Scarecrow

Elin and Goldie had their own language by then.

I want to write about that first. Because it was the week before, and because it’s how I knew what was coming. And because Mother said, the night Hana’s twins were born, years ago now it feels like, that twins talk to each other in the dark and never tell you what they’re saying.

Elin and Goldie aren’t twins.

Everyone says so. Ruth says so. Halloway says so. They have different mothers. They were born an hour and a half apart, on one night, in one kitchen. Luna’s daughter and Sera’s daughter. Sisters. Not twins.

Nobody’s told Elin and Goldie.

They were seven months old that week. Which for mine means they looked about a year and a half, and walked, badly, holding on to things, and had opinions about everything.

They slept together. Always. In the iron basket by the oven until they got too big for it, and then in one cot in the children’s room in the house on the rise, which Rory built, very wide, because he said he could see which way things were going. If you put them in separate cots they cried. Both of them. At once. Until somebody put them back together. And the room went from winter, or summer, back to April.

They ate together. One spoon. Elin took a mouthful and then held the spoon out to Goldie, and Goldie took a mouthful and held it back. Maura tried giving them a spoon each. They put one of them down and went on sharing the other.

And they talked.

Not words. Not our words. Not Hyrrani or Lir or Vaeli or anything Dot had ever heard. Sounds. Small ones. Back and forth. In the cot at night. In the courtyard in the morning, sitting on the warm stone by the arch in the sun. Elin would say something very quiet and cool, and Goldie would answer it warm, and Elin would laugh, and Goldie would laugh, and nobody else in the house had any idea what was funny.

”They’re talking about us,” said Risa.

”They’re babies,” said Luna.

”They’re talking about us,” said Risa. ”Look at them. Elin just looked at me and said something and Goldie laughed.”

Elin looked at Risa.

Said something. Very quiet. Very cool.

Goldie laughed.

”See,” said Risa.

And the weather.

That was the thing that made Doctor Bell take both pairs of spectacles off. Elin makes cold; she’s Luna’s. Goldie makes warm; she’s Sera’s. Separately, they were winter and summer. Together, from the first night on the towel, they’d made April.

But by seven months, it wasn’t just April any more.

They’d learned to change it.

On purpose. Together. Elin a little cooler, Goldie a little warmer, and the courtyard would go from April to a morning in late May, with the smell of cut grass. Or Goldie would hold back and Elin would lean in and it would be October, crisp, with the smell of apples. Doctor Bell sat in the courtyard for three mornings with her instrument and wrote down every change and said she’d never seen anything like it.

”They’re seasons,” she said. ”The two of them. Together. They’ve worked out how to make seasons.”

”Can either of them do it alone?” I asked.

Doctor Bell watched them on the warm stone. Elin with her cool hand flat on the ground. Goldie with her warm hand flat on Elin’s.

”No,” she said. ”Only together. That’s the point. Elin makes cold, Goldie makes warm. But a season isn’t cold or warm. It’s the two of them. Agreeing.” She put her spectacles back on. ”Twins do that. I’ve read the old Earth papers. Twins who make up languages. Twins who finish each other’s sentences.” She looked at them. ”These two finish each other’s weather.”

”They’re not twins,” I said. To Mother. On the porch. That evening.

”No,” said Mother. In Father’s chair. Watching them in the courtyard below, sitting together on the stone with their hands flat, making the evening smell of rain. ”They’re sisters. Born on one night to two mothers who love each other.” She drank her tea. ”That’s close enough.”

”Halloway says it’s because they were born on the same night. In the same kitchen. One after the other.”

”Halloway’s right,” said Mother. ”And she’s wrong.” She put her cup down. ”Genny and Garnet weren’t twins because of when they were born. They’re twins because they decided to be. Every day. From the first day.” She looked at them in the courtyard. ”Those two decided on the towel. On the kitchen table. When they looked at each other and the kitchen went to April.” She smiled. ”Twins aren’t how you’re born, love. They’re who you won’t be without.”

So that’s how I knew.

When the other twins were coming. When they were nearly here.

Because on the tenth week, at dawn, Elin and Goldie woke up in their cot in the children’s room at the same moment, and sat up, and looked at the door.

And said something.

Both of them. At once. The same sound.

And the whole house on the rise, every room, every porch, every courtyard, went still. Not cold. Not warm. Still. The way the air goes on Hyrran before the wind drops.

Andraste was on the roof.

She’d been on the roof all night. She couldn’t sleep, she’d said, at midnight, when she went up; she was too big to lie down, and the twins were too loud, and the roof was the only place she could breathe. I’d gone up at two and found her sitting with her back to the chimney and her knees as far apart as they’d go and her hands flat on her middle, which was enormous now, at ten weeks, enormous in a way that made Maura shake her head every time she saw it.

She’d been very quiet.

”They are not talking,” she said. ”Since midnight. They have stopped.”

”Is that bad?”

”No,” said Andraste. ”I do not think so.” She looked out at the seventh lake. ”I think they are listening. For something.”

At dawn the house went still.

And Andraste stood up.

”Now,” she said.

I’m going to try to write it properly. All of it. Because Andraste asked me to. Because she said that on Hyrran the First Blade’s husbands write it down, every one, and read it to the children on their first fight, so the children know what it took.

So this is for them.

She wouldn’t have them in the house.

”On the ridge,” she said. On the roof. With both hands on her middle and her face very white and very calm. ”The highest one. On Hyrran. In the wind.”

”Andraste—”

”Every First Blade,” said Andraste. ”For a thousand years. Standing. On the ridge. In the wind.” She looked at me. ”I told you on the roof. I have been looking forward to it my whole life.”

”It’s ten weeks. Halloway says—”

”Halloway is not First Blade,” said Andraste. And then her face changed, all at once, and she put one hand flat on the chimney and held on to it very hard and didn’t say anything for a long time.

When it passed she said, very quietly: ”The ridge. Please.”

So we went to the ridge.

Through the courtyard arch. All of us. Because in the house on the rise nothing happens to one of us without the rest. Nobody organised it. Elin and Goldie had already woken everybody.

Mother first. Of course. In her coat, with Maura beside her carrying a basket that Maura had packed weeks ago and kept by the courtyard door. Ingrid and Konrad. Rory, with the General. Kyria, who’d come running down the grandparents’ wing in her old iron with her long blade in her hand, which she said she’d carried to every birth in her family for forty years and wasn’t stopping now. Teshka beside her.

Luna and Sera and Risa. With the children. All of them. Dory in front, holding Elin’s hand on one side and Goldie’s on the other, because the two of them had refused to be carried and refused to be parted and Dory said she’d take them.

Genny with volume fifteen. Garnet with her drawing board.

Halloway, furious. Ruth. Doctor Bell.

And Hana.

Hana, with her own middle round and her own baby taking its time inside her, walking beside Andraste through the arch, with one hand on Andraste’s back.

”I said I’d hold the air,” she said. ”In case the wind dropped.”

It was snowing on Hyrran.

Not hard. Big soft flakes, the way it had snowed on the day Andraste asked the sky. Coming down slowly through still air.

And the ridge was full.

Forty thousand Hyrrani. On every ridge and every pass and every mountain round the highest one. In iron. Silent. Standing in the snow.

They’d known.

I don’t know how. Kyria says the Hyrrani always know when a First Blade’s time comes; she says the queen under the mountain sings it, and every Hyrrani hears it in the silver, the way every Vaeli felt the Cradle go quiet. I don’t know if that’s true. But they were there. All of them. Forty thousand. With the wrecks of a thousand years of houses’ ships lying on the mountains between them, grown over with snow.

Silent.

Waiting.

The Hyrrani queen came up out of her hall.

Very old. Very strong. With silver like snow. She came up out of the mountain onto the ridge and lay down at the very top, where Andraste had stood to ask the sky. Where we were married.

And our queens came through the arch behind us. The Scarecrow queen. The old queen. The heavy queen. The ash queen. And lay down beside her. In the snow.

Andraste walked to the top of the ridge.

Barefoot. In plain dark cloth. With her long blade in her hand. Kyria gave it to her at the top of the arch; she said every First Blade has her own blade in her hand when her children come, so the children’s first sight is of the thing they’ll inherit.

She stood between the queens. At the very edge. With the snow coming down on her and the iron sea far below and forty thousand Hyrrani silent on the mountains.

And put the point of her blade in the snow.

And leaned on it.

I knelt in front of her.

In the snow. With my hands flat on the ridge. Holding. Every atom of it. The stone. The snow. The air. The way I hold a kitchen when a baby’s being born. So nothing would break.

Hana knelt beside me. With her hand on Andraste’s leg. Holding the air.

Kyria stood behind her daughter. With her own blade out. Facing the sky. The way she stood over Teshka on Ammaru.

And behind all of us, the Mom Squad. Mother, Ingrid, Maura, Teshka, Kyria’s empty place. And behind them, my family.

It was very fast.

Halloway said afterward it was the fastest she’d ever seen. Faster than Dory. Faster than small Sigmund. Andraste stood on the ridge with her blade in the snow and her face very white and didn’t make a sound, not one, for a long time, because she said a First Blade doesn’t; and then, near the end, she made one.

Not a scream.

A laugh.

Like a door falling off its hinges. So loud it went off the ridge and down the mountain and across the iron sea, and forty thousand Hyrrani on the mountains heard it, and still didn’t move.

And her son came.

Roaring.

That’s the first thing about him. For about four breaths. Not crying. Roaring. With his fists closed and his eyes screwed shut and his whole small body furious at the cold and the snow and the size of the world.

It’s the only time he’s ever roared. Everyone who knows him now says so. Corin doesn’t roar. Corin watches.

I caught him.

I didn’t mean to. Maura was supposed to. But he came very fast and I was right there with my hands in the snow and I felt every atom of him coming and I put my hands out without deciding to.

And he stopped roaring.

The moment my hands were on him. He stopped. Opened his eyes.

And I knew them.

Not Andraste’s. Not the iron sea. Mine. Which Mother says are Father’s. The same colour, the same shape, with the silver ring round them very bright, brighter than any of my children’s had been. And his face, very small and creased and new, was a face I’d seen every morning of my life in the window over the kitchen sink.

He looked like me.

Not a little. Not the way Trevor has my chin or Dory has my way of standing. All of him. Everyone saw it. Maura, beside me, made a small sound and put her hand over her mouth.

And he didn’t look at me the way babies look at things.

He looked at me the way Mother says I looked at everything. Very quietly. Very carefully. As if he was working out how I was made.

And asked me something.

I felt it. Not a sound. Not a word. The way his sister felt it, all those weeks, inside. He reached out with what he is, every atom of him, very small, very new, and he asked me for something.

I don’t know what.

I’ll never know what. I’ve thought about it every day since. He asked me for something on the ridge in the snow when he was three breaths old, and I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t know how to give it to him.

But something in me did.

I felt it go. From me. To him. Very small. Very quiet. The way his sister gave him things, inside, that he didn’t notice he was being given.

And he closed his eyes.

And went to sleep.

In my hands.

On the ridge.

Andraste looked down at us.

Still standing. Still leaning on her blade. With her face very white and the snow on her shoulders and her short black hair.

”He asked you,” she said.

”Yes.”

”What did he ask?”

”I don’t know.”

”Did you give it to him?”

”I think so.”

Andraste looked at her son, asleep in my hands. For a long time.

”Good,” she said. ”That is what fathers are for.”

And then her face changed again.

”His sister,” she said. ”Is coming.”

I gave him to Maura. She had a Hyrrani blanket ready, the thick grey wool of the mountains, and she wrapped him in it and held him against her and he didn’t wake up.

And I put my hands back in the snow.

And waited.

Eleven minutes.

I didn’t know it was going to be eleven minutes. Nobody did. Halloway was counting, because Halloway always counts, and Genny was writing, and nobody else was thinking about anything but Andraste standing on the ridge leaning on her blade.

But Garnet knew.

She told me afterward. She was standing beside Genny with her drawing board, at the back, with Rowan beside her holding her pencils. And at the first minute after the boy, she put her pencil down. And took Genny’s hand. And held it.

”What are you doing?” said Genny.

”Counting,” said Garnet.

”I’m counting.”

”I know,” said Garnet. ”So am I. In my head.” She held Genny’s hand very tight. ”I think it’s going to be eleven.”

Genny looked at her.

And didn’t say anything.

And held her hand back.

Elin and Goldie knew too.

Dory told me. She was holding them. One hand each. At the front, with the other children, in the snow. And at the first minute after the boy, both of them let go of her hands at once. And sat down in the snow. Together. Side by side.

And put their hands flat on the ridge.

Elin’s cold one. Goldie’s warm one.

And the snow on the ridge round Andraste stopped falling.

Not stopped. Changed. It went from snow to something softer. Slower. Warmer. Not rain. Not snow. Something in between, the way the first week of spring is in between. Very fine. Falling on everything at once.

The air went still.

Not cold. Not warm.

April.

”They’re helping,” said Dory. Very quietly. To me. Across the snow.

”I know.”

”They’re making it easier,” said Dory. ”For the girl. They said.”

”They don’t talk, Dory.”

”They talk to each other,” said Dory. ”I listen.” She looked at the two of them, sitting together in the snow, with their hands flat. ”They said the girl’s quieter. She needs it quiet to come out. So they’re making it quiet.”

At the tenth minute, Andraste stopped laughing.

She’d been laughing, on and off, all through. Like a door falling off its hinges. Every time it came. Forty thousand Hyrrani listening.

At the tenth minute she stopped.

And went very still.

And very quiet.

The way her daughter is.

At the eleventh minute, her daughter came.

Quiet.

That’s the first thing about her. Not roaring. Not crying. She came into the April air on the ridge very quietly, very fast, all at once, and opened her eyes before anyone could catch her.

Grey. Like the iron sea. Like her mother’s. With the silver ring round them.

And Hana caught her.

Not me. Not Maura. Hana. Kneeling beside me in the snow with her hand on Andraste’s leg, holding the air. She put out both hands without deciding to, the way I had, and the girl came into them.

And looked at Hana.

And breathed.

The first breath. Very deep. Very full. The way the Sheln breathed in the clearing on Ammaru when Hana knelt and gave them air.

Hana started to cry.

The girl didn’t ask Hana for anything.

She didn’t need to. She’d been asking her brother for things for ten weeks and getting them. She didn’t need to ask anyone else.

She turned her head.

In Hana’s hands. Very small. Very new. Three breaths old.

And looked across the ridge. Through the April air. To where Maura was standing with her brother asleep in the grey Hyrrani wool.

And her brother woke up.

They looked at each other.

Across the ridge. Through the snow that wasn’t snow. Eleven minutes apart.

And didn’t make a sound.

And then the stone of the ridge, under all of us, where Andraste stood with her blade, where we were married, where every First Blade of Hyrran had stood for a thousand years, moved.

I felt it. Every atom. I was holding the ridge. I felt it move under my hands and I didn’t do it.

They did.

Both of them. At once. The boy in Maura’s arms and the girl in Hana’s. Eleven minutes old and twenty-two minutes old. They reached out with what they are, every atom, very small, very new, and they found the stone of the ridge, and they asked it.

The way they’d asked each other for bone and a heart.

The way I ask doors.

And the stone listened.

It came up out of the ridge.

Between Andraste’s feet. Where the point of her blade was in the snow. Very small. No higher than my knee. Red-grey, the stone of Hyrran’s highest mountain, worked very fine, with a pattern in it like water running.

An arch.

A small one. Perfect. Exactly like the great arches the Hyrrani cut on every mountain, the ones that open when a queen sings and a First Blade puts her hand on them. Exactly like the one in the courtyard of the house on the rise. Exactly like the one on the red glass.

But nobody cut it.

It grew. Out of the ridge. Because two babies asked it to.

Nobody on the ridge said anything.

Not Andraste. Not Kyria. Not the queens. Not forty thousand Hyrrani in the snow on the mountains.

Then the Hyrrani queen, lying at the very top of the ridge beside our queens, lifted her great white head. And looked at the small arch between Andraste’s feet for a long time.

And sang.

It opened.

The small arch. Between Andraste’s feet. The space inside it, no bigger than a window, went from snow to—

Somewhere else.

I looked through it. On my knees in the snow. And saw, very small, very far, through a window of red-grey stone no higher than my knee:

The cot in the children’s room in the house on the rise. Rory’s cot. The very wide one. With the blankets thrown back where Elin and Goldie had climbed out at dawn.

”Home,” said Andraste.

Very quietly. Looking down through the arch at her feet.

”They made a door,” she said. ”Home.” She looked at me. Then at her son in Maura’s arms. Then at her daughter in Hana’s. ”Before they had names. Before anything. The first thing they did with their father’s gift, together, was make a door home.”

She let go of her blade.

It stayed standing in the snow, point down, beside the little arch.

And Andraste sat down. Very suddenly. On the ridge. In the April air.

And held out her arms.

Maura gave her the boy. Hana gave her the girl.

She held them both. One in each arm. Sitting in the snow on the highest ridge of Hyrran, between the queens, with the little arch between her knees, open, showing the cot in the children’s room.

And she didn’t say anything at all.

Kyria put her blade down.

In the snow. Beside her daughter’s.

And knelt. Behind Andraste. With her arms round all three of them.

And then forty thousand Hyrrani on the mountains of Hyrran struck their blades on their shields.

Once.

All together.

A sound like the mountains falling.

And then again.

Twice.

Elin and Goldie got up out of the snow.

Together. Holding hands. Walking, badly, the way they walk, across the ridge, through the April air they’d made, to where Andraste was sitting with her twins.

And stopped in front of them.

And looked at them.

The boy, awake, in the crook of his mother’s left arm. The girl, awake, in the crook of her right.

Elin said something. Very quiet. Very cool.

Goldie said something back. Warm.

And then the boy, eleven minutes older than his sister, made a sound. The first sound since he stopped roaring in my hands.

And his sister, eleven minutes younger, made the same sound back.

And Elin and Goldie laughed.

Both of them. At once.

”They’re talking,” said Risa. Very quietly. At the back. ”All four of them.”

”They’re babies,” said Luna.

”They’re talking,” said Risa. ”Look at them.”

Luna looked.

And didn’t say anything.

And then took Risa’s hand.

The grandparents came up the ridge one at a time.

Kyria first, because she was already there, kneeling behind her daughter with her arms round all three of them, and she didn’t let go for a long time.

Then the General. In his old uniform, which he’d put on at dawn without being asked, because he said a man ought to be dressed properly for this. He knelt down in the snow beside Andraste in his good trousers, the way he’d knelt on the kitchen floor for Elin, and held out his hands, and Andraste looked at him for a long moment and then gave him Corin.

Corin opened his eyes and looked at the General’s face.

And didn’t roar.

”He’s heavy,” said the General. Very quietly. ”For eleven minutes old.”

”Twenty-two,” said Andraste.

”Twenty-two,” said the General. And held him very carefully, with his big hands, and didn’t say anything else for a long time.

Then Mother. Who took Thessaly. And looked at her. And Thessaly looked back with her grey iron-sea eyes and didn’t make a sound.

”Oh,” said Mother. ”Oh, you’re a quiet one.” She held her closer. ”Genny was a quiet one. She looked at everything just like that. As if she was writing it down.” She looked over her shoulder at Genny, at the back, with volume fifteen. ”Weren’t you.”

”I don’t remember,” said Genny.

”I do,” said Mother.

Then she gave Thessaly to Ingrid. And held out her hands to the General.

The General gave her Corin.

And Mother looked down at him.

She didn’t say anything for a very long time. She stood on the ridge in the snow with my son in her arms and looked at his face. And he looked back at her. Quiet. Not roaring. Not crying. Just looking. Carefully. With Father’s eyes.

Her face did something I’ve only seen it do twice. Once on the red glass, when Ingrid looked up from beside Dory and said Dot. Once at the kitchen table at five in the morning when I told her I was proud of her.

”Oh,” she said. Very quietly. ”Oh, there you are.”

”Mother?”

She didn’t look up.

”Your father,” she said. ”That’s your father, Lucas.” She touched Corin’s face. One finger. Very gently. Along the cheek. ”His eyes. His mouth. The way he’s looking at me. Like he’s trying to work out what I’m made of and whether he could make it into something better.” Her voice went. She waited for it to come back. ”Your father looked at me like that the first day. On the northern front. He came down the line to fix a pump that had cracked, and stopped, and looked at me holding the ground, as if he was working out how I did it.”

Ingrid, beside her, with Thessaly, said very quietly: ”And whether it was worth saying anything.”

”Yes,” said Mother. ”That too.” She didn’t take her eyes off Corin. ”You look like him. You always have. But this one—” She stopped. ”I can see so much of him in this one. So much, love. All at once. As if he’s been waiting.”

Corin looked up at her. Quietly.

And asked her for something.

Mother felt it. I saw her feel it.

She didn’t know what it was either.

”Yes,” she said to him. Very quietly. ”Yes. Whatever it is. Of course.” And held him closer.

Maura, with Rory beside her, didn’t take either of them. She just knelt down and put her warm hands on Andraste’s, one on each side, and held them until they stopped shaking. Andraste hadn’t known they were shaking. She looked down at Maura’s hands for a long time.

”On Hyrran,” she said, ”nobody holds the First Blade’s hands.”

”You’re not on Hyrran,” said Maura. ”You’re on a ridge. In the snow. With your husband’s family.” She didn’t let go. ”That’s different.”

And Ingrid and Konrad. Konrad stayed at the back. He said he’d never been to a birth in his life; he said he’d been at the Ministry, or the Senate, or signing something, every time. Ingrid took his hand and walked him to the front through the snow, and he stood there, white and very straight, and looked down at Corin in the General’s arms.

”I don’t know what to do,” he said.

”Nobody does,” said Ingrid. ”You just stand there.”

So he stood there.

And Corin, in the General’s arms, turned his head and looked up at Konrad Friese, and asked him for something.

Konrad felt it. I saw his face. He didn’t know what it was either.

He gave it anyway.

Okafor came through the arch from the map room at noon.

Through the big arch. On the ridge. Not the little one. In her coat, with the black slate in her inside pocket, and snow on her shoulders by the time she’d walked from the arch to the top of the ridge.

She stood at the edge of the family for a long time. Looking at Andraste in the snow with her twins. At the little arch between her knees, open, showing the cot. At forty thousand Hyrrani on the mountains.

Then she took out the black slate.

And wrote two lines at the bottom of the left column. Very carefully. In her square hand.

And put it away.

”Not a rescue,” I said. Beside her.

”No,” said Okafor. She looked at the little arch for a long time. ”But I’d like to know what is.” She looked at me. ”Your children made a door, Dask. On their first day.”

”I know.”

”The houses spent a thousand years trying to take Hyrran. They never got past the arches.” She looked at Corin and Thessaly. ”These two made one in twenty-two minutes.” She was quiet for a long time. ”Ilka’s going to hear about this on the relay. And so are the houses.”

”Yes.”

”Good,” said Okafor. ”Let them be frightened of something else for a change.”

Andraste named them on the ridge.

With Kyria. And with the four of them, Luna and Sera and Risa and Hana, who came and knelt in the snow round her, because on Hyrran, Kyria said, the First Blade names her children with every wife and husband of the house kneeling round her, so that the children know from the first day that they have more than one mother.

The boy is Corin.

After nobody. Andraste said she’d wanted a name that didn’t belong to any battle.

The girl is Thessaly.

After the sea. The iron sea below the ridge. Kyria’s mother’s name for it, in the oldest Hyrrani, which nobody uses any more, except on the ridge, when a First Blade’s daughter is born.

Corin and Thessaly Dask.

Eleven minutes apart.

”Eleven,” said Garnet.

At the back. Very quietly. With Genny’s hand still in hers. She hadn’t let go.

”Eleven,” said Genny.

Halloway, beside them, with her watch, looked at the two of them for a long time.

”Ten minutes and fifty-eight seconds,” she said.

”Eleven,” said Garnet and Genny. At once.

Halloway looked at them.

Then she put her watch away.

”Eleven,” she said.

We went home through the little arch.

Not all of us. It’s no higher than my knee. But Andraste insisted. She said the children’s first door should be walked through by someone, and it should be family, and it should be the first day.

So Dory went.

On her hands and knees. Through a window of red-grey stone on the highest ridge of Hyrran. And came out in the children’s room in the house on the rise, in Rory’s very wide cot, in the warm. And stood up in it. And called back through the arch, very loudly, so everyone on the ridge could hear:

”It works!”

And Elin and Goldie, holding hands on the ridge, went next. Crawling. Together. Through their new brother and sister’s door.

The little arch is still there.

On the ridge. On Hyrran. Between where Andraste’s feet were.

And there’s another one now. In the children’s room. In the wall beside Rory’s cot. No higher than my knee. That nobody cut and nobody built. It came up out of the floor of the house on the rise on the first night, very quietly, while Corin and Thessaly slept in the cot with Elin and Goldie, all four of them in a heap, with the room at April.

Doctor Bell’s measured it. Both pairs of spectacles. She says it’s perfect. She says it opens without a queen singing it. She says it opens for four people: Corin and Thessaly and, she thinks, Elin and Goldie, because the four of them have been sleeping in a heap since the first night and she thinks the arch knows them.

She says she doesn’t have a word for it.

She says she’s stopped trying.

Hana came down to the children’s room the next morning.

Early. Before anyone. With her hand on her middle. And found Andraste already there, sitting on the floor beside Rory’s cot with her back against the wall and her knees up, very tired, watching the four of them sleep in a heap. Corin and Thessaly in the middle. Elin and Goldie round them. The room at April. The little arch in the wall beside the cot, very quiet, waiting.

Hana sat down beside her.

They didn’t say anything for a long time.

”They grew,” said Andraste. Eventually. Very quietly. ”In the night. I watched. They are bigger than they were at dusk.” She didn’t take her eyes off them. ”Corin turned over on his own at four in the morning. Thessaly watched him do it and then did it too. At five.” She was quiet. ”They are one day old.”

”I know,” said Hana.

”How do you bear it?”

Hana thought about it.

”You don’t,” she said. ”Not the first time. You sit on the floor and watch them and you can’t believe it.” She put her hand on Andraste’s knee. ”And then one morning you come down and Efua’s filled every cup in the kitchen in her sleep and Kwame’s pointing at the door saying there, and you put the kettle on.” She smiled. ”You get used to it.”

Andraste looked at her.

”You said that before,” she said. ”On the porch. About one baby.”

”I was wrong,” said Hana. ”It’s about two.”

Andraste laughed. Very quietly. So she wouldn’t wake them.

Thessaly opened her eyes anyway. And looked at her mother. And then, very slowly, at Hana. And then back at her mother.

And Corin, beside her, without waking, asked his sister for something.

And she gave it to him. Without looking away from Hana.

”She’s going to be very dangerous,” said Hana.

”Yes,” said Andraste. ”I know.”

I said it that night. The second night.

On the long porch. In order.

When I got to the end, Andraste was in the big chair, the one Hana sits in. With Corin on one side and Thessaly on the other. And Hana on the rail beside her, with one hand on Andraste’s shoulder and the other on her own middle, where the patient one is, taking its time.

And Elin and Goldie at Andraste’s feet. On the boards. Holding hands. With their other hands flat on the porch.

Making it April.

I knelt down in front of all of them.

And said it. To Andraste. To Corin. To Thessaly. To Elin and Goldie.

Then to Hana. And lower, to the patient one.

Corin opened his eyes and looked at me.

And asked me for something.

And I still didn’t know what.

And I gave it to him anyway.

Days 4033–4044. Eleven Minutes.

Elin and Goldie aren’t twins. Nobody’s told them. One cot, one spoon, their own language; together they make seasons. Mother: twins are who you won’t be without. At dawn of the tenth week they woke and looked at the door, and the house went still. Andraste stood on Hyrran’s highest ridge with her blade in the snow and forty thousand silent on the mountains, and laughed. Corin roared for four breaths and stopped in my hands, with Father’s eyes, and my face, and asked me for something; I gave it. Mother: there you are; I can see so much of your father in him. Elin and Goldie made the snow April. Eleven minutes. Thessaly came quiet, into Hana’s hands. Together they asked the ridge, and a small arch grew between Andraste’s feet that opens home. Halloway: ten fifty-eight. Garnet and Genny: eleven. Halloway: eleven.