Scarecrow

We didn’t answer Selwyn.

Okafor had said we wouldn’t, and we didn’t. The Council band went quiet after his message, and stayed quiet, and every midnight Ruan watched it and sent word down to the map room that there was nothing on it. Nothing. As if Selwyn was sitting in the Chancellor’s chair with his hand on a map, waiting to see what we’d do.

What we did was keep crossing.

The third went to Ashby. A hundred and twenty thousand. A dome built round an old salt mine, with the mine still under it, and the people of Ashby came up out of the mine to the ships with white dust on their boots and their eyelashes. The salt young on their terrace on Avalon could taste them when they came off the Ground. They came down to the edge of the terrace and stood in a long glittering line and watched them, and the people of Ashby stood at the foot of the ramp and watched them back, and nobody knew what to do, until an old woman from the mine walked up to the nearest salt young and crouched down and said, very gravely, ”Hello. I’ve been digging you up my whole life. I’m sorry.”

The salt young said something back. Juno told us later what it was.

You did not know we were alive. Now you do.

The fourth went to the north rim. Three mining domes, close together, small and old and cold. Ninety thousand. They came off the ships with their coats done up to the chin, and the furred young came down off the cold hill to look at them, and liked them very much, because they were the first people on Avalon who didn’t think it was hot.

The fifth went back to New Halcyon.

The Council had locked the east locks. Odell had said they would. Soldiers on every one. The Program floors sealed and empty, the Ministry dark on its hill.

It didn’t matter.

The Scarecrow opened her arms over the dome and I put doors in the glass. Not at the east this time. Everywhere. All the way round. At every street that ran into the ring street. A hundred of them. Big enough to walk through four abreast.

And people walked through.

The soldiers on the east locks watched them go. They didn’t do anything. A few of them put their weapons down on the ring street and walked through with everyone else.

Bram stood at the foot of the Ground’s ramp the whole time. With his list. Watching every face. And at noon, out of the door nearest the old water-works on Forty-one, a small grey-haired woman came walking very fast, almost running, with a bag in each hand and her face wet. She stopped at the bottom of the ramp. She looked at Bram.

”He’s alive?” she said.

Bram took her bags.

”He’s on the ward,” he said. ”With a girl who counts. He’s got a window. I put it in myself.”

Jory was at the foot of the ramp on Avalon when the Ground came down.

He hadn’t been told. Nobody had told him. Tally had asked him, the night before, whether he’d like to come and see the ship come in, and he’d thought about it for a long time, and said yes. He stood beside her with the notebook in his hands. His neck still had the red line round it where the housing had been. It was fading.

His mother came down the ramp.

She saw him.

She dropped both bags on the iron and ran down the rest of the ramp and the line had to stop, and she didn’t care, and nobody else did either. She ran across the red glass and stopped in front of him, very close, and looked up at his face. She didn’t touch him. Not at first. As if she wasn’t sure he was real.

”Jory,” she said.

Jory looked at her.

I could see him trying. Trying to find it. The same thing he’d found at the bottom of a pocket in the fitting room behind the suit bay, when Ruth asked him his name.

”Mum,” he said.

And then she put her arms round him, and he stood very still, and then very slowly he put his arms round her too, and Tally stood beside them with the notebook, and made a mark.

Not on HOME. On the page that said JORY. One mark, under his name.

”That is his mother,” she said. To me. ”She should be on his page.”

We didn’t only take people.

That was something Luna worked out, at the map table, in the second week. That three million people walking out of their domes onto a world with a sky would need somewhere to walk to. Not the city. The city had been built for twenty thousand and then for two hundred thousand and couldn’t be built for three million.

So the city didn’t. The city stayed where it was.

And everyone else went somewhere new.

North. Past the ninth lake, where the first queen had said no one had walked since before the Sorn came. East past the Hesk ranges, where the plains went further than the Hesk had gone. West, toward the coast the salt young could taste on the wind. Every crossing that came in, Luna gave a direction. Carver went north. Ashby went west, toward the salt. The north rim went to the cold country past the ninth lake, because that’s what they knew.

And I went with them. Every one. Not to build their houses. Pell had taught me that, a long time ago, with her hand on a doorframe that was too perfect. To build the big things. The ones nobody else could. Cisterns, in the old rock. Water, from the lakes. Roads, just the first ones, just enough to walk on. And then I stood back.

And they built.

Crooked. All of them. Every town different. Carver built theirs round a square with a well in the middle, because Carver had had a well in the middle of its square for three hundred years before the dome went up. Ashby built theirs down into the ground, because they’d lived under the ground so long they didn’t feel safe above it, not yet. The north rim built theirs in a circle, all the doors facing in, the way the mining domes had faced in against the cold.

Pell went round all of them. On a horse, Hana’s Bess, very upright, in her best coat. She stopped at every town and looked at every house and nodded. Once, at Carver, she got off the horse and went up to a door that someone had hung very slightly crooked, and put her hand on the frame.

”Good,” she said. ”That’s a good door.”

And got back on the horse.

Hana went into labour on the morning of the sixth crossing.

She didn’t tell anyone. I found out afterward. She’d felt it start at dawn, during the count, standing on the red glass with Risa and small Sigmund and everyone, and she’d said nothing. Because the Ground was going to Halden that morning. Because Halden was the hardest one. Because I was going.

She’d stood on the glass and said good morning to me very carefully, every word right, and held on for a long time, and let go.

And I’d gone.

I found out when Juno sat bolt upright in the Scarecrow’s forward deck over Halden, three hours later, with the seed in her hand, and said, ”Lucas—”

And then Dory’s voice. Through every queen. Through me.

Papa. Hana’s started. She didn’t tell anyone. She said not to tell you till you were there. You’re there now. So I’m telling you. A pause. Edda says it’s fine. Ruth says it’s fine. Grandma says twins always come when you’re not looking. Another pause. I’m holding everything.

Halden.

I want to tell Halden properly. Because of what happened there, after.

Halden was where the Sorn had taken two hundred and eleven people with silver in them and made them open every door in the dome. Crane had seen it on a screen. He’d told me about it on his bench at night, in the voice like someone reading a list of things he could never put down. They’d been screaming the whole time, because they knew what they were doing and couldn’t stop.

Sixty thousand people had lived in Halden. It took four minutes. The screens had been sealed that night. Nobody in New Halcyon ever saw Halden again.

There was still a Halden. Not much. A ring of old buildings round the broken dome, half buried in ash. Nobody had stayed; nobody could have. But people had come back, afterward, from the outer domes, from the families of the ones who’d died, because somebody ought to be there. Eleven thousand, over thirty years. In the ruins. With a filter they’d built themselves out of pieces of the old one.

They were the only ones on Odell’s list who hadn’t asked to come.

He’d asked them. Every midnight. On the old band. And every midnight they’d said no. We’re not leaving. Sixty thousand people died here and nobody stayed with them. We came back so somebody would.

So we weren’t going to take anyone from Halden.

We were going because of what Odell had heard on the band two nights before.

They’ve sent soldiers, the man from Halden had said. On the old band, at midnight, very fast, very frightened. From New Halcyon. On a transport. The Council’s. Three hundred. They came in the night.

What kind of soldiers? said Odell.

The new kind, said the man from Halden.

The Council had found something to decide.

We saw them from the Scarecrow as she came over the broken dome. In the ruins. In the ash. On the old streets between the buildings where eleven thousand people from Halden were standing very still, in their doorways, not moving, not making a sound.

Three hundred of them. In a ring. Round the whole of Halden. Facing out.

Every one with a housing.

And every one with silver in them, from the Program floors, put in fast, in rows. And every one of them, I could see, when I looked, with something in them that had woken up wrong. Fire. Ice. Wind. Things that bent the light, badly. Things that held. The things the program had always made, in the first Cinder, in Mother and Rory and Maura and the General.

Not slowly. Not one at a time. Not with a doctor for every three.

In rows. All at once. And then a housing, and a sliver, pushing.

Do what you’re told.

And what they’d been told, Odell said, white-faced, on the screen in the forward deck, reading it off a scrap of band he’d caught, was this.

Hold Halden. Nobody leaves. Nobody comes. If anything comes down out of the sky, stop it.

They saw us.

Of course they did. Marlo had the light bent round us, but the program had made some of them into things that bent light too, badly, in rows, and those ones looked up through Marlo’s bending and saw the long dark ship coming over the ruins with her fins folded.

And then the fire came up.

Not at us. At the sky. At where we were. Badly aimed, the way a child throws, because nobody had taught them, because they’d been made all at once and given a housing and told stop it. A great wash of fire, from a dozen of them at once, up into the air over Halden, and ice behind it, and wind, a howling uncontrolled wind that tore across the ruins and blew the ash up off the ground in a black wall.

The Drenn queen opened her arms.

The Scarecrow’s fins went out. All four. Over Halden. And the fire hit them and slid off, the way the new Hand’s fire had slid off the Kethri on the wind, and fell away into the ash. And the ice. And the wind went round us like water round a stone.

Nothing on this ship holds anyone. Nothing from the sky reaches anyone under her arms.

But the people of Halden weren’t under her arms. They were in the ruins. In their doorways. Between the soldiers and us.

And the fire was coming down on them.

I went out.

I didn’t decide to. I was just out. Through the side of the Scarecrow, the way I’d gone out over the Kethri forest. Down into the ash and the wind. And I caught the fire. All of it. Every wash of it, coming down out of the sky onto the ruins. I asked it to be nothing, and it was. And the ice, which I asked to be water, and then to be still. And the wind.

And they kept making more.

Three hundred of them. In a ring. Every one pouring out whatever the program had woken up in them, as hard as they could, because the sliver was pushing and the sliver said stop it and that was all they knew. They weren’t aiming at me. They were aiming at the sky. At the ship. At anything. They didn’t know how to stop.

I could have stopped them.

I could have gone round the ring and folded every one. Like the handlers. Like the keeper in the box. In a minute. Less.

They weren’t handlers.

They were people from the lower floors who’d been promised a ration card.

”Lucas.”

Genny. Through the seed. Through Juno. From the forward deck.

”Lucas, I can hear them.”

I was holding a wall of fire off a building with a family in the doorway. I didn’t answer.

”The slivers,” said Genny. ”In the housings. I can hear them. All three hundred.” Her voice was very strange. Very fast. ”They’re not pushing the soldiers. Not really. They’re pushing because they don’t know how to stop. Like mine. Like the one I kept.”

Mine. The sliver from Jory’s housing. That she’d kept, in its empty housing, in a box under her bed. That she’d told you can stop now, and it had stopped.

”I’ve been singing to it,” said Genny. ”At night. For weeks. Like I sang to the choir. Through the door. To what’s on the other side.” A breath. ”It sings back. It’s very small and very sad and it only knows one note. But it sings back.”

”Genny—”

”They’re all from the same place,” said Genny. ”All the slivers. From the tithe stores. From queens the Sorn broke up into pieces and gave the Council for tokens. They’re all pieces of queens.” Her voice went very quiet. ”And queens listen when other queens sing.”

I understood.

I stood in the ash with fire coming down on both sides and I understood.

The choir. Day 811. The tender at the dock waking up, and the voice it made, all those slivers singing one note, pointed down at Scarecrow. And Genny standing on the glass with her eyes shut, singing the lullaby through the door in the middle of Sera’s silver, to what was on the other side. You do not close it. You sing to what’s on the other side.

The pieces of queens had listened.

”Can you?” I said. ”All three hundred?”

”Not me,” said Genny. ”I’m one. I’m too small.” A pause. ”But I’m not one. Am I. Not really.”

And I felt it.

Behind her. Through the seed. Through Juno. Through the hello, all the way back across the dark between the pages, to Avalon.

Every queen.

They’d been listening. All of them. Since we left. The way they always listened when we went out. Our queen at the garden wall. The first queen in the hollow. The heavy queen, on the Ground, a few miles off on the ash, humming. The youngest. The Kethri queens and the furred and the marsh and the coral and the moth, awake in the day again. The Karst queen under the park, who was too frightened of the dark between to come and wasn’t too frightened to sing across it.

And Dory. On the red glass, with her hand flat on the ground. Holding everything. Holding Hana, in the quiet room, who was having twins. Holding all of it.

Genny, said the first queen. Through the hello. Very gently. Sing. We will sing under you.

Genny sang.

From the forward deck of the Scarecrow, over the broken dome of Halden, with her eyes shut and her hand flat on the deck. Not loud. She was never loud. The lullaby. The same one. The one Genny had sung through the doors to the choir.

And under her, every queen on Avalon.

And it went out. Down. Through the Scarecrow’s fins, through her open arms, into the ash and the wind and the fire. Into the ring of three hundred. Into every housing.

Into every sliver.

Not stop. Genny didn’t say stop. She’d never tell anyone anything. She sang what she’d sung to her own sliver, under her bed, at night, for weeks.

You can stop now. Nobody’s going to make you push any more. You can stop.

The fire stopped.

Not all at once. One at a time. Round the ring. A soldier in the ash with his hands up and fire pouring out of them, and then not. His hands still up. Shaking. Then down. Then the one beside him. Then the next. The ice stopped coming. The wind dropped. The black wall of ash it had lifted off the ground hung in the air for a moment over Halden, and then came down, very slowly, like snow.

Round the whole ring.

Three hundred.

They didn’t fall down. They didn’t do anything. They stood in the ash where they were, with their hands at their sides, and the slivers in their housings were quiet. Not pushing. Not singing. Just very still. Like something that had been holding its breath for a very long time and had just been told it could let it out.

And the soldiers stood there.

Nobody telling them anything.

For the first time since the Program floors.

Some of them sat down.

Just sat. In the ash. Where they were. Some of them looked at their hands. At the fire that wasn’t coming out of them any more. Some of them looked up. At the sky. At the long dark ship over them with her arms out.

One of them, a woman near the gate, very young, with ice still frosting her fingers, looked round at the ruins of Halden. At the doorways. At the eleven thousand people standing in them, very still, looking back at her.

At the family in the doorway I’d been holding the fire off.

At the little boy in front, about Dory’s size, who was staring at her.

She put her hands over her face.

Tally came down the Scarecrow’s ramp.

Nobody had asked her to. Nobody had told her. She came down onto the ash of Halden with Genny’s notebook open on her arm and a new page at the top. She’d written on it, in the forward deck, while Genny sang, in her careful square letters.

HALDEN.

And three hundred marks. Four lines down. One across. Sixty times. Done very fast. Some of them crooked.

She walked out into the ring.

To the young woman by the gate with her hands over her face and ice on her fingers. She knelt down in the ash in front of her. At her height. She held up the notebook.

”This is you,” she said. ”Someone knows you are here.”

The young woman took her hands away from her face.

She looked at the mark. At Tally. At the small silver-haired child kneeling in the ash with a pencil.

”I didn’t—” she said. Very hoarse. ”I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to do any of it. I couldn’t—”

”I know,” said Tally. ”I could not either. For a long time.” She put her finger on the mark. ”Would you like to come with me? You do not have to. That is asking.”

The young woman looked at her for a long time.

Then she looked past her. At the family in the doorway. At the little boy.

”I tried to burn them,” she said.

”You did not,” said Tally. ”He stopped it.” She pointed at me. ”And then Genny sang. And now you are sitting in the ash and they are standing in a door. Both.” She held out the notebook. ”You can ask them something. If you like. I think they would let you.”

The woman didn’t move for a long time.

Then she got up. Very slowly. With ice still frosting her fingers. And walked, one step at a time, across the ash, toward the doorway.

The family didn’t move.

She stopped a long way off. Ten yards. More. She looked at the little boy.

”I’m sorry,” she said.

The little boy looked at her. At the ice on her fingers.

Then he said, very clearly, the way small children say things: ”Can you do that again? The ice? Without the fire?”

The young woman looked down at her hands.

She lifted one. Very slowly. Shaking. And opened it. And very carefully, the way you’d set something down on a table and not move it, she made a single small flake of ice. Six-sided. Perfect. On the tip of her finger.

The little boy came out of the doorway.

Not all the way. A few steps. His mother’s hand on his shoulder, not stopping him. Just there.

He looked at the flake.

”That’s good,” he said.

The people of Halden came out of their doorways.

Not all at once. Not quickly. Slowly. One family. Then another. Out into the ash, into the ring of three hundred soldiers sitting and standing with their hands at their sides and the slivers quiet. And they didn’t do anything. They just stood among them. Looking.

Then an old man from Halden, very thin, with a filter mask round his neck that he’d built himself out of pieces of the old one, walked up to the nearest soldier. A big man, sitting in the ash with his head down.

”You’re from the Program,” said the old man.

The soldier didn’t answer.

”My brother lived in Halden,” said the old man. ”Before. He had silver in him. From the first program. The Cinder one.” He looked down at the soldier. ”He was one of the two hundred and eleven. He opened our door. He was screaming the whole time.” He was quiet. ”I’ve wanted to say to someone, for thirty years, that it wasn’t his fault. And there’s never been anyone to say it to.” He crouched down. Slowly. His knees cracking. ”So I’m saying it to you. It wasn’t your fault. Whatever they made you do. It wasn’t.”

The soldier lifted his head.

Halden came.

All of it. Eleven thousand. The ones who’d said no every midnight for a month on the old band. The ones who’d said we left once and everyone who left died.

They came up the ramp of the Ground with their filters round their necks. And behind them, walking very slowly, sometimes holding on to each other, the three hundred. With their housings. With the slivers quiet.

Tally stood at the top of the ramp. And counted every one.

The old man with the filter was the last of Halden. He stopped at the top of the ramp and looked back at the broken dome, at the ruins, at the ash coming down very slowly like snow.

”Thirty years,” he said. ”Keeping them company.” He looked at the soldiers going up the ramp ahead of him. ”I think they’d say we can go now.”

He went in.

Hana’s twins were born while we were crossing home.

I felt them come. Through the hello. Through Dory, holding everything. In the dark between the pages, in the forward deck of the Scarecrow, with three hundred quiet soldiers in the hold behind me and Genny asleep on the floor with her head on Garnet’s knee and the notebook on Tally’s lap.

Two.

One after the other. A few minutes apart. Water, in both. Hana’s water, that she’d brought up through the green to make a coral pool, that she’d held a thousand ropes of to lift the sea over a wall on the coral world. And something else. Different in each. Something I couldn’t see from that far. Something that was mine.

And between them, very faint, a thread of silver. Going from one to the other. And back.

Dory’s voice came through the hello. Very tired. Very pleased.

Papa. They’re here. Both. A girl and a boy. The girl came first. She’s louder. A pause. Hana’s all right. She’s laughing. Edda says she’s never heard anyone laugh that much straight after. Another pause. They’re talking to each other already, Papa. I can hear it. I can’t tell what they’re saying.

Grandma says nobody ever can.

Days 2165–2220. The other side.

No answer to Selwyn; the Council band quiet every midnight, as if he sits with his hand on a map waiting. We kept crossing. Ashby, a hundred and twenty thousand from round an old salt mine, white dust on their boots and eyelashes; the salt young stood in a glittering line at the edge of their terrace; an old miner crouched: hello; I’ve been digging you up my whole life; I’m sorry. You did not know we were alive. Now you do. The north rim, three cold domes, ninety thousand, coats to the chin; the furred young liked them very much, the first people on Avalon who didn’t think it was hot.

New Halcyon again; the east locks locked, soldiers on every one; it didn’t matter. A hundred doors in the glass all round, at every street into the ring street, four abreast. A few soldiers put their weapons down on the ring street and walked through. At noon, out of the door nearest the waterworks on Forty-one, a small grey-haired woman almost running with a bag in each hand: he’s alive? He’s on the ward with a girl who counts; he’s got a window; I put it in myself.

Jory at the foot of the Ground’s ramp because Tally asked if he’d like to, the red line round his neck fading. She dropped both bags and ran and the line stopped; she looked up at him close, not touching, as if he mightn’t be real. Jory. Him trying to find it, like his name at the bottom of a pocket. Mum. Slowly his arms round her too. Tally made a mark under JORY: that is his mother; she should be on his page.

Luna at the map table: three million need somewhere to walk to; the city stays as it is and everyone else goes somewhere new. North past the ninth lake, east past the Hesk ranges, west toward the coast. Carver north, Ashby west toward the salt, the north rim to the cold past the ninth lake. I went with every one to make only what nobody else can: cisterns, water from the lakes, the first roads; then stood back. Crooked, every town different: Carver round a square with a well because it had one three hundred years before the dome; Ashby down into the ground because they don’t feel safe above it yet; the north rim in a circle, doors facing in against the cold. Pell round them all on Bess in her best coat; at Carver she put her hand on a door hung slightly crooked: good; that’s a good door.

Hana felt it start at the dawn count before the sixth crossing and said nothing, because it was Halden and I was going; good morning, every word right, held on, let go. Three hours later over Halden, through every queen: Papa, Hana’s started; she said not to tell you till you were there; you’re there; Edda says fine, Ruth says fine, Grandma says twins always come when you’re not looking. I’m holding everything.

Halden, where the Sorn made two hundred and eleven with silver open every door, screaming because they knew and couldn’t stop; sixty thousand in four minutes; the screens sealed. A ring of old buildings round the broken dome half buried in ash; eleven thousand came back over thirty years, families of the dead, so somebody would be there, with a filter they built from pieces of the old one; the only ones on Odell’s list who never asked to come: sixty thousand died here and nobody stayed with them; we came back so somebody would. We went because of the band two nights before: soldiers, three hundred, on a Council transport in the night. What kind? The new kind.

In a ring round Halden facing out, every one with a housing; silver from the Program floors put in fast in rows and woken wrong: fire, ice, wind, bent light done badly, holding; what the first Cinder made in Mother and Rory and Maura and the General, but not slowly; a sliver pushing. Hold Halden; nobody leaves, nobody comes; if anything comes down out of the sky, stop it. The bad light-benders saw through Marlo’s bending, and the fire came up, aimed like a child throws, ice behind, a howling wind lifting the ash in a black wall. The Drenn queen opened her arms; it slid off the fins. But the people of Halden weren’t under her arms; they were in their doorways between the soldiers and us.

I was out through the side of the ship before deciding, catching every wash of fire and asking it to be nothing, ice to water then still, the wind. They kept making more; three hundred pouring out whatever was woken in them because the sliver said stop it and that’s all they knew. I could have folded every one in a minute. They weren’t handlers. They were people from the lower floors promised a ration card.

Genny through the seed while I held a wall of fire off a family in a doorway: I can hear them, all three hundred slivers; they’re not really pushing the soldiers; they push because they don’t know how to stop, like mine. The one from Jory’s housing in a box under her bed she’d told you can stop now. I’ve been singing to it at night for weeks, like the choir, through the door to what’s on the other side; it sings back; very small, very sad, one note. They’re all from the tithe stores, queens the Sorn broke into pieces and gave the Council for tokens; all pieces of queens; and queens listen when other queens sing. The choir on Day 811, the tender waking, the voice pointed down at Scarecrow; Genny on the glass singing the lullaby through the door in Sera’s silver. All three hundred? Not me; I’m one; too small. But I’m not one, am I?

Behind her, through the seed, through Juno, all the way back across the dark: every queen, listening as they always do when we’re out; the heavy queen a few miles off on the ash; the Karst queen too frightened of the dark between to come and not too frightened to sing across it; and Dory with her hand flat on the glass holding Hana in the quiet room and everything. The first queen: Genny, sing; we’ll sing under you. The lullaby, not loud, down through the open fins into every housing, into every sliver. Not stop; she never tells anyone anything; what she sang under her bed: you can stop now; nobody will make you push any more.

One at a time round the ring the fire stopped; hands still up, shaking, then down; the ice; the wind; the black wall of ash hung a moment and came down slowly like snow. Three hundred standing in the ash, the slivers quiet, like something told it could let out a breath held a long time. Nobody telling them anything for the first time since the Program floors. Some sat; some looked at their hands; some at the sky. A young woman by the gate with ice on her fingers looked at the eleven thousand in their doorways, at the family I’d held the fire off, at a boy Dory’s size staring at her, and put her hands over her face.

Tally down the ramp unasked, HALDEN and three hundred marks done fast in the forward deck while Genny sang, some crooked. Knelt in the ash: this is you; someone knows you’re here. I didn’t want to; I couldn’t. I know; I couldn’t either, a long time. Will you come? You don’t have to; that’s asking. I tried to burn them. You didn’t; he stopped it; then Genny sang; now you’re in the ash and they’re in a door. Both. You can ask them something; I think they’d let you. Ten yards off: I’m sorry. The boy: can you do the ice again, without the fire? Shaking, the way you set something on a table and don’t move it, one six-sided flake on her fingertip. A few steps out, his mother’s hand on his shoulder, not stopping him: that’s good.

Halden came out among them, looking. An old man with a filter mask he built from pieces of the old one to a big soldier with his head down: my brother had Cinder silver; he was one of the two hundred and eleven; he opened our door screaming; I’ve wanted thirty years to tell someone it wasn’t his fault and there’s never been anyone; so I’m saying it to you; it wasn’t your fault, whatever they made you do. The soldier lifted his head. All eleven thousand who’d said no every midnight came up the Ground’s ramp with filters round their necks, and behind them, slowly, holding each other, the three hundred with quiet slivers. Tally counted every one. The old man last, looking back at the ash coming down like snow: thirty years keeping them company; I think they’d say we can go now.

Crossing home in the dark between pages, three hundred quiet soldiers in the hold, Genny asleep with her head on Garnet’s knee, the notebook on Tally’s lap: I felt them come through Dory. Two, minutes apart. Hana’s water in both, the water she brought up through the green and held in a thousand ropes over the wall on the coral world; something else in each, different, mine; a thread of silver between them and back. Dory, tired and pleased: both; a girl and a boy; the girl first; she’s louder. Hana’s laughing; Edda’s never heard anyone laugh that much straight after. They’re talking already; I can’t tell what they’re saying. Grandma says nobody ever can.