

The answer came back the following morning.

Personal packets could be logged for onward transfer through the station’s existing mail process. He could provide a receipt when he accepted them. He could not guarantee a date of delivery on Earth, and he would not pretend otherwise.

We had heard versions of that answer before.

It was still better than an invented promise.

Wren helped us make copies for ourselves. The letters went into a sealed packet with the others people had chosen to send.

Sera pressed her palm against the outside after it was closed.

“She’s going to complain about how long I took to tell her,” she said.

“Your mother?”

“Yes.”

I looked at her.

She smiled, though her eyes were bright.

“I’d like that.”

So would I.

The preparations for Windsor’s visit were less impressive than the station might have expected.

We cleaned the receiving room.

We did not hide the workshop tools or tell the children to keep out of sight.

Holt insisted on enough chairs for everyone who might be asked to speak, and on water where people could reach it without requesting permission.

Wren arranged copies of the records in the order that made them understandable.

Adela’s comparison of the destination lists went beside the originals. The photographs of the holding rooms stayed with the statements from people who had lived in them.

Dot made sure the recordings could be played without any connection to a transmitter.

The queens chose how they wanted to participate.

Our queen would meet him at the broad passage if he wished to speak with her. The neighbouring mother wanted to give her account there as well, close enough to return to her young when she had finished.

The planetary queen would remain at the mountain. She had offered a recorded account and would answer through a voluntary connection if the conversation required it.

Luna wrote each choice clearly.

Nobody would be brought into the room as evidence against their will.

Toren came to see the arrangement after the chairs were placed.

He walked around the table, tested one chair, and looked at the open door.

“Is that staying open?”

“If you want it open while you speak,” Luna said.

“I do.”

She made a note.

He looked at the pictures of the work spaces.

Then at the page where his statement had been copied.

“I might say it differently this time.”

“That doesn’t mean you said it wrong before,” Wren told him.

He rubbed the fingers of his restored hand against his palm.

“They’ll ask about this.”

“Probably,” I said.

“Do you want me to explain how?”

“You can tell them what happened to you. You don’t have to speak for me.”

He nodded.

After a while he asked for another copy of his statement to read privately.

Wren gave it to him.

He left with the page rolled loosely in one hand instead of gripped hard enough to crease it.

Eren and Tavia chose to speak together.

They wanted Maeve in the room.

Reed wanted Dot nearby but intended to give its own account. Vell asked whether questions about its power system could wait until after the questions about the tether.

Luna wrote yes before the question was fully translated.

The unnamed kit declined again.

Nobody treated that as a missing piece we had to persuade it to supply.

It spent most of the afternoon with Old Son beside the tower, watching the little flash that still marked the hours for someone who would not return.

I stopped there on my way to the new reserve.

Old Son acknowledged me, then returned its attention to the light.

The unnamed kit asked whether it could choose a name later.

“Whenever you want,” I said.

“What if I choose one and then wish for another?”

“Then tell us the other one.”

It considered that.

Old Son moved slightly closer to it.

I continued to the reserve without asking whether they needed anything else.

Sometimes leaving people to their own company was useful too.

Luna spent part of the afternoon with Holt.

When she came home, she had a blank page rather than another list of evidence.

“He told me to write down what I want to ask before anyone else tells me what the meeting is about.”

“That sounds like him,” Sera said.

Luna sat at the table.

For a long time the page remained blank.

Then she wrote a sentence and turned it over before any of us could read it.

I did not ask.

Risa brought her tea and sat nearby with her book.

Sera mended something that did not particularly need mending.

I made an honest attempt to leave the loose fastening on the cupboard alone, then gave up and repaired it quietly.

Eventually Luna turned the page back over.

“Did you know?” she read aloud.

No one answered the question meant for her father.

She looked at the words.

“That’s the first one.”

I sat beside her.

“Yes.”

“And if he says no, I want to know what he did know. What he thought those facilities were for. Why his name was on the authority.”

She wrote those beneath the first question.

Her hand grew steadier as the page filled.

When she finished, she folded it and put it in her pocket.

It was a much smaller page than the station’s formal request.

I thought it would be harder to get around.

That evening, Ilse reported another uneventful day.

No hostile movement. No unfamiliar signals reported by the queens. The scheduled traffic had used the agreed approach, and the western path markers remained where we had placed them.

She read the details in the square while people were finishing supper.

Then she told them who would be on the ordinary night watch and went to eat her own meal.

That was all.

No extra readiness order.

No warning to sleep dressed.

For a moment I noticed people waiting for something more.

Then Priya asked for the empty bowls, and the evening went on.

Dov carried a stack to the kitchen. Liam and Anja walked towards the growing ground. Toby and Wren were already arguing affectionately about whether a tune had ended or merely reached a part Toby had not yet invented.

Risa took my hand beneath the table.

“We could go for a walk.”

“All four?”

“If they want.”

Sera was standing before the question reached her.

Luna finished her water and joined us.

We walked the inner path without inspecting it.

I tried, at least.

At one point I noticed a drain cover sitting slightly crooked. Sera followed my eyes and stepped in front of it.

“Tomorrow.”

“It would take a moment.”

“And tomorrow it will still take a moment.”

I left it.

The neighbouring brood’s young had settled for the night. Their mother greeted us from within the broad opening, her attention brushing mine only after I accepted it.

She asked whether the human father would bring danger.

I told her what we knew.

A small visiting party. Questions. Our own people ready to receive them. No promise that every word would be easy.

She considered that.

*My young sometimes fight before they understand why they are frightened.*

I looked at Luna beside me.

“Human ones too.”

The queen wished us a quiet night.

We wished her the same and continued home.

At the house, Luna put her question page on top of the map case.

Sera set out clean clothes for the morning and then complained that she had made us look as though we were attending an inspection.

“We are allowed clean clothes,” Risa said.

“I know.”

“They’re ours.”

Sera looked at the little stack.

Then she nodded and left it where it was.

I checked the window before getting into bed, not because there was anything outside it I needed to see, but because I wanted the breeze to reach the room without lifting the curtain too much.

Luna moved the moisture from the sill with a small thought.

Sera warmed the cold place at the foot of the bed.

Risa turned the lamp down with her hand on the ordinary switch.

We lay close together in the dark.

After a while Luna said, “If I don’t know what to say tomorrow—”

“You can stop,” Risa told her.

“Or ask us,” Sera added.

“Or take your time,” I said.

Luna was quiet.

Then she moved closer.

No one told her she had to be brave in a particular way.

She had done enough of that for people who had not always deserved it.

I woke once during the night.

There was a sound outside, a brief scrape followed by footsteps.

I opened my eyes.

Waited.

The steps moved along the covered path. A watchkeeper making the ordinary round, with no hurry and no alarm.

Beside me, Sera slept. Risa’s breathing was soft and steady. Luna had one hand resting against my wrist.

I could have got up.

I could have checked every wall and every pipe and asked both queens whether anything had changed in the last hour.

Instead I listened until the footsteps faded.

Then I closed my eyes.

The next thing I knew, morning light was touching the curtain.

Day 596–597. Quiet.

Emergency overnight readiness stood down. Ordinary watch, gate coverage, medical response, and agreed brood communication remain. People allowed to sleep properly. No hostile movement or new coercive signals reported.

Afternoon on the canyon shelf with Sera, Risa, and Luna. No construction performed. This appears to have been the purpose.

Personal letters completed for Mother, Father, Genny, and Garnet. Sera wrote to her mother. Relationship and pregnancy news included with everyone’s agreement. Copies retained. Packet prepared for existing station mail process. Forwarding is available; Earth delivery date and actual receipt remain unconfirmed. No restored direct channel.

General Windsor’s party expected tomorrow morning after final approach confirmation. Safe local frequency supplied in place of requested standard channel. One shuttle, small party. Original records ready. Witness participation voluntary, individual requests recorded. Queens participating on their own terms.

Luna has written her questions.

Roster unchanged: one hundred and seventy-seven humans and kits. Both local broods settled in their separate homes.

I heard the watch pass and went back to sleep.