Scarecrow

Dov and Priya were married on Day 750, under the tree we didn’t move.

I should explain the tree.

When I built the square, in the first year, before it was a square, before there was a city round it or a kitchen at one end or a meeting passage at the other, there’d been a tree in the middle of it. One tree. Alone on the red glass, in a crack where a little soil had collected and something had decided to grow.

It wasn’t an Earth tree. Nobody knew what it was. It had silver bark that peeled in long curls, and leaves like small hands that turned to follow the sun, and in the spring it put out flowers that smelled faintly of pepper and lasted about a day.

I’d been going to move it. It was in the way. It was exactly where the square needed to be flat.

Luna had stopped me.

”It was here first,” she’d said. That was all.

So I built round it. The square went in a circle round the tree, and the paving stones curved to meet its roots, and the kitchen and the passage and Toby’s bench all ended up arranged around it as if that had been the plan all along.

It had never had a name. People called it the tree we didn’t move, and then the tree, and then, after a while, nothing at all, because everyone knew which tree you meant.

Priya wanted to be married under it.

”It was here first,” she said, when Dov asked why. ”And it’s still here. That seems like the right sort of thing to stand under.”

Everyone came.

I don’t think I’d ever seen the whole of Scarecrow in one place before. Not at the dawn count; people came and went at the dawn count, and some slept through it, and the young stayed in the courts. Not at the meeting before the delegation landed; people had been frightened then, and stood at the edges.

This was different.

People came in their best. Which in Scarecrow meant clean, mostly, and mended, and some of the third wave had found ribbons in the cargo and tied them in their hair. Nessa had a crown of the pepper-flowers that she’d climbed the tree at dawn to pick, and been shouted at by Priya for, and been forgiven.

The young came up out of the passage. All of them. Not to the shadow at the mouth, where they sat for the music. Into the square itself. They’d never done that before. They came out in a long careful line with the attendants at the edges and stood in a ring round the outside of the crowd, behind everyone, flat heads up, watching.

Our queen came to the end of the agreed path, where it opened onto the square, and lowered her great head onto the paving stones.

And at the edge of the perimeter, on the far side, at dusk, where the street met the square—

Sesh.

Dory didn’t come.

That was the hardest part, for Risa. The square was past the garden wall. Past the hollow. The queens could hold the world quiet round our house, but not round the whole city, not with the mirror in its compound across the street and the handler beside it and ten Kethri with slivers in their collars.

So Dory stayed in the quiet room.

With Dot.

And with Pebble.

Pebble had asked. Dot said so. He’d come up the agreed path at noon, the way he always did, and found the four of us getting ready, and Risa at the bottom of the garden stairs with her face set the way it went when she’d decided something she didn’t like. And he’d gone past her. Down the stairs. Into the faceted dark. And lain down beside Dory’s basket, flat on the stone floor, with his head on his forelimbs.

And hummed.

”He has said,” Dot reported, ”that he will stay with the small one. So that the small one’s mother can see the joining.”

Risa had stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at Pebble lying beside the basket, and Dory awake in it, reaching one hand over the edge toward his head.

”He’s three feet tall,” Risa said.

”He is the eldest of the young who knows her,” said Dot. ”He says that is what the eldest does.”

Risa put her hand over her mouth.

Then she took it away and said, ”Thank you, Pebble,” in a voice that didn’t quite work, and turned and went up the steps.

Holt married them.

Nobody had asked who would. There wasn’t a priest in Scarecrow. There wasn’t a registrar or a magistrate or anyone with a form. There’d been a wedding in the third wave’s first month, two people from Nell’s squad who’d decided they might not live long enough to wait, and Wren had written it in her book and that had been that.

But Priya had asked Holt.

”You’re the oldest,” she’d said. ”And you’ve seen the most. And you say things like you mean them.”

Holt had looked at her for a long time.

”I’ve never married anybody,” he’d said.

”Then I’ll be the first,” said Priya. ”That seems right too.”

So Holt stood under the tree we didn’t move, with his stick in one hand, in a coat Gareth had pressed for him that morning, and his face set like a man about to walk into fire.

Dov stood in front of him.

Dov in a clean shirt, with his hair combed flat for once, and his hands shaking so badly he had to keep them in his pockets. Dov, whose feet I’d fixed in the spring, who’d walked across the medical building and back and then sat down and cried. Who’d carved a sparrow for Priya and then a ring with sparrows all the way round.

And then the crowd parted, and Priya came.

She didn’t have a dress.

Nobody in Scarecrow had dresses. She had a clean blue shirt that Sera had lent her and a skirt Luna had found in the third wave’s cargo and taken in, badly, at midnight. And the sparrow ring on her finger. And a crown of pepper-flowers that Nessa had made her to match her own.

She walked across the square on her own.

Nobody had given her away. She’d said she didn’t belong to anyone to give.

She walked through the crowd, past the forge and the kitchen and Toby’s bench, through the ring of the young who turned their flat heads to follow her, and stopped in front of Dov under the tree.

And Toby, on his bench, began to play.

He’d written it for them.

He’d told me so, a week before. He said he’d been trying to write something for a wedding for a month and kept getting it wrong, because every song he wrote came out sad, and you can’t have a sad song at a wedding. And then he’d sat in the square one evening watching Dov carve something in the doorway of the workshop and Priya bring him a bowl of soup and stand there while he ate it, not saying anything, just standing there, and he’d gone home and written it in an hour.

It wasn’t sad.

It wasn’t happy, either. It was something else. Something like the light in the kitchen at breakfast, when everyone’s there and the porridge is on and nobody’s said anything important yet. Something warm and ordinary and so precious it hurt.

The young hummed along.

They didn’t know the song. They’d never heard it. But they hummed anyway, under it, the low note they always found, so that the fiddle had something to stand on.

And at the edge of the perimeter, at the far side of the square, the sliver in Sesh’s collar hummed too.

Holt didn’t say much.

He’d said he wouldn’t. He said he’d heard too many long speeches at too many funerals, and if he was going to do this he was going to do it short and true.

”Dov,” he said. ”Priya.”

They looked at him.

”I’ve been on this planet longer than anyone here,” said Holt. ”I’ve seen a lot of things end. Bases. Squads. People. I’ve carved most of their names on the wall myself.” He looked at the north wall, at the far end of the street. ”I never once thought I’d stand in the middle of a city on Avalon and watch something start.”

He looked back at them.

”So I’m not going to tell you what to promise,” he said. ”You know what to promise. You’ve been promising it for months. In the kitchen. In the workshop. In the way he carves things for you and the way you bring him soup and stand there while he eats it.” His voice went rough. ”I’m just going to ask. In front of everybody. So nobody can say they didn’t hear.”

He turned to Dov.

”Do you mean it?”

Dov took his hands out of his pockets. They were still shaking.

”Yes,” he said.

Holt turned to Priya.

”Do you?”

Priya didn’t say anything for a moment.

Then she reached out and took Dov’s shaking hands in hers, and held them still.

”Yes,” she said.

Holt looked at them both. Then he looked out at the whole square. All of Scarecrow. The young in their ring. The queen at the end of the agreed path. Sesh at the edge.

”Then that’s done,” he said. ”And everyone heard.”

And he stepped back.

The square went up like a fire.

People shouting. People clapping. Nessa screaming so loud that the young at the edge of the crowd flinched and then started humming even louder, as if to keep up. Liam on top of the bench beside Toby, which Toby tried to stop and couldn’t, roaring.

Dov kissed Priya under the tree.

Or Priya kissed Dov. It was hard to tell. They kissed for a long time, with the pepper-flowers falling out of Priya’s crown and Dov’s combed hair coming uncombed, and when they stopped, Priya was crying and Dov was crying and half the square was crying.

I was crying.

I didn’t know why. I’d never been to a wedding in my life. I’d never cried at anything happy before.

But I stood in the square with Sera’s hand in mine and Risa’s head on my shoulder and Luna on my other side, writing in her notebook, and I cried.

Sera was crying too. She said she wasn’t. She said it was the pepper-flowers.

Risa wasn’t pretending. She just cried, quietly, with her face against my shoulder, and her hand reaching across me to find Luna’s, and holding it.

Luna wrote in her notebook.

Day 750. Dov and Priya. Holt asked. They said yes. Everyone heard.

Then she put the pen down and let Risa hold her hand, and cried too.

The Overseer was at its window.

I saw it. Across the square, past the crowd, past the edge of the perimeter where Sesh stood, the guest-house window. The mirror was there. For the first time in days. Not in the middle of the room. At the window.

Watching.

It stood there through the whole thing. Through Toby’s song and Holt’s question and the shouting and the kiss. Through everyone crying.

It didn’t move.

And when the square had begun to settle, and Priya and Dov had disappeared into a crowd of people trying to hug them both at once, and Nessa had climbed the tree again for more flowers, the band on Crane’s collar lit.

Crane was on his bench, at the edge of the square. He’d come out to watch. He’d been crying too. I’d seen him wipe his face with the back of his hand when Priya took Dov’s shaking hands.

His face shut.

And the flat even voice came out of his throat. Quietly. Not across the square. Just to the people nearest him.

To Holt. Who’d come to stand beside the bench.

The Overseer asks, said the voice, why the population is weeping.

Holt looked at the window.

The joining is a success, said the voice. By the Overseer’s assessment, both parties have consented and the ceremony is complete. There is no loss. There is no injury. A pause. Why do they weep?

Holt didn’t answer at once.

He looked up at the window for a long time. At the mirror behind the glass.

Then he said, quite gently for Holt, ”Because it’s going to end.”

The band stayed lit.

”Everything ends,” said Holt. ”We know that. We’ve buried enough people to know that. Every one of us in this square knows that Dov and Priya are going to die one day. One of them first. And the other one’s going to have to stand somewhere and carve a name.” He leaned on his stick. ”We’re not crying because it’s sad. We’re crying because it’s good. And it’s going to end. And they did it anyway.”

The band was silent.

”That’s what you don’t understand,” said Holt. ”Isn’t it. You’re made in a vat. You’re grown knowing what you’re for. You live a few years, and the shell keeps you going longer, and you eat queens so you won’t stop.” He looked at the window. ”You’ve never done anything good knowing it would end. You’ve never done anything anyway.”

Nothing came out of Crane’s throat for a long time.

Then the band went dark.

Crane opened his eyes. He was crying again. Or still.

”It heard you,” he whispered.

”I know,” said Holt.

At the window, the mirror stood very still.

Then it turned away.

Back into the middle of the room.

Sesh stayed until the end.

The music. The food. Priya’s cake, three layers again, which Nessa insisted on carrying out to the edge of the perimeter on a plate, with a fork, for the tall one. Which Sesh looked at for a long time, her head tilted, one eye on the cake and one on Nessa.

Then she bent her neck, very slowly, against the collar’s pull, and took a single piece with her beak. Very carefully. And straightened up.

Nessa nodded, satisfied, and went back.

Sesh stood there with the piece of cake in her beak until the light went.

Dot, who’d come up from the quiet room for the last hour with Dory asleep and Pebble still on guard, rolled to the edge of our side of the line. Sesh’s eye swivelled to her.

And Sesh clicked.

A long string. Slow. Dot translated.

”She says her world had joinings too,” said Dot. ”Once. Before the collars. She says two would stand under the oldest tree in the village and the whole brood would come.”

A click. A falling whistle.

”She says she has not seen one since she was a hatchling.”

Another click.

”She says she did not think she would see one again.”

Sesh lowered her beak. The cake was gone. She’d eaten it, very slowly, at some point while she was clicking.

Then she clicked one more thing. Short.

Dot’s lamps flickered.

”She says,” said Dot, ”the tree is very beautiful.”

The courier case came at dusk.

Late. The supply drop had been delayed by the wedding; nobody had wanted to go to the apron while the square was full. Gareth brought it up the street in the dark, still in his good coat, with a pepper-flower in his buttonhole that Nessa had put there.

Luna opened it at the kitchen table.

It wasn’t numbers. It was a Project form. Stamped. Official. With a seal at the top that Luna recognised at once, and that made her face go very still.

Central Allocation.

She read it aloud.

Notice of approval.

The asset’s request for a family welfare visit to Avalon is approved. The following persons will travel on the transport arriving Day 759:

Dask, Genevieve. Dask, Garnet. Minors.

Pell, Harriet. Guardian.

Osei, Hana. Companion.

A delegation of the Senate will accompany the visit, to observe conditions at Primary Base and report to the Chancellor. The delegation will be led by Senator Friese.

Risa went white.

Security for the visit will be provided by the General Staff. General Windsor is attached to the delegation in that capacity.

Luna’s voice didn’t change. But her hand, holding the form, began to shake.

”He’s coming,” she whispered. ”Expected back.”

Nobody said anything.

Then Luna kept reading.

The following petition is denied:

Calder, Maura, and spouse. Request to accompany the visit to see their children.

No reason is given.

Liam stood up.

He didn’t say anything. He stood up from the kitchen table so fast his chair went over behind him, and he walked out of the kitchen, and down the porch steps, and into the dark.

Sera didn’t move.

She sat at the table with her hands flat on the wood and her face completely white and her eyes fixed on the form in Luna’s hand.

Calder, Maura.

Her mother. One of the thirty-one. On the Retention list. With the spoon. Who answered every morning at dawn, the warm one, first, like an oven door opening.

No reason is given.

Sera stood up.

Slowly. Not like Liam. She stood up and pushed her chair in, very carefully, and walked across the kitchen to the drawing table in the corner, where Luna kept her maps and Gareth kept his plans and Toby kept his music.

She sat down.

She pulled a clean sheet toward her. Picked up a pencil.

And drew a circle.

Then another.

Then a line between them. Long. Very long.

”What are you doing?” said Risa softly.

Sera didn’t look up.

”Avalon,” she said, tapping the first circle with the pencil. Then the second. ”Earth.” Then the line. ”Eleven light-years.”

She looked at the line for a long time.

Then she put the pencil down and looked up at me.

Her eyes were dry. Her jaw was set. And round the edges of her silver, very faint, the red light came up, the way it did when the fire was close.

”We’re going to go and get her,” she said.

I found Liam at the scarecrow field.

At the end of the last row. By the blank scarecrow Gareth had built in the spring for whoever came next, with its arms out in the dark and no name on its chest.

He was sitting on the ground in front of it with his knees up and his arms round them. Still in his wedding shirt. The ribbon Nessa had tied round his wrist that afternoon was still there.

I sat down beside him.

He didn’t say anything for a long time.

”No reason,” he said at last.

”I know.”

”No reason. They didn’t even bother to make one up.” His voice was very flat. Not loud. Liam was never not loud. ”Mum’s been on the spoon since before I was born. Dad’s been carrying her up and down the stairs of Block Nine since the lift broke in my second year of school. And they asked. They asked to come. To see us.” He swallowed. ”And somebody on two floors of the Senate Annex that aren’t on any directory wrote denied and didn’t even say why.”

I didn’t say anything.

”You know what Dad said to you,” said Liam. ”At the last dinner. Before the launch.”

”He asked me to bring you home.”

”He asked you to bring us home,” said Liam. ”Both of us. Me and Sera.” He laughed. It wasn’t a laugh. ”And here we are. Home. On Avalon. With a city and a queen and a baby on the porch, and Sera’s got another one coming, and I’m going to be an uncle twice over.” His voice cracked. ”And they can’t come and see it.”

He put his face on his knees.

I sat beside him in the dark.

After a long time, he lifted his head.

”The Calder rule,” he said. ”Do you remember? I told you. In the dome. Before anything. When I worked out you were getting close to Sera.”

”Calders burn hot,” I said. ”If I hurt her, you’d set me on fire.” I paused. ”And then you asked me to stay for dinner.”

Liam laughed. A real one, this time. Small and wet.

”I meant it,” he said. ”Both parts.” He wiped his face with his wrist, with Nessa’s ribbon still on it. ”Sera’s in there drawing circles. You know what that means.”

”She’s going to go and get her.”

”She’s going to go and get her,” said Liam. ”And she’s going to need someone to make a lot of noise while she does it.” He stood up. Brushed off his wedding trousers. Looked at the blank scarecrow, with its arms out in the dark. ”Calders burn hot. Both of us. Hers comes out her hands. Mine comes out my mouth.” He looked at me. ”Come on. She’ll have drawn the whole route by now and she’ll want someone to tell her it’s mad.”

”Is it mad?”

”Completely,” said Liam. ”That’s never stopped a Calder.”

Pebble was still in the quiet room when we got back.

Lying beside the basket, exactly where he’d been at noon. Dory asleep with one hand hanging over the edge, resting on his head.

He hadn’t moved all day.

Dot, at the top of the stairs, said quietly, ”He would not leave. This unit offered to take over at dusk. He said the eldest does not leave until the mother comes back.”

Risa went down the stairs.

She knelt on the stone floor beside Pebble and put her hand on his foreplate, over the pale scar. He hummed. She bent down and touched her forehead to the top of his head, the way she touched Dory’s.

”Thank you,” she said. ”I saw the joining. All of it.”

Pebble hummed louder.

Then he got up, slowly, carefully, so as not to wake Dory, and went up the stairs past us, and down the agreed path toward the courts, where his own queen was waiting.

He didn’t look back.

But Dory, in her sleep, turned her hand over, where his head had been, and closed her fingers on nothing.

Days 748–750. A wedding in the square.

Dov and Priya were married under the tree we didn’t move. Silver bark, leaves like small hands that follow the sun, pepper-smelling flowers that last a day. I was going to move it in the first year. Luna: ”It was here first.” I built the square round it. Priya: it was here first and it’s still here; that’s the right sort of thing to stand under.

Everyone came. Nessa climbed the tree at dawn for a crown of flowers and was shouted at and forgiven. The young came into the square itself for the first time, in a ring behind the crowd. The queen at the end of the agreed path. Sesh at the edge of the perimeter.

Dory stayed in the quiet room. Pebble went past Risa, down the stairs, and lay beside the basket with his head on his forelimbs. ”He will stay with the small one so that her mother can see the joining. He is the eldest of the young who knows her. That is what the eldest does.” Risa: ”Thank you, Pebble.”

Holt married them. Priya: you’re the oldest, you’ve seen the most, and you say things like you mean them. ”I’ve never married anybody.” ”Then I’ll be the first.” Gareth pressed his coat. Dov’s hands shook in his pockets. Priya walked across alone; she doesn’t belong to anyone to give. Toby’s song: not sad, not happy, like the kitchen at breakfast before anyone’s said anything important. The young hummed under it. So did Sesh’s sliver.

Holt: I’ve carved most of the names on the wall. I never thought I’d watch something start. ”Do you mean it?” Dov: yes. Priya took his shaking hands and held them still: yes. ”Then that’s done. And everyone heard.”

The square went up like a fire. I cried. I’d never cried at anything happy before. Sera said it was the pepper-flowers. Risa reached across me for Luna’s hand. Luna wrote: Holt asked. They said yes. Everyone heard. Then cried too.

The mirror stood at its window for the first time in days, through the whole thing. Through Crane: why do they weep? The joining is a success. No loss, no injury. Holt: because it’s going to end. One of them will carve the other’s name. We cry because it’s good, and it will end, and they did it anyway. You’re grown in a vat knowing what you’re for; you’ve never done anything good knowing it would end. ”You’ve never done anything anyway.” The band went dark. Crane: ”It heard you.” It turned back into the middle of the room.

Nessa carried cake to the perimeter for the tall one. Sesh bent against the collar and took one piece. Her world had joinings, once: two under the oldest tree in the village and the whole brood came. She hasn’t seen one since she was a hatchling and didn’t think she would again. ”The tree is very beautiful.”

At dusk, a Central Allocation form. Approved for Day 759: Genevieve and Garnet Dask, minors. Harriet Pell, guardian. Hana Osei, companion. A Senate delegation led by Senator Friese. Risa went white. Security: General Windsor. Luna’s hand shook. ”He’s coming. Expected back.”

Denied: Maura Calder and her husband, to see their children. No reason given.

Liam stood up so fast his chair went over and walked into the dark. Sera pushed her chair in carefully, sat at the drawing table, and drew two circles and a long line. Avalon. Earth. Eleven light-years. The red came up round her silver.

”We’re going to go and get her.”

Liam in the scarecrow field, by the blank one, still in his wedding shirt with Nessa’s ribbon. His father has carried his mother up and down the stairs of Block Nine since the lift broke. They asked to come. Denied, no reason. His father asked me to bring them home. ”And here we are. Home. And they can’t come and see it.” The Calder rule: he meant both parts. Calders burn hot; hers comes out her hands, his out his mouth. Sera will need someone to make a lot of noise. ”Is it mad?” ”Completely. That’s never stopped a Calder.”

Pebble didn’t leave the quiet room all day. The eldest doesn’t leave until the mother comes back. Risa touched her forehead to his head. Dory, asleep, closed her fingers where his head had been.