Scarecrow

Andraste found out first, and she found out on the training field, and she found out by losing.

It was eleven days after Ammaru. The arches were humming again, all nineteen, and two more besides, because Doctor Bell had cut one on the rise behind the Vaeli hall for Teshka, so she could be carried through it to Ammaru every evening and sit under the rain with Maura’s hands on her legs. The grey was down to the ankles by then. Maura said the feet were being stubborn. Teshka said Maura was being slow. They argued about it every evening, through the arch, at the top of their voices, and both of them enjoyed it very much.

And Andraste trained.

Every morning. On the north field. With the Vaeli. With Saska, because Saska is the only person on Avalon who’s fast enough to make Andraste work, and Andraste is the only person on Avalon who’s ever been able to touch Saska at all.

They’d fought every morning since the wedding. Neither of them had ever won. Garnet kept a sheet. It was all draws.

On the eleventh morning, Saska won.

I wasn’t there. Brock was.

He told me at breakfast. In the long kitchen of the house on the rise, with everyone at the table and the young coming up the stairs from the hall underneath. He told it very carefully, the way Brock tells things, with his hands round his cup.

”She was slow,” he said.

”Who was?”

”Andraste.” He turned the cup. ”Not a lot. A heartbeat. Saska saw it. Before Andraste did.” He looked at the table. ”Saska put her on the grass. And then she didn’t help her up. She just stood there. Looking at her.”

”Is she hurt?” said Mother. Sharply.

”No,” said Brock. ”That’s what Saska said. Not hurt.” He frowned. ”Saska said—” He stopped. Went a bit red. ”Saska said Andraste’s heartbeat was wrong. She said she could see it. A heartbeat ahead. And there were too many.”

The whole table went quiet.

Mother put her cup down very slowly.

At the other end of the table, Hana went white. Then pink. Then put both hands over her face.

”Oh,” she said. Through her fingers. ”Oh, no.”

Everyone looked at her.

”Not oh no,” said Hana. Quickly. ”Not bad oh no. Just—” She took her hands away. ”I was going to tell you all tonight. On the porch. I had a whole—I was going to do it properly.” She looked at me. Down the length of the table. ”I’m pregnant too.”

I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t. I sat at the long table in the kitchen of the house on the rise with my bread halfway to my mouth and looked at Hana, and then at the door to the courtyard, where Andraste had just come in from the field, barefoot, with grass in her short black hair and Saska behind her.

And I felt it.

I should have felt it before. I can feel every atom of everyone I love. I can feel the moon. But I’d never once thought to look. Not inside. Not there.

I looked.

Hana. A small bright heart. Very new. Very quick. And all round it, the faint clean taste of water and air, the way Hana is.

And Andraste.

Andraste stopped in the doorway.

She looked at the table. At everyone looking at her. At Hana with pink on her face and her hands on the table. At me.

”Saska told you,” she said.

”Brock told us,” said Risa. ”Saska told Brock.”

”I told Brock,” said Saska, behind her. Not sorry at all. ”He asked why I won.”

Andraste looked at Saska over her shoulder for a long moment.

Then she laughed. Like a door falling off its hinges. And came in and sat down at the table, beside Hana, in her place, the fifth chair, and took a piece of Maura’s bread.

”Yes,” she said. Through a mouthful. ”I am carrying.”

”How long have you known?” said Luna.

From the window. With Elin on her hip, frosting the glass.

”Since the second sun,” said Andraste.

Everyone looked at her.

”Not from it,” said Andraste. ”The day after. I counted.” She looked at me. ”On Hyrran, a First Blade knows her own body the way she knows her blade. I knew on the ridge, after the wedding. I knew in the clearing on Ammaru, with my hand on his shoulder.” She drank her tea. ”I did not tell anyone because Teshka was hurt and the rain had not stopped yet and the Mom Squad were very busy.” A pause. ”And because on Hyrran you do not tell anyone until you have lost a fight because of it. That is how you know it is real.”

”You could have told us,” said Risa.

”I am telling you,” said Andraste. ”I have lost a fight. To Saska.” She looked over her shoulder again. ”Which she will never let me forget.”

”Never,” said Saska.

Then Andraste turned to Hana.

And put her scarred hand flat on the table beside Hana’s. Not touching. The way Genny teaches. Hand down near, and wait.

”And you,” she said. ”Sister.”

”Me,” said Hana. Very quietly.

”How long?”

”Six weeks. A little more.” Hana looked at the hand beside hers. ”Since the wedding.”

Andraste considered this.

”Then we are together,” she said. ”Like Luna and Sera. Like the cold and the warm.” She looked at Hana. ”On Hyrran, when two wives of one house carry at once, it is called a doubled door. It is very lucky. It means the house is strong enough to hold two at once.”

”Luna and Sera did it first,” said Hana.

”Then this house is very lucky,” said Andraste. ”Twice.”

I still hadn’t said anything.

Mother noticed. Of course she did.

”Lucas,” she said. Very gently. From Father’s chair at the end of the table. Which is at the end of the long table now, in the house on the rise, because Rory brought it up the long road himself on the day we moved in and said nobody else was carrying it.

I looked at her.

”Say something, love,” said Mother. ”They’re waiting.”

I got up.

I went down the long table. Past Luna and Sera and Risa. Past Genny and Garnet and Pip. Past the General and Rory and Maura and Ingrid and Konrad and the children, all eight of them, who’d gone very quiet, because the children always go quiet when something’s happening and they don’t know what it is yet.

To the end. Where Hana and Andraste were sitting together.

And knelt down between their chairs.

On the kitchen floor of the house on the rise. The way I’d knelt on the plain in front of Luna and Sera on the night of the twins’ birthday.

And said it.

To both of them.

And then, because Genny was already writing it down and Garnet already had her pencil out, I said it again. Lower.

To the two hearts.

That’s when I felt it.

Not Hana’s. Hana’s was one. Very clear. One small bright heart in the faint taste of water.

Andraste’s.

I’d felt it in the doorway and not understood it. Felt it at the table and thought I was wrong. But kneeling there, close, with my hands on the floor, feeling every atom of the kitchen still, I felt it properly.

I looked up at her.

She was looking down at me. Crooked. With the scar.

”You feel it,” she said.

”Yes.”

”How many?”

I didn’t answer.

Andraste waited.

”I don’t know,” I said. Which was true. ”It’s very early. They’re very small. It’s—” I stopped. ”It’s very loud in there. That’s all. Louder than one.”

Andraste smiled.

And looked round the table. At all of them. At Mother, in Father’s chair. At Genny and Garnet, side by side on the bench, eleven minutes apart. At Hana’s twins, Efua and Kwame, on the rug by the stove with Dory between them. At the empty place where Rowan and Callum Vey sit when they come up for supper, which is most nights now.

”I have been asking,” she said. ”Since the wedding. About this family.” She took another piece of bread. ”Your mother had twins. The girls. Genevieve and Garnet.” She nodded down the table at them. ”Hana had twins. Efua and Kwame. My mother had twins, once, before me; my sisters, who are First Blades of the eastern ranges now. Luna and Sera carried at once and had their daughters on one night, which on Hyrran we would also call twins, a little.” She put the bread down. ”Twins run in the Dask house. They run in mine.”

She looked at me.

”I am hoping,” she said. ”For two.”

”You can’t hope for twins,” said Risa. ”It doesn’t work like that.”

”On Hyrran it does,” said Andraste.

”It doesn’t.”

”On Hyrran,” said Andraste, very seriously, ”a First Blade who carries goes up the highest ridge and stands in the wind and tells the sky what she wants. And the sky listens.” She considered. ”Mostly.”

”Mostly?”

”My mother asked for a daughter who would never lose a fight,” said Andraste. ”She got me.” A pause. ”I lost a fight this morning.”

”Because you’re carrying twins,” said Kyria.

From the courtyard door. In the old iron of the First Blade. She’d come through the arch from the ridge on Hyrran, because Andraste’s mother comes through the arch for breakfast most mornings now, and she’d been standing in the doorway for a while.

Everyone turned.

”You don’t know that,” said Andraste.

”I know you,” said Kyria. In our language, which she’s very nearly fluent in now; she practises on the General every morning over the eggs. ”You’ve never been slow in your life. Not once. Not when you were six with a stick. Not when you took the blade from me at seventeen.” She came in. ”You were slow this morning by one heartbeat. One heart is not enough to make a First Blade slow.” She sat down across from her daughter. ”Two might be.”

Then Kyria looked at Hana.

”And you,” she said.

”One,” said Hana. Before anyone could ask. ”Ruth’s checked. Halloway’s checked. Doctor Bell’s measured.” She smiled. A little helplessly. ”One. I’ve already had my twins. I’m very happy with one.”

”One is good,” said Kyria. ”One is a whole house.” She looked at Mother. ”Dot. You’ll need more rooms.”

”There are more rooms,” said Mother. ”Andraste built more rooms.”

”You’ll need more rooms,” said Kyria.

Genny wrote it down that night.

In volume fourteen. In the section headed Brood: Dask. Under Elin and Goldie, on a new line, with Father’s pen.

Hana: one. Six weeks. Water and air.

Andraste: Saska says too many heartbeats. Lucas says louder than one. Andraste says two. Kyria says two. Mother says wait and see.

And under that, smaller:

Twins run. Garnet and me. Efua and Kwame. Rowan and Callum (not ours, but on the porch every night, so). Andraste’s sisters. And now maybe.

And under that, smaller still:

I’ve started a list of every pair of twins on Avalon. It’s longer than I thought.

The grandparents took it very well.

Which is to say: they took over.

Kyria moved in.

Not officially. She didn’t ask anyone. She came through the courtyard arch for breakfast on the twelfth day and didn’t go back. She took the room at the end of the grandparents’ wing, the one nobody had claimed because it was furthest from the kitchen, and put her old iron in the corner and her long blade on the wall, and said she’d go back to Hyrran when her daughter had delivered and not before.

”What about your husbands?” said Mother.

”They can come through the arch,” said Kyria. ”They know the way.” She considered. ”Not the one who’s good at nothing. He’ll get lost.”

He came through the arch on the fourteenth day, by himself, and got lost in the courtyard, and Pip found him in the bakery an hour later eating Rory’s bread with an expression of enormous contentment.

His name is Taveth. He’s very good at nothing. He’s been in the bakery every morning since. Rory says he’s never had a better taster.

Maura took over Hana.

She does that. She did it for Sera with Goldie and for Luna with Elin and she’d have done it for Andraste too if Kyria hadn’t got there first. She moved Hana’s chair at the long table so it was nearest the oven, and cooked whatever Hana wanted at any hour of the night, and when Hana said she was perfectly well and didn’t need looking after, Maura said nobody needs looking after, that’s why you do it.

Efua and Kwame thought this was the best thing that had ever happened to them. Because wherever Maura was, there was bread.

And Mother.

Mother sat with both of them.

In the evenings. On the long porch on the west side, where the sun goes down over the seventh lake. Hana on one side, with her feet up on a stool the General made. Andraste on the other, sitting on the rail with her bare feet hanging over the edge, because she won’t sit in a chair if she can help it. And Mother in the middle, in Father’s chair, which somebody always carries out to the porch for her.

I don’t know what they talked about. Not most of it.

But I came out onto the porch on the fifteenth evening with the tea, and they stopped talking, and Mother looked up at me.

”Andraste wants to know,” she said, ”what you were like as a baby.”

”I don’t think—”

”I told her you were very quiet,” said Mother. ”And that you looked at everything. Not like other babies look at things. Like you were working out how it was made.” She took a cup. ”And that the first word you ever said was door.”

”It wasn’t.”

”It was,” said Mother. ”You were eleven months old. Your father was carrying you through the kitchen. You pointed at the back door and said door. And then you said it again. Louder. And then the door opened.” She drank her tea. ”By itself. Your father nearly dropped you.”

Andraste, on the rail, laughed so hard she nearly fell off.

”That’s not true,” I said.

”It’s completely true,” said Mother. ”Your father wrote it down. On the back of a paper researching something or other. I kept it for years.” She looked out over the seventh lake. ”I lost it in one of the moves. I never found it again.” She was quiet for a moment. ”But I remember what it said. Day one of the door. In his handwriting. Then, he put water on the moon because it looked lonely, at four years old.”

Andraste stopped laughing.

“You put water on the moon at four years old?”

She looked at Mother for a long time. Then at me.

”I believe it,” she said.

”You’d believe anything that makes me look ridiculous,” I said.

”Yes,” said Andraste. ”But I also believe it.”

Hana told me about the other conversation later. The one on the roof.

Andraste goes up onto the flat roof of the house on the rise most nights, after the porch, to sit in the dark and look at the stars over the seventh lake. On Hyrran, she says, a First Blade sleeps on the wall of her city with her blade beside her, and she can’t get used to a roof over her head; she says she can feel it there, like a hand on her face. So she goes up and sits on it instead.

On the sixteenth night, Hana went up too.

”I’d never been up there,” Hana said. ”I didn’t know you could.”

”You can go anywhere in this house,” I said. ”Andraste built it that way.”

”I know,” said Hana. ”That’s what she said.”

They sat on the roof together for a long time without saying anything. Then Andraste asked her what it had been like. With the twins. The first time.

And Hana told her.

All of it. The room held still and warm with water. Ruth at the foot of the bed. Sera’s hot hands on her shoulders. The three of them and me. Efua first, then Kwame, eleven minutes apart. The way the air in the room had gone sweet when Kwame came out, because Hana had been holding it for everyone without knowing, and let go.

”She listened,” Hana said. ”The whole time. She didn’t say anything. And then at the end she said—” Hana stopped. Smiled. ”She said on Hyrran a First Blade gives birth standing up. On the ridge. In the wind. With a blade in her hand. And that she’d been looking forward to it her whole life.” Hana looked at her own hands. ”And then she said she’d like me to be there. To hold the air. In case the wind dropped.”

”What did you say?”

”I said yes,” said Hana. ”And then I said I’d like her to be there for mine. To guard the door.” She was quiet for a moment. ”She said she’d be honoured. And then she said nobody on Hyrran had ever asked her to guard a door for a birth before. Only for a battle.” Hana looked up at me. ”She said she thought this would be harder.”

The Marian flew on the twentieth day.

I should write about her. Because she belongs here too.

Dennis Haddon spent three weeks inside the Hand that came down in the clearing on Ammaru.

The empty one. That had stopped singing when I asked it. Grey. Very big. Very quiet. With nobody in it, because the correctors who’d been in it had gone out and fallen when it stopped.

He said she needed moving.

So he moved her.

Not on his own. With Keir and Aster, who came through the arch from the shipyard on the second day. With Ruan, who came down off the Meridian to listen to her and said she was very confused and very frightened and had never once in her whole existence been asked anything. And with me, once, on the tenth day, because Dennis asked me to come and see if she’d let me in.

She did.

I walked up her ramp into the dark and put my hand flat on the wall and felt every atom of her, and she felt me back. And she was afraid. Not of me. Of not singing. She didn’t know what she was if she wasn’t singing the song the houses taught her.

So I asked her what she’d like to sing instead.

She didn’t know.

”That’s all right,” I said. ”Neither did the Steady. At first.”

Dennis sang her the freight song.

That’s what Brock calls it. It isn’t a song. It’s the thing Dennis says under his breath when he’s loading something. Thirty-one years of it, on the Ministry docks on Earth. Weight on the left. Weight on the right. Doors shut. Going up. Over and over. Very quietly. While he walked through her holds with his hands in his pockets, checking everything twice.

On the eighteenth day, she started saying it back.

Ruan heard it. On the thread. Very faint.

Weight on the left. Weight on the right. Doors shut. Going up.

On the twentieth day she lifted off the forest floor of Ammaru, very slowly, with Dennis at her heart and Brock at the door and the rain falling on her, and went up. Not fast. Not running. Just up. Into the sky over the clearing. Where the other one was still hanging grey and still and waiting.

And stopped beside it.

And said, Ruan told me, very quietly, on the thread, to the other one:

Weight on the left.

Dennis named her for his wife.

He asked Marian first. On the porch of the third-wave house, with the beans growing up the rail.

Marian said it was the silliest thing she’d ever heard. A great grey warship named after a woman who grew beans.

Then she said yes.

Then she cried.

Then she went through the arch from the long ward to Ammaru, for the first time, and stood in the clearing in the rain and looked up at the Marian hanging over the forest, very big and very grey and very quiet, saying weight on the left to her sister.

And Marian Haddon took a packet of seeds out of her pocket.

And walked up the ramp.

There are beans growing in the Marian’s forward hold now. In a crack in the deck where the Sorn metal met the Hyrrani iron Keir patched her with.

Brock found them on the twenty-second day.

He didn’t say anything. He just went and found Saska and brought her up the ramp and showed her.

Saska stood looking at them for an hour.

The other Hand hasn’t come down yet.

It’s still there. Over Ammaru. Grey and still. Listening to the Marian say weight on the left.

Dennis goes up to it every day. In the Marian. And sits beside it. And says the freight song.

He says it’ll come down when it’s ready. He says you can’t rush freight.

She went up the ridge on the twenty-fifth day.

On Hyrran. The highest one. Where we were married, over the hall where the Hyrrani queen lives, with the wrecks of a thousand years on the mountains all around and the iron sea below.

Not alone. Nobody on Avalon does anything alone any more. She said on Hyrran a First Blade goes up the ridge alone to tell the sky what she wants, and Mother said that was a lovely tradition and she’d be coming anyway, and Kyria said she’d be coming too, and then it was everyone.

Through the courtyard arch. Onto the snow. All of us. The five of us and the children and the grandparents and Genny and Garnet and Pip and Rowan and Callum, who’d never seen Hyrran and stood on the ridge in their flight jackets with their mouths open. And Teshka, carried on her litter by Saska and Brock, with Maura walking beside it with a basket.

Andraste went to the top.

Barefoot. In the snow. In plain dark cloth. With her arms bare.

We stood a little way down and watched.

She stood at the very edge of the ridge with the wind coming up off the iron sea into her face. And put both hands flat on her middle. And looked up at the sky over Hyrran, very grey and very high, with the snow coming out of it.

And said something.

Not in our language. Not loud. Dot didn’t translate it, and Kyria, beside me, didn’t either. She just watched her daughter with her arms folded and her face very still.

The wind dropped.

All at once. The whole ridge. Not a breath. The snow stopped coming down sideways and came down straight, very slowly, in big soft flakes, the way it does on Avalon in the first week of winter when the children run out to catch it.

And Andraste stood in it with her face turned up.

”What did she say?” I asked Kyria. Very quietly.

Kyria didn’t look at me.

”The same thing I said,” she said. ”Thirty-nine years ago. On this ridge.” A pause. ”And the sky did that for me too.”

”What did you ask for?”

Kyria looked at me then. Crooked. Like her daughter.

”A daughter who’d never lose a fight,” she said. ”And somebody to make her laugh when she did.” She looked back up the ridge. ”I only got the first one. Until now.”

Efua and Kwame ran up the ridge before anyone could stop them.

To Andraste. Through the snow. Holding hands, the way they always do. And stopped in front of her and looked up at her, both of them, with Hana’s eyes and the silver rings round them very bright.

And Kwame pointed at her middle.

And said his word.

”There,” said Kwame.

And then Efua, who almost never says anything, who fills cups in her sleep and only shouts at birds, pointed too.

And said: ”There.”

Twice.

Andraste looked down at them for a long time.

Then she knelt down in the snow and put her arms round both of them. And laughed. Like a door falling off its hinges. So loud the twelve Hyrrani standing guard on the next ridge turned round to look.

”Twins,” she said. Over their heads. To all of us. ”Twins say so.”

”That’s not evidence,” said Risa.

”On Hyrran,” said Andraste, ”it is.”

Genny’s list got longer that week.

She showed it to me on the porch. Volume fourteen, the back pages, where she keeps the things that aren’t brood but that she can’t bear not to write down. A page headed Twins on Avalon, in her small neat hand.

It was three pages long.

”Look,” she said. And pointed. ”The Hathri have them all the time. Every third birth. Sigmund says it’s the silver in the ground. The Lir hardly ever. The Vaeli—” She looked down the page. ”Saska says there were never twins in the Cradle. Not once. In eleven generations.” She was quiet for a moment. ”Halloway thinks the houses did it. On purpose. So nobody on the Barrow would ever have someone who was exactly theirs.”

”And on Avalon?”

”Since the Vaeli came,” said Genny, ”four pairs. In two months.” She closed the book. ”Halloway says it’s the queens. Singing. She says silver listens to singing, and what the queens sing most is together.” She looked at me. ”So maybe Andraste’s right. Maybe you can ask for it.”

Callum, on the rail beside her, said, ”We didn’t ask for it.”

”No,” said Genny. ”Your mother did.” She looked at him. ”Nan Vey told me. She said your mother wanted two so neither of you would ever be alone on Thirty-three.”

Callum didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then he put his left hand, which closes now, every finger, over Genny’s on the cover of the book.

”It worked,” he said.

Genny didn’t move her hand.

Garnet, at the other end of the rail, with Rowan’s head on her shoulder and her drawing board on her knees, drew it.

Teshka walked on the twenty-sixth day.

Not far. From her litter to the edge of the rain in the clearing on Ammaru, four steps, with Maura on one side and Kyria on the other and Saska in front of her walking backwards with both hands out.

The grey is gone from her feet. Maura says the toes were the last to listen and the most stubborn, which Teshka says is a family trait.

She stood at the edge of the rain on her own two feet and looked up at the Marian hanging over the forest.

”Next week,” she said, ”I fight.”

”Next month,” said Maura.

”Next week,” said Teshka. ”Ask Kyria. Mom Squad doesn’t wait.”

Kyria, beside her, said nothing at all. But she didn’t disagree.

And Okafor.

She came through the courtyard arch on the twenty-eighth morning. At breakfast. With the slate.

She didn’t sit down.

She stood at the end of the long table and looked at all of us. At Hana with her feet up by the oven. At Andraste on the bench beside her with her bare feet on the rail of Kyria’s chair. At Mother. At the children. At the young coming up the stairs.

”Congratulations,” she said. To Hana and Andraste. ”Both of you.” She put the slate down. ”I’m sorry to do this at breakfast.”

”Do what?” said Mother.

Okafor looked at me.

”The three Hands that got away from Ammaru,” she said. ”Ilka’s been following them. On the relay.” She put her hand flat on the slate. ”They went home. All the way up the thread. To a place Garnet hasn’t drawn. Further than the Barrow. Further than seven-three-K.”

”Where?” I said.

”Ilka thinks it’s where the houses live,” said Okafor. ”Not their worlds. Them. The houses themselves.” She took her hand off the slate. ”And she says that since the three Hands got there, something’s been going out from it. Down every thread. To every world the houses hold.”

”What?”

Okafor didn’t answer for a long time.

”A name,” she said. ”Ilka says it’s a name. The houses are saying it. Over and over. To every Hand and every corrector and every counting tower in the whole of the empire.”

She looked at Andraste.

”It’s the word the Hyrrani taught them,” she said. ”A thousand years ago. On the mountains. The word for what the houses call you.” She looked at me. ”World-breaker.”

Nobody at the table said anything.

Andraste put her hand flat on her own middle. Very slightly. Without looking down.

”Then they know,” she said.

”They know,” said Okafor. ”They know he’s real. They know what he did on Caddoc. They know he could have done it over Ammaru and didn’t.” She looked at me. ”Ilka says they’re not angry any more.”

”What are they?”

Okafor picked up the slate.

”Frightened,” she said. ”Ilka says the houses have never been frightened before. Not in all the time anyone’s been listening. Not even of the Hyrrani.” She put the slate under her arm. ”She says she doesn’t know what frightened houses do. Nobody does.”

”We’ll find out,” said Andraste.

”Yes,” said Okafor. ”We will.” She looked at Hana. At Andraste. At the long table and everyone at it. ”Eat your breakfast. All of you. I want everyone in this house strong.”

She went back through the arch.

I sat at the table for a long time after.

Andraste put her hand on my knee. Under the table. Flat.

”You are going small,” she said. Quietly. ”In your head. Thinking about it.”

”A bit.”

”Don’t,” she said. ”Not at breakfast.” She moved her hand. ”Feel this instead.”

She took my hand. And put it flat on her middle. Under the table. Where nobody could see.

And I felt it again.

Very loud. Louder than one.

”Two,” she said. ”I asked the sky.”

”You haven’t been up the ridge yet.”

”I asked it from here,” said Andraste. ”The sky is the same sky.” She took her hand away and left mine. ”Two.”

Dory knows.

I’m nearly sure of it. She came and sat on my lap on the porch that night, which she’s too big for and does anyway, and put her hand flat on the rail. Holding. The way she does every night.

And she looked down the porch at Andraste, sitting on the rail at the far end with her bare feet over the edge, beside Hana.

And smiled.

”Do you know?” I said.

”Yes,” said Dory.

”Are you going to tell me?”

”No,” said Dory. ”It’s a surprise.” She leaned against me. ”You’d want it to be a surprise. Grandma says. She says you always liked doors that opened by themselves.”

I said it that night.

On the long porch. In order. Down the rail and off the steps and onto the grass, where Kyria and Taveth and Teshka sit now, with Ingrid and Konrad, because there still aren’t enough chairs.

When I got to the end, I knelt down. Between Hana and Andraste. On the boards.

And said it to both of them.

And then to the hearts.

One.

And then, quietly, to the other. To however many were there. Louder than one.

Andraste put her scarred hand on the back of my head.

”Twice,” she said. ”I asked.”

So I said it twice.

Days 3941–3980. Twins Run.

Saska beat Andraste on the north field by one heartbeat and said there were too many heartbeats. At breakfast Hana said she was pregnant too: one, six weeks, water and air. Andraste: carrying since the day after the second sun; on Hyrran you don’t tell until you’ve lost a fight because of it. A doubled door. I knelt between them and felt Andraste’s: louder than one. She says twins run in the Dask house and in hers, and she’s asked the sky for two. Kyria moved in; Taveth lives in the bakery. Mother says my first word was door. On the ridge the wind dropped for her, and Efua and Kwame pointed and said there, twice. Teshka walked. Dennis sang an empty Hand the freight song until she sang it back; she’s the Marian, with beans in her hold. The houses are saying world-breaker down every thread. Okafor: they’re frightened. Dory knows. It’s a surprise.