Scarecrow

The courier cases came every other day after that.

Nobody said why. Nobody stopped them. The supply drop came down, and at the bottom of the last crate, under the flour or the lamp oil or the seed, there’d be a grey case with the General Staff’s stamp on the lid. Gareth carried it up the street without a word. Luna opened it. Decoded it. Turned it round on the kitchen table so we could all see.

Still here. Still collecting. Careful.

On Day 722, there were two.

The first was her father’s. Short. Friese has moved two of my former aides to his own office. I take it as a compliment. Still here.

The second wasn’t.

It had the same stamp. The same lock, keyed to Luna’s hand. But when Luna opened it and took out the folded sheet, it wasn’t numbers.

It was a letter.

Handwritten. In pencil. In a hand that went up and down across the lines as if the person writing it had to stop and think between every few words. Very careful. Very slow. Some of the letters were too big and some were too small, and in places a word had been written, rubbed out, and written again, two or three times, until it was right.

At the top, it said:

For Risa.

Luna didn’t read it.

She looked at the first line, and then she folded it again, very gently, and held it out across the table.

Risa was by the stove with Dory on her hip. She looked at the paper in Luna’s hand. At the pencil. At the words that went up and down.

She went white.

”That’s Hana’s,” she said.

I hadn’t heard Hana’s name said aloud in a long time.

Hana Osei. Squad Three. Hydrokinetic. The quiet girl who’d floated water spheres in the cistern and hidden her nosebleeds for seven weeks because her family needed the stipend. Six people in two rooms on Harbor Block 44. A father on the Retention list, with the shake.

Risa’s roommate.

I’d drained the blood from behind her eyes at the cistern, over forty minutes, with my hands on her head and no idea what I was doing. And it hadn’t been enough. In the pressure chamber, a week later, a vessel had split, and she’d fallen, and for four minutes everyone thought she was dead.

She’d lived.

Slowly. She’d never linked again. She’d never come to Avalon. 39 of 40, Crane had said at the Friday assembly, and used her name as an example of courage.

The last time I’d seen her, she’d been in the medical wing, learning to walk again. Eight steps. Risa had sat by her bed and read her horse books, because Hana liked horses and had never seen one.

Her words had been the last thing to come back. Some of them hadn’t come back at all. When her mother came up from Harbor Block 44 with a parcel of lamb, Hana had looked at her and tried to say Mama and said water instead.

Risa had walked out of the room sparking.

Risa read it at the table.

She sat down with Dory in her lap and the letter flat in front of her, and read it. Slowly. Her lips moved, the way Luna’s moved when she counted.

Then she read it again.

Then she put her hand over her mouth and read it a third time.

Then she put it down, and picked Dory up, and held her very tightly against her shoulder, and stared at the wall.

Nobody said anything.

After a long time, Risa held the letter out to me. Her hand was shaking.

”Read it out,” she said. ”I can’t.”

For Risa.

This is Hana. I am writing it myself. It is slow. Do not mind the rubbing out.

I have my words now. Most of them. Some still go wrong. Yesterday I wanted spoon and said moon. My little brother laughed so hard he fell off the bed. I laughed too. That is new. Laughing at the wrong word. Before I only cried.

The doctor says the words came back because someone saw them coming back. Lucas, at the cistern, before. He looked at the word place and watched the threads. The doctor says that helped. I do not know how. But I wanted to say.

I have a job now. I carry letters.

Not real letters. Not on paper. In my head. There are families in the domes. Children of the modified. Families like mine. Families like the ones on the Retention list. Families of the cadets who went. They cannot write to each other. Everything is read. So I walk. Harbor Block to the Upper Ring to the Annex Rows. I visit. I have tea. I say what someone else said, and then I say it back the other way.

Nobody reads a girl who is slow with words. Nobody thinks she is carrying anything.

The General found me. He asked if I would carry one more letter. To Avalon. I said yes.

So this is it.

I stopped.

Risa didn’t look up. She had her face against Dory’s head. Dory was awake, very still, watching me with her silver-ringed eyes.

I kept reading.

The nine. The General told me. Taken, not lost.

I went to the Quint house. Their mother has kept their room the same for two years. Two beds. She asked me if they are alive. I said: three are, that Juno can feel. Maybe the Quints. Maybe not. She held my hands for a long time. She said thank you for not saying yes.

I went to Pim Arden’s father. He fixes lifts on the Upper Ring. He did not cry. He said, my boy was good with knots. I said, I know. Lucas told me. That was a lie. But it was the right kind.

I went to Tobias Ade’s grandmother. She already knew. Kemi wrote her. I do not know how.

I went to all nine. I said taken, not lost. I said someone on Avalon is still looking. Every one of them asked the same thing. Who?

I said: the whole city.

My father is on the Retention list. You know this. He has the shake. He gets the spoon.

Every morning at dawn, he says, something happens. Like a hand on his face. Very fast. Then gone. He says someone is saying all the names. Far away. And one morning, he says, it said his name too.

I told him who. He did not believe me. Then he did. Then he sat at the table and cried, and my mother cried, and my little brother did not know why so he cried too.

Then my father asked me to say thank you.

So: thank you.

Risa made a sound.

I stopped again. Looked up.

She shook her head. Keep going.

Risa.

This part is only for you.

You read me the horse books. Every day. In the medical wing. When I could not say anything. When I said water instead of Mama. You did not stop. You did the voices. You were very bad at the horse voices.

You thought it was your fault. That you waited seven weeks. I heard you say it, to Lucas, in the corridor. I could not say anything back. The words were not there.

They are there now.

It was not your fault. You waited because I asked you to. You told because you were afraid I would die. Both of those were because you loved me. Neither of those were wrong.

I am alive. I have words. I laugh when I say moon for spoon.

That is because of you. And the horse books. And Lucas at the cistern. And Sigmund, who carried me to the medical wing and never told anyone.

He did. I remember. I could not see but I could hear his voice. He said, hold on, Osei, over and over, all the way down the corridor. Tell him I remember.

The General says you have a baby.

I am not supposed to know. I will not tell anyone. But I wanted to say: I hope she likes horses.

Your friend,

Hana.

P.S. It took me nine days to write this. I hope it is right. I rubbed out a lot.

Nobody in the kitchen said anything for a long time.

Risa sat with Dory against her shoulder and her eyes closed and tears running down her face, and didn’t wipe them away. Sera, at the stove, had turned round and was standing with the spoon in her hand, not stirring. Luna was looking at the table.

Then Risa held out her hand.

I gave her the letter.

She read it again. The fourth time. Slowly. Every word. Every rubbed-out place, every letter too big or too small, every line that went up and down.

When she got to the end, she folded it, very carefully, into quarters. The way Luna folded things. And put it inside her shirt, against her skin, under Dory.

”Sigmund,” she said.

Her voice cracked.

”Sigmund carried her,” she said. ”All the way down the corridor. He never told me. He never told anyone.” She looked at me. ”Hold on, Osei.”

”I’ll get him,” said Luna, already standing.

”No,” said Risa. ”I’ll go.”

She got up. She handed Dory to Sera, who took her without a word. She walked out of the kitchen and down the street toward the practice ground, where Sigmund would be, the way he was every morning, holding his lightning in a scorched circle so it didn’t go anywhere it shouldn’t.

I didn’t follow.

But I saw, from the kitchen window, a long way down the street, Risa stop at the edge of the scorched circle. And Sigmund turn. And Risa hold out the folded letter.

And Sigmund read it.

And then, very slowly, the lightning that had been running up and down his arms went out. All at once. Not into the ground. Just out. Like a lamp.

And he put his arms round his sister and held on.

Juno came to the map room that afternoon.

She didn’t knock. She walked in while Holt and Luna and I were going over the second delivery manifest, and she stood at the end of the table under the map with her arms folded and her chin up, and she said:

”I want to get them.”

We all looked at her.

”The three,” Juno said. ”In the east. Hana went to all nine families and told them someone’s still looking. Someone on Avalon. The whole city.” She pointed at the map. At the black mark in the dead space, past the jungle. ”Well, we’re not looking. We’re sitting here making tungsten. I want to go.”

Nobody said anything.

”I can feel them,” Juno said. ”Every day. Every night. Three. Behind a wall. Not moving. Held.” Her voice shook. ”I feel them when I wake up and I feel them when I go to sleep and I feel them while I’m eating Priya’s bread. And Hana walked to the Quints’ mother and told her someone is looking, and that’s a lie, because we’re not.” She swallowed. ”I’m not having Hana tell lies for me.”

Luna was the first to speak.

”The terms,” she said.

”I know the terms.”

”Term five. We don’t act against the Meridian or any Sorn vessel in orbit around Avalon.” Luna’s voice was very careful. ”For as long as the terms are kept. That’s what we signed. That’s what keeps the stabilizer coming. For your mother, Lucas. For Hana’s father. For all thirty-one.”

”The east isn’t a vessel,” said Juno. ”It isn’t in orbit. It’s in the ground.”

Luna opened her mouth.

Then closed it.

She looked down at her copy of the terms, which she kept in her notebook, the way she kept everything. Read term five again. Her lips moved.

”The Meridian, its crew, or any Sorn vessel in orbit,” she said slowly.

”Nothing about relays,” said Juno. ”Nothing about sites. Nothing about things buried in dead spaces where no brood lives.” She leaned on the table. ”You wrote it, Luna. You wrote it very carefully. You always do. And you didn’t write the ground.”

Holt, at the head of the table, was very still.

”She’s right,” he said.

”It’ll know,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

”The Overseer,” I said. ”If we take the east site, it’ll know. It knew about the forge. It knew about the feed. It knew when I started reading the shell.” I looked at the guest house through the window. ”It’s in the city. Under our terms. Watching every dawn count. It’ll know the moment we do anything.”

”Then it knows,” said Juno. ”It can’t say we broke the terms. We won’t have.”

”It can say anything it likes,” said Holt quietly. ”And then do anything it likes, and say we broke them first.” He looked at the map. ”That’s how it works. That’s how it always works.”

”Then what do we do?” said Juno. ”Wait until it leaves? It said undetermined. That could be years. That could be never.” Her voice cracked. ”The three could be dead in years.”

Nobody had an answer.

Then a voice spoke from the doorway.

”Make it look like weather.”

Risa.

She was standing in the door with Sigmund behind her. Her eyes were red. So were his. Neither of them seemed to care.

”I can’t build a storm over the east,” she said. ”Not from here. It’s too far.” She came into the room. ”But I can feel the weather there. I’ve been feeling it since Juno told us about the dead space. There’s a front coming down off the eastern mountains. Big. Five days out.” She looked at the map. ”And there are fronts over the west, too. Over the islands. And the delta. Spring storms. All of them coming in the same week.”

”So?” said Juno.

”So I can’t build a storm over the east,” said Risa. ”But I can push one. If it’s already there. If it’s already coming. I can lean on it. Make it bigger. Make it slower. Hold it over one place for one night.” She looked at me. ”And under a storm like that, with lightning everywhere, nobody can tell one strike from another. Not the station’s instruments. Not the Overseer. Not anyone.”

”Three sites,” said Holt slowly. ”One night.”

”One night,” said Risa. ”Three storms. Pushed together. The islands, the delta, the east. All of it looks like spring weather. All of it.” She folded her arms. ”And under it, the ring takes the relays. And we take the three.”

Nobody said anything.

Then Sigmund spoke. For the first time.

”I’ll help her push,” he said.

The queens agreed that night.

All fourteen. Our queen asked them, through the ring, with Dot beside her translating every word. The plan. The storms. The three sites. The night.

The answers came back one by one.

The delta queen, whose water tasted wrong, said yes before our queen had finished asking.

The Bowl Queen said yes, and asked whether her brood could send soldiers to the east, since they had the furthest to walk and she wished to start early.

The mountain queen was quiet for a long time.

Then she said, There is something in the islands. In the west. Under the relay.

What? said our queen.

A fragment, said the mountain queen. Of a queen. Caged. Like the thirty-one on Earth. But not in a human. In the relay itself. Wired into it. To give it strength. A pause. I felt it when the ring first formed. I did not say. I did not know whose it was.

And now?

And now I know, said the mountain queen. It is mine.

Nobody at the wall said anything.

They cut it from me, said the mountain queen. Four hundred years ago. When they first chained me. A piece of my own silver, to put in the islands, so the relay there would sing my voice. Her voice was very steady. It has been singing my voice to the western broods for four hundred years. Driving them. With me.

Then we’ll bring it home, I said.

The mountain queen didn’t answer for a long time.

And the delta, said the delta queen, quietly. There is one in the delta too. I did not know what it was. I thought it was why the water tasted wrong. A pause. It is not mine. It is very old. It is from a queen who is not in the ring.

Whose?

I do not know, said the delta queen. Perhaps no one’s, now.

Luna drew it on the map.

Three black marks. The islands, the delta, the east. A storm over each one, in pencil, in the shape Risa described. A line from the Bowl Queen’s valley to the east, where her soldiers would walk. A line from Lantern’s forest to the delta. A line from the white mountains to the west.

And a line from Scarecrow to the east. Keir’s transport. Me, Juno, Sera, Toby, Keir and Aster.

Five days.

Holt sat under it with his stick across his knees and looked up.

”It’ll know,” he said again. Quietly. Not to stop us. Just so it was said.

”It’ll know there was a storm,” said Luna.

”It’ll know more than that.”

”Probably,” said Luna. ”But it won’t be able to say we broke the terms. Because we won’t have.” She closed her notebook. ”And it’ll have to decide what to do about that. In front of all of us. At a dawn count. Where everyone can hear.”

Holt looked at her for a long time.

”Your father,” he said.

”Would be terrified of me,” said Luna. ”I know.” She stood up. ”I’m going to write him. And Hana. She should know someone’s looking.”

Liam had a contribution too.

He made it at supper, in the kitchen, very loudly, at the end of the long table nearest the range, while the Overseer sat at the far end beside Holt with its bowl of stew untouched in front of it. It came to supper every night now. Nobody had invited it again. Nessa said she didn’t need to; once was an invitation and after that it was a habit.

”Five days from now,” Liam announced, to the whole kitchen, ”is my birthday.”

It wasn’t. Liam’s birthday was in the autumn. Sera looked at him across the table with her eyebrows somewhere near her hairline.

”And I want a party,” Liam said. ”A proper one. In here. All night. With music. Toby’s going to play. Priya’s going to bake. And I’m going to make a new drink.” He raised his cup. ”Everyone’s invited. Everyone.” He turned, deliberately, and looked down the length of the table at the mirror. ”That includes you. You’ve been coming to supper for a week. You can come to a party.”

The kitchen went quiet.

The mirror turned toward him.

The Overseer does not attend parties.

”You didn’t attend supper either,” said Liam. ”Until Nessa made you. Now look at you. Regular.” He grinned. ”Five nights. All night. There’ll be a storm, probably, Risa says it’s that time of year. Perfect party weather. Everyone inside, everyone warm, nobody going anywhere.” He drank. ”You’ll love it. Or you’ll hate it. Either way, you’ll be here, and you’ll be looking at me, because I’m going to be impossible to look away from.”

The mirror didn’t move for a long time.

The Overseer will consider, it said.

Liam raised his cup to it.

”That’s a yes,” he said to the room. ”I know a yes when I hear one.”

Afterward, on the porch, Sera hit him on the arm. Hard.

”Ow.”

”It’s not your birthday.”

”It’s not not my birthday,” said Liam. ”Somewhere. On some world.” He rubbed his arm. ”Look, you need it watching something that isn’t the sky. I’m the loudest thing in this city. I’ll be very, very loud. All night.” He looked at the guest house. ”And if it’s busy watching me make a fool of myself, it’s not busy counting lightning.”

Sera looked at him for a long time.

Then she hit him again, softer, and kissed his cheek.

”Idiot,” she said.

”Brother,” said Liam. ”Same thing.”

That night, on the porch, Risa read Hana’s letter again.

The fifth time. Out loud. To Dory, who was awake in her lap, watching her face.

She didn’t cry this time. She read it slowly, every word, and when she got to I hope she likes horses, she stopped and looked down at Dory.

”There’s a girl called Hana,” she said. ”She’s very brave. She carries letters in her head. One day you’ll meet her.” She brushed Dory’s hair back from her forehead. ”She wants to know if you like horses. There aren’t any horses on Avalon. But I’ll read you the books anyway. I’ll do the voices.” Her mouth twitched. ”I’m very bad at the voices.”

Dory looked at her.

Then her silver came round. Slow and warm. Not checking. Something else. Something that stayed, the way it had stayed on Sera the first time Sera held her.

And she said, out loud, her second word.

”Mama.”

Risa went completely still.

Sera, on the step below, turned round. Luna, in the doorway, dropped her pen.

Dory said it again. Clearly. Reaching up with one small hand to touch Risa’s wet face.

”Mama.”

Risa made a sound I’d never heard her make.

Then she laughed. And cried. And held Dory against her chest and laughed into her hair and cried into it, both at once, on the porch in the dark, with Hana’s letter crumpled in her other hand.

”Not water,” she said. ”Not water. She said it right. First time. She said it right.”

Sera came up the steps and put her arms round both of them. Luna, after a moment, picked up her pen and came and sat on the arm of the chair and put her head against Risa’s.

And from the garden wall, the queen hummed.

Here. I’m here.

Days 720–722. Hana’s voice.

The cases come every other day now, and nobody says why. Day 722, two. One from the General: Friese has moved two of his former aides to his own office, and he takes it as a compliment. The other was in pencil, the lines going up and down, words rubbed out and rewritten. ”For Risa.” Hana’s.

Hana Osei. Squad Three, hydrokinetic, Risa’s roommate. I drained the blood at the cistern; a vessel split in the pressure chamber; four minutes. She lived, never linked, never came. Risa read her horse books. When her mother came with lamb, Hana tried to say Mama and said water.

Risa read it three times and couldn’t read it out, so I did.

She has most of her words. Spoon came out moon and her brother fell off the bed laughing; laughing at the wrong word is new. The doctor says the words came back because someone watched them coming back. She carries letters now, in her head, between the families of the modified, because nobody reads a girl who is slow with words. The General found her.

She went to all nine families. The Quints’ mother: thank you for not saying yes. Pim Arden’s father fixes lifts and said his boy was good with knots; Hana said Lucas told her that; a lie, the right kind. Tobias Ade’s grandmother already knew; Kemi wrote. Every one asked who is still looking. ”The whole city.”

Her father is on the Retention list. At dawn, something like a hand on his face. Someone saying all the names. One morning it said his. He cried, and asked her to say thank you.

To Risa only: it wasn’t your fault. You waited because I asked; you told because you were afraid I’d die; both were love. And Sigmund carried her to the medical wing and never told anyone. ”Hold on, Osei,” all the way down the corridor. Tell him I remember. I hope she likes horses. It took nine days to write.

Risa read it a fourth time and put it inside her shirt. She took it to Sigmund on the practice ground. His lightning went out like a lamp, and he held on to his sister.

Juno: I want to get the three. Hana is telling families someone is looking, and that’s a lie, because we’re not. Luna: term five. Juno: it says the Meridian and any Sorn vessel in orbit. It doesn’t say the ground. You didn’t write the ground. Holt: she’s right. Me: it’ll know. Holt: and do what it likes and say we broke them first.

Risa, in the doorway with Sigmund: make it look like weather. She can’t build a storm over the east, but fronts are coming over the east, the islands and the delta, all the same week. She can lean on them, make them bigger and slower, and hold them over one place for one night. Under that, no one can tell one strike from another. Sigmund: ”I’ll help her push.”

All fourteen queens: yes. The Bowl Queen’s soldiers start early. The mountain queen: in the islands, a fragment wired into the relay to give it strength. Hers. Cut from her four hundred years ago, so the relay would sing her own voice at the western broods. We’ll bring it home. The delta queen: there’s one in hers too, very old, from a queen who is not in the ring. Perhaps no one’s, now.

Five days. Luna drew it on the map. Holt: it’ll know. Luna: it won’t be able to say we broke the terms, and it’ll have to decide what to do about that at a dawn count, where everyone can hear.

Liam at supper announced his birthday in five days. It isn’t his birthday. A party, all night, Toby playing, a new drink, everyone invited, including the mirror. ”There’ll be a storm, probably. Perfect party weather.” It will consider. Liam: ”That’s a yes.” To Sera: it needs something to watch that isn’t the sky, and he’s the loudest thing in the city. If it’s watching him make a fool of himself, it isn’t counting lightning. She hit him, then kissed his cheek. ”Idiot.” ”Brother. Same thing.”

On the porch Risa read Hana’s letter a fifth time, to Dory. There are no horses on Avalon; she’ll read the books anyway and do the voices badly.

Dory’s second word, out loud: ”Mama.”

Risa: ”Not water. She said it right. First time.”