Scarecrow

I didn’t wake anyone.

I went down off Father’s roof and across the yard and up the long road to the map room in the dark, and Luna was already there. Of course she was. Standing at the great table in her coat over her nightgown with Garnet’s sheet under her hands and her hair down.

She looked at my face.

”Neve,” she said.

”The second black world. The ring’s closing. From the edge of the world. Toward the hole.” I put my hand flat on the sheet, on the black circle with its white dot. ”They’ll be there by midday. Their midday. Maybe sooner.”

”How many?”

I shut my eyes. And felt.

It wasn’t like hearing. When I’d heard, before, I’d heard where the silver wasn’t. A gap. Moving. Now I could feel them. Not their silver; they didn’t have any, not any that was alive. Them. What they were made of. Every grain of the black stuff that wasn’t armour and wasn’t skin. Every collar. Every dead curled piece of silver at the bottom of every one.

”Three hundred and twelve,” I said.

Luna didn’t say anything for a while.

”And we can’t get there,” she said.

Okafor came. Then Risa, with her hair still faintly on end from the evening’s practice. Then Sera, with Ash asleep over her shoulder because Ash had woken when Sera got up and refused to be left. Then Mother. Then Wren, already counting.

Then the Overseer. In the doorway. With the dog.

”No ropes,” said Okafor. ”Every queen on Avalon is asleep. The Drenn queen sang Neve down nine days ago. Nobody can sing her home.” She looked round the table. ”Anyone?”

Nobody said anything.

”Dask. Can you—” She stopped. ”The scattering. Can you go along the thread? Like that?”

I’d thought about it. On the roof. For a long time.

”I don’t know,” I said. ”I’ve only ever gone a mile. On the plain. If I spread out along a thread between worlds, I don’t know if I’d come back together at the other end.” I looked at my hands. ”Or how many of me would.”

”Then no,” said Luna. Very flatly.

”Then no,” said Okafor.

The Overseer spoke from the doorway.

There is a way.

Everyone turned.

It didn’t come in. It stood in the frame of the door with the dog at its feet, very tall, very grey, looking at the floor.

The Scarecrow was a Hand, it said. Before it was hers. Before it remembered what it had been. The Hands were made by the houses. They were made to go where the note sends them. A pause. They do not need a queen to sing a rope. They need the note.

”What note?”

The Overseer lifted its head.

The one note, it said. The houses’ note. The one the voice sings across every world. The one the towers sing into the young. Dig. Hold. Keep. Its pale eyes were very still. I know it. I was made at the middle. I taught it on the benches for longer than anyone remembers. A pause. I can sing it. The Scarecrow will hear it. She will remember how to go where it sends her. Even now.

Nobody said anything.

”And who else hears it?” said Mother.

The Overseer looked at her.

Everything that was made to, it said.

”No,” said Okafor.

The houses will hear it, said the Overseer. Yes. They will hear the note come from the wrong place. From a fault. From Avalon. It looked at the floor again. They will know I am here. They will know what I am. They will know what I have done.

”Then no.”

They already know where Avalon is, said the Overseer. The houses have known since the fire world. Since before. A pause. They do not know what I am now. That is the only thing they would learn.

”That’s enough,” said Okafor.

Is it? said the Overseer. Very quietly. There are three hundred and twelve walking toward a hole with a woman at the edge of it who sat with a keeper until it asked her something. And the heavy young at the bottom. And a queen. It looked at Okafor. I taught keepers to stand at the foot of towers and look up. For longer than anyone remembers. I did not ask what I was teaching. A pause. I would like to be asked this. I would like you to ask me to sing it.

Okafor looked at it for a very long time.

Then she looked at me.

”How many can you take?” she said. ”Now. With what they gave you.”

I didn’t answer at once. I shut my eyes and felt the three hundred and twelve, walking across the black, closing on the hole.

”I don’t know,” I said. ”I’ve never tried.”

”The four of you,” said Okafor. Looking at Luna. At Risa. At Sera. ”Nobody else. No teams. No children. No Mother.” Mother opened her mouth. ”No, Mother. If it goes wrong I need someone here who can hold.”

Mother shut her mouth.

”Overseer,” said Okafor.

Yes.

”Will you sing the note? For the Scarecrow? So she can take the four of them to Neve?”

The Overseer looked at her.

And something in its long grey face changed. Not much. A little. At the edges.

Yes, it said. Thank you for asking.

Sera put Ash down on the bench by the wall.

Ash woke up. And looked at all of us. With her hinge face. Deciding.

”You’re going to do the fire,” she said. To Sera. Not a question.

”Yes.”

”The big fire?”

”No,” said Sera. ”Not the big one. Never the big one.”

Ash considered this. Then she lay back down on the bench.

”Say it first,” she said. With her eyes shut. ”Papa does. You have to.”

So Sera said it. And Luna. And Risa. To Ash, on the bench, who was asleep again before Risa finished.

And then I said it. To everyone in the room. Fast. In order. Okafor last.

Okafor looked at me when I got to her.

”I lied,” she said. ”I’m a sergeant.” A pause. ”Go.”

The Overseer stood at the foot of the Scarecrow’s ramp.

On the landing field. In the grey before dawn. With the dog sitting very straight beside it and the whole town dark behind it, and the four of us at the top of the ramp, and the Scarecrow under our feet, very quiet, waiting.

It put back its long grey head.

And sang.

I’d heard the one note before.

A thousand times. Down a thousand threads. Through the towers. Through the collars. Through the voice in the halls, be still, hold, keep, flat and heavy and certain, like a hand on the back of your neck. I’d heard it in the halls the first day. I’d heard it under the ring. I’d heard it in Tally’s voice, once, when she was still a small polite thing in a chair, before she found out she could ask.

I’d never heard it sung by something that didn’t want to sing it.

It was the same note. Exactly the same. And it wasn’t.

The Overseer sang it the way you’d say the name of someone who’d hurt you. Clearly. Without flinching. Because it needed saying. And every grain of it was the note the houses had made, and every grain of it was the Overseer’s own.

The Scarecrow heard it.

I felt her hear it. Under my feet. Through the deck. A shiver. Very old. From before she was ours. From when she was a Hand, new, over the Kethri forest, and fought.

She remembered.

And she went.

It wasn’t like a rope.

A rope was soft. A queen sang it out in front of you and you went along it, and it held you the whole way, the way a hand holds a hand. This wasn’t soft. It was straight. Hard. A line, drawn across the dark between worlds with a ruler, and the Scarecrow went down it like a stone down a well.

Luna held my hand. Hard. Her fingers going cold.

Risa’s hair stood straight up.

Sera shut her eyes.

And behind us, at the end of the line, very far, I felt something on Avalon fall down.

”The Overseer,” I said.

Nobody answered.

I couldn’t feel it any more. Not properly. The line was taking us too fast, too far. But I’d felt it fall. On the landing field. At the foot of where the ramp had been. Its long grey body going down onto the red glass all at once, like a coat dropped off a hook.

And the dog, barking.

The second black world had been hills.

You could tell. From above. The shapes of them under the black, long and rounded, one after another, like a blanket over sleeping animals. A river that had run between them. A lake. All of it black now. Flat black. Taking the light and not giving it back.

And in the middle, in a valley between two hills, a hole.

Deep. A hundred feet at least. With the Harness sitting beside it on the black with her ramp down and her name in gold on her side. And round the top of the hole, a small figure. Standing. With her arms out.

Neve.

And coming over the hills toward her, from every side, a long dark ring.

Closing.

They were nearly there.

We were late. Again. Not as late as the fire world. Late enough. The ring was over the last hills and coming down into the valley, three hundred and twelve of them, tall and wide and faceless, walking, and everywhere they walked the black got blacker, and at the edge of the hole, where Neve stood, there was nothing between her and them but a hundred yards of nothing.

And then I saw what was in front of them.

Young.

Walking ahead of the correctors. In a line. In collars. Small and grey and very thin, with their heads down. Dozens of them. Being pushed. Not by hands. By the black, under their feet, moving forward, so that if they stopped walking it reached their heels.

So they didn’t stop walking.

They came down into the valley ahead of the correctors. Toward Neve. Toward the hole.

”Lucas,” said Sera. Very quietly. ”Where did they get them?”

I felt them. All of them. Their silver. Alive. Faint. Frightened. And not from this world. From the twelfth. From the world of long grey grass with a tower at its centre and nobody at the foot of the tower.

We’d brought home three hundred and forty young from the twelfth world. Every one.

Not every one.

Some of them had been taken before we got there. With the keeper. With the queen. Out past the middle.

And brought back.

To walk in front.

”They know we won’t hit them,” said Risa. Her voice was very flat. ”That’s why. They know.”

Nobody said anything.

The houses did not sing. They did not listen. They did not come down threads to ask questions.

They watched what we did. And they used it.

”Down,” I said.

I didn’t take the ramp.

I went out of the side of the Scarecrow the way I’d gone out over Halden and the red world and the fire world. Except I didn’t fall. I scattered. All at once. Into the air over the valley. Thin. Silver. Spread across the whole of the sky between the ship and the ground.

And I felt everything.

Every one of the three hundred and twelve. Every collar. Every young walking in front of them with its head down. Every grain of the black. Neve, at the edge of the hole, with her arms out. Corwin behind her, on his knees, with his hands bleeding on the black. Marlo and the two light-benders, at the top of the Harness’s ramp, holding the light round the ship so the correctors couldn’t see her. The heavy young at the bottom of the hole, pressing. And under them, deeper, curled very tight in a hollow in the rock, a queen.

Alive.

The young first.

I reached for them. All of them. The way I’d reached for the stone a mile off on the plain, with my eyes shut. I felt every collar on every young, every grain of grey, where it closed and how. And I didn’t fold them. I couldn’t; I had to be careful; folding is fast and folding is hard and the collars went in too deep.

I opened them.

All at once. Every collar. From the inside. The way Garnet opened grey, a hand at a time, except all the hands at once. And every young walking in front of the ring lifted its head.

And the black under their feet reached their heels.

”Luna!”

She was already there.

Out of the Scarecrow on a path of ice. Down. Fast. So fast it was a white line across the valley. She came down between the young and the ring, and the path under her spread. Out. Wide. A floor of ice, thick and white and clear, between the young and the black.

The black came onto it. Under it. Into it.

The ice went grey. Then dark. Then black, from underneath, the way the keeper had gone black, from the feet up.

And Luna let it go.

The whole floor. All at once. To frost. And it blew away off the black like snow off a roof, and the black under it found nothing, and she was already laying another one. Thicker. Wider. And another. And another. Laying them down and letting them go, laying them down and letting them go, so that every time the black came up into the ice there was nothing there to take, just frost, blowing away.

”Go!” she shouted. At the young. ”Go! Toward the ship!”

They didn’t move. They didn’t know they could.

Sera came down.

Not on a path. Not on a storm. Light. On fire. A woman made of flame, coming down out of the sky over the valley as slowly as a feather. The young looked up at her.

Every one.

She came down among them. On Luna’s ice, which didn’t melt under her, because she made herself so light she barely touched it. And held out her burning hands.

”Come on,” she said. Very gently. ”Come on, then.”

And the young came to her.

The way the fire world’s young had come to their mother. Toward the warm. They didn’t know what she was. They didn’t know they could move. But they knew warm. And they came. And she walked backward across the ice toward the Harness, slowly, with her hands out and her whole body burning, and they followed her. One after another. Up the ramp. Into the light that Marlo was holding round the ship.

The ring didn’t stop.

It didn’t stop when the young lifted their heads. It didn’t stop when Luna’s ice came down between. It didn’t stop when Sera came out of the sky. It didn’t look at any of it. It walked.

Three hundred and twelve. Toward the hole. Toward Neve.

Risa was waiting for them.

She was over the valley. On her storm. With the black cloud under her feet like a floor and her arms folded and her hair standing straight up.

She unfolded her arms.

And the first bolt hit the ring.

Not a corrector. The black. In front of them. A white line from her hand to the ground, so bright the black went white for an instant all round it, and the sound came after, and hit the valley like a fist, and the hills threw it back.

The correctors in front of the bolt stopped.

Not because they were hurt. They weren’t. The black took the lightning the way it took fire. But it had to take it. All of it. All at once. And for one breath, the black under their feet was so full of lightning that it couldn’t take anything else.

They stopped. Because there was nothing under their feet to walk on.

Then it was black again. And they walked.

Risa clapped.

The thunder went out from between her hands in a ring. Down. Into the valley. Into the ring of correctors.

They didn’t feel it. They didn’t have anything to feel it with.

But they were made of something. And I could feel what.

And so could the thunder.

It went into them, the sound, and found every grain of them, every seam in the black stuff that wasn’t armour and wasn’t skin. And shook it. The way sound shakes glass.

And twelve of them came apart.

Risa looked down at them. At the twelve. At the black pieces on the black ground.

Her face went very still.

Then she clapped again.

I was everywhere.

Over the valley. In the air. Thin. Not where anything could walk into me. And I reached down through all of me into every one of the three hundred, and felt what they were made of.

I’d thought the black was nothing. That I couldn’t fold nothing.

It wasn’t nothing. Not them. Not the correctors. Every one of them was made. Built. Out of something. Atoms. Numbers. Held together in a shape the houses had chosen, round a piece of silver they’d burned out on purpose.

I could feel every number.

And anything I could feel, I could change.

I didn’t fold them.

I let them go.

The way I let myself go, on the plain. The way I scattered. Except I wasn’t holding them together after. I found the place in each one where the numbers held on to each other, and I asked them to stop.

And they stopped.

Forty of them. At once. Mid-step. In the ring. They didn’t fall. There wasn’t anything left to fall. They went out like breath on a cold morning, a dark shimmer in the air where each one had been, spread thin, and the wind took it.

Forty more.

And forty more.

I’m going to write this down properly. Because Genny says it should be written. Because if you don’t, someone will say it didn’t happen, or that it didn’t cost anything.

It cost something.

Every one I let go, I felt. Not their hearts. They didn’t have hearts. Not their silver. It was dead. But I felt them. Every number. All the way through. And every one had been something, once, before the houses made it into this. And at the bottom of every one there was a small curled piece of dead silver that had once been able to hear.

I let a hundred and sixty of them go before I stopped feeling sick.

I didn’t stop feeling sick. I stopped noticing.

That’s worse.

They changed.

The houses. Watching. Somewhere far off, past the middle. They watched what I did and they changed it.

The ring stopped closing on the hole.

And turned.

All of them. What was left. A hundred and forty. At once. Away from Neve. Away from the hole. Toward the Harness.

Toward Sera. At the foot of the ramp. On fire. With the last of the young going up past her into the light.

They knew I couldn’t see.

I didn’t need to see. But they didn’t know that. All they knew was what they’d watched on the fire world. That I had to look. One at a time. And while I looked at one, the next one walked into whoever was standing beside me.

So they all walked at once. Toward the one standing furthest from me.

Sera.

She didn’t move.

She stood at the foot of the Harness’s ramp on Luna’s ice with her whole body burning and the young going up behind her, and watched them come. A hundred and forty. Walking. And the black coming in front of them, taking the fire out of the air, out of the ice, out of everything.

She held out her hands.

And I felt her start the star.

”Sera—”

I couldn’t stop her. I was spread over the whole valley, thin, letting them go forty at a time, and there were still a hundred left, and they were walking, and she was right there.

The point in her hands. Packing. White. Small.

It wanted to be bigger.

She didn’t let it.

She held it. At the size of a seed. So bright the whole valley went dark round it. And she didn’t throw it. She didn’t drop it.

She opened her hand.

And it went out of her palm in a line.

Not a ball. Not a blast. A line. Thinner than a hair. White past white. From her palm, across the ice, into the ring. Through the first corrector. Through the one behind it. Through the one behind that. Straight. Not stopping. The black took it, as it went through them, the way it took everything. But it was too much to take. In too small a place. Too fast.

The black couldn’t hold it.

Twenty of them, in a line, came apart. From the inside. From the line.

Sera turned her hand.

She let it go out when there were thirty left.

All at once. On her own. Before anyone asked her twice. The line went out of her palm and the point went out in her hand, gold, orange, red, nothing. And she stood at the foot of the ramp, burning, breathing very hard.

Thirty. Walking.

I let them go.

All thirty. At once. With every part of me. They went out like breath, and the wind took them, and the valley was empty.

Except it wasn’t.

Neve was on her knees.

At the edge of the hole. Where she’d been standing with her arms out. Where she’d been standing when the ring turned, and walked away from her, toward the ship.

Not all of them had turned.

One hadn’t.

I don’t know why. Maybe it was further in. Maybe it was closer. Maybe it didn’t hear whatever the houses told the rest. Maybe the houses told it, specifically, to keep walking. Toward the woman at the edge of the hole.

It reached her while I was letting the last thirty go.

It walked into her.

And she put her hands up. Flat. The way she’d sat with the keeper on the wind world, with her coat round its shoulders, until it asked her something. And it walked into her hands.

And her hands went cold.

I came back together beside her.

All at once. From everywhere. And put my hands on the corrector’s back and let it go before I’d finished being whole.

It went out like breath.

Neve was still on her knees. With her hands up. Flat. In front of her. Holding nothing.

They were black.

To the wrist.

”I’m all right,” she said.

She wasn’t. She was looking at her hands. Very steadily. The way she’d looked at the chart in Ruth’s ward, the first night, with a hundred and twelve names on it.

”I can’t feel the silver,” she said. ”In them. At all.” She turned them over. ”I can feel my hands. I can move them.” She moved them. ”Ruth’s going to want to see these.”

”Neve—”

”I know,” said Neve. ”Your fingers. Dory.” She looked at me. ”Is she awake? Dory?”

”Yes.”

”Then she can hold mine open too,” said Neve. ”Every afternoon. Like yours.” Her voice shook, very slightly, and steadied. ”I don’t mind. I’d like her to.”

We didn’t lose anyone.

I want to write that down. It’s the first thing I want written in the brood book, before the rest. Nobody of ours. Not Neve. Not Corwin, who’d opened the black at the edge of the hole a crack at a time for three days with his bare hands, so the heavy young could get the queen out. Not Marlo, who’d held the light round the Harness for six hours so the ring couldn’t see it, and passed out at the top of the ramp when Sera came up it with the last of the young. Not the two light-benders. Not the heavy young.

Nobody.

The young from the twelfth world.

Fifty-three. Walked in front of the ring. In collars. With the black at their heels.

Forty-eight came up the ramp of the Harness behind Sera.

Five didn’t. They’d been at the very front. When I opened the collars, they’d lifted their heads, and stopped walking, because for the first time in their lives they could. And the black under their feet had reached them before Luna’s ice.

Five.

I’m writing it down. In my own hand. So it’s not only in the brood book.

And the queen.

At the bottom of the hole. A hundred and twelve feet down. Curled very tight in a hollow in the rock. A queen of the hills, grey and gold like dry grass, with her young packed into her coils.

The heavy young brought her up. Slowly. Pressing. With Luna laying ice down the sides of the hole so the black couldn’t close in. With me lifting, very carefully, all five fingers lit.

She came up into the light.

She didn’t uncurl. Not on the black. Not until she was on the Harness, in the hold, with the ramp shut and the dark between worlds outside.

Then she did.

Eight hundred and nine young came out of her coils.

There had been about a thousand.

We came home on the one note.

There was nothing else. The queens were still asleep. The Overseer had sung us down, and the Scarecrow remembered the way back, and the Harness followed her, the way the iron ships follow, because she’d been built to.

It was quicker going home. I don’t know why. The line was just as hard. Just as straight. But the Scarecrow went down it like something going downhill.

We came out over Avalon at dusk.

And I felt the landing field before we were over it.

The Overseer was on the red glass.

Where it had fallen. At the foot of where the Scarecrow’s ramp had been. Its long grey body stretched out on the glass. The dog lying beside it, against its chest, very still.

Mother was kneeling beside it.

Holding.

She’d been holding it, Wren said, since dawn. Since it fell. Twelve hours. On her knees on the red glass. With her hands flat on its long grey chest and her eyes shut. Not because it was dying.

Because something was trying to take it.

I felt it as soon as I was down.

Before the ramp was all the way open. Down through the deck and across the glass and into the Overseer.

Something was in it.

Not the voice. I knew the voice. I’d heard the voice come down the thread, slow and careful, like someone on a staircase in the dark. This wasn’t careful. This wasn’t slow. This was a hand. In the Overseer. Reaching. Into every part of it that had been made at the middle. Into the shape it had been taught. Into the note.

Pulling.

And Mother, on her knees, holding it back.

”It heard,” said Mother. Without opening her eyes. When I knelt down beside her. Her voice was very thin. ”When it sang. The houses. They heard the note from the wrong place.” Her hands were shaking on the Overseer’s chest. ”And they knew what it was. And they’ve been trying to take it back ever since.”

I put my hands beside hers.

And felt it.

The houses. For the first time. Not their correctors. Not the black. Them. Very far. Past the middle. Further than I’d ever reached. A grip. Cold. Certain. Taking hold of the thing they’d made, the way you’d pick up a tool you’d left in the rain.

Not angry.

Not anything.

The Overseer opened its pale eyes.

And spoke.

Not its voice. Not thin and dry and careful. Flat. Heavy. Without anything in it at all. Coming out of its long grey mouth the way water comes out of a pipe.

Fault.

Mother’s hands went white on its chest.

This instrument belongs to the houses. The ships belong to the houses. The queens belong to the houses. The young belong to the houses. The human world belongs to the houses, by the paper it signed. A pause. No breath. All will be returned.

Nobody moved.

Or all will be corrected.

And then the grip let go.

Not because Mother held it. Not because I did. It let go. The way you’d put a tool down. Because it had said what it wanted to say. Because it had used the thing it made to say it, and that was all it was for.

The Overseer’s eyes shut.

Its long grey chest went down. And didn’t come up. And then, very slowly, came up again.

The dog lifted its head and licked its face.

It didn’t wake for two days.

When it did, it was in the ward. In the small room at the end with the window, where Halloway saw the ones she didn’t want anyone to see yet. The dog was on the end of the bed. Mother was in the chair.

It looked at the ceiling for a long time.

Then at Mother.

I heard them, it said. In its own voice. Thin. Dry. Careful. In me. Speaking. Through my mouth. A pause. I did not know they could. I did not know I was still a thing they could pick up.

”You’re not,” said Mother.

I was. For a day.

”For a day,” said Mother. ”And then you put yourself down again.” She took its long grey hand, the way she took mine. ”That’s the difference. They didn’t put you down. You did.”

The Overseer looked at her for a long time.

Would you ask me to sing it again? it said. If you needed to?

Mother didn’t answer at once.

”I’d ask,” she said. ”I wouldn’t tell.”

The Overseer shut its pale eyes.

Then yes, it said.

I said it that night.

On the porch. In order. With Neve on the top step, because she’d come up from the ward and Dory had held her hands open for an hour and the silver had started to seep in at the wrists. With Sera beside me, very quiet, with her burning put away. With Risa and Luna. With the children.

With the queens still asleep on the mountain. Six days. Tomorrow was the sixth.

And with something else. Under all of it. For the first time.

The houses.

I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t feel them. Not now. But I’d felt them once, in the Overseer, reaching. And now I knew they were there.

Past the middle. Where the queens were kept.

Waiting for us to return what was theirs.

Days 2768–2771. The One Note.

No ropes; the queens asleep. The Overseer asked to be asked, and sang the houses’ one note so the Scarecrow would remember she’d been a Hand, and fell on the red glass as we went. The ring was closing on Neve, and the houses had sent the twelfth world’s taken young to walk in front, because they know we won’t hit young. I opened every collar from the air. Luna laid ice and let it go to frost so the black found nothing. Sera walked the young up the ramp burning, then held a star the size of a seed and let it out as a line. Risa’s thunder shook them apart. Between us, three hundred and twelve; I let most of them go, and stopped noticing. One walked into Neve: her hands, black to the wrist. Five young didn’t make it; forty-eight did. Nobody of ours. The hill queen and eight hundred and nine young. At home Mother had held the Overseer twelve hours while the houses reached into it; they spoke through its mouth: return everything, the human world too, or be corrected. Then they put it down. It says it’ll sing again if asked.