Scarecrow

Mother decided on a Tuesday.

She does that. Decides things on ordinary days, at the stove, with her back to everyone, and then turns round and says them as if they’d been decided for a long time.

”We’re going to the park,” said Mother.

Everyone at the long table looked up.

”All of us,” said Mother. ”Saturday. Every grandchild. Every grandmother. Anybody who wants to come.” She put the teapot on the table. ”Halvane’s people have had their hands on it for a year and nobody in this house has been. I want to see what they’ve done.”

I should say what the park is, for anyone reading this who’s never been.

It’s the one Genny asked for, years ago, when the young had never played. The roller coaster Doctor Bell did the sums for. The swings that go out over the water. The wheel, so big the top is higher than the coaster. The boats on the long slow channel. The carousel, with Garnet’s painted animals on it and a scarecrow on the central pole. The wind tower. Pip’s stall.

It’s where I won my wives their ribbons. Five of them. Six, counting Mother’s.

It’s where I won Mother hers, dark blue, in nineteen tries. Father won her one once, a long time ago, at a little fair with a wheel and some swings in a town behind the lines, on leave, in the war. Twenty-three tries.

The Aldri had been at it for a year.

Halvane asked first, the way he always does. He came to the long table and asked if his people might look at the park, because the Aldri children who go to Miss Pell’s school go there after, and come home to Ister talking about the coaster for days, and he’d like to see what all the fuss was about.

Then he went. And came back very quiet.

”We don’t have one,” said Halvane. ”On Ister. We never built one. We built engines and stations and guns.” He looked at his long hands. ”Eleven thousand years. Nobody ever built anything just to scream on.”

”Would you like to?” said Mother.

Halvane looked at her for a long time.

”Yes,” he said.

So they did. With Genny, who’d asked for the park in the first place, and Keir and Enna, and Doctor Bell, who’s very old now and still does the sums. And Pip, who still runs her stall. They didn’t take anything away. Mother made them promise. They added.

I’ll write what they added when we get to it.

Saturday was clear. Kesh promised. She stood on the porch at dawn with her cloud and frowned at the sky until it went blue all the way to the edges, and then she made her cloud go very small and very white and sit over her head like a hat, and said that was all the rain anyone was getting today.

Risa says that’s the first time Kesh has ever promised the sky anything.

We went on the train. All of us. Crane gave us three carriages and put us on his board with a marker that said, in his very small writing, Gran.

I’ll write who came, because Mother says the park’s about who you went with.

Mother. In her long brown coat, with the dark blue ribbon in her hair. And me beside her, because she asked me to carry the bag, and because I’d have come anyway.

Oona, in her long brown coat, holding the hem of Mother’s, with her teapot in her other hand. She brought the teapot. She brings it everywhere.

And all of them.

All my children. Dory, sixteen, looking twenty, who said she’d come to help with the small ones and spent the whole day being one of them. Trevor, as tall as Luna, quiet, watching everything. Small Sigmund, who isn’t small, and who lifts things now without asking. Ash, with a screwdriver in her pocket in case anything at the park needed fixing. Efua and Kwame and Abena, Hana’s three, Efua shouting at birds from the train window the whole way. Elin and Goldie, still acting like twins. Corin and Thessaly. Vessa, who doesn’t turn for anything now. Kesh with her cloud for a hat.

And Bahamut, with Dinraal and Isolde, his silver hair sticking up the way his father’s does. And Ithel, holding Bahamut’s hand, very seriously, the way he holds everything.

And Tiri.

Ingrid came with Ione.

Ione’s taller now. Not like mine; ordinary taller. She still doesn’t say much. She still sleeps with the lamp off. She sat by the train window next to Ingrid and looked at the sky the whole way, the way she did on her first train, when she asked if it went on.

Konrad came too. He stood on the platform at the red glass in his good coat and didn’t get on, and Ingrid looked at him from the carriage door.

”Well?” said Ingrid.

”I wasn’t sure I was invited,” said Konrad.

”Get on the train, Konrad,” said Ingrid.

He got on.

And everyone else.

Saska and Brock with Tesh, married on the north field at dawn, the same morning as my sisters, who’s two and walks a heartbeat ahead of everyone so that holding her hand is like holding the hand of someone who already knows where you’re going. Genny and Garnet with their husbands, Callum and Rowan, the four of them in a row on the bench at the back of the carriage, my sisters with their heads together and Nan Vey’s grandsons pretending not to listen. Kwame Osei with Abena and old Efua, who brought a bag of seed to throw at birds. Rory and Maura, Maura with a basket, because Maura always has a basket. Kyria and Teshka. Abbe and Ilas from the bench by the kitchen door, who between them are two hundred and eighty-something years old and said they’d come to watch.

And my wives.

All five of them. In the last carriage, together, very quiet, looking out of the window. Hana caught my eye down the length of the train and didn’t smile, quite. Andraste did.

The park’s different.

I’ll put it as I saw it, coming in through the gate at the bottom, with Mother on my arm and Oona on her coat.

It’s the same. Everything’s where it was. The wheel. The coaster. The boats on the channel. The swings over the water. The carousel. The wind tower. The green in the middle, under the lamps. The queen of the garden in the corner, very small and white, who smells of rain.

But the lamps are Ister’s now. The fine glowing lines strung between the trees, gold, the way they are in the cities. And at the top of the coaster there’s a new loop that goes up into the sky, very high, and then stops. Just stops. In the air. For a long breath. Before it drops. Rowan says it’s Aldri fighter work under the rail. Rowan says it’s the best thing he’s ever been on, and he flies an interceptor.

And past the wheel, where there used to be a field, there’s a long low building with a gold roof.

The children went for the building first.

Of course they did.

The Aldri call it the dream rooms. Dot says the word’s closer to the place where you go somewhere else, but dream rooms is what the children call it, so that’s what it’s called.

You lie down in a long chair. Something very light settles over your eyes. And then you’re somewhere else.

Anywhere. A sea. A mountain. The inside of a star. The sky over Ister. A world the Aldri remember from before the Sorn, that’s gone now, that they made again so their children could see it. A race in silver fighters through a field of rocks. A forest where everything sings.

Corin and Tiri went into one together. They came out an hour later and Tiri’s shimmer was so bright you could read by it.

”We were on the old Ister,” said Corin. ”Before they moved it the first time. Her great-great-grandmother’s house.” He looked at Tiri. ”There was a lamp.”

”The same one,” said Tiri. ”Before it broke.”

They went back in. Four times. Ilas, on the bench outside with Abbe, didn’t say anything when they told her. She went in herself, the fifth time, with Tiri holding one hand and Corin the other, very slowly, because she’s a hundred and ninety. She came out and sat on the bench for a long time and didn’t say anything at all.

Abbe poured her a cup from Oona’s teapot, which Oona had lent her.

Old Efua went in to shout at the birds.

There’s a dream room with birds in it. Thousands of them. Every kind there’s ever been, the Aldri say, on every world they ever heard of. Old Efua went in with her bag of seed and great-grandchild Efua beside her, the two Efuas, the old one and the young one, the way they walk out to Hettie’s rows at dawn.

They came out two hours later. Old Efua was hoarse. Young Efua was hoarse.

”Well?” said Kwame Osei, on the bench.

”They don’t move,” said old Efua. Very cross. ”You shout and they don’t move. They’re not real.” She threw a handful of seed at a perfectly ordinary bird on the path, and it flew off, and she looked very satisfied. ”That’s a bird.”

Then the arcade.

The Aldri built that too. Next to the dream rooms, under the same gold roof. Machines with lights in them. You put a little silver disc in, and they let you play something: a game of catching falling stars, or flying a fighter through a ring of rocks, or knocking down a tower of glowing blocks with a ball. The machines keep count. If you win, they give you a small prize. A silver bird. A gold star. A ribbon, sometimes.

Small Sigmund lifted the first machine he lost at off the floor and shook it, very gently, to see if anything would come out. Nothing did. A very tall Aldri attendant came over and looked at him for a long time. Then he gave small Sigmund a silver disc and said, through Dot, we’ve been waiting for someone to try that.

Ash didn’t play anything. She opened the back of one of the machines with her screwdriver while nobody was looking, and looked inside it for a long time, and closed it again. The Aldri attendant saw that too.

”Is it broken?” he asked her.

”No,” said Ash. ”I wanted to see how it knew.”

”Knew what?”

”When you’d won,” said Ash.

The attendant thought about it. Then he took out his little silver box and wrote something down.

Corin fixed one.

Of course he did. Weight on one leg, hand on the back of his neck, a long look. It was a falling-stars machine that had stopped, with a little sign on it in Aldri that Dot said meant resting.

Then all at once. Humming.

The machine lit up. All its lights. And gave him a prize, because it didn’t know any better: a silver bird, very small, the size of his thumb.

He looked at it.

Then he gave it to Tiri. Without saying anything.

Tiri looked at the bird. She already has one. The real one, on her shoulder, that she breaks.

She put the little one on her other shoulder.

Kyria saw that from across the arcade. She was with Teshka, watching Thessaly and Vessa beat everyone at the flying game.

She didn’t say anything. But I saw her hand go to the pocket of her coat.

Mother saw it too. She looked at Kyria across the arcade, and Kyria looked back, and something went between the two grandmothers that I’ve learned by now not to ask about.

Kyria took her hand out of her pocket again.

”Not a year,” said Mother. Very quietly. To nobody.

”No,” said Kyria. From across the arcade. Somehow they heard each other. ”Just keeping count.”

We had lunch on the green. All of us.

Maura’s basket, which turned out to have enough in it for everyone, which Maura’s baskets always do. And the new food. The Aldri have stalls now, along the edge of the green. Little cakes that glow, very faintly, in your hand, and taste of something nobody has a word for. Something cold in a cup that changes colour when you drink it. Fried things on sticks, which turned out not to be Aldri at all but Pip’s idea, and were the best thing there.

Konrad ate four of the glowing cakes and said they were nonsense and ate a fifth.

Halvane came at lunch.

He hadn’t said he would. He came through the arch from Ister and walked up from the gate in his robe, very tall, and stood at the edge of the green looking at the coaster for a long time.

Then he looked at Mother.

”I have never been on one,” said Halvane.

”Then go,” said Mother.

He went. Dory took him. She said she’d been on the new loop four times already that morning and could do it in her sleep.

They went up. Into the sky. To the place at the top of the loop where the car stops, in the air, for a long breath.

And then it dropped.

The whole park heard Halvane. Eleven thousand years of his people building engines and stations and guns, and nobody ever building anything just to scream on, and the Speaker of the Aldri of Ister screamed all the way down the new loop like a boy.

He came off very pale, with his shimmer going on and off all over, and stood on the platform holding the rail.

”Again,” said Halvane.

Dory took him round six times. On the sixth, he didn’t scream. He laughed the whole way.

Dory told me afterward what the park felt like, on the net. She keeps the net out a little, always now, the way you keep a window open.

She said she’d never felt anything like it. She said all day, the whole park, every heart in it, was doing the same thing at once, and it wasn’t fear and it wasn’t grief and it wasn’t any of the things she’s felt on the net on Ostry or Caddoc or the twelfth hill.

”It was so loud,” said Dory. ”Everyone. Being happy. All at once.” She was sitting on the grass by the channel with her knees up. ”I didn’t know it was that loud. I’ve never had the net out anywhere it was all that.”

She was quiet.

”I think I’d like to keep it out here,” she said. ”For a bit. Just to hear it.”

I left her there. Trevor came and sat beside her after a while. He didn’t say anything. He looks older than me some days and still doesn’t know what to say to his sister when she’s like this, so he just sits there. She put her head on his shoulder.

After lunch, everyone went off.

I’ll write it the way Mother saw it, because I was with Mother. Carrying the bag. Escorting her, Okafor called it, when we left; she said mind you escort your mother properly, and Mother said she’d never been escorted anywhere in her life and wasn’t starting now, and then took my arm anyway.

We took the grandchildren round. All of them who’d stay with us, which was most of the small ones. Mother and me and Oona and Dory and Kesh and Bahamut and Ithel and Tesh, when Saska handed her over, and whoever else came running past.

The carousel first.

Garnet’s painted animals, the Teeming young and the Kethri and the Hesk and the Sef and the Nivi and the light-bender you can only see sideways, going round and round under the gold lamps. The Aldri hadn’t touched it. Mother made them promise.

Oona rode the light-bender. Kesh rode a Teeming young with her cloud on her head. Bahamut rode the Kethri, very solemn, and Ithel stood beside him the whole way round, holding the pole, in case.

Mother didn’t ride. She stood at the edge, with me.

And at the turn, at dusk, when the lamps came on, she lifted it.

Not much. A finger’s width. The whole carousel, going round, with all the animals and the children and the scarecrow on the central pole. Up off its base. Still going round. In the air.

And Oona, on the light-bender, put her hand out flat.

And lifted with her.

The whole park stopped.

Everyone on the green. Everyone in the queues for the coaster and the wheel and the boats. The Aldri at their stalls. They all turned round and looked. At the carousel going round a finger’s width off the ground in the gold dusk, with an old woman in a long brown coat at the edge with her hands out flat, and a small pale-gold girl on a painted animal with her hand out flat, and their hair standing up off their heads, both of them, like a storm coming.

Then Mother put it down. Very gently. Still going round.

Somebody on the green started clapping. Then everybody did.

Mother went very pink.

Oona got off the light-bender and came and took hold of her coat hem and said, quite loudly, to the whole park: ”Love.”

The wheel next. Dory and Mother and Ione.

Ingrid had brought Ione to the wheel and was standing at the bottom of it with her hands in her pockets, looking up, not getting on. Mother looked at her.

”I’ll take her up,” said Mother. ”Go and find your husband.”

Ingrid looked at her for a long time. Then she went.

So Mother and Dory and Ione went up the wheel. I stayed at the bottom with the small ones. And the wheel went up, slowly, very high, higher than the coaster, the way it does. And at the top, it stopped. The way it does at the top, for a long breath, so you can see the whole park and the town and the plains, all the way to the edge.

Dory told me afterward. She said Ione didn’t say anything at the top. She sat between Mother and Dory and looked at the sky.

Then she said: ”It goes on.”

”Yes, love,” said Mother.

”Past the end of everything,” said Ione.

”Yes.”

Ione thought about it. Then she put her head on Mother’s arm. Which she’s never done.

”Good,” said Ione.

They stayed at the top longer than the wheel stops for. Dory says she asked it to. Very quietly. The way she asks the ground. And the wheel, which is old, and was the first big thing I ever built for anyone to play on, thought about it, and stayed.

I didn’t see what happened with Konrad and Ingrid. Nobody did, at first.

Ingrid told Mother. Mother told me. I’m fairly sure I’m not meant to know.

Ingrid found him at Pip’s stall.

He was standing at the counter, at the bottom of the wheel where it’s always been, with a handful of bread-dough balls gone too hard to eat, in front of the row of tin cups. Pip, behind the counter, very grown up now, with a long apron and the same face she had when she was a small girl at the Calders’ table, was watching him with her arms folded.

He’d been there an hour.

”How many?” said Ingrid.

”Thirty-one,” said Pip. ”Throws. He hasn’t knocked one off yet.”

Konrad didn’t turn round. He threw another ring. It missed.

”Thirty-two,” said Pip.

”Konrad,” said Ingrid.

”I never had a spark in me,” said Konrad. Not turning round. ”Not one. In my whole life. You know that. Everyone knows it now.” He threw another. It missed. ”I stood behind you at the Kesh ford with a slate. And I took the medal. And when they told me to sign your ward, I signed it.” Another. Missed. ”And you came back anyway. And you married me again. In your head, at least. You never said. But you did.”

He picked up another ball.

”Trevor Dask won Dot that ribbon in twenty-three tries,” said Konrad. ”Lucas won her one in nineteen. I’ve never won you anything in my life, Ingrid. Not once.”

He threw.

A tin cup went over.

Pip took a ribbon out of the box under the counter.

Grey. Silver-grey. The colour of the sky in the moment before lightning. When everything goes still.

She held it out to Konrad.

He took it. And turned round. And Ingrid was standing behind him, the way he stood behind her at the ford, a very long time ago.

He held it out.

”Will you go out with me,” said Konrad. ”Tonight. Just you. Not the children. Not the sheet.” His voice did something. ”I’ve never asked you properly. Not once. I signed things instead.”

Mother says Ingrid looked at the ribbon for a very long time.

Then she took it. And tied it round her wrist. Herself.

”Yes,” said Ingrid.

They went on the boats. On the long slow channel through the trees, under the bridges, past the swings, round the bottom of the coaster. The way Sera and I went, the first time. Rory saw them from his boat, with Maura, two boats behind. He says Konrad didn’t say anything the whole way round, and Ingrid didn’t either, and at the fall at the bottom of the swings, where the channel goes over and round in the wide slow circle, Ingrid put her head on Konrad’s shoulder.

Rory says he and Maura went round again just to see if she’d do it twice.

She did.

Rory and Maura had their own afternoon. I’ll put it in, because Rory would want it.

They went on the swings. The ones that go out over the water so far you think you’ll fall in. Maura said she was too old. Rory said she’d said that about the hill, the first year, and walked up it every day since. They went on the swings. Maura held on with both hands and said she was going to be sick and wasn’t.

Then Rory took her to the wind tower and asked if she’d like him to try for a ribbon. Maura said she’d had a ribbon off him forty years ago, at a fair on Earth, under a dome, and she still had it, and it was in a drawer, and she didn’t need another one.

Then she said: ”Red,” and Rory went and got her one.

Kwame Osei took Abena and old Efua on the boats too. Old Efua threw seed at every bird on the channel and hit most of them. Abena sat very straight in the middle of the boat with her hair in her scarf and her hands folded and said, at the end, that it was very pleasant, which Hana says is the most enthusiastic thing her mother has said about anything since Earth.

Then Kwame went to Pip’s stall. On his own. He came back with a ribbon. Gold. He gave it to Abena without saying anything.

Abena looked at it. Then at him.

”Fifty years,” said Abena. ”You never won me anything at a stall.”

”There wasn’t a stall,” said Kwame Osei. ”There was a river.”

She tied it in her scarf.

Saska took Brock and Tesh on the coaster. Not the new loop; Tesh is two. The small coaster, at the bottom, for the young ones. Tesh sat between them, very solemn, with one hand on each, and when it dropped she moved a heartbeat before, so she was already leaning the right way, and laughed.

Brock went iron at the first drop. All of him. To the neck. The whole coaster car went lopsided and the Aldri attendant had to stop it.

Saska laughed so hard she cried.

Tesh went iron too. Just her hands. Holding on. Exactly where her father’s hands were.

Teshka, watching from the bench with Kyria, said something in Vaeli.

”She says,” said Dot. ”Very difficult to hit. And very difficult to shift.”

Genny and Garnet and Callum and Rowan went on the new loop. Four times. Rowan’s idea.

They went into a dream room after, where you fly. Genny and Garnet came out first, very quickly, and Garnet said she’d been flying since she was small and it was very strange to be told how. Callum and Rowan came out an hour later grinning like idiots. They’d been racing each other through the rocks.

Then the four of them sat on the grass by the channel, under the gold lamps, in a row. My sisters and Nan Vey’s grandsons. Not saying anything. Genny with her head on Callum’s shoulder and her notebook shut in her lap, which I’ve never seen. Garnet with her board under her arm, not drawing, with Rowan’s hand on her knee.

I went past them on the way to the carousel. Garnet looked up at me. She didn’t say anything. She smiled.

My sisters.

Corin and Tiri and Thessaly went on the swings at the end of the afternoon. The ones over the water.

Three in a row. Thessaly on the end, very still, the way she is, with her hands on the chains and her face turned up. Corin in the middle, swinging as high as he could. Tiri on the other side, a head and a half taller, all long arms and legs, shimmering.

At the top of every swing, out over the water, Corin shouted. Not words. Just shouting. Because it was the top.

At the top of every swing, Tiri hummed.

Thessaly, at the end, rolled her eyes every time, and swung anyway.

Kyria watched them from the bank. She didn’t take anything out of her pocket. She stood with her first blade on her back and her arms folded and her face doing something Andraste says she’s seen it do perhaps three times in her life.

”They’re children,” said Kyria. To me. Without turning round. ”Your mother’s right.”

”I know.”

”Seven,” said Kyria. ”He’s seven now. I keep forgetting. He looks so like your father, your mother says.” She watched Corin go out over the water, shouting. ”Let him be seven a while longer.”

Then my wives.

At the end. When it was dark. When Mother had taken the small ones home on the train with Oona and Dory and Kesh and Bahamut and Ithel, and said she didn’t need escorting home, she’d been escorted enough for one day, and kissed me on the forehead the way she did when I was small.

When Corin and Tiri had gone home with Andraste’s mother and Aune, walking backward down the path to the gate, waving.

My wives were waiting by the wheel. All five.

We did it again. The way we did it the first time. One at a time, and then all together.

I’m not going to write all of it. Some of it’s ours.

Sera on the boat, with Sera turning off every lamp on the channel and lighting only the ones over us, the way she did, so that we went round in the dark under a small warm light. She had the red ribbon round her wrist. She’s had it since.

Risa on the new loop, in the front car. She screamed eleven times again. Then at the top, in the long breath where the car stops in the sky, she stopped screaming and looked down at the park, all of it lit gold, and said very quietly that she’d been frightened in more places than she could count since the first time, and this was still the only one she liked.

Hana on the bicycle on the long path round the lake. I held the seat. I let go. She knew. She rode all the way round. She has the green ribbon on her handlebars still; the bicycle lives in the shed by the kitchen door.

Luna on the wheel, at the top, in the long stop. She didn’t say anything. She held my hand. The blue ribbon was in her hair.

And Andraste.

At the wind tower. Where she put me on my back in three breaths, the first time. She looked at it for a long time.

Then she looked at me.

”Your ribbon’s on One,” said Andraste. ”Under the ice. On my grandmother’s blade.”

”I know.”

”Holdfast’s ribbon was for a fight I didn’t get to have,” said Andraste. ”Not this.” She looked at the tower. ”I’ve never had a second one of these.”

I didn’t say anything.

She climbed the tower.

Three breaths. Again. On my back, at the top, in the wind, with the whole park gold below us.

Then she lay down beside me. On her back. Looking at the sky.

We stayed there a long time.

When we came down, Pip had a ribbon on the counter already. White. Like the snow on the ridge. She didn’t say anything. She just pushed it across.

Andraste tied it round her wrist.

We came home on the last train. All six of us in one carriage. Crane had left our marker on the board and moved it back himself when we came in, very late, though he should have been in bed hours before.

Mother was on the porch. Of course she was.

She didn’t say anything about the ribbons. She looked at Andraste’s wrist and then at me, and poured six cups.

Then, at the very end, after the names, after Oona’s goodnight, love, Konrad and Ingrid came up the hill. Very late. Very slowly. Konrad’s knees don’t stop him on the bend any more, but he stopped on the bend anyway, Mother says, on purpose, so they’d have longer.

Ingrid had the grey ribbon round her wrist.

She didn’t say anything about it either.

She sat down on the step beside Mother. And held out her wrist. And Mother looked at the ribbon for a long time, and then at her own, the dark blue one, in her hair, from twenty-three tries a very long time ago, and nineteen not so long ago.

”How many?” said Mother.

”Thirty-two,” said Ingrid.

Mother laughed. Out loud. On the step. The way I haven’t heard her laugh since before the Project, when I was very small and Father came in from the forge with soot on his face and pretended not to know why we were laughing.

”Good,” said Mother. ”Thirty-two’s a very good number.”

Days 6602–6609. The Park Again.

Mother decided on a Tuesday. Halvane screamed all the way down the new loop, then said again, and on the sixth laughed. Dory: everyone being happy at once is so loud. Halvane: eleven thousand years and nobody ever built anything just to scream on. Kesh promised the sky. Crane’s marker said Gran. The dream rooms: Corin and Tiri on the old Ister, and the lamp before it broke; Ilas went in the fifth time. Old Efua: they don’t move, they’re not real; that’s a bird. Small Sigmund shook a machine; Ash looked inside one to see how it knew you’d won. Corin fixed a resting machine and gave Tiri the bird; Kyria’s hand went to her pocket; not a year, just keeping count. Mother and Oona lifted the carousel at the turn, still going round; the whole park clapped; love. Ione at the top of the wheel: it goes on; good. Konrad at Pip’s stall, thirty-two throws at the tin cups: I never had a spark; I signed things instead; will you go out with me. Grey, the colour before lightning. Ingrid put her head on his shoulder at the fall, twice. Maura’s red from Rory, Abena’s gold from Kwame: there was a river. Brock went iron on the small coaster and so did Tesh’s hands. My sisters on the grass with their notebooks shut. My wives again: red, yellow, green, blue. Andraste at the wind tower: I’ve never had a second one of these. White, on her wrist. Mother: thirty-two’s a very good number.