Scarecrow

The voice came on every band on the ninth morning after I sent the message to Lantern.

At the count. Of course it did. Senna Thale said afterward that the Collective always times things for when people are gathered; it wants as many as possible to hear at once.

Mother was halfway through the names.

She didn’t stop.

To all worlds of the Bright Reach, said the voice. The same one. From the middle seat. Very clear. Very formal.

It has come to the attention of the Assize that certain member worlds on the outer edge of the Reach have been approached by parties outside the Collective with offers of assistance.

The Assize reminds all member worlds that the Collective provides for its members. The Collective is a family.

Matters affecting member worlds are matters for the Collective.

Mother kept saying the names. Very quietly. Under it.

Any member world that accepts assistance from outside the Collective, from the world called Avalon, the world called Ister, or any world of the so-called Hedge, will be held to have renounced the Collective’s protection.

It will be banished from the Reach.

A banished world is outside all law.

It will be eliminated.

The voice stopped.

Mother didn’t.

She got to the end. All of them. Ithre and Arreth and the Lenn and the steam people and the dome under the gas giant and Merrow and Ceren and everyone. And then she said one more.

“And everyone on Lantern,” said Mother. “Who’s been told not to put the kettle on.”

Oona said: “Goodnight, love.”

Tiri found me in the courtyard after the count. With her bird. And Corin, of course, beside her.

“Is Ister a member?” said Tiri. “Of the Collective?”

“No,” I said. “It never was.”

“Then they can’t banish it.”

“No.”

Tiri thought about it. Very seriously. The Aldri way.

“So they can’t banish us,” she said. “Or Avalon. Or the Hedge. Because we were never in.” She turned the bird over in her hands. “They can only banish the ones who were. The ones who paid.”

“Yes.”

Tiri looked at the bird for a long time.

“That’s horrible,” said Tiri. Very quietly. “That’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard.”

Corin didn’t say anything. But he took her hand. And hummed. Two notes. Very low.

Then he went and found Ithel, at Miss Pell’s school, and asked him how many of the two thousand eight hundred and six had paid tithe. Ithel told him. Four hundred and six. Corin wrote it on the back of his hand and didn’t wash it off for a week.

Senna Thale came through the arch from Ister at noon.

She’d heard it in the deepest city. Every Aldri had. She came straight up the hill with her grey case, very thin, very dry, and sat down at the long table without being asked, and Mother put a cup in front of her without being asked either.

“It’s legal,” said Senna Thale.

Nobody said anything.

“I’d like to say it isn’t,” said Senna Thale. “It is. Under their law. The Collective can decide who is a member and who isn’t. Banishment is in the oldest codes. And a banished world is outside the Reach’s law, which means outside its protection, which means anyone may do anything to it.” She turned her cup round. “Including the Collective.”

“The Assize postponed us,” said Okafor. “Three months ago. It said it was examining the Prime.”

“It is,” said Senna Thale. “Very slowly. Under its own law.” She drank. “It postponed the charges against you. It didn’t say it would stop the Collective doing anything else. It’s still the Collective’s court.” She put the cup down. “It thanked us. Very politely. And then it went back to work.”

Mara Quell came with her. With her heavy case.

She laid the new sheet on the long table. The star-eater’s path. The way it had turned toward the web.

“In the next three years,” said Mara Quell, “it will reach one hundred and sixty-three small red stars with member worlds round them.” She put her finger on the first. “Lantern is ninth. The first is eleven weeks away.”

“How many people?”

“On all of them?” Mara Quell looked at her numbers. “About four hundred million.”

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Okafor said what everyone was thinking.

“If we go,” she said. Very level. “They’re banished. And eliminated.”

“Yes,” said Senna Thale.

“If we don’t go,” said Okafor, “the star goes out. And they freeze. And the swarms come in after and eat what’s left.”

“Yes.”

Okafor looked at the slate. At Theirs too.

“It’s not a choice,” she said. “It’s two ways to die.”

“That,” said Senna Thale, “is the point of it.”

I’ll write what Senna Thale said next. Because it’s the thing that made me understand what the Collective is.

“The Collective doesn’t want them dead,” said Senna Thale. “It doesn’t care if they’re dead. It wants them afraid.” She folded her long hands. “It’s been four thousand years. Every request for aid marked received. And nobody ever came, so nobody ever had to choose. Now someone’s coming.” She looked at me. “So they have to make it cost more to say yes to you than to say yes to the star.”

“Why?”

“Because if one small world on the edge says yes to you,” said Senna Thale, “and lives, then every small world at the back of the far hall learns that it can. And then the Collective isn’t a family any more. It’s a very large room full of people who’ve realised the door was never locked.”

The small worlds answered first.

Not Lantern. Others. On the old bands, very faint, from the very edge of the web, in the days after the decree. Tiamat caught them one at a time and Dot turned them at the long table, and Ingrid wrote every one down on a new page of Stopped, because she said they belonged there even though they hadn’t.

We’re sorry, said the first. From a world called Hesketh, fourteenth on Mara Quell’s sheet. We heard about the cups. We’d hoped. We can’t.

Please don’t come, said the second. From a world nobody had a name for, very small, in a language even Dot had trouble with. They’ll know. They always know. Please.

We’ll wait, said the third. The Collective is a family. Surely someone will come.

Mother listened to every one. At the stove. With her back to the long table.

When the third one finished, she turned round.

“Someone did,” said Mother. “Write that down, Ingrid. Next to theirs. Somebody did come. They said no. That’s allowed.”

Ingrid wrote it down.

Halvane came up the hill on the tenth evening. With Kyria and Aurelius and Varra.

“Ister will not move,” said Halvane. At the long table. Before anyone asked. “If the Collective wants to eliminate a world for saying yes to us, it can come and try to eliminate us first. We’ve stopped running.”

“It may not come for us,” said Okafor. “It may only go for them. The small ones. Where we can’t be.”

“Then we’ll be there,” said Varra. She had her rope round her waist. A great many knots on it. “Wherever anyone says yes. The Standing goes where the wall breaks. That’s what Lucas taught us.”

Aurelius didn’t say anything. He put his armoured arm on the table, very gently. The table creaked.

“Not an army,” said Okafor. “Senna’s right. If we go in with the Standing, the Collective calls it an invasion on every band and the small worlds stop listening.”

“Then not the Standing,” said Kyria. “Grandmothers.” She looked at Mother. “And one or two people they’d be very foolish to try and eliminate.”

Ebb answered on the eleventh day.

On the old band. Very faint. Very far. Tiamat caught it from the ninth station and Dot turned it, slowly, at the long table.

We heard, said Ebb.

The council met. All night. They’re very frightened. Some of them want to send you a message saying we never asked. Some of them want to say we’ll take our chances with the star. Some of them want to send a message to the Collective saying we’re loyal, and we’ll wait, and surely someone will come.

A long crackle.

I stood up, said Ebb. At the end. I’m very old. They let me speak because I’m very old.

I said: my grandmother asked. For help. When the Hands came. Three hundred years of tithe paid. And they marked it received.

I said: I don’t know what they can banish us from. I don’t think we were ever in it.

Another crackle.

They didn’t decide, said Ebb. They’re still talking. I’m sorry.

But I’ve put the kettle on.

Mother was at the stove.

She didn’t turn round for a long time. Then she did. With the pot. She put it down on the long table very carefully, in front of everyone, the way she puts down something she’s about to need both hands for.

“Well,” said Mother. “It’s not our choice, then.”

Everyone looked at her.

“It’s theirs,” said Mother. “It’s always been theirs. Every world we’ve ever gone to. The Lenn. The steam people. Merrow. We never once made anyone come.” She looked at Okafor. “We went, and somebody old sat down with a cup, and waited. And they chose.”

“This time choosing might kill them,” said Okafor.

“Not choosing will kill them,” said Mother. “Slower. In the dark. With the swarms.” She looked at the sheet. Mara Quell’s. The hundred and sixty-three stars. “So we go. And we tell them the truth. All of it. The star, and the decree, and what the Collective says it’ll do. And we tell them they can come home with us, all of them, every one, and then there’s nobody left on the world to banish.”

“And if they won’t?”

“Then that’s their choice too,” said Mother. “And we leave the arch open. Our side. In case.”

Okafor looked at her for a long time.

“Who walks out first?” said Okafor.

Mother picked up the pot.

“I do,” said Mother.

Everyone started talking at once.

Mother put her hand up. Everyone stopped. Even Okafor.

“I’ve sent Merrit,” said Mother. “Twice. She’s a hundred and thirteen. I sent Abbe into the steam. I sent every grandmother on this hill out of every arch for four years.” She put the pot back down. “And I haven’t gone myself in a long time. I’ve stood on the red glass and poured for them when they came back.”

“Somebody has to be here,” said Okafor. “For the names.”

“Oona can say the names,” said Mother.

Oona, on her step, by the kitchen door, looked up.

“She knows them all,” said Mother. “She’s been listening every morning since she was five.” She looked at Oona. “Haven’t you, love.”

Oona didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she stood up. In her coat. And went to the middle of the kitchen, where Mother stands at the count. And said, very quietly, very carefully, the first one.

The very first. The one Mother’s said every morning since before Avalon.

And then the next.

She said all of them.

It took an hour. Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Oona stood in the middle of the kitchen in her coat and said every name Mother has ever said, in order, the way Mother says them, without stopping once. Ithre and Arreth and the Lenn and Merrow. Ceren, at the end.

Then she stopped.

And said: “Goodnight, love.”

To herself. Because there was nobody else to say it.

Mother didn’t say anything. She went across the kitchen and knelt down. Her knees; she doesn’t, much. And put her hand on Oona’s face.

“There you are,” said Mother.

I sat with Mother on the porch that night. At the turn. Oona lifting the step. Mother not lifting anything, for once; she was sitting on the top step with her knees up and the pot beside her.

“You’ve never been off Avalon,” I said. “Not since the crossing. Except Root and Oona’s world, and a few others.”

“No,” said Mother. “I’ve been very busy. Pouring.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“I know,” said Mother. She looked out at the town. At the red glass. “Your father didn’t have to go either. To talk to Crane about coming back. He could have stayed in the field and mended the filter and let them say whatever they liked.”

“Why did he go?”

“So he heard it from him,” said Mother. “I told you.” She turned her cup round. “But there’s another reason. I didn’t tell you that one.”

I waited.

“He said,” said Mother, “that if he only ever told me to be brave, and never went anywhere himself, then one day I’d stop believing him.” She smiled. Very slightly. “I’ve been sending grandmothers out of arches for four years, love. Telling them it’s all right. Telling them somebody old has to walk out first.” She put the cup down. “I’d like them to keep believing me.”

So Mother went.

I’ll write who went with her. Short. Because Halvane was right about armies, and Mother was right about grandmothers, and we tried to make it both.

Me. Dory, to take us up the thread and bring us back. Aune, because she’s the one who lands a fighter like a cup and waits, and if anyone came at Lantern’s sky, she’d be in it first.

And the grandmothers. Every one who’d ever walked out first. Merrit. Abbe. Ilas, who’s a hundred and ninety-four, and said she’d never once in her life walked out first for anyone and she’d like to try it before she was two hundred. Oss, with her ears up. Ollin, very tall and very grey. Wenna from Tiel, with her washing folded over her arm. The grandmother from Merrow, in her grey shawl, with her hands shaking, who said she owed it.

And Nan Vey. With her iron.

“I don’t know what they’ll need pressed,” said Nan Vey. “But something will.”

Andraste stood at the top of the porch steps. With Holdfast on its hook behind her. Where it had to stay.

“If they come,” said Andraste.

“Then I’ll be in the arch,” I said. “And Dory will bring the grandmothers home first. And then me.”

“And then you,” said Andraste.

“And then me.”

She looked at me for a long time. Then she looked at Mother, at the bottom of the steps, with the pot.

“Mrs Dask,” said Andraste. “You’ve never walked out first.”

“No,” said Mother.

“Are you frightened?”

Mother thought about it. Very honestly.

“Yes,” said Mother. “I think that’s how you know you’re doing it right.”

Lantern is very small.

A grey-green world with a thin pale sun, very old, very dim. Red. The kind the star-eater eats. With one continent and a great many lakes, and on the shores of the lakes, low round houses with lamps in every window. That’s why it’s called Lantern, Ebb said. Because from the sky at night, before the Hands came, the whole continent looked lit.

It doesn’t now. There are fewer of them. Ninety thousand. On the shore of the biggest lake, in the oldest town.

Dory brought us down at the edge of it. At dusk. On the shore.

The lamps were lit in the windows. Every one. People in the doorways. Small and grey-skinned with their hands folded, the way Ebb holds his. Very quiet. Watching.

They’d heard. Everyone had heard. Banished. Eliminated.

Nobody came out.

Mother walked into the middle of the town. On her own. In her long brown coat, which Nan Vey had pressed. With the pot.

She didn’t look round. She didn’t hurry. She walked the way she walks down to market, slowly, to the middle of the square on the lake shore, where there was a stone bench under a lamp post. And sat down.

And poured herself a cup.

And drank it.

Then she poured another one. And put it on the bench beside her.

And waited.

It took a very long time.

The grandmothers stood at the edge of the square. Behind her. Not close. Not far. Merrit and Abbe and Ilas and Oss and Ollin and Wenna and the grandmother from Merrow and Nan Vey with her iron. In a row. The way grandmothers stand.

I stood at the arch with Dory. Aune was in the sky, very high, very still, where nobody could see her.

The lamps stayed lit in the windows.

Nobody came out.

Then Ebb did.

He came out of a house at the very end of the square. Very small. Very old. With his hands folded. Carrying something.

He walked across the square to the bench. Very slowly. And stopped in front of Mother.

And held it out.

A piece of paper. Very old. Yellow. Folded many times. With a mark on it in faded ink, and under the mark, a word in the Collective’s script that I didn’t need Dot to read.

Received.

“My grandmother’s,” said Ebb. “Your advocate gave it back to me.”

Mother took it. Very carefully. In both hands.

She read it. All of it. I don’t know how; she doesn’t know the language. But she read it the way she reads anything someone gives her that matters. With her whole face.

Then she folded it. And gave it back.

And picked up the second cup. And held it out.

“Somebody’s answered,” said Mother.

Ebb looked at the cup for a long time.

Then he took it. In both hands. And turned round, very slowly, to the town. To the houses with their lamps in every window, and the people in the doorways, and the lake going dark behind them.

He poured it out on the stones of the square.

The whole town saw.

They came out after that.

Not all at once. One. Then a few. Then a great many. Out of the doorways into the square, very slowly, very quiet, with their hands folded, and stopped in front of the grandmothers. And the grandmothers poured. Every one. Merrit and Abbe and Ilas and Oss and Ollin and Wenna and the grandmother from Merrow. Out of pots they’d brought in their bags. Into cups they’d brought in their pockets.

And Nan Vey stood at the end of the row with her iron. And when the first child came up to her, very small, with a grey smock creased from being slept in, she knelt down and pressed it.

They came home over twenty-two days.

Ninety thousand. Through the arch Dory made, from the lake shore to the red glass. With their lamps. Every family carried one. Lit. Through the arch and out onto the glass, so that on Avalon, at dusk, for twenty-two days, the red glass at the bottom of the hill was covered in small lit lamps, going up the hill, one after another, into the town.

Oona said the names every morning. On her own. Then she poured.

Wren counted.

Konrad wrote it down. On a new sheet. At the top it said:

Banished.

And under it: Lantern. 90,214.

And under that, smaller: Came anyway.

Not all of them came.

I want that written down too. Because it’s true, and because Mother would want it written.

Three hundred and eleven stayed. On Lantern. In the oldest houses, on the lake shore. They said they’d been born there and they’d die there, and the Collective could come and do what it liked, and the star could too.

Mother went to every one of them. On the last day. With the pot. She sat with each one for as long as they’d let her.

She didn’t ask them to come. She just sat.

When she’d finished, she came back to the arch. And looked back at the lake, with three hundred and eleven lamps still lit on the shore.

“Leave it open,” said Mother. “Our side.”

Dory left it open.

Ilas walked out first on the second morning.

Not for the whole town; that was Mother. For the end of the lake shore. The far end, where the houses were oldest and the people in them most afraid, and nobody had come out of a door since the decree.

She went on her own. A hundred and ninety-four. Without her stick. Very tall, very bent, in her pale robe, very slowly along the shore, past the lamps in the windows. To the last house. And sat down on its step.

She didn’t have a pot. She’d forgotten it. She told Aune afterward she’d been so frightened she’d left it on the bench in the square.

So she just sat. On the step. With her long hands folded in her lap, the way the Lantern people fold theirs.

The door opened after an hour.

An old woman came out. Very old. Almost as old as Ilas. She looked at Ilas for a long time. Then she went back in.

And came out again with a pot of her own. And two cups. And sat down beside Ilas on the step.

“She poured for me,” Ilas told Aune. In Aldri. On the roof, weeks later, Aune said she was still smiling about it. “A hundred and ninety-four years, and the first time I walked out first, somebody else poured.”

“Was that all right?”

“It was better,” said Ilas.

Andraste slept at the arch.

On Avalon. On the red glass. For twenty-two nights. Wrapped in her coat, on the glass beside the arch to Lantern, with Holdfast across her knees. Not drawn. Not near the arch. Just there.

Nobody asked her to. Nobody asked her not to. Halloway came down every evening and told her she was pregnant and the glass was cold, and Andraste said she knew both of those things, thank you, and Halloway went back up the hill and sent Sera down instead, who sat beside her all night and kept the glass warm.

On the ninth night, Hana came down too. And sat on Andraste’s other side. And breathed. Very slowly. For both of them. And the one Andraste’s carrying.

After that they all came. Every night. Luna, Risa. The five of them in a row on the red glass beside the arch to Lantern, wrapped in coats, with Holdfast across Andraste’s knees, keeping each other warm.

Wren counted them. Every night. Five.

“Six,” said Andraste, on the fifteenth night. Very quietly. “Seven. Counting the two of us who aren’t born yet.”

“Eight,” said Sera. “Don’t forget mine.”

Wren wrote eight.

Mother learned to make a lamp.

On the eighth day on Lantern. Ebb’s granddaughter taught her. She’s nine, and very small, and grey, and very serious, and she’d never in her life met anyone who didn’t know how to make a lamp.

“Everyone knows,” she said. Through Dot. “You learn before you can walk.”

“Nobody taught me,” said Mother.

Ebb’s granddaughter looked at her for a long time. Then she sat down on the stone bench in the square, beside Mother, and took the pot off Mother’s lap, very carefully, and put it on the ground. And put a lamp in Mother’s hands instead. An unlit one. Clay, very thin, with a wick.

It took all afternoon. Mother’s very bad at it. Ebb’s granddaughter was very patient. The grandmothers stood round and watched and didn’t help, because Ebb’s granddaughter said that was cheating.

At dusk, Mother’s lamp lit.

It was lopsided. It smoked. Ebb’s granddaughter looked at it very critically.

“It’ll do,” she said.

Mother carried it home through the arch on the last day. It’s on the kitchen sill now. Beside Sera’s empty cup from the dead world, and Ilas’s lamp, and the moss woman’s jar. It still smokes. Mother lights it every evening at the turn.

The Lenn met the Lantern people at the red glass.

Ollin asked. She’d gone through the arch to Lantern with the other grandmothers, and come back on the fourth day, and stood on the glass at the count watching the lamps come through. Small grey people with their hands folded, frightened, carrying their light.

“We came with our houses on our backs,” said Ollin. To Mother. When Mother came home to sleep one night. “Rolled up. We didn’t know where we’d put them.” She looked at the lamps going up the hill. “They’re carrying their light. They won’t know where to put that either.”

So the Lenn met them. Every evening. At the red glass. Very tall, very grey, in their fine fur, with their grass houses on the eastern plain already woven and waiting. And walked the Lantern people out to the plain, past the walkers, to a lake Dory had made the week before, very big, very still, with low round houses on its shore that the Lenn had woven out of their own grass.

With a hook by every door. For a lamp.

“So they’d know where it goes,” said Ollin.

A fourth world called. On the twentieth day. While the last of Lantern was still coming through.

Not on the old band. Quieter. A thread. Dory felt it. Held out. Very thin. The way Ysse held hers.

She stopped in the middle of the arch with a family going past her and put her hand up.

“Dad,” said Dory. “Someone’s asking.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” said Dory. “It’s very far. Twentieth on Mara Quell’s sheet.” She shut her eyes. “They’re whispering. Like they don’t want anyone to hear.” A pause. “They heard about Lantern. They want to know if it worked.”

I looked at the lamps going up the hill on the other side of the arch. Ninety thousand.

“Tell them yes,” I said.

They came on the twenty-second day.

Aune saw them first. From very high, in Lantern’s dim sky, where she’d sat every day for twenty-two days and nobody had seen her.

“Ships,” said Aune. Through the net. Through Dory. Very level. A pilot reading a number. “Edge of the system. White. Twelve.” A pause. “Not the white ship. Smaller. Faster.” Another pause. “Silver on them. On the outside. Tarnished.”

I knew what that meant. So did Dory.

“Refined,” said Dory.

They had the seal. Of course they did. They came in very fast across Lantern’s dim sky, twelve white ships with tarnished silver running along their sides like the veins on the people inside them, and the first thing they did was put the seal up. Bright. Old. On every band.

Under the seal of the Collective, said a voice. Not the Assize’s. A man’s. Very calm. Very pleasant. The world called Lantern has accepted assistance from outside the Reach. It is banished. It is outside all law.

It will be eliminated.

The last of the ninety thousand were still coming through the arch. A few hundred. Families with lamps. On the lake shore, at the edge of the town, in a line. Very quiet. Very frightened. Looking up.

And Mother was with them. At the back of the line. With the pot. Making sure nobody was left.

The grandmothers had gone through. Dory had sent them, first, the way I’d promised Andraste. Merrit and Abbe and Ilas and all of them. Nan Vey last, complaining.

Mother hadn’t gone. She’d said she’d go when the last one was through.

I stood in the arch.

I didn’t hold back. I’d learned that on Root.

But I didn’t move either. Not yet. I stood in the arch on the lake shore of Lantern, at dusk, with the last few hundred families going through behind me and Mother at the back of the line with the pot, and Dory beside me with Dusk off and her black eyes open, and Aune very high in the dim sky with her fighter, and twelve white ships with tarnished silver coming down out of the sky toward the oldest town on Lantern, and three hundred and eleven lamps still lit on the shore.

And I said, on every band, the way the voice had:

“This is Lucas Dask.”

The white ships didn’t stop.

“There are three hundred and eleven people on this world,” I said. “Who chose to stay. In their own houses. On their own shore.” I looked up at the ships. “And a few hundred more going home behind me. And my mother.”

The ships kept coming.

“You know what I did on Ithre,” I said. “And Arreth. You have the reports.”

They didn’t answer.

“I asked the silver out of them,” I said. “Very politely. It didn’t hurt. I made sure.” I looked at the first ship, very close now, very white, over the lake. “I’m going to ask you the same thing now. Once.”

“Turn round,” I said.

Days 9032–9061. Banished.

The voice at the count: the Collective is a family; matters for members are matters for the Collective; any member world that accepts help from Avalon, Ister or the Hedge has renounced its protection, is banished, is outside all law, and will be eliminated. Mother kept saying the names under it, and at the end: and everyone on Lantern, who’s been told not to put the kettle on. Senna: it’s legal; the Assize postponed you; it didn’t say it would stop the Collective doing anything else. Mara: a hundred and sixty-three stars in three years, four hundred million. Okafor: it’s two ways to die. Senna: it doesn’t want them dead; it wants them afraid; if one small world says yes and lives, the back of the far hall learns the door was never locked. Hesketh: we can’t; another: please don’t come; another: we’ll wait, surely someone will come; Mother: someone did; they said no; that’s allowed. Halvane: Ister will not move; we’ve stopped running. Kyria: not the Standing; grandmothers, and one or two people they’d be very foolish to try to eliminate. Ebb: the council’s frightened; I said I don’t think we were ever in it; I’ve put the kettle on. Mother: it’s theirs to choose; it always was; tell them the truth and they can all come home, and then there’s nobody left to banish. Who walks out first? I do. Oona said every name, in order, for an hour, and goodnight love to herself; Mother: there you are. Mother on the step: your father said if he only ever told me to be brave and never went himself, one day I’d stop believing him; I’d like them to keep believing me. The grandmothers went with her: Merrit, Abbe, Ilas who’d never walked out first, Oss, Ollin, Wenna, the grandmother from Merrow, and Nan Vey with her iron. Andraste: are you frightened? Yes; that’s how you know you’re doing it right. Lantern, lamps in every window, and nobody came out. Mother sat on the bench in the square and poured and waited. Ebb brought his grandmother’s request: received. Somebody’s answered. He poured it out on the stones and the whole town saw. Nan Vey pressed the first child’s smock. Twenty-two days, ninety thousand lamps going up the hill. Konrad: Banished; Lantern 90,214; came anyway. Ilas walked out first at the far end of the shore, forgot her pot, and the old woman inside poured for her: it was better. Andraste slept at the arch for twenty-two nights with Holdfast across her knees, and the other wives came too; Wren counted eight. Ebb’s granddaughter taught Mother to make a lamp: it’ll do; it smokes on the kitchen sill now. The Lenn met them at the glass and walked them to a lake with a hook by every door: so they’d know where it goes. A twentieth world whispered: did it work? Tell them yes. Three hundred and eleven stayed, and Mother sat with each one and didn’t ask; leave it open. Then twelve white ships with tarnished silver and the seal: banished, eliminated. The grandmothers home first; Mother at the back of the line. I stood in the arch. Once: turn round.