Scarecrow

The month ended on a morning so hot the red glass shimmered.

Okafor stood at the foot of the steps of Scarecrow at dawn, after the count, with her slate under her arm and Garnet’s new map in her breast pocket. Three circles on it. Three lines going out from the dot. She took it out and unfolded it and looked at it for a long time.

Then she put her finger on the first one.

”That one,” she said.

The red queen had asked.

Not for war. Not for anything. She’d asked through Genny, at the bottom of the canyon, where she lay on the old grey-black rock most days now with her long curved neck stretched out and the opening at the end of it turned up toward the strip of sky between the walls. Her eleven young lay round her. They’d stopped holding hands. They’d learned to lie on their backs on the warm rock with their faces turned up, the way they’d lain in the cracks when they were very small.

There were more, the red queen had said. Before I was broken. Many more. In the cracks. Under my rock. A long pause. I do not know if they are still there. I do not know who sings down to them now.

Nobody, Genny had said. Very quietly. Nobody sings down to them. That’s what the towers are for.

Then I would like to go home, said the red queen. And sing.

”No children,” said Okafor.

In the map room. With the big map on the wall and Garnet’s small one on the table and everyone round it. She said it before anyone else could say anything. She said it looking at Tally, by the door, with Reed beside her and Moon asleep across both their laps.

”Not one,” said Okafor. ”Not from the halls. Not from the ash. Not born on Avalon.” She put her hand flat on the table. ”The Sorn take children and teach them to do what they’re told and send them to fight. I’ve just watched it. Under the ring. With fifty-eight thousand of them.” She looked round the table. ”We’re not doing that. Not ever. Not even if they ask.”

”The eleven,” said Tally. Very quietly. ”Will ask.”

”I know they will.”

”They are the red queen’s. It is their world.”

Okafor looked at Tally for a long time.

”Then they can come,” she said. ”To go home. To be there when their mother sings. Not to fight.” She picked up her stylus. ”They stay on the ship until it’s done. Every one. If anything comes near the ship, someone stands in front of them.” She looked at me. ”Is that clear, Dask?”

”Yes, Major.”

”Good,” said Okafor. And then, because she was Okafor: ”Write it down, Windsor.”

Luna wrote it down.

The twins weren’t children.

That was the argument Garnet made. At supper. Very loudly. With her fork in the air.

”We’re fifteen,” she said. ”And we’ve done the whole furred world. And the gas moon. And every housing on the ward. And Genny sang down three hundred slivers at Halden and Lucas didn’t even—”

”I know,” said Mother. From the stove.

”Okafor said no children.”

”Okafor said no children from the halls or the ash or born on Avalon,” said Genny. Not looking up from her plate. ”We were born in the dome. On Earth.” She ate a potato. ”I asked her. She said she’d have put us on the list anyway, and if I ever used that argument on her again she’d make me count the north wall for a month.”

Garnet put her fork down.

”You asked her?”

”Somebody had to,” said Genny.

Okafor’s list was short this time.

The Scarecrow. The Wing, with the three Kethri queens, because the red world was hot and dry and the Kethri said they’d flown over worlds like that, a long time ago, in collars, and knew which way the wind went.

Genny. Garnet. For the collars.

Risa. ”For the weather,” said Okafor. ”The red queen says it hasn’t rained there since the towers went up. She doesn’t know why.”

”I do,” said Risa. Very quietly. ”If you put enough grey towers on a world, pushing, the sky stops listening to it.” Her hair lifted, very slightly. ”I’ve felt it. On the Kethri world. Over the forest. The clouds wouldn’t come.” She looked at Okafor. ”They’ll come for me.”

Sera and Liam. For the heat. Not fire. The opposite. Sera could pull heat out of a horseshoe, every day at the forge, and put it somewhere else. Liam had learned to put fire back. ”A hot world,” said Okafor. ”With young lying in cracks. If anything gets hotter than it should, I want someone who can take it out.”

Luna. Operations.

Anja. For standing in front.

And me.

The eleven said goodbye to the porch the night before.

Nobody told them to. They came up the street from the canyon at dusk, in a line, the way they still walked when they didn’t think about it, and stopped at the bottom of the steps of the crooked house. Where the children with no queens sat every evening with Mother, and Moon slept on the end of the rail across Reed’s lap, and the feathered child sat on the top step with icing still faintly on its fingers from the birthday, because it had refused to wash them for a week.

The eleven stood there.

They’d been on the porch, most mornings, before their mother came back. Before Genny found their four pieces on the wall. They’d sat on the steps with the others, with nobody singing, holding on.

Now someone was.

The feathered child looked at them. It didn’t say anything. None of them did.

Then the first of the eleven, the oldest, came up one step. And held out its hand. Flat. Palm up.

The feathered child put one finger on it.

And then the next one did. And the next. All the children on the steps. One at a time. A finger on the palm of the oldest of the eleven, who stood there very still and let every one of them, until there was nobody left on the porch who hadn’t.

Then the eleven went back down the street. Toward the canyon. Toward their mother.

Mother watched them go from Father’s chair.

”They’re going home,” said Dory. Beside her. With Pebble.

”Yes,” said Mother.

Dory looked at the porch. At the children still sitting there, with nobody singing.

”Will theirs come back too?” she said. ”All of them?”

Mother didn’t answer for a long time.

”Some of them,” she said. ”Genny’s working on the wall.” She put her hand on Dory’s head. ”And the ones whose queens don’t come back—they’ll have this porch. And you. And each other.” She looked at the steps. ”That’s not nothing.”

The red queen came up from the bottom of the canyon at dawn.

All the way up the old path, very slowly, with her long curved neck swaying and her eleven young walking beside her in a line. Not holding hands. Just walking. Close. She went up the Scarecrow’s ramp and into the room in the middle beside the Drenn queen’s, which Keir had made for her in a week, red, with a warm stone floor.

The eleven went into the hold. And lay down on the floor. On their backs. With their faces turned up.

Waiting to hear her sing.

The crossing took an hour.

The red queen sang toward home. Not loud. Four pieces aren’t much. But under her every queen on Avalon sang, and behind them every child with their hand flat on the ground, held by Dory on the red glass. And at the far end of the thread, something answered.

Faint. Very faint. Like something singing at the bottom of a very deep crack.

The red queen went very still.

Mine, she said.

The world was red.

All of it. Red rock, as far as I could see from the forward window. Flat and cracked and very hot, under a white sun that filled a quarter of the sky. The cracks ran across it in every direction like the lines on an old hand. Deep. Dark. Some of them so wide you could have dropped the Scarecrow into one.

And in the middle of it all, a rock.

Tall. Red. Standing up out of the flat ground like a finger. Flat at the top. The place the red queen had sat. A very long time ago. Singing down into the cracks all round her.

There was a tower on it now.

Grey. Thin. Very tall. Grown up out of the top of the red rock like a thorn, so that the rock and the tower were one shape. And from the top of the tower, pushing out across the whole red world, flat and steady, the voice.

Dig.

There were other towers. Smaller. At the edges of the biggest cracks. Dozens. All grey. All pushing the same thing.

Dig. Dig. Dig.

And down in the cracks, the young.

I looked. From the forward window. Down into the nearest crack, past the heat shimmer, past the dark.

Small. Red, like the rock. Low and wide, with long curved necks, like their mother. Hundreds of them, in that crack alone. Pressed against the walls. With grey collars round their long necks. Digging.

Not with tools. With themselves. Pressing their mouths against the rock of the crack walls and singing into it, very low, so that the rock cracked further, and crumbled, and fell. And in the rubble, at the bottom of every crack, something grey.

Not rock. Grey. Sorn grey. In veins. Like ore.

”Oh,” said Genny. Beside me. Very quietly.

”What?”

”That’s where it comes from,” said Genny. Her face had gone white. ”The grey. The towers. The Hands. The collars.” She was staring down into the crack. ”It grows here. In the rock. Under the queen’s rock. Deep down. And they’ve got her young singing it out.”

I don’t know if Genny was right. Nobody ever found out for certain. Maybe it came from many worlds. Maybe that one was just one of them.

But I looked at the red queen, in her room, with her long curved neck stretched toward the window, looking down at her world for the first time in longer than she remembered.

At the tower on her rock.

At her young in the cracks, with collars round their necks, singing the grey out of the ground.

And I felt the Scarecrow’s hull ring. Very faintly. All the way round.

”Lucas,” said Sera. Beside me. Her hand on my arm. Hot. ”Put it back.”

I put it back.

It took a long time.

Luna laid it out.

At the forward window. With a sheet of paper and her pen. Not drawing. Writing. Very fast. In the clear calm voice that was her father’s.

”The towers first,” she said. ”Not the big one. The small ones, at the cracks. One at a time. If we take the big one first, every small one will push harder. If we take the small ones, the big one’s pushing alone.” She looked up. ”Garnet, Genny. Every crack, after its tower’s gone. Collars. As many as you can, as fast as you can. Don’t wait for them all. Get the first few off and let the rest see.”

”Like the beds,” said Garnet.

”Like the beds.”

”Risa.” Luna looked at her. ”The sky.”

Risa was standing at the back of the forward deck with her hair already lifting. With a cloud forming over her head. Very small. The size of a hat. In the middle of the ship.

”When?”

”When the first tower goes,” said Luna. ”The young in the cracks have never felt rain. Their mother says so. She says on her world it rained once a year, a long time ago, before. And on that day every young came up out of the cracks to feel it.” She paused. ”I’d like them to come up.”

Risa’s cloud got bigger.

”Sera. Liam. The cracks. If the rock gets too hot when the towers come down. If anything starts to burn.”

”Anja. The ship. In front of the hold.”

She looked at me last.

”You know what to do.”

”The towers.”

”The towers,” said Luna. ”And Lucas.” She held my eyes for a moment. ”The handlers. There’ll be handlers. At every tower. They’ll come out when they feel it go.” She didn’t say anything else.

She didn’t need to.

The first tower was at the edge of the nearest crack.

Grey. Thin. Taller than a house. Grown up out of the red rock at the lip of the crack like a thorn out of skin. Pushing down into the dark. Dig. Dig. Dig.

I went down to it.

Out of the side of the Scarecrow, the way I’d gone out over Halden. Down through the heat. It was like going into a furnace. Like the forge with the doors shut and all three fires driven past two thousand degrees. My skin felt it. My eyes. I came down on the red rock at the foot of the tower and it was so hot through my boots I could feel it in my teeth.

I put my hand on the tower.

It wasn’t the grey under the ring. It wasn’t grey that had never been anything else. It was young grey. New. Grown up out of the rock a few years ago, maybe, and told to push, and pushing. It didn’t fight. It didn’t know enough to fight.

I asked it what it was.

It didn’t know. It only knew one word.

Dig.

So I folded it.

Not slowly. Not gently, the way I’d folded the three old Hands that asked to rest. Fast. Down into itself. The way I’d folded the small polite one in the Chancellor’s chair. Until there was nothing at the lip of the crack but a small grey stone, very light.

And the voice, at that crack, stopped.

The handlers came out of the rock.

Of course they did. Luna had said they would. Three of them. Grey. Tall. With blades. Out of the ground at the foot of where the tower had been, the way they’d come out of the ground under the forge, a long time ago, before I’d learned to look under myself.

I’d learned.

I folded them before they were all the way out. One. Two. Three. Small grey stones. Into the box in my coat, with the three old Hands.

I’m not going to pretend I was gentle.

And then Risa made it rain.

I was standing at the lip of the crack with three handlers in a box in my coat and the tower gone, and the heat coming up off the red rock so thick I could see it moving. And I felt it change.

Not the heat. The sky.

I looked up.

The white sun that filled a quarter of the sky was still there. But in front of it, very small, very high, there was a cloud. White. The size of a hat.

Then the size of a house.

Then the size of the Scarecrow.

Then the sky over the whole of the crack, and the whole of the red flat ground round it, for a mile in every direction, was grey. Not Sorn grey. Rain grey. Soft and heavy and very low. And under it, the heat broke. Like a fever. All at once. The air went from a furnace to a summer afternoon in the time it takes to breathe in.

And the rain came down.

It came down on the red rock. On me. On the lip of the crack. Warm. Heavy. Big drops, the size of coins. Hitting the hot rock and hissing and steaming, so that for a moment the whole of the ground round the crack disappeared in a white cloud.

And then running.

Down into the crack. Down the walls. Into the dark, where the young were pressed against the rock with collars round their long necks, singing the grey out of the stone.

Onto them.

They stopped singing.

The whole crack. Hundreds of them. All at once. They stopped pressing their mouths to the rock. They stopped digging.

And very slowly, they turned their long curved necks up.

Toward the sky.

Toward the rain.

Garnet came down the crack first.

She flew. She was the only one besides me who could fly, except Genny, who was right behind her. Down into the dark, with the rain coming down round her and her hair plastered to her head and her silver up her arms in wobbly lines. She came down beside the nearest of the young. Pressed against the wall. With its neck turned up. With the rain running down its red face.

She put her hand on its collar.

She’d done it on the furred world. A thousand times. On a spare collar from the shelter doors on the red glass at home, when I taught her. It’s like drawing. Outside, then inside. She looked at the collar. At the outside of it. At the shape. And then she touched it, and drew it the other way.

The collar opened.

It fell off the young’s long neck into the rain at the bottom of the crack.

The young didn’t move. It just stood there, with its neck turned up, with the rain running down its face.

”Genny,” said Garnet. ”Sing.”

Genny sang.

Not the lullaby. Not this time. She’d asked the red queen, on the crossing. What did you sing? Down into the cracks? Before? And the red queen had told her. Very slowly. Four pieces aren’t much. But she’d remembered that.

It wasn’t a song. It was a sound. Low. Warm. Steady. Like the sound the eleven had remembered, at the bottom of the canyon, lying on their backs on the grey-black rock. The sound of being sung down to in the dark.

Genny made it. Down the crack. Through the rain.

And the young without its collar opened its mouth.

And made it back.

The next one’s collar came off. And the next. Garnet went down the wall of the crack in the rain like someone running down a staircase, touching every collar as she passed, drawing it open. Not stopping. Not waiting. Genny behind her, singing. And every young that was free, turning its long neck up into the rain, and making the sound back.

Until the whole crack was singing it.

Hundreds of young, pressed against the walls of the crack in the warm rain, with their necks turned up, singing down. Into themselves. Into each other. The sound their mother had made into the cracks every night before she was broken.

And from up on the lip of the crack, I heard the eleven.

On the Scarecrow. In the hold. On their backs on the floor, with their faces turned up. Singing it too.

We did the next tower. And the next.

All day. Across the red world. Under Risa’s rain, which followed us from crack to crack like a dog, and broke the heat wherever it came, so that the rock cooled and steamed and the young turned their necks up. I folded towers. I folded handlers. Garnet went down the cracks. Genny sang.

At the eleventh crack the rock got too hot. A tower I folded had been pushing so long and so hard that the rock under it had gone soft, and when it went the heat came up out of the ground all at once like something breathing out. The rain hissed on it and went to steam. The young in the crack below cried out.

Sera was there before I could turn round.

She came down out of the Scarecrow onto the soft red rock and put both hands flat on it. And pulled. The way she pulled the heat out of a horseshoe every day at the forge. Out of the rock. Into herself. Into her arms, which went red, then orange, then a bright hard white. And she stood there in the rain with steam coming off her and her arms blazing and her jaw set, holding it.

”Liam,” she said. Through her teeth.

Liam came down beside her. And put his hands on her arms. And took it from her. The way Maura held Rory’s fire. The way nobody can hold somebody else’s fire, and Maura had learned to anyway. He took it into his own arms and his own arms went white, and then he lifted them up into Risa’s rain and let it go. Up. Into the sky. As steam.

A great white column of it. Going up out of the red world into the grey rain.

The young in the crack below stopped crying.

And at the foot of the Scarecrow’s ramp, Anja stood in front of the hold.

All day. With her arms folded. With her silver like the grain in good wood. Because something came. Not handlers. A warden. Out of the rock at the foot of the ramp, the way they came. Tall and grey with pale eyes. And it saw the open ramp. And the hold. And the eleven on their backs on the floor, singing.

And it went toward them.

Anja didn’t unfold her arms.

The warden came up the ramp. Anja stood at the top of it. It reached her. It stopped. Because something was in the way. And it lifted one long grey arm, with the blade at the end of it.

Anja looked at it.

”No,” she said.

The blade came down.

It hit her shoulder. And bent. The way the Drenn blades had bent, on the forest floor, when the first Drenn swung at her head. It bent, and stopped, and the warden looked at it.

Anja unfolded her arms.

She didn’t hit it. She put one hand flat on its chest. The way Sera put her hand on things. The way Mother did. And pushed. Very gently. Not hard. Just enough.

The warden went backward down the ramp. All the way down. And sat down at the bottom. On the red rock. In the rain.

And didn’t get up.

Anja folded her arms again.

”Next,” she said.

The big tower was last.

On the red rock in the middle. Where the red queen had sat. Grown up out of the top of it like a thorn. Pushing. Dig. Dig. Dig. Louder than any of the others. Alone now, the way Luna said it would be. Every small tower folded. Every crack singing. And it pushing into all of them, harder and harder, dig, dig, dig, and nobody listening.

I went up to it.

To the top of the red rock. In the rain. And put my hand on it.

And didn’t fold it.

The red queen asked me not to.

She’d come out of the Scarecrow. Down the ramp, past Anja, past the warden sitting in the rain at the bottom. Across the red rock. Very slowly. With her long curved neck swaying. With her eleven young walking beside her in a line.

To the foot of her rock.

And she looked up at the tower on the top of it for a long time.

Not folded, she said. Through Genny. Through me. Not put away in a box. It grew out of my rock. It is made of what my young sang out of the ground for the Sorn. A long pause. I would like it to be something else.

”What?”

The red queen didn’t answer. She began to climb.

It took her an hour. Up the side of her rock, in the rain, very slowly, her long neck reaching up to find each hold. Her eleven young waited at the bottom. Lying on their backs on the wet red stone with their faces turned up, watching her.

At the top, she stopped. Beside the tower. Grey, thin, very tall, grown out of the top of her rock.

And she put the opening at the end of her long curved neck against it.

And sang into it.

Not down. Not into the cracks. Into the tower. The sound. Low. Warm. Steady. The sound of being sung down to in the dark.

The tower stopped pushing.

Not because I’d folded it. Because something was singing into it, and it had never heard anything but dig. And it didn’t know what this was. And it stopped, the way the warden stopped at the top of the ramp when something was in the way.

And then it started again.

But not dig.

The sound. The red queen’s. Coming out of the top of the tower, the way dig had come out. Out across the whole red world. Into every crack. Flat and steady and very loud. Not pushing. Singing.

The grey tower on the red rock sang down into the cracks.

The way she had, every night, before she was broken.

The young came up.

All of them. From every crack. Thousands. Up the walls, out of the dark, into the rain. Small and red and low with long curved necks, without collars, with the rain running down their faces. They came up out of the cracks onto the flat red ground and lay down on it. On their backs. In the rain. With their necks stretched up toward the rock in the middle. Toward the tower. Toward their mother at the top of it.

The eleven got up from the foot of the rock.

And walked out among them.

And lay down too.

I stood at the top of the rock beside the red queen and looked down at all of it.

The red world. In the rain. Every crack open. Every collar gone. Thousands of young lying on their backs on the flat red rock with their faces turned up, singing back. The Scarecrow at the edge, with her ramp down. Anja at the top of it with her arms folded. A warden sitting in the rain at the bottom, not getting up.

And on the warden’s long grey face, very faintly, as I watched, the rain running down it. Like it was running down all the others.

Thank you, said the red queen. Through Genny. Not looking at me. Looking down at her young. I will stay.

”I know.”

The eleven will stay, she said. This is their world. They did not know it. Now they do. A long pause. If you need us, sing. We will hear. The tower will hear. It sings now.

I found the warden at the bottom of the ramp when I came down.

It hadn’t moved. It was sitting on the wet red rock with its long limbs folded and its blade-arm in its lap, bent where it had hit Anja’s shoulder. With the rain running down its face.

I crouched in front of it. At its height.

It looked at me with its pale eyes.

”We were told,” it said. Its voice thin and dry. ”To watch. All of us. Every tower. On every world. To watch for anything that does not do what it is told.” It looked at the rain. At the young on the red rock. ”Something has happened under the ring. The keeper there has called. The call went home. And home has answered.”

I didn’t move.

”Home has told every tower on every world,” said the warden, ”to watch.” It looked at me. ”I was watching. And you came.” A long pause. ”And now I am sitting in the rain. And I do not know what to report.”

”Then don’t,” I said.

The warden looked at me for a long time.

”Is that allowed?”

”Here it is,” I said.

Okafor crossed out the first circle that night.

On Garnet’s new map. In the forward deck of the Scarecrow, crossing home, with the eleven gone and the red queen gone and the hold very quiet. One line. Through the circle. Very neat.

Then she looked at the map for a long time.

At the two circles left. At the dot in the middle.

”Home has answered,” she said. Very quietly. Not to anyone.

”Yes.”

”Every tower. On every world. Watching.” She put the map back in her breast pocket. ”They know now, Dask. Not what we are. Not yet. But that something’s happening. That it’s in a line.”

”Yes.”

Okafor looked out of the forward window. At the dark between the pages.

”Then we’re going to need,” she said, ”to be faster than watching.”

Dot counted us off the ramp.

At the foot of the steps of Scarecrow, in the dark, the way she always did. One at a time. Okafor. Luna. Risa, with her hair still standing up and a very small cloud over her head that refused to go away. Sera and Liam, both with their arms still faintly pink. Anja, with her shoulder bruised where the blade had bent. The twins. Garnet asleep on her feet, Genny holding her up.

Me, last.

”This unit counts one more,” said Dot. Her grille very bright. ”Operator. You are wet.”

”It rained.”

”This unit was told,” said Dot. ”Through the heavy queen’s young. Who heard it from the hello. Every queen on Avalon heard the red world sing.” Her hands unfolded. One. Then another. ”This unit has never heard a world sing. This unit would like to, one day.”

”You will.”

”This unit would like it to be soon,” said Dot. ”This unit always would.”

She folded her hands again. And turned back to the steps. Because there were more people coming up them, the way there always were, and somebody had to count every one, and it had always been her.

I went to the hollow before I went home.

To the north shelf. With the box from my coat. The first handler was there, from a long time ago. The four wardens. The forty-one. The keeper, small and folded with its face. The three old Hands, very light, asleep. The small polite one’s box, empty now, because she was Tally and slept on the end of our porch rail.

I put the new box beside them. Towers and handlers. Twenty-six towers. Sixty-one handlers.

The Overseer was at the mouth of its passage. With its bread. With the dog. It looked at the box on the shelf for a long time.

”They are not children,” it said. ”Those ones.”

”No.”

”They were made. Like me.” It looked at the bread in its hand. ”Grey, and a piece of a queen, and an order.”

”Yes.”

The Overseer was quiet for a long time.

”Someday,” it said, ”somebody might leave bread on a stone for them too.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

The dog leaned on the Overseer’s leg.

Days 2636–2652. Rain.

The red queen asked to go home and sing down to whoever was left. Okafor’s rule: no children fight, not from the halls or the ash or born on Avalon; the eleven came to be there, not to fight; Genny pointed out the twins were born on Earth. A red world under a white sun, cracked like an old hand, and on the queen’s rock a grey tower grown like a thorn: dig. Her young in collars singing grey out of the rock; Genny said that’s where the grey comes from. Luna: the small towers first. I folded each tower and every handler that came out of the rock. Risa made it rain for the first time since the towers, and the young turned their necks up. Garnet ran down the cracks opening collars; Genny sang the red queen’s sound, and they sang it back. Sera pulled the heat out of melting rock and Liam carried it up as steam. A warden’s blade bent on Anja’s shoulder; she pushed it gently down the ramp and it sat in the rain. The red queen climbed her rock and sang into the last tower until it sang too. The warden said the keeper’s call went home, and home has told every tower on every world to watch. Okafor crossed out one circle: we’ll need to be faster than watching.