Scarecrow

Aune came up the hill with a bag.

I should say what kind of bag. It matters, later.

It was an Ister bag. Gold, the way everything from the second city’s plaza is gold, with handles made of something soft and white that the Aldri spin from the inside of a plant. It was very large. It was so large that Aune, who is very tall, had to carry it with her arm bent up at the elbow so it didn’t drag on the steps. It was so full that the top wouldn’t close.

She’d been on Ister three days. Ilas had asked her to come and help sort Ceren’s things, finally, out of the room at the top of the old house where they’d been kept for twenty years. Aune said she’d been putting it off. She said she’d like to stop putting it off now, because now there was somewhere to bring the ones she wanted to keep.

So I thought it was those. Ceren’s things. His flight helmet, maybe. His books.

It wasn’t those. Those came the next day, in a small plain box, and Aune put them in the drawer by her side of the bed without saying anything, and I didn’t ask, and that’s a different thing for a different page.

The gold bag was something else.

The long table was full. It usually is at that hour. The bread had come out and Mother was pouring, and Oona was lifting the pot for her when it got heavy, which it doesn’t, but Mother lets her. Sera was at the end in the chair with arms, because she’s very round now and Halloway says the chair with arms or nothing. Hana and Andraste were on the bench beside her with their hands on their own middles, which they do without noticing, all three of them, the same way, like they practised.

The children were everywhere. They always are. On the bench, under it, on the stairs, on the windowsill. Teo was sitting on the back of Kesh’s chair with all four arms folded, which Kesh had given up asking him not to do.

Aune put the bag down in the middle of the table. Between the bread and the teapot.

It fell over.

Things came out.

“I went to the plaza,” said Aune. “On the way back to the arch.”

“You said you’d be back for lunch,” said Risa.

“I was going to be,” said Aune. “Then I went past the shop with the comics in the window and they’d put up a sign.” She sat down. She does sit, now, at the long table. It took her three months. The Aldri don’t sit for important things, and she’d decided the long table was very important, and Mother had to explain that that’s exactly why you sit at it. “There was a line. Round the plaza twice. I stood in it.”

“You stood in a line,” said Andraste.

“For two hours,” said Aune. “A woman in front of me recognised me. She asked if I’d like to go to the front. I said no. Nobody gets to go to the front.” She looked at me. “She asked me to sign her copy instead. And her husband’s. And her husband’s mother’s.”

“What was the line for?” said Elin.

Aune reached into the gold bag. Which was lying on its side across the bread, with its top open. And took out a comic.

Long and very beautiful and drawn in gold and white. Like the other ten.

The Asker. Volume eleven.

I’ll say what was on the front, because I spent a long time looking at it.

It was a doorway.

Silver. Tall. Standing on a red shore with a lake behind it, very dark, very still. And in the doorway, a man. Long coat. Silver hair. Black eyes, all black, the way mine go. His hands at his sides. Not moving.

Behind him, very small, very far down the shore, a line of people going home. And at the back of the line, an old woman with a teapot.

And in front of him, over the lake, in the dark of the sky, twelve white ships.

It was Lantern. Of course it was. It was the arch on Lantern and the day the twelve came, and I’d known they’d draw it, Imre Oshan told me they would, but it’s different seeing it on the front of a thing with a price on the back.

“They’ve done Gran’s teapot,” said Ash.

“They have,” said Mother. She’d put down the real teapot and come round the table and was looking over Ash’s shoulder. “That’s the right one. The brown one. Look, they’ve done the chip.”

They had. A very small chip, on the spout. In gold.

“How did they know about the chip?” said Kwame.

“Imre Oshan,” said Mother. “She asked me about the teapot for a whole afternoon.” She sounded very pleased. “I said who on Ister’s going to care about the chip, and she said all of them.”

There were twenty copies.

I counted later. Aune had stood in the line for two hours and then asked for twenty copies of volume eleven, one for every child in the house, and the man at the counter had looked at her and looked at the line behind her round the plaza twice and said he’d have to ask his mother, who owned the shop.

His mother came out from the back. She was the one with the son on the pilots’ wall beside Ceren. The one from the eating hall who says they never pay. Not ever. It turns out she owns the comic shop too, or her sister does, Aune wasn’t clear.

She gave Aune twenty copies. She wouldn’t take anything for them. She said she’d already been paid, a long time ago, on the north side, in a way she couldn’t spend.

She also gave her the bag.

The children took their comics.

I’ll tell you what that’s like, if you haven’t seen it. Twenty children, from Dory, who’s twenty-two and pretends she’s only looking at hers because the others are, to Fen, who’s the smallest and can’t read Aldri yet and held his upside down for a long time before Hana turned it round, all going quiet at once. Not the ordinary quiet. The other kind. Where you can hear pages.

Corin read his standing up. Next to Tiri. They read it together, one copy between them, even though there were two. She turned the pages. He said wait when she went too fast, and she waited. Thessaly watched them do it and rolled her eyes at me across the table, the way she does about them, and then went back to her own.

Sorrel read hers on Dory’s lap, with her green ears going darker and darker.

Linnet read hers on the windowsill. The frost-scales on her arms went pink at the third page and stayed pink.

Teo read his on the back of Kesh’s chair, holding it with the two small hands and turning the pages with the two big ones.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Elin, at the end, where she’d got to first, because Elin always gets to the end first, said: “Oh.”

And turned it round so we could see.

The last page. The last ship turning round over the lake. Going. And the man in the door, very small now, with his back to us, and his hand up.

Letting it go.

“They didn’t play that bit,” said Elin. “On the bands. The Collective. They didn’t play the end.”

“No,” said Aune.

“But the comic did,” said Elin.

“Yes,” said Aune. “The comic did.”

There was more in the bag.

There was always going to be. You don’t need a bag that size for twenty comics. Aune said she’d been very good. She said she’d stood in the second line, the one at the shop with the figures, for only an hour and a half, and she’d only bought what she thought the house actually needed.

Risa asked what the house actually needed.

Aune took out a box.

It was the size of a bread oven. It was gold, of course. It had a window in the front. And through the window, in a little world of red glass and black water and a silver doorway, there were two of me.

I should explain that.

It was the deluxe model. That’s what it said on the side. Aune read it out in Aldri and then in our language, very carefully, the way she reads out ship numbers: Deluxe. The Lantern Shore. With Two Figures, Lights, Sounds, and the Clear-Hull Feature.

“What’s the clear-hull feature?” said Trevor.

“I’m getting to it,” said Aune.

The box came open in four pieces, the way Aldri boxes do, the sides folding down like petals, and there it was on the long table, between the teapot and the bread. A shore. A real-looking shore, as long as my arm, made of something red and glassy that caught the lamp the way the real red glass does. A lake at the edge of it, black and very smooth. And a silver arch.

Standing in the arch: me. The figure. The same as the old one, the one with the light-up eyes, only bigger, and better made, with a coat that was real cloth and moved when you breathed on it. Hands at his sides. Feet on the shore. Not moving.

And out over the lake, on a thin silver rod you could hardly see, was a white ship. Narrow and fast-looking, with silver on it.

And beside the ship, on a second rod, in the air: me again.

Close enough to touch the hull.

I didn’t say anything for a while. I’ll be honest about that.

The children did. Most of them. Kesh said it was the best thing she’d ever seen. Ash said they’d got the coat right, which is what Mother said about volume nine. Goldie wanted to know if the lake was real water, and it wasn’t, it was the black glass, but it looked like it.

Kwame said, “There’s two of you.”

“There were,” I said.

“Both at once,” said Kwame.

“Yes.”

“That’s the bit everyone wants to know about,” said Aune. “In the line. Everyone was asking each other how you did it. A man behind me said you have a twin.”

“I haven’t got a twin,” I said. “My sisters are twins.”

“I told him that,” said Aune. “He didn’t believe me. He said I’d say that, wouldn’t I.”

Then Aune pressed the base of the arch.

The figure in the door’s eyes lit up. Black, with a light behind the black, the way they’d done on the old one. And a sound came out of the shore. Very small. Very far. The sound of a lot of people walking on red glass, going home. And under it, a tiny voice, an old woman’s, saying something I couldn’t make out.

“That’s me,” said Mother. She’d sat down. She’d sat down very suddenly. “That’s me saying keep going.”

“Imre Oshan recorded you,” said Aune. “At the long table. She told me. She asked if you’d say it once more, the way you said it on the shore, and you did.”

“I thought it was for the book,” said Mother.

“It was,” said Aune. “And then it was for this.”

Mother didn’t say anything. She put her hand on the edge of the red shore. Very lightly. The way she puts her hand on the grey ones in the mornings.

Then Aune pressed the white ship.

And its skin went clear.

I don’t know how the Aldri do it. Some kind of glass that’s white until it’s touched and clear while you hold it. Bell would know. I’ll ask Bell.

What it did was: the whole hull of the little white ship went as clear as water, all at once, from the nose back, and you could see inside.

And inside were the Refined.

Forty of them. Tiny. Very tall and pale, even at that size, with long white hair and white robes and silver under their skin, black at the edges. All standing in rows the way they’d have stood. Every one of them carved separately, with a separate face.

Every one of the faces was surprised.

Not frightened. Not angry. Surprised. Forty very small long faces, with their mouths open and their eyebrows up, turned towards the side of the hull where the other figure of me was floating on his silver rod, close enough to touch.

The children loved it.

I want to put that down first because it’s true. They loved it. Kesh laughed so hard she fell off her chair and Teo, who was sitting on the back of it, came down with her in a pile of arms. Goldie wanted to hold the button. Then Efua wanted to. Then everyone wanted to. The skin of the little ship went clear and white and clear and white, and every time it went clear there were the forty faces, surprised, and every time the children shrieked.

“Look at that one,” said Kesh. From the floor. Pointing. “At the back. He’s dropped his cup.”

He had. One of the forty. At the very back. Holding a little cup at an angle, with nothing coming out of it, because it was carved.

“That’s Imre Oshan,” said Aune. “She said some of them must have been holding something. She said if you’re surprised, you drop what you’re holding.”

Fen, who’d been given the button by then, because he’s the smallest and everyone lets him, was counting. Under his breath. In the low hum he uses when he’s being careful. He counted all forty. Then he went back and counted them again.

“Forty,” said Fen.

“Yes,” said Hana.

“In all of them?” said Fen. “In all the ships?”

“Forty in each,” said Hana. Very gently. “About.”

Fen looked at the forty faces for a long time.

“They didn’t know,” said Fen. “Did they. That Dad could do that.”

“No,” said Hana. “They didn’t.”

I’ll say what I thought. Hana says I should.

I thought: those were people.

Not good ones. They came to Lantern to eliminate it. That was the word. Ninety thousand people going home, and an old woman with a teapot at the back of the line, and they came with silver on their ships to put them on frames and drain their queen the way they did Ysse’s, the way they did three thousand six hundred and twelve queens’ before her. I know what they were. I looked all the way down them the way Dory does, standing in that door. I’d do it again. I’ve said that and I’ll keep saying it.

But they were people, and they were surprised, and there were four hundred and forty of them, and now there was a toy.

And twenty children were laughing at their faces on our long table.

I didn’t know what to do with that. So I didn’t do anything. I sat and drank my tea.

Mother knew.

She always does. She came and stood behind me while the children were fighting over the button, and put her hand on my shoulder.

“You’re thinking they shouldn’t laugh,” said Mother.

“I’m thinking I don’t know,” I said.

Mother watched the little ship go clear again. And the forty faces.

“When your father was small,” she said, “in the boys’ halls, the floor below ours, there was a warden who took every toy any boy ever had. Every one. A tin car, a carved bird, a ball made of string. He locked them all in a cupboard at the end of the hall and kept the key on his belt. Everyone knew. Nobody did anything. Then one day he went to put another one in, and the cupboard door came off in his hand, and forty years of toys fell out on top of him all at once. And your father laughed so hard he had to sit down on the landing.”

“Is that a real story?”

“Every word,” said Mother. “He told me himself. He wasn’t laughing that the man got hurt. He didn’t, much. He was laughing because for once the thing that was always going to happen didn’t happen. Because the boys had been surprised by that man for years, and then, for one afternoon, he got to be surprised by them.”

She squeezed my shoulder.

“They’re not laughing at the dying,” said Mother. “They’re too young to think about the dying, and when they’re old enough, they will, and you’ll be there. They’re laughing at the faces. Because the people who come with the frames always know how it’s going to go. They always have. And for once they didn’t.”

She went back round the table and picked the real teapot up again.

“Also,” said Mother, “the one dropping his cup is very funny.”

Lio didn’t laugh.

I noticed that. She was in the doorway, where she usually is, with her hands in her sleeves. She’d read her comic in about four minutes, the way she reads everything, and then she’d been watching the toy.

Not the Refined. The figure in the arch.

I went over to her later. When the button had gone round the table twice and Abena had come down from the long ward and been given it, and was turning the ship clear and white with a very professional face, like she was checking a reflex.

“They’re going to make one of me,” said Lio. Quietly. “Aren’t they. One day. The Marrah child.”

I thought about lying. You don’t, with Lio. It doesn’t work.

“Probably,” I said.

Lio thought about that.

“I’d like a coat that moves,” said Lio. “Like yours.” She was quiet a moment. “And I’d like it to be in the doorway. Not on a frame. If they make one. I’d like it to be in the doorway with everyone else.”

“I’ll tell Imre Oshan,” I said.

“She’ll get it right,” said Lio. “She always does.”

The bag still wasn’t empty.

There was a set of the queens. Small ones, the size of a thumb each, in a tray, all the ones who came through the arches to Root, with the Scarecrow queen at the front. Mother took that one off the tray and looked at it for a long time and then put it on the windowsill, by the glass with the oatmeal stain on it, and nobody moved it after that.

There was a Dory figure, a new one, with the silver net going out from her hands and a bigger nose.

“They listened,” said Dory. She held it up. Turned it. “Somebody told them.”

“I told them,” said Aune. “At the counter. I said she’d been very hurt about it.”

“I wasn’t hurt,” said Dory. “I was accurate.” She looked at it for another moment. “It’s a good nose.”

There was a figure of Aune. In her flight suit. With her fighter, which came apart and went back together, and a small white ribbon on her wrist. Andraste took that one and tied a real white ribbon on it, a tiny one, from the drawer, and gave it back.

And there was, at the very bottom of the bag, a small flat gold card. Aune held that one back. She put it in her pocket and said she’d tell us about it later, and Risa said that was the most suspicious thing anyone had ever done at this table, and Aune said yes.

The other thing she told us about first was the dream room.

The dream rooms are at the park. Under the gold roof, next to the sky rides. The Aldri built them in the first year, and they’re what Wren counts more of than anything else on Avalon, except the dawn count. You lie down in a long soft room under a gold ceiling and close your eyes, and the Aldri make it so you’re somewhere else. A world with birds in it. A sky where you fly. Corin and Tiri used to go to the old Ister, the one with the lamp before it broke, so Tiri could show him where she was from.

Aune said the Aldri had made a new one.

She said they’d been making it for two years. She said she’d known, because one of the dream-makers had been in her squadron once, a long time ago, and had written to her asking questions, and she’d answered them, and been sworn not to say.

“It’s you,” said Aune.

“What is?” I said.

“The new dream,” said Aune. “You get to be you.”

We went the next morning. All of us. The ones who could.

Halloway said Sera, Hana and Andraste could go in the gallery and watch but not lie down, not in the state they were in, and Andraste said she’d been in a worse state than this on the ridge with a sword, and Halloway said that was a different kind of state, and Andraste said it was the same state, it was just a different direction, and Halloway said the gallery, and that was that.

The line was round the gold roof. Twice. Like the comic shop.

Wren was at the front of it. Counting. She looked up when we came and said it was the longest line she’d ever counted at the park. She said it had been the longest line every day for nine days, since the new dream opened. She said the sky rides were sulking.

We stood at the back. Aune was very firm about that.

An Aldri girl about Sorrel’s age turned round in the line ahead of us, and looked up at me, a long way up, because she was already as tall as my shoulder. And looked at Aune. And back at me.

And said something in Aldri very fast.

“She says,” said Aune, “is it really you.”

“It is,” I said.

The girl said something else.

“She says,” said Aune, “she’s going to be you in the dream. In about an hour. And she’d like to know if there’s anything she should know.”

I thought about it.

“Tell her,” I said, “to ask nicely.”

Aune told her. The girl thought about it very seriously, the way Aldri children think about everything. Then she nodded, and turned back round, and stood in the line very straight.

It was another hour and a half to the door.

Inside, it was the long soft room under the gold. A lot of very tall long beds. And one of the dream-makers, Aune’s old squadron friend, who was standing at the end with an expression I’ve seen on Crane’s face when one of his engines is about to start for the first time.

He didn’t tell us his name. He said he didn’t need one in the dream rooms, they’re not about him. He said he was very honoured. He said he’d like me to tell him everything that was wrong.

I said I’d try.

There are two ways to have the dream.

The first is on your own. You lie down and close your eyes and you’re me.

I’ll try and write what that’s like, because I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it from the outside before.

I lay down. I closed my eyes. And I was standing on the red shore of Lantern, with the arch behind me and the lake in front, and everything was very clear.

Not clear like a sharp morning. Clear like the clear-hull feature. I looked at the red glass under my feet and I could see into it. Not into it. Down it. The way I see things. The little bright lattice of it, all its pieces holding hands, going down and down into the shore in lines and rows, every piece in its place, humming very quietly. I looked at the lake and saw the water, the small bent shapes of it, two little ones and one big one, tumbling over each other, never still. I looked at my own hand and saw it, all the way down, the threads and the silver in the threads, and further.

They’d done it. That was the first thing I thought. They’d done the seeing.

There were small gold letters at the edge of things, when you looked at them long enough. Names. Silica, it said, over the red glass, in Aldri and then in ours. Water, over the lake. Very small. Like the labels on Father’s chart. The one on the kitchen wall. The one in the window over the sink now, with the oatmeal stain on it.

The second thing I thought was that it was wrong.

Not all wrong. Just one way. And it took me a while to see which.

You could change things, in the dream. That’s what everyone in the line was there for. You looked at a thing and thought what you wanted it to be, and it was. I looked at a stone on the red shore and thought, bread, the way you’re meant to, and the little bright lattice of it came apart and went back together different, and it was a loaf. Warm. On the shore. It even smelled right.

It was too fast.

That was it. That was what was wrong. The stone didn’t think about it. It didn’t hum. It didn’t do the thing where you ask, and it hears you, and there’s a very small moment where it decides. It just went.

I opened my eyes.

The dream-maker was standing by my bed.

“It’s very good,” I said. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen anyone make. You got the seeing right. All of it. Exactly.”

He waited. He knew there was a but. They always know.

“It’s too fast,” I said. “The changing. In the dream, you think it, and it happens. That’s not what it’s like. You ask it. And it thinks about it. It’s only a moment. But it’s always there.” I didn’t know how to say it better. “It’s not mine. It’s theirs. They do it because they want to. If they didn’t want to, it wouldn’t.”

The dream-maker looked at me for a long time.

“Has one ever said no?” he said.

“Not yet,” I said.

“But it could.”

“It could.”

He thought about that. Then he went to the end of the room, very quickly, the way Asha goes when she’s had an idea, and started talking to the wall in Aldri, and the wall talked back, and Aune said he was asking it how long it would take to put a moment in.

The children didn’t think it was too fast.

The children thought it was the best day of their lives.

I’ll say what they made, because Wren made me write it all down, she said someone had to count it. Kesh made the red shore into cake. All of it. As far as she could see. Then she had to lie very still while the dream-maker explained to her that dream cake doesn’t count. Goldie made a horse out of the lake. Trevor made a ring out of a star, a very small one, and said nothing about it, and Kesh said it was for Teva, and Trevor said it wasn’t, and then said it was.

Elin looked at the names. All of them. For an hour. She didn’t change anything. She went from thing to thing on the shore and read the small gold letters, and when she came out she had a list of thirty-eight she’d never heard of, and asked if Bell would teach her them.

Teo made four more arms. For himself. Then decided eight was too many and put them back.

Thessaly made her brother a better comb. Corin made Tiri a bird. Which is what everyone expected, but it was a better bird than the first one, she said, because he’d had practice.

And Fen, who is the smallest, made the stone into bread, the way I’d done, because he’d watched me do it. Then he asked the dream-maker if he could take it home for Hana.

The dream-maker said no. Dream bread doesn’t come out.

Fen said he’d thought so. He said it was all right. He’d just wanted to ask.

The dream-maker wrote that down.

The other way to have the dream is with other people.

They call it the battle. The Aldri word’s longer, Aune says; it’s closer to the day everyone stood up. But the children call it the battle, so that’s what it’s called.

It’s Root. The second day. When the Hungry came out of the dark over the south wall and everyone was there.

You lie down in a row, up to twelve of you, and you each choose who you are. Dory. Or Luna, or Sera, or Risa, or Hana, or Andraste. Or Dinraal, with his silver and his guns, or Isolde, with her leaves. Or one of the silver army from Hearth: Aurelius with his domes, Gilgamesh holding the north, Rhiannon, Tiamat, Arcturus, Julius, Alexander. The First Weapon. Any of them.

And the Hungry come.

And you fight.

I didn’t play. I’d like that understood. I was asked. Several times. By the dream-maker, and by Kesh, and by the Aldri girl from the line, who’d come out of her dream as me looking very satisfied and wanted to go again as someone else.

I said no. I said I’d been at the real one.

I watched from the gallery instead. With Mother, and Sera, Hana and Andraste, who’d been told no too, and Abena, who’d come to make sure they did as they were told. There’s a long window into the gold, and the gallery can see everything the dreamers see, like looking down on a pond.

So we watched the battle of Root. Again. From the outside. With children in it.

The first row was ours.

Trevor chose to be Luna. He said it was so he’d know what his mother did, all day, on the ice road. Luna was in the gallery by then too; she’d come in late from the north field and sat down with Linnet on her knee. She watched her son make a road of ice out of nothing, across the dream sky, and get it wrong, and make it again, and get it less wrong.

“He’s holding it too tight,” said Luna. To nobody. “You don’t hold it. You let it know where it’s going.”

Goldie chose to be Sera. Her own mother. She went up the south wall of dream Root in fire, the way Sera did, and burned a hole through the first of the Hungry, and came back down and did it again. In the gallery, the real Sera put both hands on her middle and laughed until Abena told her to breathe.

Thessaly was Andraste. Of course she was. With Holdfast, and its working door. Teo wanted to be Andraste too. You’re not allowed two of the same in one row, the dream-maker said. Teo said that was a bad rule. The dream-maker thought about it, and said Teo could be Kyria, who wasn’t on the list, if Kyria didn’t mind. Kyria wasn’t there to ask, so Andraste said Kyria wouldn’t mind in the least, she’d be honoured, and Teo went into the dream as his grandmother with a blade in each of his four hands. Which Kyria has never had. But Andraste said it was close enough.

Kesh was Dinraal. Sigmund was Isolde, because he lost a bet with Tovi. Ash was Gilgamesh. Kwame and Efua were Aurelius and Arcturus, side by side, and argued in the dream about who got to dome the frame. Elin was Risa. Corin was the First Weapon, which surprised everyone, and Tiri was Rhiannon.

And Dory was Dory.

I should say what happened to Dory.

She’d said she wouldn’t. She’d said it was silly; she was there. Then Sorrel asked her to. Sorrel had been told she was too small for the battle, which is true, it’s for ten and over, and she’d been very brave about it, and then she’d said: “Will you go in? And be you? And I’ll watch?” And Dory couldn’t say no to that. Nobody can say no to Sorrel when her ears go flat.

So Dory lay down at the end of the row. And the dream started. And she was very good. Of course she was. She’d been there. She held the net the way she held it on the real day, out from her hands to everyone, and the dream-Hungry came out of the dark, and she was where they weren’t before they got there.

And then the second row went in.

The second row was all Aldri children. Ten of them, and two Hyrrani, from the line. And one of the Aldri, a tall serious girl of about fifteen, had chosen to be Dory too.

It’s allowed, between rows. You can be the same person as someone in the other row. It’s a different part of the wall.

The Aldri girl was faster than Dory.

I’ll be fair. It was the dream. The Aldri girl had been in it nine times that week and knew where the Hungry would come from. Dory had been in it once, and had been at the real thing, where nobody knew where anything would come from.

But the Aldri girl was faster. She got to the south corner first, every time. She caught three of the dream-Hungry Dory was reaching for. And when they both came out, she went straight to the end of the row where Dory was sitting up and said, in very careful, very slow Aldri, which Aune translated from the gallery in a voice that was very nearly not laughing:

“You were very good. You were a bit slow on the left.”

Dory looked at her for a long time.

“I was there,” said Dory.

“I know,” said the Aldri girl. “That’s why I chose you. You’re my favourite.” She paused. “You were still a bit slow on the left.”

Dory came up to the gallery afterwards and sat down next to me and didn’t say anything for a while.

“Was I slow on the left?” said Dory.

“On the real day?”

“On the real day.”

I thought about it. I’ll be honest. I was there. She was beside me on the wall, and I was everywhere, and I remember.

“A bit,” I said.

Dory put her face in her hands.

“She’s fifteen,” said Dory. Through her fingers. “She’s fifteen and she’s never been anywhere and she told me I was slow on the left.”

“She also said you were her favourite,” said Mother.

“That’s worse,” said Dory.

Sorrel climbed onto her lap and put both arms round her neck and said Dory was the fastest person in the whole world and the girl was wrong. Dory said thank you. Then she said the girl wasn’t wrong. Sorrel said she was. Dory said she’d allow it.

Wren counted it for us at the end of the day.

She said more people had gone into the battle that week than had gone into every other dream at the park put together. She said it was the most popular thing on Avalon now, except possibly Pip’s stall on market day, and she’d have to count that again to be sure. She said the dream-maker had told her that on Ister it was even more, and the line at the second city’s dream rooms went round the plaza four times.

She said people chose Dory most. Then Andraste. Then, she said, a long way behind, but going up every day, Dinraal.

I sent that one through the arch to Hearth. In a note. You’re third.

Dinraal wrote back the next morning. One line.

Who’s beating me.

I told him.

He wrote back again. Fair.

Then, an hour later, another one. Is Isolde on the list.

She was sixth. I told him that too. I didn’t hear anything for a day. Then Isolde wrote, separately, and said Dinraal had been very quiet and very pleased with himself for twenty-four hours, and she’d had to remind him that a lot of the people choosing him were nine.

On the second night, Aune told us about the card.

We were on the roof. The six of us. Where we go. Sera on the cushions, because Halloway won’t let her on the slates now, and Hana and Andraste either side of her, and Luna at the edge with her feet over, and Risa lying on her back looking at the sky over Avalon like she’s thinking about putting a storm in it, which she usually is.

Aune sat down between Risa and me. She took the flat gold card out of her pocket. And held it up so the lamp from the window below caught it.

It was a picture. Not drawn. One of the Aldri pictures that moves very slightly when you tilt it.

It was a man.

I’ll describe him. I have to, for what comes after.

He was Aldri. You could tell that, even with what they’d done to him. Very tall. Long face, long hands, the faint shimmer under the skin. But they’d given him silver hair, and a coat. My coat. And his eyes were black. All black. The way mine go.

And he was beautiful.

I don’t know another way to say it. I’ve thought about it. I’m writing this down a week afterwards and I still haven’t thought of one. He looked like someone had read every description of me in Imre Oshan’s book and then made a person out of them who’d never been tired once in his life. He was standing in a doorway. Of course he was. He was standing in a silver doorway with his hands at his sides and the light behind him, and he looked like he’d been carved.

At the bottom, in gold, in Aldri: two words.

“The Asker,” said Aune. “It’s a film.”

The Aldri make films, it turns out.

I didn’t know that. I’d been to Ister a hundred times and never known. They don’t make many. A few in a hundred years, maybe. Each one takes a long time, because the Aldri do everything slowly and very well, and when one comes out, Aune says, the whole planet stops for a day and watches it.

They were making one about me.

“It’s been in the works a year,” said Aune. “Imre Oshan’s writing it. She didn’t tell you because she said you’d try and stop her, and then she’d have to argue with you, and she’d win, and it would be awkward at the long table.”

“She’s right,” said Luna.

“I would have tried,” I said.

“She’d have won,” said Andraste.

“Who’s that?” I said. Pointing at the man in the doorway.

“That’s you,” said Aune.

“That’s not me.”

“That’s Isar Thenn,” said Aune. “He’s playing you.”

She said the name like she was saying the name of a weather. Like everyone knows it. And it turns out, on Ister, everyone does. Isar Thenn is the most famous actor the Aldri have. He’s been the most famous for about a hundred and forty years. He’s played every great Aldri there is. He played the first Speaker. He played the pilot who held the north side alone for three days before the second jump. Aune said she’d watched that one with Ceren, when they were young, and they’d both cried, and then argued about whether you’re allowed to cry at a film about your own squadron.

“He wrote to Imre Oshan himself,” said Aune. “He asked for it. He’s never asked for a part in his life. He said he’d seen the recording from Lantern and he’d like to try.”

It isn’t just him. That’s the other thing she told us.

She said it had the best cast Ister had ever put in one film. Every famous Aldri face there was. Maelis Orr, who’s been on the stage in the second city for three hundred and eighty years and is the grandest woman on Ister, is playing Mother. When Mother heard that, the next morning, she put the teapot down and said she’d like to meet her, and then said, a bit sharply, that she hoped Maelis Orr knew to warm the pot first.

A famous young Aldri actress is playing Dory. They’ve built her a nose. Dory has asked to approve it.

The wives are all famous Aldri too, all five, and Aune said that there’d been more argument about who played Andraste than about anything else in the casting, because every actress on Ister wanted to hold Holdfast. Andraste was very pleased about that. She tried not to be. She failed.

“And who’s playing you?” said Risa.

Aune looked at her hands.

“They asked me to play myself,” said Aune. “I said no. I said I’ve spent forty years being looked at over the plaza. I’d like the next forty off.” A pause. “So it’s someone else. She’s very good. She’s taller than me.”

“Nobody’s taller than you,” said Hana.

“She is,” said Aune. “By a finger. I measured.”

Dinraal, she said, had been asked to play himself, and had said yes in about one breath. Nobody at the table was surprised.

I looked at the card again.

At Isar Thenn. In the doorway. With my coat on.

“He’s better looking than me,” I said.

I didn’t mean to say it out loud. I’d like that noted. It came out. The way things do on the roof, at night, with the six of us, where nothing’s ever been said that couldn’t be. It came out in a sort of mutter.

There was a silence.

Then Risa sat up.

“Say that again,” said Risa.

“He’s better looking than me.” I held the card out. “Look at him. Look at his face. He’s got cheekbones. I’ve got a face.”

“You’ve got a lovely face,” said Hana.

“He’s got a face like someone made it on purpose,” I said. “Mine’s just where it ended up.”

I’ll say what happened then. Because it went on for some time, and it was the nicest thing that’s happened on that roof in a while, and I want to remember it.

Luna went first. She came across the slates from the edge, which takes her a moment now, because she’s careful with the slates, and took the card out of my hand and looked at it for a long time, very seriously, the way she looks at ice before she puts a road on it.

“No,” said Luna.

“No what?”

“No, he isn’t,” said Luna. She gave me the card back. “He’s tidy. That’s all. They’ve made him very tidy. You’re not tidy. You’ve never been tidy. Your mother says you’ve had oatmeal in your hair since you were six. Since I’ve known you it’s been dust from the field, and soot, and ash, and grey, and I don’t know what all. That’s not a face that ended up somewhere. That’s a face that’s been somewhere.” She sat down next to me. “I’d rather that one.”

Sera went next. From the cushions. She didn’t get up. Halloway’s orders.

“He’s very pretty,” said Sera. “I’ll give him pretty.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I’m not finished,” said Sera. “He’s very pretty, and he’s never once sat on the bottom step with his head in his hands because a child was due and he didn’t know what to do with himself. He’s never fallen asleep at the long table with jam on his sleeve. He’s never put a fire out with his coat because I’d set a curtain going and I was crying.” She shifted the cushion under her back. “You’ve done all of those. On the same day, once.” A pause. “I wouldn’t trade you for twenty of him. I wouldn’t trade you for all the Aldri there are and the teapot thrown in.”

“Not the teapot,” said Andraste.

“Not the teapot,” said Sera. “Fine. I’d keep the teapot.”

Hana didn’t say anything for a while. She was lying with her head on Andraste’s shoulder and her hand on her middle.

Then she said: “Lucas.”

“Yes.”

“When you came back. On Root. On the second day. When I called you.”

I didn’t say anything. We don’t talk about that much.

“I didn’t call his name,” said Hana. Very quietly. “I wouldn’t have known his name to call. I called yours. And I knew exactly what you’d look like, coming back. I knew exactly what face. That’s the one.” She closed her eyes. “That’s the face. I’m not interested in any other face.”

Andraste was the shortest.

“He couldn’t lift Holdfast,” said Andraste.

“It’s a film,” I said. “They’ll make him a light one.”

“That’s my point,” said Andraste. “They’ll have to make him a light one.” She put her hand on my knee. “On Hyrran we don’t marry the one who looks right in the doorway. We marry the one who stays in it.” She thought about it. “You stayed in it. Eleven ships. You didn’t move one step.”

“Twelve,” I said. “Eleven, and the one I let go.”

“Twelve,” said Andraste. “Even better.”

Risa didn’t say anything kind at all.

She looked at me for a long time. With her eyes narrowed, the way she looks at a cloud she’s thinking about.

“You’re fishing,” said Risa.

“I’m not fishing.”

“You’re fishing,” said Risa. “You’ve got five women on a roof telling you you’re handsome, and you’re lying there letting them, and the whole time you’ve been holding that card so we can all see how much less handsome you are, so we’ll keep going.”

“That’s not—”

“I’ve seen every face you’ve got,” said Risa. “Every one. I’ve seen the one you make when you’re asking a star to be a step, and the one you make when Kesh is sick, and the one you make when you’ve eaten the last of the honey and you’re hoping nobody’s noticed.” She lay back down. “I’m not trading any of them for a man who’s never had to get up in the night. And I’m not saying it again, so remember it.”

“You could say it again,” said Luna.

“I could,” said Risa. “I won’t.”

Aune hadn’t said anything.

She’d sat there through all of it. Between Risa and me. Holding her knees. Watching each of them in turn, the way she watched them the first night she came up onto the roof, when she was still learning what this was.

When Risa finished, she took the card out of my hand. Very gently. Turned it over, so the man in the doorway was face down on the slates.

Then she leaned over and kissed me.

Not quickly. The way the Aldri do everything. Very slowly, and very well, and as if it were important.

When she sat back, she looked at me for a long moment.

“It’s very much true,” said Aune.

“What is?”

“All of it,” said Aune. “Everything they said.” She looked at the card, face down. “I’ve known Isar Thenn’s face my whole life. Everyone on Ister has. I watched him hold the north side with Ceren, when I was young, and I thought that was what a hero looked like.” She turned back to me. “Then a man came to Ister with grey all down his coat and his hair standing up, and the first thing he asked was whether we were all right.”

She took my hand.

“That’s what a hero looks like,” said Aune. “I’ve seen both now. I know which one I married.”

Nobody said anything for a while after that.

Then Risa, without opening her eyes, said: “Well. That was better than mine.”

“Yours was very good,” said Aune.

“Mine was honest,” said Risa. “Yours was better.”

Sera laughed so hard Hana had to breathe for her. Luna put her feet back over the edge. Andraste put the card in her pocket, and said she’d use it as a target on the ridge, and Aune said Isar Thenn would be very honoured.

I’ll put down the rest of the days briefly. They were good ones. I’d like there to be a page where only good things happen, even if it’s short.

The dream-maker came back on the fifth day. He’d put in a moment. Very small. Now, in the dream, when you look at the stone and think bread, it waits. Only a breath. Long enough to notice. And sometimes, he said, not often, one time in a few hundred, it doesn’t change at all. It stays a stone. And a small gold word comes up at the edge of things, in Aldri and then in ours.

No.

He said the children had complained at first. Then they’d stopped complaining. He said it was the strangest thing. He said they’d started saying please.

Fen went in again. He made the stone into bread. It waited a breath. Then it did.

He came out and told Hana it had said yes. He said he’d asked very nicely. Hana said she knew he had.

Mother wrote to Maelis Orr. A long letter. About how to warm the pot, and how long to leave it, and the chip on the spout, and the sound she makes when she sits down, which she said she didn’t make but which everyone at the long table says she does. Maelis Orr wrote back in a very fine hand and said thank you and asked if she might come and watch Mother pour, one morning, before they filmed. Mother said she’d have to get in line. Then she said she was joking. Then she cleaned the whole kitchen.

Isar Thenn wrote too.

To me. Through Imre Oshan. A very short note, in our language, which he’d learned, Imre said, specially, which took him a month.

I’ll do my best, it said. I know it won’t be you. It can’t be. I’ve only been in a doorway on a stage. You’ve been in one where it mattered.

And under that, smaller:

Your wives are very frightening. Imre told me what they said. Please tell them I agree.

I read that out at the long table. Risa said she liked him already. Andraste said he could still come to the ridge.

The other things. Quickly.

Lantern’s engine is two weeks ahead now. The old woman still brings the engineers lunch. Halvane says he’s going to stand at the stern when it first turns over, and Ilas says he’ll do no such thing at his age, and he says he’s going to anyway, and she says she knows.

No word from Corvan. Dory checks. Every morning. Ilka has the Meridian’s ears on the thin band all night, and nothing comes. Dory says that’s either very good or very bad, and she doesn’t know which, and she’d like to.

Bell has done her sum again, about the cup of tea. She does it every week. It still comes out the same.

The Collective is still considering its response.

Sera is very round. Halloway says days. Sera says she’s said that before.

On the last night, I went down to the kitchen late.

Somebody had left the playset on the long table. The red shore and the black lake and the silver arch. The little figure of me in the doorway. And the other one, out over the lake on his silver rod, beside the white ship.

I pressed the ship.

The hull went clear. And there they were. Forty very small faces. Surprised.

I looked at them for a long time.

Then I heard someone on the stairs. It was Dory. With Sorrel asleep on her shoulder, the way she carries her, because Sorrel won’t sleep if Dory isn’t there.

Dory came and stood beside me and looked at it too.

“I thought you’d be down here,” said Dory.

“I’m just looking.”

“I know.” She shifted Sorrel. “I looked too. The first night.” She was quiet. “I looked all the way down them, that day. In the ships. Before you were beside them.”

“I know.”

“They were surprised,” said Dory. “Really. That’s what I saw. Imre got that right.” She looked at the little faces. “Not one of them had ever thought it could happen to them. Not once. In four thousand years.”

She let go of the button. The hull went white again.

“I think that’s the bit the children like,” said Dory. “Not the rest. Just that.”

She went back up the stairs.

I put the playset on the windowsill. Next to the Scarecrow queen. Next to the chart with the oatmeal stain on it.

Then I put the light out.

Days 9143–9161. Better Looking.

Aune came up the hill from Ister with a gold bag from the plaza; she’d stood two hours in the line round the plaza twice, nobody goes to the front. The Asker, volume eleven: Lantern on the front, the brown teapot with the chip; twenty copies, one per child, from the shop of the woman whose son is beside Ceren; already paid, on the north side. Elin: they didn’t play the end; the comic did. The deluxe model, the Lantern Shore: me in the arch, me beside a white ship, Mother’s voice saying keep going, and the clear-hull feature; forty surprised Refined inside, one dropping his cup. The children loved it. Fen counted forty, twice: they didn’t know Dad could do that. Mother: the warden’s cupboard of taken toys fell on him and your father laughed on the landing; they’re laughing at the faces, because for once they didn’t know how it would go. Lio: if they make one of me, put it in the doorway, not on a frame. The queens in a tray, the Scarecrow queen on the windowsill; Dory’s new nose: I was accurate; it’s a good nose. The dream room: you get to be me; they got the seeing right, every name; it was too fast; you ask, it decides; has one ever said no? Not yet. Kesh’s cake shore; Trevor’s ring; Elin’s thirty-eight names; Fen’s bread for Hana. The battle of Root: Trevor as Luna, Goldie as Sera, Thessaly as Andraste, Teo as Kyria with four blades; Dory as Dory, and a fifteen-year-old Aldri Dory: you were a bit slow on the left. Most popular dream on Avalon; Dory first, Andraste second, Dinraal third. Who’s beating me. Fair. The film: Imre Oshan’s writing it; Isar Thenn, the most famous Aldri actor, plays me; Maelis Orr plays Mother and had better warm the pot. He’s better looking than me. Luna: he’s tidy; you’ve been somewhere. Sera: not for twenty of him; I’d keep the teapot. Hana: I called your name. Andraste: we marry the one who stays in the doorway. Risa: you’re fishing. Aune kissed me: it’s very much true; I’ve seen both now; I know which one I married. The stone now waits a breath, and sometimes says no, and the children say please. Isar Thenn: your wives are very frightening; please tell them I agree. No word from Corvan. Sera: days. Dory at the playset: not one of them ever thought it could happen to them.