Scarecrow

The crossing didn’t take forty minutes.

That was the first thing that went wrong. Not wrong. Different. Aster had told us it would be. She’d said it in the map room, before we left, with her lamps very low: a queen sings toward far silver until it answers. To the human world, the silver answered at once. Voss’s seed. Okafor’s people. A whole dome of it. To the nine worlds, the queens’ own young answered. There, nothing will answer. There, everything has been taught not to.

So the Drenn queen sang.

And behind her, along the hello, every queen on Avalon sang with her. I felt them go out. Our queen, at the garden wall. The first queen. The heavy queen on her stone shelf at the heart of the Steady, singing harder than I’d ever heard her sing, toward the place her best young had gone. All of them, a long way behind us now, holding the rope up so it wasn’t heavy.

The thread went out of the point of the ship. Long. Very thin. Into the dark between.

And nothing took hold of it.

It went on like that for a day.

Then two.

The Scarecrow didn’t move. Not the way ships move. She sat in the dark between the pages, very still, with the thread running out of her point into nothing, and the Drenn queen in her room singing one low word over and over, and the hum of every other queen under it, faint, like a crowd in another room.

Safi slept at the helm, sitting up. Aster didn’t sleep at all. Marlo and his two light-benders played a card game none of the rest of us understood, which involved bending the light so the other players couldn’t see their own cards. Juno sat with her eyes shut and the seed in her hand and sent everything home, every hour, so Okafor would know we were still here.

And every hour, through the seed, something came back.

Mostly Okafor. Received. Sometimes Luna, with a number about the city’s water. And twice a day, morning and evening, so loud through the seed that Juno flinched and then laughed: Dory.

Papa. I checked. All three are there. Mama’s is bigger. Hana’s are talking to each other. I can’t hear what they’re saying. Grandma says that’s normal.

Wren counted every morning.

She couldn’t hear anyone. Not the way she did at home. There was no note going out and coming back off every face; there was no one out here to come back off. Just us. Nine people and a queen in a dark ship in the space between pages.

So she took the stone out of her pocket.

Toby’s stone. With Harriet’s dawn note in it. She held it against her ear and shut her eyes, and the note went into her very faint, and she counted us. Out loud. Every morning. Safi. Aster. Marlo. The two light-benders. Juno. Tally. Me. The Drenn queen, in her room. Herself, last.

”Ten,” she said.

”Ten,” said Tally. Making a mark. Two hands of lines in Genny’s notebook, two rows down. She’d started a new page for the crossing. At the top she’d written, very carefully, in Genny’s square letters which she’d copied exactly: US.

On the third day, Tally asked me something.

She’d been sitting on the floor by the Drenn queen’s open door most of the morning. Listening to the singing. With the notebook on her knee and the pencil in her hand, not writing anything.

”Lucas.”

”Yes.”

”What if no one answers?”

I didn’t know what to say. I’d been thinking it for three days.

”Then we go home,” I said. ”And think of something else.”

Tally looked at the thread. You could see it, from the forward window. Very faint. Silver. Running out from the point of the ship and getting thinner and thinner until it wasn’t there.

”They won’t answer,” she said. ”I would not have. When I was there. If I had felt something singing to me, I would have—” She stopped. Her short silver hair stood up a little at the back where Voss had cut it. ”I would have told the voice. That is what we were taught. If you feel something, you tell the voice, and the voice makes it stop.”

Nobody said anything.

”Not all of them,” said Tally. Very slowly. Looking at the thread. ”There was one. Who sat next to me.”

”In the halls?”

”Yes. On the bench. We were not supposed to look at each other.” Her voice was very flat. Very careful. As if every word might be one she wasn’t allowed. ”She used to touch my hand. Under the bench. Where the voice could not see. Just with one finger. Every day.” Tally looked down at her own hand. ”I did not know what it was for. I did not know it was a thing a person could want. I thought it was a mistake she kept making.”

”Did you tell the voice?”

Tally was quiet for a long time.

”No,” she said. ”I never told. I did not know why I did not tell.” She looked up at me. ”I think now I know why.”

She went to the Drenn queen’s door.

She stood in it. Very small. In front of the great blue-black shape folded into its rests with its four blades and its eyes half shut, singing.

”May I ask something?” said Tally.

The Drenn queen opened her eyes.

She didn’t stop singing. But she turned her great head. Down. Toward the small silver-haired child in her doorway.

”You are singing to all of it,” said Tally. ”All the silver there. All at once. They will all tell the voice.” She swallowed. ”Can you sing to one?”

The Drenn queen looked at her for a long time.

Which one? she said. Through me. Through Juno. Very low.

”She sat next to me,” said Tally. ”I do not know her name. I do not think she has one. She touched my hand under the bench.” A pause. ”I can show you what that felt like. If that is a thing that can be shown.”

The Drenn queen lowered her great head. Until it was level with Tally’s. The way she’d bowed to Anja on the forest floor, a long time ago.

Show me, she said.

I don’t know what Tally showed her.

Nobody did. It went between them. Not through the hello. Not through Juno. Something else. Something that I think Tally had kept, for a very long time, very small, somewhere the grey hadn’t grown over, because she hadn’t known it was worth anything.

The Drenn queen shut her eyes.

And the singing changed.

Not louder. Smaller. Narrower. The low word she’d been singing for three days went thin and fine as a single hair. And behind her, along the hello, I felt every queen on Avalon go quiet one after another, as they understood. Until there was just one thread. One voice. Singing toward one child, somewhere in a hall of grey, who’d touched someone’s hand under a bench.

Six hours later, someone answered.

I felt it before anyone. I was at the forward window. And the thread, the silver thread running out of the point of the ship into the dark, went tight.

Not hard. Not like a rope pulled. Like a rope touched. Very lightly. One finger. And let go. And then touched again.

Juno sat bolt upright with the seed in her hand. ”Something—”

”Her,” said Tally.

She was standing in the Drenn queen’s doorway. Very straight. Her hands at her sides, in fists.

”That is her,” said Tally. ”That is what it felt like. Under the bench.”

The thread went tight again. One finger. And this time it didn’t let go.

And the Drenn queen sang the word one more time, very softly, toward it.

And the Scarecrow turned the page.

The sky was black.

Not the black of night. The black between pages, almost. Very deep. Very still. With stars in it, many more than over Avalon, so many in some places they looked like dust.

And across it, edge-on, a ring.

Pale. Enormous. A blade of light cutting the sky in half from one side to the other, so thin it hurt to look at, so long it went out of the window at both ends.

And under it, very low, two suns. One blue. One red. Going round each other so slowly you’d have to watch for a year to see them move.

Exactly as Garnet had drawn it.

”Light,” I said.

Marlo was already moving. He and his two light-benders put their hands flat on the inside of the hull, one at each side and one at the top, and the windows went strange for a moment, the stars bending at the edges. Then they were clear again.

”We’re not here,” said Marlo. ”Anyone looking at us sees the stars behind us. Anyone who isn’t looking sees nothing at all.”

”How long can you hold it?”

”As long as we don’t fall asleep,” said Marlo. He looked at his two. ”We’ll take turns.”

Safi brought us round. Slowly. Not the way the Steady moved, all at once. Gently. Under the ring. Toward where the two suns were. Toward where Tally’s window had been.

And there it was.

It wasn’t a world.

Not the way Avalon is a world. Or Earth. It was smaller than a moon. Grey. All of it. Not ash-grey or stone-grey. Sorn grey. The grey of the Hands, the grey of the collars, the grey that had held the queens in their housings. A whole small world of it, hanging under the ring in the light of two suns.

It wasn’t round. It was the shape grey grows when nobody asks it to be anything. Lumped. Folded. Ridged, the way the old Hand had been ridged, with deep creases running across it. Very smooth in places. Very rough in others. And very still.

”There,” said Tally. Very quietly. At the window. ”That is where.”

I looked.

I’d been afraid I wouldn’t be able to see into it.

Grey that had never been anything else, Tally had said. Grey that wasn’t asleep. When I’d gone into the new Hand over the Kethri forest, the grey had fought me. I’d had to ask harder, and harder, and it had let me in. This was older than that. Much older. And it had never been anything but what it was.

But I didn’t need to ask it to let me in. I didn’t want to change it. I only wanted to look.

And looking, I could do.

I looked.

Halls.

Long and low. One above another. Going down into the grey and round and round the whole small world like the inside of a shell. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Every one the same. Grey walls. Grey floor. Grey benches, in rows, straight, going away into the grey as far as the hall went.

And on the benches, children.

Sitting.

Straight-backed. Hands together in their laps. Very still. Every one. In row after row after row after row. Every one with a smooth grey curve where a face would be.

Different shapes. Different sizes. Some tall and narrow like Tally. Some small and round. Some with limbs folded in ways I’d never seen. Some with something like wings, folded tight under grey. Some no bigger than Dory. Some no bigger than Trevor.

And under the grey, in every one, silver. Whole. Born whole.

Every one.

I don’t know how long I looked.

Sera wasn’t there. Nobody was there to put a hand on my arm and say put it back. I just stood at the window with my hands flat on the glass and looked, and somewhere a long way off I could hear something ringing, very faintly, and I didn’t know until afterward that it was the Scarecrow’s hull.

It was Wren who stopped it.

She didn’t touch me. Wren doesn’t touch people unless she’s counted them first. She just stood beside me and said, very quietly, the thing Okafor had said in the map room.

”Look. Count. Come home.” A pause. ”Not open. Not fold.”

The hull stopped ringing.

”I know,” I said.

”I know you know,” said Wren. ”I’m saying it so you can hear it said.” She took the stone out of her pocket. Held it against her ear. ”How do I count them, Lucas? There’s no note. There’s nothing to come back off them.”

Then the voice came down.

It came from above. From the top of the small grey world. From somewhere in the grey at the very top, the highest fold, where the ridges met. Not loud. It was never loud, Tally had said. It came down through the grey like water through stone, into every hall, all at once. Into every child.

Not a word. Not quite. A pressure. A shape. The same shape, pressed down, over and over, the way you’d smooth a cloth.

Asking is not how it’s done.

I felt Tally go rigid beside me.

I felt Juno’s breath stop.

And I felt the children. Every one. In every hall. Go very slightly stiller.

Wren’s eyes opened.

”Oh,” she said.

She was looking at nothing. At the window. Her head was on one side. The way it went on the north wall at dawn, when Harriet’s note came back off everyone.

”It comes back,” said Wren. Very slowly. ”Doesn’t it. The voice. It goes down into them and it comes back off them. Every one. Like a note.” She shut her eyes. ”It’s a terrible note. But it’s a note.”

”Wren—”

”Don’t talk to me,” said Wren. ”I’m counting.”

She counted for nine hours.

The voice came down every few minutes. Sometimes every few seconds. Smoothing. Pressing. Asking is not how it’s done. And every time it came down and went into the children and came back off them, Wren heard it. The shape of each one. The way she heard the shape of everyone in Scarecrow by Harriet’s note. She counted them by the thing that was making them forget how to ask.

She sat on the floor of the Scarecrow’s forward deck with her back against the hull and her eyes shut and the stone in her hand, held tight, against her chest. Not to count by. To hold on to. Her lips moved the whole time.

Tally sat beside her. With Genny’s notebook. And every number Wren said, Tally made a mark.

Four lines down. One across.

Page after page.

She ran out of pages in the first hour. Juno found her more. The backs of Luna’s hold list. Aster’s spare plans. Marlo’s cards, the blank side. Tally made a mark on every one, and when she filled one she put it in a pile beside her, very neatly, squared at the edges, the way Voss stacked complaints.

Halfway through, Wren stopped.

Not because she’d finished. She stopped with her lips open on a number and her face went very strange.

”There’s one,” she said. ”That doesn’t.”

”Doesn’t what?”

”Doesn’t come back right.” Wren’s eyes were still shut. ”The voice goes down into it and comes back off it, like all the others, but it comes back—” She frowned. ”Wrong. Not wrong. Different. Like Harriet’s note when it goes past the Karst caves. Like there’s something in the way. Like someone’s put a hand over the string.” She was quiet. ”No. The other way. Like someone’s put one finger on the string. Very lightly. So it doesn’t quite ring the same.”

Tally’s pencil stopped.

”Where?” she said.

Wren pointed. Without opening her eyes. Down. Into the grey. Toward one of the deepest halls.

I looked.

The hall was like all the others. Long. Low. Grey benches. Rows of small shapes with smooth grey faces and their hands together.

And on the end of one bench, near the back, one of them had its hand not quite together.

One finger. Out. Resting very lightly on the bench beside it. On the empty place. Where somebody else had been sitting, once, a long time ago, and wasn’t any more.

”Her,” said Tally.

She wasn’t looking. She couldn’t see. Not the way I could. She was just sitting there on the floor with the pencil stopped and her face turned toward where Wren had pointed.

”She still puts her finger there,” said Tally. ”On my place. I was sent out a long time ago. And she still—” She stopped. Her flat careful voice wavered, the way it had in the garden, when she’d asked if she was allowed to know how old she was. ”She answered. She answered the rope. Because it felt like my hand.”

Nobody said anything.

”She will tell the voice,” said Tally. ”If she is asked. If the voice finds out something touched her. She will have to tell.” She looked at me. ”Won’t she?”

I looked at the child on the bench. At the one finger. At the silver under the grey, whole, born whole, and somewhere very deep in the middle of it, under all the smoothing, a small place the grey hadn’t quite reached. Not much. A fingertip’s worth.

”No,” I said. ”I don’t think she will. I think she’s been not telling it things for a very long time.”

Wren finished at the end of the ninth hour.

She stopped counting. Opened her eyes. They were red at the edges and very dry, and she sat very still for a long time with the stone against her chest.

Tally made the last mark. Then she squared the pile beside her. It was taller than she was, sitting down.

”Well?” I said.

Wren didn’t answer at once. She looked at the pile.

”Fifty-eight thousand,” she said. ”Three hundred and twelve.” Her voice was perfectly steady. ”Children. Not counting the voice. Not counting anything that isn’t a child. Not counting the ones on the Hands.” A pause. ”Fifty-eight thousand three hundred and twelve. And one with her finger on the bench.”

”That is one of the fifty-eight thousand,” said Tally. ”I counted her.” She held up the last sheet. The last mark. ”I counted her in.”

And then the rest of it.

Because Okafor hadn’t only said count. She’d said what’s standing over them.

So I looked at that too.

The voice was at the top. I’d known that. In the highest fold of the small grey world, where the ridges met. I looked up into it.

A keeper. One. But not like the one in the box on the north shelf. Much older. Much larger. Grown into the grey the way the old Hand’s queen had been grown into her housing, so that you couldn’t tell where it stopped and the world began. Pale eyes. Many of them. Looking down. Into the halls. All the time. Never shutting.

And all round it, in the folds, the others. Wardens. Handlers. Not many. They didn’t need many. Fifty-eight thousand children who’d been taught not to ask don’t need many people to stand over them.

And at the ring, three Hands. Moored, the way the Open Hand sat on the plain at home, with their fingers folded. Old ones. Tired. Asleep.

And one more. Coming.

We watched it come in.

It came round the edge of the ring from the far side. A Hand, smaller than the others, fingers half open, moving slowly. It came down toward the small grey world and settled against it, at one of the ridges, and the grey of the Hand and the grey of the world met and grew together like two drops of water touching.

And out of the palm of the Hand, into the grey, children.

In a line.

Holding hands.

I don’t know where they came from. Nobody did. Not Kethri. Not Drenn. Not any of the nine. Small. Smaller than Ash. Pale, with something like soft fur, and large dark eyes. Thirty of them. Maybe forty. In a line, holding hands, the way Miss Pell had said the older children walked up the hill to the Ministry, a long time ago. The way they’d been taught to walk on the ring street.

They didn’t have grey on their faces yet.

They had faces.

They were looking round. At the grey. At the halls. At the handlers on either side of them, walking them in. One of them, near the back, was crying. Very quietly. Without making any sound. The one in front of it had turned round to look.

And then the voice came down.

Asking is not how it’s done.

And the one in front turned back round.

I didn’t move.

I want that written down. I want it in the book, in the same place on the page where everything always goes. I want Ruth to read it every year.

I didn’t move.

I stood at the window of the Scarecrow with my hands flat on the glass and every bit of silver I had screaming at me to go down there, through the grey, through the voice, and take the line of children by the hands and bring them up into the ship. I could have. I could have done it. I could have opened that Hand like a door and folded every handler in that hall into a box before any of them knew I was there.

And then the keeper at the top would have known.

And the next time we came, there’d be nothing here. Or there’d be fifty-eight thousand children somewhere else, somewhere we’d never find, with a thousand Hands round them.

Look. Count. Come home.

I didn’t move.

Tally did.

She didn’t go anywhere. She stood up. Off the floor, where she’d been sitting beside Wren with the pile of marks. She came to the window and stood next to me. She couldn’t see what I could see. She couldn’t see into the grey. But she knew what I was looking at. She knew the halls. She’d walked in, once, in a line. Holding hands.

She put her hand flat on the glass. Next to mine.

And she put one finger out.

Just one. Touching the glass. Very lightly.

Toward the deep hall. Toward the child on the end of the bench.

Down in the grey, the child on the bench moved her finger.

Just slightly. On the empty place beside her.

Once.

Juno sent it home at dusk.

Not dusk here. Here the two suns never set. Dusk at home. On Avalon. When everyone would be on the plain, or the porch, or the green, and Okafor would be standing at the foot of the steps of Scarecrow with her slate.

Juno sat with her eyes shut and the seed in her hand, and I told her, and she sent it. All of it. The ring and the two suns. The small grey world. The halls. The keeper at the top, grown in. The wardens and the handlers. The three tired Hands and the one that came in. The line of children with faces, holding hands.

And the number.

Fifty-eight thousand three hundred and twelve.

Then we waited.

It was a long time before anything came back. Longer than it had ever been. Juno sat with her eyes shut and her hand round the seed. Wren sat with the stone against her chest.

Then Juno’s face changed.

”Okafor,” she said. ”She says—”

She stopped. Listened.

”She says received,” said Juno. ”And then she says—” Her voice changed. Not Juno’s. Okafor’s. Exact. The way Wren does it. ”Every one. Come home, Dask. All of you. We’ll need everyone.”

We stayed one more day.

Okafor allowed it. To look. To be sure. Aster wanted to know how the Hands were moored. Marlo wanted to know where the handlers walked, and when. Safi wanted to know how close a ship could come under the ring before something noticed.

And I wanted to look at the keeper at the top. For a long time. To know it. The way I’d known the keeper in the box, before I folded it. The way you learn the face of the thing you’re going to stand in front of, one day, when it matters.

It didn’t know I was there. It didn’t look up. It didn’t need to. It had never needed to look up, in all the time it had been there. Nothing had ever come.

I looked at it until I knew every fold.

On the last morning, Wren counted us.

Stone against her ear. Eyes shut.

”Safi. Aster. Marlo. Petra. Coren. Juno. Tally. Lucas.” The Drenn queen, in her room. ”Me.” She opened her eyes. ”Ten.”

”Ten,” said Tally. And made a mark. On the page that said US.

And then she turned to a new page. A clean one. And at the top, very carefully, in Genny’s square letters, she wrote:

THEM.

And under it, one mark.

Just one. For the child on the end of the bench.

”I will do the rest when we come back,” said Tally. ”When they are on the ship. I will count them on. One at a time. The way Dot counts everyone up the steps.”

”Fifty-eight thousand,” said Wren. ”One at a time.”

”Yes,” said Tally. ”I would like to.”

The Drenn queen sang toward home.

This time, everything answered. Every queen on Avalon. Our queen at the garden wall, the first queen, the heavy queen on her stone shelf, the youngest, the Kethri queens in the forest, the Karst under the park. Juno’s seed. Dory, who’d been waiting, standing on the red glass with her hand flat on the ground and Pebble beside her, holding everything.

The thread went out of the point of the ship and was caught at once. By a whole world.

It wasn’t heavy at all.

I stood at the window and looked back, as long as I could.

At the ring. At the two suns. At the small grey world in the light of them, with its halls going down and round like the inside of a shell. With fifty-eight thousand three hundred and twelve children on grey benches with their hands together.

And one finger out.

”We’re coming back,” I said. Not out loud. Into the grey. Very quietly. Not asking it to be anything. Just saying it. In case anything down there could hear. ”Not yet. But we’re coming back. Every one.”

The Scarecrow turned the page.

Days 2069–2081. Someone answered.

The crossing didn’t take forty minutes. A queen sings toward far silver until it answers; there, everything has been taught not to. The Drenn queen sang and every queen on Avalon sang under her, the heavy queen hardest, toward where her best young went; the thread went out of the point of the ship into the dark between and nothing took hold. A day; two. Safi asleep sitting up; Aster never; Marlo’s card game where you can’t see your own cards; Juno sending home every hour, received; Dory twice a day so loud Juno flinched: all three are there; Mama’s is bigger; Hana’s are talking to each other; Grandma says that’s normal.

Wren counted us every morning with Toby’s stone at her ear, Harriet’s note going into her faint: ten, herself last. Tally made the marks on a page headed US.

The third day, Tally by the queen’s door: what if no one answers? Then we go home and think of something else. They won’t; I would have told the voice; you tell the voice and it makes it stop. Not all. One who sat next to me on the bench, where we weren’t supposed to look at each other, touched my hand under it with one finger every day. I thought it was a mistake she kept making. I never told. I think now I know why. To the Drenn queen: you’re singing to all of it; they’ll all tell; can you sing to one? Which? I can show you what it felt like, if that can be shown. The queen lowered her head level with hers, as with Anja: show me. Something went between them I think Tally had kept very small where the grey never grew. The song went thin as a hair, and every queen on Avalon went quiet one after another as they understood.

Six hours later the thread went tight. Not pulled: touched, one finger, let go, touched again. Her. That’s what it felt like under the bench. It didn’t let go, and we turned the page.

Black sky thick with stars; a pale ring edge-on like a blade through the window at both ends; two suns low, blue and red, going round each other too slowly to see. As Garnet drew it. Marlo and two light-benders, hands flat on the hull: we’re not here. Not a world: smaller than a moon, all Sorn grey, the shape grey grows when nobody asks it to be anything, lumped, folded, ridged. That’s where.

I didn’t need it to let me in; I only wanted to look. Halls long and low, one above another, down and round like the inside of a shell, thousands, every one the same; benches in rows; children, straight-backed, hands together, smooth grey faces; every shape and size, some with folded wings, some no bigger than Dory, some no bigger than Trevor; under the grey, silver, born whole, every one. The hull rang. No Sera to say put it back. Wren, not touching: look, count, come home; not open, not fold; I know you know; I’m saying it so you can hear it said. How do I count them? There’s no note.

Then the voice came down from the highest fold, through the grey like water through stone into every hall, a pressure smoothing like a cloth: asking is not how it’s done. Tally rigid. The children a little stiller. Wren: it comes back off them, like a note; a terrible note, but a note. Don’t talk to me; I’m counting. Nine hours, the voice every few minutes, every few seconds, and she counted them by the thing making them forget how to ask, the stone held to her chest, not to count by, to hold on to. Tally marked every number; out of pages in an hour; Luna’s hold list, Aster’s plans, Marlo’s cards, squared in a pile like Voss’s complaints.

Halfway Wren stopped: there’s one that doesn’t come back right; like one finger on the string so it doesn’t quite ring the same. In a deep hall, at the end of a bench near the back, one child’s hand not together; one finger out on the empty place beside it where someone sat once. Her. She still puts her finger on my place. She answered because it felt like my hand. She’ll tell the voice? A fingertip’s worth of her the grey never reached. No; I think she’s been not telling it things a very long time.

End of the ninth hour, Wren’s eyes red and dry; the pile taller than Tally sitting down. Fifty-eight thousand three hundred and twelve children; not the voice, not the ones on the Hands; and one with her finger on the bench. She’s one of them; I counted her in.

What’s standing over them: at the top, grown into the grey like the old queen into her housing, one keeper much older and larger than the one in the box, many pale eyes looking down all the time, never shutting. Wardens and handlers in the folds, not many; fifty-eight thousand taught not to ask don’t need many. Three old tired Hands moored at the ring. And one coming, small, fingers half open, settling against a ridge, Hand and world growing together like two drops; out of the palm, children in a line holding hands like Pell’s older children up the hill to the Ministry. Not any of the nine; smaller than Ash, pale, soft fur, large dark eyes; thirty, forty; faces, no grey yet; one near the back crying without a sound; the one in front turned to look. Asking is not how it’s done. It turned back round.

I didn’t move. I want it written where everything goes, for Ruth to read every year. Every bit of silver screaming to go down and take the line by the hands; I could have opened that Hand like a door and folded every handler in the hall before they knew. Then the keeper at the top would have known, and next time nothing here, or fifty-eight thousand somewhere we’d never find with a thousand Hands round them. Look. Count. Come home.

Tally stood and put her hand flat on the glass by mine and one finger out, toward the deep hall. Down in the grey the child on the bench moved her finger on the empty place. Once.

Juno sent it home at Avalon’s dusk: the ring and the suns, the halls, the keeper grown in, the Hands, the line with faces, the number. The longest wait. Okafor’s voice exact through Juno: received. Every one. Come home, Dask. All of you. We’ll need everyone.

One more day, allowed: Aster on the moorings, Marlo where the handlers walk and when, Safi how close under the ring before something notices; and me, looking at the keeper at the top till I knew every fold, the face of the thing I’ll stand in front of one day. It never looked up. Nothing had ever come.

Last morning: Safi, Aster, Marlo, Petra, Coren, Juno, Tally, Lucas, the queen, me: ten. A new page in Genny’s letters: THEM. One mark, for the child on the bench. I’ll do the rest when we come back, count them on one at a time, like Dot up the steps. Fifty-eight thousand one at a time. Yes. I would like to.

Toward home everything answered at once: every queen, Juno’s seed, and Dory on the red glass with her hand flat and Pebble beside her, holding everything. Not heavy at all. I looked back at the small grey world with its halls like a shell, fifty-eight thousand three hundred and twelve on grey benches with their hands together, and one finger out. Into the grey, not asking it to be anything: we’re coming back. Not yet. Every one. The Scarecrow turned the page.