Scarecrow

Genny was born eleven minutes before Garnet.

Everybody knew that. Genny made sure everybody knew it. She’d said so on every birthday since she could talk, at the kitchen table in the dome, at the long table on Avalon, on the porch. Eleven minutes. As if it explained everything. Garnet said it explained nothing except that Genny had always been in a hurry.

They turned eighteen on the same morning.

Eleven minutes apart.

I gave them their presents on the morning itself.

Not at the party. On the morning. Before anyone else was up. The way Father used to, on our birthdays, before he went to the fields or the forge. He’d wake us in the dark and give us something small he’d made at the forge and say nothing at all, and go to work.

I didn’t say nothing at all.

I’d been practising. For three years. On the porch.

Genny was at the long ward. With Bell’s tray. She’d been there all night.

I sat down beside her on the floor. And gave her a pen.

Not an ordinary pen. Iron. Very fine. I’d asked it, over a week, at the forge, to be the shape of the pen she’d lost on Earth, the one Father gave her when she was young. She’d talked about it for years. Father’s pen. I lost it in the move to the penthouse. I’d never seen it. I’d asked Mother what it looked like. Then I’d asked the iron.

Genny turned it over in her hands for a long time.

”It’s the same,” she said. Very quietly. ”It’s exactly the same.” She looked at me. ”How?”

”Mother remembered. I asked.”

Genny didn’t say anything for a long time.

”I’ll write volume forty-three with it,” she said.

”I know,” I said. And then I said the rest. The thing I’d been practising.

That I was proud of her. That she’d asked Neve’s bone and the voice and nine queens in the trays and found Rain, and every time she’d been frightened and done it anyway. That she’d sat with Bell every night when nobody told her to. That Father would have taken one look at each volume she’d written and said get some dirt on them first, then we’ll listen, and then read every page.

That I loved her.

Genny put the pen down on Bell’s tray. And put her face in her hands. Twice. Once for each thing.

Garnet was at the kitchen table. With her drawing board. Drawing the morning’s sheet.

I gave her a map.

Not a drawing. A real one. Carved. In stone. From the rock under Father’s field, the copy, at the end of the street, where the scarecrow stood with Mother’s blue scarf. I’d asked the stone to remember every world Garnet had ever drawn. Every circle. Every thread. All nine lines. The middle. The thick thread. Seven-three-K. And at the end of the thick thread, the hollow world, very dark, with nothing inside it.

And round the edge, very small, in the stone, all the names of everyone who’d come home.

Garnet ran her fingers over it for a long time.

”There’s a space,” she said. ”In the middle. Where the voice is.”

”You left room,” I said. ”On your sheet. Three years ago. When you didn’t know what to draw.” I put my hand on the stone beside hers. ”I left room too.”

Garnet looked at it.

Then she took a pencil. And very lightly, so it would rub off if she changed her mind, she drew in the space, nine small dots. Then crossed one out. Then drew one beside it.

”Eight,” she said. ”And Bell, asleep. And Rain.” She looked up at me. ”When it’s got a name, I’ll carve it in.”

I said the rest then too.

That I was proud of her. That she’d drawn every world we ever went to from what other people told her, for three years, because she wasn’t allowed to go. That she’d given Mother her drawing of the reed world so Mother could carry the queen home. That she’d coloured eleven circles black and then rubbed white dots out of every one so Okafor would know where to dig.

That I loved her.

Garnet didn’t cry. Garnet never cried when you were looking.

She waited until I’d gone out of the kitchen.

I heard her through the door.

Pip turned eighteen nine days later.

She said she didn’t want a fuss. She said it every day for a month. She said it to Maura in the bakery and to Liam at the forge and to Sera on the porch and to Rory, who said nothing at all, because Rory never did, and then went to the forge and spent three nights making something nobody was allowed to see.

So the grandparents decided to have one party.

For all three.

”Nobody asked me,” said Pip.

At the kitchen table. On our porch. With her arms folded and her chin up. She was very like Sera when she did that. Sera said she wasn’t.

”Nobody ever asks you,” said Maura. ”You don’t ask either. You just turn up on the Harness with a basket of bread and your hair full of ash.” She put a bowl of dough in front of her. ”Knead that.”

Pip kneaded it.

”I didn’t want a fuss,” she said.

”I know, love,” said Maura. ”That’s why it’s a party. Not a fuss.” She looked at the dough. ”You’re pushing it about like it’s done something to you. You’ve been spending too much time with Ingrid.”

Mother planned it.

All of it. Every grandparent on the rota, on the big sheet Garnet had drawn on the kitchen wall. She took the sheet down and turned it over and wrote, on the back, in her careful rounded hand, the hand I’ve known all my life:

Genny. Garnet. Pip. Eighteen.

And under it, a list. Like Okafor’s lists. Like the one at the foot of the steps of Scarecrow, before the Hands came, a long time ago.

Bread: Maura. Ovens: Rory. The plain, not the porch; too many people. Cows: Hettie, if she’ll lend them. Lanterns: Ash, Sera, Rory the second; nobody else lights anything. Music: Toby. The children from the town; all of them; Abena will bring them. Konrad: read. Something from Earth. Something they’d remember.

And at the bottom, very small:

Ask them what they want.

She asked them.

Genny first. At the long ward. Where Genny was sitting with Bell’s tray, the way she sat every night now, with her hand flat on it, because Bell hummed once a night in her sleep and Genny said someone should be there when she woke properly.

”What would you like?” said Mother. ”For your birthday.”

Genny thought about it for a long time. Twice. The way she thought about everything.

”I’d like to finish the brood book,” she said. ”Volume eleven. The forest queen’s chapter. And the sorting queen’s.” She looked at the tray. ”I’d like to be on a task force. The medics. With Halloway and Toby and Neve. On the Harness. When it goes.” She looked up at Mother. ”I’m eighteen. Okafor said. The rule’s for children.”

Mother didn’t say anything.

”I’ve been asking queens their shapes since I was fifteen,” said Genny. ”I asked Neve’s bone. I asked the voice. I found nine queens in the trays and then the rain.” Her hand didn’t move on Bell’s tray. ”I’d like to ask someone who needs asking. Out there. Not on the long ward floor.”

”I know, love,” said Mother.

”Will you tell Okafor?”

”No,” said Mother. ”You will.”

Garnet didn’t have to think about it.

She was at the kitchen table with her drawing board and the old brown dog under her chair, the way she was every evening. Drawing the next morning’s sheet. Four hundred and nineteen circles. The sixty-four tithe worlds, in blue now, round the edges. The thick thread. Seven-three-K, with a ring of empty white rooms round a space where the sorting queen used to be.

And the hollow world. At the end of it. A single dot, very dark, with nothing drawn inside it.

”I want to go,” said Garnet.

Mother looked at her.

”The reed world,” said Garnet. Without looking up. ”Okafor wouldn’t let me. I was fifteen. She said no children. You took my drawing instead and did it the way I did.” She kept drawing. ”I’ve been drawing every world we’ve been to for three years. From what other people tell me. From what Wren hears and Lucas feels and Reed listens to through floors.” She put the pencil down. ”I’d like to see one. Myself. Before I draw it.”

”Which one?”

Garnet turned the sheet round.

She put her finger on a small blue circle at the edge. On the far side of the fourth line. A world of shallow seas.

The first tithe world to answer. Show us.

”That one,” she said. ”Konrad’s going. With Voss and Selwyn. To stand in front of them.” She looked at Mother. ”Somebody should draw it. When a council that’s always signed sees someone who stopped.”

Pip didn’t want anything.

She said so. At the forge. Where she’d gone after the kneading to sit on Ash’s bucket, because Ash was at the bakery with Maura and the bucket was empty, and watch Sera work.

”I don’t want anything,” she said. ”I said.”

Mother sat down on the anvil. Where Sera usually sat. Where Ingrid had sat to teach Risa the quiet, once, before the finishing.

”Everyone wants something, love,” she said.

Pip looked at her feet.

”I’m the only one who doesn’t do anything,” she said.

Sera stopped hammering.

”Liam sees where the air goes,” said Pip. ”Sera holds stars. Mother made Holt’s whole steppe warm. Father fires the ovens and he used to hold a fire the size of a house.” She pulled her knees up. ”Rory the second sets fire to things in his sleep. Ash makes bread rise. And I’m a Calder and I can make my hands a bit warm, if I concentrate, and that’s all.” She looked at the floor. ”I carried bread. On the eleventh crossing. That’s the only thing I ever did. Carried bread.”

Mother didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she said, ”Forty thousand.”

Pip looked up.

”Meg’s girl counted,” said Mother. ”You carried bread to forty thousand people coming out of a dome on Earth onto the ash. You’d never been anywhere. Nobody let you come. You came anyway.” She folded her hands. ”An old man asked you what the sky was like on Avalon. You told him. He said thank you, Pip Calder.” A pause. ”Nobody else on that crossing thought to carry bread. Not one of us. Not me. Not Okafor. Not your mother.”

Pip didn’t say anything.

”That’s not nothing,” said Mother. ”That’s what all of us do, in the end. All of it. The stars and the lightning and the holding. It’s all just carrying bread to someone who’s frightened and saying here.” She stood up. ”You did it first. Before any of us thought to.”

She went to the door. Then stopped.

”What would you like, Pip?”

Pip looked at her hands. A bit warm. If she concentrated.

”I’d like to go,” she said. ”With the Mom Squad. When they go. I’d like to carry the bread.”

The party was on the plain.

At dusk. On the ninth day. Because Pip’s birthday was the ninth day and Mother said the twins could wait nine days for once in their lives, and Genny said eleven minutes was quite long enough to wait for anything and she wasn’t waiting nine days, and Garnet said she’d waited eleven minutes her whole life and nine days would be a nice change.

They had it on the ninth day.

Everyone came.

I don’t mean that the way people say it. I mean everyone. The grandparents first, with baskets and blankets and Hettie’s cows. Then the families. Then the town under the garden wall, all fifteen thousand of them, with Abena at the front and three hundred grandparents behind, walking down the hill in the evening light, very slowly, with their hands open.

Then the long table. The broods. The Ossari came up out of the ranges for the first time and stood at the edge of the plain in the dusk, pale and many-limbed, singing to the rock under it. The Vel drifted in over the plain from the coast in colour. The Hathri came in from their steppe and knelt at sundown and put their hands flat on the ground and sang, because they said a birthday was a good night to let the ground know you were still on it.

The queens.

Our queen came down off the garden wall. All the way. To the edge of the plain. She’d never come down that far for anything that wasn’t a war.

The old queen didn’t come. But at dusk, very far, very old, from her mountain, we heard her sing one note. Not the war-song. Not go and bring them home. Dot said it was the brood-word for the young have grown.

Ash and Sera and Rory the second lit the lanterns.

Hundreds of them. On poles. All across the plain. Not with fire. With warm. Ash put her hands round each one, the way Maura had taught her in the bowls of dough, and they lit. Soft. Gold. Not burning.

Rory the second only set fire to two poles. Maura said that was very good.

Toby played.

Not the counter-note. Not Harriet’s note. Songs. From Earth. From the dome. That he’d learned from his mother before her hands started shaking, and sung to Genny on the radio when we were all eleven light-years apart. And the children from the halls sang the parts they knew, with the third part slightly wrong.

Konrad read.

He stood up on a cart at the edge of the plain with a lantern and a book. A very old book. From the archive floors. With a cracked spine. He’d chosen it himself. He wouldn’t tell anyone what it was.

He opened it.

And read, in the voice he’d used in the Senate to read things into the record, a story about three children who went through a door at the back of a wardrobe into a country where it was always winter, and found out they were braver than anyone had ever told them.

Fifteen thousand children from the white rooms sat on the grass in the lantern light and listened.

When he finished, nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Rain, near the front, very small, said a word in her own language.

Dot translated it. Through the wood of the cart.

Again.

Rory gave Pip the thing he’d made.

At the end of the night. When the lanterns were burning low and the children from the town were asleep on the grass in rows with the grandparents among them and the cows standing very still at the edge, breathing on anyone who came near.

He didn’t say anything. He just held it out.

A basket.

Iron. Woven. Like a bread basket, but iron, very fine, every strand of it twisted by hand over three nights at the forge, and round the rim, in small letters, so small you had to hold it up to the lantern to see them:

PIP CALDER. CARRIES BREAD.

Pip looked at it for a long time.

”It’s heavy,” she said.

”It’s iron,” said Rory.

”I can’t carry bread in an iron basket.”

Rory looked at her.

”Put your hands on it,” he said.

She put her hands on it.

A bit warm. If she concentrated.

And the iron went warm.

Not hot. Warm. All of it. Every strand. The way Maura’s ovens went warm when Rory put his hand on them. The way the dough rose under Ash’s hands. And it stayed warm. When she took her hands away. Warm all the way through. Holding it.

”It holds,” said Rory. ”The warm. Whatever you put in, it keeps.” He looked at his youngest daughter. ”Your hands are a bit warm, Pip. If you concentrate.” A pause. ”Now whatever you carry stays warm. All the way there.”

Pip didn’t say anything.

She put the basket down on the grass. And put her arms round her father. Who was a Calder, and never said anything, and stood very stiffly for a moment, and then didn’t.

Then Luna stood up.

She’d been sitting on a blanket at the edge of the lanterns all evening. With the General on one side and Trevor asleep on her other. She hadn’t said much. She hadn’t eaten much either. Maura had noticed. Maura noticed everything.

She stood up now. In her long coat. And looked at Sera. On the next blanket. With Ash asleep against her and Rory and Maura behind her.

Sera looked back.

Something went between them. I don’t know what. I felt it. Not with the silver. With everything else.

Then Sera stood up too.

”We weren’t going to say,” said Luna.

To everyone. Not loudly. She didn’t need to be loud. Everyone on the plain who was still awake had turned round.

”Not tonight,” said Luna. ”It’s their night. Genny’s and Garnet’s and Pip’s.” She looked at the three of them. ”We were going to wait.”

”We can’t wait,” said Sera. ”Mother’s been looking at me since the cake.”

Maura, behind her, put her hand over her mouth.

”Both of us,” said Luna.

She was looking at me.

”Both of us,” said Sera. ”The same week. Halloway thinks.” She put her hand on her middle. Very lightly. ”Neve felt it this morning. She said there was a heart. Two of them. One in each.” She swallowed. ”She said one was cold and one was warm and she’d never felt anything like it.”

I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t. I was standing at the edge of the lanterns with a cup of Maura’s tea in my hand and I didn’t say anything at all.

Hana did.

She came across the grass. With Kwame asleep on her shoulder and Efua by the hand. And stopped in front of Luna and Sera. And looked at them for a long time.

Then she put her arms round both of them at once. Kwame and all.

And Risa came. From the other side of the lanterns. With small Sigmund on her hip and her hair on end and a very small cloud over her head that started, very gently, to rain.

”Both,” said Risa. ”At once. You couldn’t take turns?”

”We didn’t plan it,” said Sera.

”Nobody ever plans anything in this family,” said Risa. And put her arms round all three of them.

The General was standing.

He’d stood up when Luna stood up. In his greatcoat. With the frost at its edges. And he hadn’t moved.

He looked at his daughter for a long time.

Then he looked at me.

”Dask,” he said.

”Sir.”

He didn’t say anything else. He came across the grass. Very straight. The way he’d walked across the red glass the morning Trevor was born, to stand at the edge with his grandson in his arms and a frost-flake on his cheek.

He stopped in front of me.

And put his hand on my shoulder.

That was all. He didn’t say anything. He put his hand on my shoulder and left it there for a moment. And the frost from his coat went into mine, very faintly.

Then he went to his daughter.

Maura didn’t put her hand down from her mouth for a long time.

Then she did. And came round the blanket to Sera. And put both hands on her daughter’s face. Warm. The way she’d put them on Sera’s back when Sera was six and had the winter fever.

”Warm,” she said. Very quietly. ”Neve said one was warm.”

”Yes,” said Sera.

”Of course it’s warm,” said Maura. ”It’s a Calder.” She was crying. ”It’s yours.”

Rory stood behind her. With his arms folded. Not saying anything.

His forearms were very bright.

Mother hadn’t moved.

She was sitting on the grass at the edge of the lanterns. With Dory asleep in her lap. With Kwame’s spoon in her coat pocket, because Kwame had asked her to keep it for him.

She looked at me across the grass. At Luna and Sera. At Hana and Risa round them. At the General with his hand on his daughter’s shoulder and Maura with her hands on her daughter’s face.

Then she looked down at Dory.

And put her hand on Dory’s hair.

”Two more,” she said. Very quietly. To nobody. ”Trevor. Two more.”

Genny took the brood book out.

Volume eleven. She always had it. She opened it to a clean page, at the back, after the sorting queen’s chapter.

And wrote, in her small upright hand, at the top:

Avalon. Two hearts. One cold, one warm.

And under it, the way she’d written it inside the back of notebook forty-one, the night I said it out loud for the first time:

Witnessed. G. Dask.

Garnet looked over her shoulder.

”That’s ambiguous,” she said. ”We’re both G. Dask.”

”I know,” said Genny. ”I was first.”

Garnet considered this. Then she took Father’s pen out of Genny’s hand. And added, underneath, very small:

Also witnessed. The other G. Dask. Eleven minutes later.

Okafor came across the plain at midnight.

She’d been at the edge of the lanterns all evening, with Holt, not saying anything, watching. She came across now with the slate under her arm and stopped in front of Genny and Garnet and Pip.

”Eighteen,” she said.

”Yes,” said all three of them. At once. Like a chord.

Okafor looked at them for a long time.

Then she turned the slate over. To the back. To the page that said Hollow, and Not yet, and Every world that pays. First.

And wrote, under it:

Dask, Genevieve. Medics. The Harness*. Halloway.*

Dask, Garnet. Maps. In the field. Konrad’s world, first.

Calder, Pip. Task Force Nine. Bread.

She showed it to them.

”The rule’s for children,” she said. ”You’re not.” She put the slate back under her arm. ”Halloway says you’ll be insufferable, Genny. Konrad says Garnet will correct his maps. Maura says Pip can carry the bread if she carries it in that basket and nothing else.” She looked at them. ”I said yes to all three.”

Nobody said anything.

Then Pip said, ”Thank you, Marshal.”

”Don’t thank me,” said Okafor. ”Thank your mother. She asked me nine times.” She almost smiled. ”I’m told it’s a family habit.”

I said it that night.

Very late. On the plain. With the lanterns burning low and fifteen thousand children asleep on the grass and the cows standing very still among them and the Hathri singing very softly to the ground.

To everyone. In order. Which took a long time.

To the three of them. Genny and Garnet and Pip. Eighteen.

And to Luna and Sera. Last. Sitting together on one blanket at the edge of the lanterns with their hands on their middles. One cold. One warm.

I knelt down in front of them on the grass.

And said it. To both of them.

And then, because Genny had written it down and Garnet had witnessed it, I said it again. Very quietly. Lower down.

To the two hearts.

Luna put her cold hand on my face.

Sera put her warm one on the other side.

And neither of them said anything at all.

Liam and Sera walked Pip home.

After. At two in the morning. Down the long road from the plain to the Calder house, the three of them, with Pip carrying the iron basket, warm, with nothing in it.

Liam didn’t say anything for a long time. Liam never did, about things that mattered.

Then he said, ”You’ll need to learn to run.”

Pip looked at him.

”On the Mom Squad,” said Liam. ”Ingrid goes as lightning. With Mother and Maura. She’s not going to carry you too. Not every time.” He kept walking. ”When they come down somewhere, you’ll be on the Long Legs behind them. And you’ll have to run. With the bread. To wherever they are. Across whatever’s there.” He looked at her. ”I can show you. Where the air’ll be. So you don’t run into a wall of it.”

”You can see where the air goes,” said Pip. ”I can’t.”

”No,” said Liam. ”But you can learn where I’d tell you it goes. If you listen.”

Pip didn’t say anything.

Sera, on her other side, put her warm hand on Pip’s shoulder.

”I held a star,” she said. ”On a mountain. In front of every queen on Avalon. And I let it go out.” She looked at her sister. ”Do you know what I was thinking about? When it wanted to be bigger?”

”No.”

”You,” said Sera. ”On the eleventh crossing. With the bread. Coming down the ramp with your hair full of ash, saying I carried bread.” She smiled. ”I thought, if Pip can walk onto a dome on Earth with nobody letting her and carry bread to forty thousand people, I can hold a star small.”

Pip stopped walking.

”That’s not true,” she said.

”It’s true,” said Sera. ”I’d never have told you. You’d have been unbearable.” She put her arm round her. ”You’re still going to be unbearable. You’re eighteen and you’ve got an iron basket with your name on it.”

”It says carries bread,” said Pip. Very quietly.

”I know,” said Sera. ”That’s the important part.”

Dory found out the next morning.

Nobody told her. She was asleep in Mother’s lap when Luna and Sera stood up, and she slept through all of it, and in the morning she came down to the kitchen and stood in the doorway with Pebble and looked at everyone.

Luna. Sera. At the table. With their cups.

She looked at them for a long time.

Then she came across the kitchen. And put her hand flat on Luna’s middle. And shut her eyes.

Checking.

”Cold,” she said.

Then she went round the table. And put her hand on Sera’s.

”Warm,” she said.

She opened her eyes. And looked at both of them very seriously.

”I knew,” she said.

”You knew?” said Sera.

”Last week,” said Dory. ”When I was holding the door. On the long ward. I felt everyone in the house. Like I always do.” She considered. ”There were two more. Very small. I didn’t say anything because nobody had said anything and I thought maybe you hadn’t noticed.” She looked at Luna. ”Mama Luna’s is going to freeze things.”

”How do you know?”

”It’s already trying,” said Dory. ”It froze a bit of you. On the inside. Very small. It’s practising.”

Luna put her cold hand on her middle.

”And Mama Sera’s,” said Dory, ”is going to be loud.” She looked at Sera. ”Like Ash. Ash was loud inside before she was born. I remember.”

”You were a baby when Ash was born,” said Sera.

”I remember anyway,” said Dory. She took her hands away. Very carefully. ”I’ll hold them. When they come. If they need holding.” A pause. ”I’m Holding. It says so.”

Then she went to the stove. And stood on her toes. And got herself a bowl of porridge. And put too much honey on it.

Hana found me in the yard at noon.

By the woodpile. Where Rory had stood with his face in his hands the morning I opened Maura’s doors. I was splitting wood by hand, because the east block carpenters had said if I was going to build things by hand I ought to be able to split my own kindling, and Ash said it was very funny watching me try.

Hana sat down on the chopping block.

”Five,” she said.

I put the axe down.

”Dory. Ash. Trevor. Sigmund. Efua. Kwame.” She counted on her fingers. ”That’s six. And two more coming.” She looked at her hands. ”Eight. Lucas, there’ll be eight.”

”Yes.”

”When I was little,” said Hana, ”on Harbor Block Forty-four, there were five of us in two rooms. Mama and Papa and Grandmother Efua and me and Kofi and Esi. We slept on the floor. Grandmother slept on a mat in the kitchen for eleven years so we could have the bed.” She looked at the house. At the windows. At the porch, with the rota pinned up behind the kitchen window. ”I used to lie on the floor at night and count everyone breathing. To make sure.”

”I know.”

”I still do,” said Hana. ”Every night. I lie in bed and count everyone breathing in this house.” She looked at me. ”It’s going to take longer now.”

I sat down on the woodpile beside her.

”Does that frighten you?” I said.

Hana thought about it. Very carefully. The way she did everything since the cistern, a long time ago, when she couldn’t find her words and her father held her hand every day.

”No,” she said. ”It’s the opposite.” She put her hand on mine. ”On Harbor Block Forty-four I counted to five and was afraid one of them would stop. Here I count to eight and Grandma’s on the porch and Ingrid’s flying someone and Konrad’s reading and Maura’s sending bread up the hill.” She smiled. ”Here I’m not afraid anyone will stop. I’m only afraid I’ll lose count.”

Genny and Garnet sat on Father’s roof the night before the Harness left.

My roof. They climbed the ladder together, the two of them, the way they’d climbed everything together since they could walk, and sat with their backs against the chimney with their knees up. I wasn’t there. I was in the map room. They told me after. Or Garnet did. Genny wrote it in volume twelve, with Father’s pen.

”We’ve never been apart,” said Garnet. ”Not once. Not for a day.”

”We were,” said Genny. ”On the stone world. When you went to glass. You made Lucas say it at the foot of the ramp in case of weather.”

”That was three days,” said Garnet. ”This is different.”

”How?”

Garnet didn’t answer for a long time.

”I’m going to see a world,” she said. ”With Konrad. A council that’s always signed. And you’re going on the Harness with Halloway to wherever something’s coming down.” She looked at her hands. ”We won’t know where each other is. Not from the roof. Not on the sheet. I won’t be able to draw you.”

Genny thought about it. Twice.

”Then I’ll write you,” she said. ”In volume twelve. Every night. Wherever I am.” She took out Father’s pen. ”And when we’re home, you can read it. And draw where I was.”

Garnet looked at the pen. At her sister.

”Eleven minutes,” she said. ”You’ve always been eleven minutes ahead of me.”

”Yes,” said Genny.

”Then go first,” said Garnet. ”Like always. And I’ll come eleven minutes after.” She put her head on her sister’s shoulder. ”And draw where you were.”

Days 3632–3650. Eighteen.

Genny and Garnet turned eighteen eleven minutes apart; Pip nine days later; one party on the plain. Mother asked each what they wanted. Genny: the medics, on the Harness*, to ask someone who needs asking out there. Garnet: to see a world before she draws it; Konrad’s world of shallow seas, first. Pip: I’m the only one who doesn’t do anything. Mother: forty thousand; it’s all just carrying bread to someone frightened and saying here; you did it first. Everyone came: the town, the broods, the Hathri singing to the ground, our queen down off the wall, the old queen singing the young have grown. Ash lit the lanterns warm. Konrad read the wardrobe story; Rain said again. Rory gave Pip an iron basket that keeps whatever warm she puts in it. Then Luna and Sera stood up: both of them, the same week, one heart cold and one warm. The General put his hand on my shoulder. Okafor wrote all three onto the slate. I said it to the two hearts.*