Scarecrow

Liam was still holding the fire.

I’d forgotten. Everyone had. In the middle of the night, with six queens coming back one after another in the tops of the trees, and the Kethri singing, cracked and wavering, and the old queen at the bottom of the old Hand listening to every note, nobody had thought to look at the General’s ice path.

He was still standing on it.

Shirtless, in the dark, a hundred feet over the forest. With his arms held out a little from his sides and every silver line on them blazing white, all the way from his fingertips to his shoulders. The General had kept the path under him all night. Hana had sat on the end of it with her feet dangling over nothing and kept a thin cold mist round him so the ice wouldn’t melt.

Neither of them had said anything. They’d just stayed.

When the last queen came back, the small quick one who went straight up to the top of the tallest tree, I came down out of the canopy and stood on the ice beside him.

”Liam.”

”Lucas.” His voice was very strange. Very level. The voice of someone holding something very heavy very carefully. ”I’ve been waiting for somebody to tell me where to put it.”

I looked at him.

Through him. The way I’d looked at Sera, the first night in the forge, when her fire wouldn’t come back. Every path of silver in him. Every one lit up white with the heat of a burning forest, packed in tight, held. Not hurting him. Not yet. But full. As full as anything I’d ever seen.

”Can you let it go?” I said.

”Where?” He didn’t move. ”Lucas, it’s a forest. The whole world. If I let go of this anywhere near a tree—”

”Not near a tree.”

He looked at me.

I looked up.

Through the canopy. Through the leaves, swaying in the dark, and the gaps between them where the stars came through. Past the old Hand, hanging still and quiet now over the forest, the voice put down. Up. Through the low clouds that sat on the tops of the trees. Through the thin cold air above them.

Nothing up there. Nothing to burn.

”Up,” I said.

Liam followed my eyes.

”How far up?”

”As far as you can throw it.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then something happened to his face. Something I’d seen happen to Sera’s, in the forge, the first time a horseshoe cooled under her hand instead of melting.

”Calders don’t throw things up,” he said. ”Dad always says. You throw it where it’ll do some good.”

”It’ll do some good up there,” I said. ”Nobody’ll get burned.”

So he threw it.

Straight up. Both hands. Everything he’d been holding all night, the whole of the fire that the handlers had rained down onto the canopy, all of it at once. Out of his hands and up through the gap in the leaves above him, past the old Hand, through the clouds.

And above the clouds, a sun.

For a moment. Just a moment. A second sun, white, so bright that the whole of the forest under it lit up silver-green from pole to pole, every leaf, every branch, every small grey Kethri in every tree. So bright that the youngest queen on Sesh’s shoulder, in the doorway of the Open Hand, put her head under her wing.

Then it was gone. Burned out in the cold thin air, with nothing to feed it.

And the dark came back, softer than before.

Liam sat down on the ice.

He didn’t mean to, I think. His knees just went. He sat on the General’s ice path with his bare arms on his knees and the silver lines on them fading slowly from white to their ordinary bright, and looked at his hands.

”I put it back,” he said.

”Yes.”

”All of it. The whole—” He stopped. ”I put it back.”

Hana slid along the ice to him. She didn’t say anything. She just put her cold hand on his hot shoulder, and the steam came up off him in a little cloud, and he laughed. Not loud. Just once.

”Sera’s going to be so annoyed,” he said. ”She did it first.”

”She’ll be proud,” said Hana.

”She’ll be annoyed and proud,” said Liam. ”That’s what Calders are for.”

The General, at the far end of the ice path, let it melt very slowly, a foot at a time, until it brought them both down to the door of the Open Hand. Then he went inside and sat down in the squad seats and closed his eyes and didn’t open them again until morning.

The old queen was still at the bottom of the old Hand.

I went back to her at first light. When the Kethri world’s small white sun came up over the edge of the forest, and the six new queens were singing to their young in the tops of the trees, and the Kethri were answering. Better than the night before. Fewer cracks. Fewer wrong whistles. They were remembering.

She was listening.

I could feel her. Very faint. Very far down. Curled small and smooth in her housing of grey at the heart of the palm, with the voice put down beside her like a stone she didn’t need any more. Listening to every note.

”Ma’am,” I said.

Yes.

”What would you like now?”

She didn’t answer for a long time.

When she did, it wasn’t in words. It never was, with her. It was a shape. Small and worn smooth, like her.

Down.

”Down?”

I have been up for so long. Over them. Always over them. In the dark, at the bottom of this. A pause. I would like to be down. Among them. Under the trees. Where I can hear them from close.

I understood.

”You could come with us,” I said. ”To Avalon. There’s a place there. Lots of queens. Lots of singing. We could—”

No. Very gently. Thank you. No. A pause. I have heard them sing for one night. I would like to hear them every morning. For as long as I have.

”How long is that?”

The old queen was quiet.

I do not know, she said. I am very old. I have been very tired for a long time. But I am not tired now. Another pause. I think I would like to find out.

So I took her out of the Hand.

Gently. More gently than anything I’d ever done. The housing had grown into her and she into it, the way the last gardener had grown round its collar. I couldn’t pull it away without pulling her. So I did what I’d done for Dot, and Old Son, and Aster. I listened. For a long time. Until I knew which part was her and which part was the grey. And I closed every place the grey touched her and gave her back her own way.

And unfolded the rest.

She came out into my hands. Small. Pale. Smooth. Warm, very faintly, the way a stone is warm when it has been in the sun. No bigger than Ash.

I carried her down.

Out of the palm. Out through the underside, where the moss hung in beards. Down past the Open Hand in the canopy, where Sesh stood in the doorway watching, with the youngest queen on her shoulder. Down through the branches, and the Kethri on them, every one of them turning to watch me go past. Down, and down, through the forest, past layer after layer of branches and leaves, into green and then darker green and then a dim gold light like the inside of a church.

To the floor.

It was soft. Moss and fallen leaves and old roots, deep and quiet. The trunks of the trees going up all round, so wide that ten people holding hands couldn’t have reached round them. The light coming down from very far above in long thin beams.

And far above, the singing.

I’d never heard anything like it. Up in the canopy it had been loud, cracked, close. Down here it was something else. It came down through the leaves and the branches and the long gold light like rain, soft, from everywhere. From all round. The whole forest singing, and the sound of it falling slowly down through the trees to the floor.

I set the old queen down on the moss.

Between the roots of the biggest tree. Where the light came down.

She didn’t move.

But I felt her listen.

There, she said. There. Yes.

I left her there.

I didn’t know if she’d last a day, or a year, or longer than any of us. Nobody did. But I went back up through the trees and every Kethri I passed was looking down. Past me. Toward the floor of the forest, where the light came down between the roots of the biggest tree.

They knew she was there.

And as I came up into the canopy, the small quick queen at the top of the tallest tree, the one who sang so loud the whole forest heard her, turned her head and looked down too.

And sang. Down. Toward the roots.

To the one who’d made them stop.

The wings took the rest of the week.

Sesh asked. That first morning, with the six queens singing and the old queen on the forest floor and the old Hand hanging empty overhead. She came and stood in front of me on the General’s ice, which he’d built again at dawn without being asked, a long white platform in the canopy, and she didn’t say anything at all.

She just turned round.

And showed me her back. Where her wings were. Where they’d grown from, the afternoon I gave them back to her on the red glass on Avalon, from the shape her body remembered.

Then she turned back. And looked out at the trees. At the few thousand Kethri on the branches, singing. Small and grey and quick.

With nothing on their backs.

The Sorn cut every Kethri’s wings the day the collars went on. Sesh had told me that, a long time ago. So they couldn’t fly away. Gone, and healed over, smooth, the way Rory’s paths had been taken out from his shoulders to his hands.

But the body remembers.

I’d grown Sesh’s from what her body remembered. And the other nine after her, on the red glass. Carefully. Listening to each.

There were a few thousand here.

”I can’t,” I said. ”Not one at a time. Not a few thousand. It’d take—”

No, said a voice.

Not Sesh. Not the youngest queen.

The small quick one, at the top of the tallest tree.

They are ours, she said.

All six of them, singing it. The six I’d sung back the night before, out of pieces of grey in collars. The one with the streamers and the one dark as bark and the one white as cloud and the one with the fan-crest and the one patterned like light through leaves. And the small quick one at the top of the tallest tree.

They are our young. Our brood. We are their mothers. A pause. We will give them back their wings.

You show us how. The way you did it for the ten. And then we will do it. All of us. For all of them.

So I showed them.

It took a day. I took one Kethri, an old one, very grey, very small, from the lowest branch of the nearest tree. I set her on the General’s ice. And I grew her wings, the way I’d grown Sesh’s. Slowly. Listening to the shape her body remembered. And while I did it, I let the six queens watch. Not with eyes. Through the silver. Every path. Every bone. Every feather.

When it was done, the old Kethri stood on the ice with two great folded wings on her back, as long as she was tall, and didn’t move.

Then she beat them. Once.

And the six queens sang.

They did the rest.

Not all at once. They weren’t me. They didn’t see through things the way I did, or change them the way I did. But they were queens. And the silver in their young was theirs. And the silver remembered.

So they sang. Every morning. To every Kethri in the forest. And the silver in every small grey back listened. And remembered. And grew.

The first morning, a hundred. Small wings, uncertain, stubby, like a fledgling’s.

The second morning, a thousand. Bigger. Stronger.

By the fifth morning, every Kethri on the world had wings.

And on the sixth morning, at dawn, with the small white sun coming up over the edge of the forest, they flew.

I’ll never forget it.

A few thousand Kethri, coming up out of the tops of the trees all at once into the morning. Grey and copper and white and dark, every colour a feather can be. Up through the low clouds. Over the forest. Turning in great slow circles in the wind, the way Sesh had turned over Scarecrow the first time, higher and higher, singing.

The whole sky full of them.

And under them, the forest. And on the floor of the forest, between the roots of the biggest tree, where the light came down, a small pale smooth thing, listening.

Sesh found the mother on the fourth day.

I didn’t know she was looking. Nobody did. She’d been gone from the Open Hand since dawn, out among the trees, with the youngest queen on her shoulder. When she came back, it was late. And she wasn’t alone.

There was an old Kethri with her.

Very old. Older than the one I’d given wings on the ice. Small and bent, with her feathers gone dull and thin, and her back smooth where her wings had been cut. Unwinged, still. The queens hadn’t reached her yet. She’d been on the lowest branches of a tree at the far edge of the forest, where the oldest ones were, the ones too old to be useful.

Sesh brought her to me on the ice.

And stood beside her. With her three-fingered hand on the old one’s shoulder. And made the long falling sound.

Not quiet. Not home. Something else. Something I’d heard only once before.

On the top of Ines Tarrow’s ridge. On Earth. When Sesh landed with the one who’d fallen in her arms.

Juno told me what it was.

She’d come out onto the ice behind me. She stood very still, with her eyes shut, listening.

”It’s a name,” said Juno. Very quietly. ”Lucas. Sesh is saying a name.”

I knew which name.

I’d heard it once. On the morning after the moon. When Sesh told me through Dot what the one who fell had been called. A long low click rising and falling away like wind over a ridge. You can’t say it, Dot had said. You’re not meant to say it. You’re meant to know it.

The old Kethri on the ice heard it.

She went very still.

And then she made a sound I’d never heard any Kethri make, and never want to hear again. Not rising. Not falling. Just one note. Low. Held. For a very long time.

Sesh put her arms round her.

I didn’t understand all of it. Juno didn’t either. The Kethri don’t tell their names to anyone but each other, and what the old one said to Sesh, and what Sesh said back, was for them.

But I understood enough.

The one who fell had been taken from this forest a long time ago. Young. In a collar. Away to another world, to fight. She’d never come back. Her mother had never known what happened to her. Whether she’d lived. Whether she’d died. Where.

And now she knew.

That her daughter had come to a world with a red glass plain and a canyon and a queen at a garden wall. That she’d been the third Kethri ever given wings. That she’d asked for them grey all the way to the tips. Like her mother’s.

That she’d gone between a blade and Sesh at the bottom of the wrist of a Hand, on a world called Earth, and fallen.

And that every morning since, the Kethri of Avalon had stood in a ring with one place left open.

For her.

The old Kethri turned round.

She looked at me. With eyes very old and very wet. And she didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

She turned her back to me.

And waited.

So I grew her wings.

Not the queens. Me. I asked them, through the hello, and the small quick one at the top of the tallest tree said yes, very quietly, and the others said yes after her. This one is yours, they said. You made her daughter’s.

So I did it the way I’d done the first ten. Slowly. On the ice, in the late light, with Sesh holding her and Juno beside me and the youngest queen very still on Sesh’s shoulder. I listened to the shape her body remembered. All of it. Every bone. Every feather.

And her body remembered something I didn’t expect.

The colour.

They came out grey.

All the way to the tips. No copper. No dark. No white. Grey, soft and pale and even, from where they grew out of her back to the very last feather at the end of each wing.

Exactly the grey I’d given her daughter. The afternoon on the red glass, when a Kethri with darker feathers at the back of the ten had asked me, through Dot, if hers could be grey all the way. I would like to look like my mother.

She had.

The old Kethri stood on the ice with her wings folded and didn’t move for a long time.

Then she beat them. Once.

And went up. Slowly. Not far. Just to the nearest branch. Where she sat, very small and very old, with her grey wings folded, and looked out at the sky full of Kethri flying.

Sesh went up after her. And sat beside her. Wing to wing.

And they stayed there until dark.

We went home on the seventh day.

Not all of us. That was the thing I hadn’t thought about, until it came.

The Kethri of Avalon stood on the General’s ice at dawn. Sesh, and the eight. With the youngest queen on Sesh’s shoulder. And in front of them, in the trees, the Kethri of their own world, winged now, a few thousand. And the six queens.

Home.

Mother came to find me below the trees. ”I’m sorry for calling you ”Dask”. For a moment I was fighting with your father again, and it just came out.”

”It kind of shocked me, but it’s ok, it was your first time fighting again, and you did great.” I replied.

”He would be so proud to see the man you’ve become, so many people look to you.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just pulled her into a hug.

Five of the eight stayed.

They said so, one by one, the way the Kethri did everything, without words, with a long falling sound and a touch of the neck against Sesh’s. Five of them. Who’d been taken from these trees young, and fought on worlds that weren’t theirs for longer than they could remember, and come to Avalon three steps behind a handler, and been given wings on the red glass.

They went up into the trees. To find whoever was left of their own.

Three came back with us. They said Avalon was theirs now too. The red glass, and the canyon, and the tall silver-green trees the last gardener had grown in the park, swaying in the wind exactly the way these did.

And the ring. They said someone had to keep the ring.

Sesh came back.

I’d thought she might not. Her world. Her forest. Her people, singing again, with wings. And the old one with grey to the tips, who’d sat beside her on a branch till dark.

But the youngest queen came back. That was why.

She told us on the last morning, through Juno, perched on Sesh’s shoulder in the doorway of the Open Hand. Very small. Very precise.

I have six sisters here now. They will sing to our people. They will give them back everything. A pause. But there are more worlds. More collars. More queens in pieces. Another pause. I am the only one of us who knows how to carry a ship.

I would like to keep asking.

And Sesh, who went wherever the youngest queen went, came back too.

The old Kethri with the grey wings came to the ice to see her off.

She didn’t say anything. She stood on the branch above the door of the Open Hand, very small, very old, with her grey wings folded. And as Sesh went up the ramp, she made a sound.

Not the long falling sound. Not the rising one.

A click. Rising and falling away. Like wind over a ridge.

Her daughter’s name.

Sesh stopped on the ramp. Turned. And made it back.

Then she went inside. And the door closed. On the inside.

We crossed in thirty-six minutes.

Lighter coming home. Always.

Okafor sat in the squad seats the whole way with her slate on her knee and didn’t write anything on it. When the dark opened and the plain was there, and the Nivi mountain and the Sef spire and the city north of the Hands with sixteen thousand people coming out onto their crooked porches to see, she took out her pencil.

And wrote one thing.

I saw it, over her shoulder. She didn’t hide it.

1.

Then she put the slate under her arm and went down the ramp.

The Kethri ring was waiting.

On the red glass. Where it always stood. With the one place left open.

Sesh walked across the glass to it, with the youngest queen on her shoulder and the three behind her. And she didn’t fill the empty place. None of them did. They stood round it, the way they always had.

But Sesh made a sound, very quietly, to the empty place.

A click. Rising and falling away. Like wind over a ridge.

And then she said something else. Juno, behind me, put it into words for me later, on the porch, after dark.

Your mother has wings again, Sesh had said. Grey to the tips. Like yours.

Days 1013–1019. Grey to the tips.

Liam was still on the General’s ice at the end of the night, shirtless, arms out, every silver line white, a burning forest packed tight inside him, the General keeping the path and Hana keeping a cold mist round him all night without a word. I’ve been waiting for somebody to tell me where to put it. Not near a tree. Up, as far as you can throw it. Calders don’t throw things up; you throw it where it’ll do some good. It’ll do some good up there; nobody gets burned. Both hands, straight up through the leaves and the clouds: a second white sun for a moment, the forest silver-green pole to pole, the youngest queen’s head under her wing. Then gone, and the dark came back softer. He sat down: I put it back. Hana’s cold hand on his hot shoulder, steam, one laugh. Sera will be annoyed and proud; that’s what Calders are for. The General let the ice melt a foot at a time down to the door and slept sitting up till morning.

At first light the Kethri sang better, fewer cracks, remembering. The old queen, curled small with the voice beside her like a stone she doesn’t need: what would you like? Down. Among them, under the trees, to hear them from close. Not Avalon; thank you, no; I’ve heard them one night and would like every morning for as long as I have. How long? I don’t know. I’m very old and was tired a long time, but not now; I’d like to find out. Her housing had grown into her like the gardener’s collar; I did as for Dot and Old Son and Aster, closed every place the grey touched her and gave her back her own way. No bigger than Ash, warm like a stone in sun. I carried her down past every branch to a floor of moss and roots, trunks ten people couldn’t reach round, gold light in long beams, the singing falling through the trees like rain. I set her between the roots of the biggest tree. There. Yes. Every Kethri looked down after me. The small quick queen at the top of the tallest tree sang down to the roots, to the one who made them stop.

Sesh turned and showed me her back, then the thousands on the branches with nothing on theirs. The Sorn cut every Kethri’s wings when the collars went on; the body remembers. One at a time would take forever. The small quick queen: they’re ours, our brood; show us how, then we’ll do it. A day: I grew wings for one very old grey Kethri on the ice and let all six watch through the silver, every bone and feather. Then the queens sang every morning and the silver in every back remembered: a hundred stubby fledgling wings, a thousand, by the fifth morning all; on the sixth, at dawn, the whole sky full of them in every colour a feather can be, singing, and on the forest floor between the roots, something small and pale, listening.

The fourth day Sesh came back late with a very old unwinged Kethri from the far edge where the oldest were kept, and made the long falling sound I’d heard once, on Ines Tarrow’s ridge on Earth. Juno: it’s a name. The one who fell, the click like wind over a ridge Dot said you’re meant to know, not say. The old one held one low note for a very long time, a sound I never want to hear again. Sesh held her. Taken young in a collar; never came back; her mother never knew. Now she knows: the red glass, the third Kethri ever given wings, grey to the tips like her mother’s; between a blade and Sesh at the bottom of a Hand’s wrist on Earth; and a ring with one place left open every morning since. She turned her back to me and waited. The queens: this one is yours; you made her daughter’s. Her body remembered the colour. Grey all the way to the tips, no copper, exactly what I gave the one who asked to look like her mother. One beat, to the nearest branch. Sesh sat beside her wing to wing till dark.

Seventh day. Five of the eight stayed, with a falling sound and a neck against Sesh’s, to find whoever was left of their own. Three came home: Avalon’s theirs too, the canyon and the gardener’s trees that sway like these, and someone has to keep the ring. The youngest: six sisters will sing to our people and give them back everything; there are more worlds, more collars, more queens in pieces; I’m the only one who knows how to carry a ship; I’d like to keep asking. Sesh goes where she goes. The old one with grey wings on the branch above the door made her daughter’s name. Sesh made it back. The door closed on the inside.

Thirty-six minutes; lighter coming home. Okafor wrote nothing the whole way. Over the plain, with sixteen thousand on their crooked porches, she wrote one thing and didn’t hide it: 1. The ring waiting with its empty place. They stood round it and didn’t fill it. Sesh made the name to it, and then, Juno told me after dark: your mother has wings again. Grey to the tips. Like yours.