Scarecrow

The Prime walked in the square on Carrow.

Mattick saw it. He was there. He’d brought the Hesta down into Carrow’s big port on the first day of the Collective’s new year, with an empty hold and nine more Words given, because he said a trader who doesn’t go home now and then gets noticed. And Carrow’s first day is a holiday. Everyone goes to the square. The Prime has walked in it, every first day, for as long as Mattick can remember. With his son.

Except last year. Last year he didn’t come. Only the voice, on the bands.

This year he came.

Mattick told us at the edge of the Hedge. On the thin band first, a short message, very fast, and then in person, nineteen days later, when the Hesta came out past the Watch into the dark where Lantern’s old sun used to be, and Aune went out to meet him in her Ceren and brought him in.

He sat at the long table. Between Halvane and Kesh. Teo moved two of his arms.

He didn’t drink his tea. He held it.

“He walked the whole square,” said Mattick. “All the way round. Slowly. The way he used to. With the boy a step behind him.”

“Corvan,” said Dory.

“Corvan,” said Mattick. “He didn’t look at anyone. He walked behind his father with his hands behind his back and looked at the stones.” Mattick turned the cup in his heavy hands. “Everyone else looked at the Prime.”

“What did he look like?” I said.

Mattick didn’t answer for a while.

“Younger,” said Mattick. “That’s the first thing. He looked younger. Not much. Ten years, maybe. As if he’d been somewhere and rested.” He stopped. “And he walked too fast.”

“Too fast?”

“Not quickly,” said Mattick. “Slowly. He walked slowly. But every step was a bit further than it should have been. As if the ground were helping.”

Nobody at the long table said anything.

“And the lamps,” said Mattick.

“What about the lamps?” said Dory. Very quietly.

“The square’s got lamps,” said Mattick. “Old ones. Hundreds. On poles, all round the edge. For the first day they light them all, even in daylight, for the Prime.” He put the cup down. “He walked past them. And every one he walked past went out. And came back on again behind him. Brighter.”

Dory went white.

I watched it happen. The colour went out of her face from the top down, the way it went the morning Halvane read the Dory count.

“Like the baby,” said Dory. “In the second city. The baby Dory. When she says her name.”

“I don’t know about any baby,” said Mattick. “I know what I saw.” He looked at her. “My granddaughter was on my shoulders. She saw it too. She said something. I’ve been thinking about it for nineteen days.”

“What did she say?”

Mattick looked at his hands.

“She said: that’s not him,” said Mattick. “And then she said: he didn’t ask them.”

I didn’t understand. Not at first.

Dory did. I watched her understand. She put her glasses on, very slowly, as if she wanted something between her and the room.

“The lamps,” said Dory. “When the baby Dory says her name, the lamps go out and come back brighter. It’s Arreth’s silver in her. She’s too small to know, but it’s still asking. Every time. You can feel it, if you’re there. Like a hand on a door, waiting to see if it’ll open.” She looked at Mattick. “Your granddaughter has a soft one of me. And a soft one of Dad. She’s read the comics. She knows what asking looks like.” A pause. “And she looked at a man walking past a hundred lamps and making them go out and come back, and she knew he hadn’t.”

“Hadn’t what?” said Kesh.

“Asked,” said Dory. “He didn’t ask them. He just walked past, and they did it. Because something in him made them.”

I asked the question I didn’t want to ask.

“Is it the voice?”

Dory didn’t answer. She took her glasses off again. And looked at the window. At the sill, with the soft Mother on it and the Scarecrow queen and the soft miner and the soft Mira Tannock and the playsets and all of it.

“I can’t tell from a story,” said Dory. “I’d have to see him. All the way.” She closed her eyes. “But I don’t think it’s only the voice. I think they’ve started.”

“Started what?” said Mother.

“Making him what Dad is,” said Dory. “Or what they think Dad is.” She opened her eyes. “Something that walks past lamps and they go out. Something the ground helps. Something younger.” She looked at me. “Not something that asks.”

Mattick told us one more thing about Carrow. Before he’d drink his tea.

He said that the morning after the walk, when he went down to the square to load, the lamps were all lit again. All round the edge, on their poles, the way they always are.

And on every pole, at the bottom, where a child could reach, there was a soft one.

Not on the ground. Tied. With string, or ribbon, or a bootlace. Soft ones of me. Of Dory. Of Mother with her pot. Of the queens, and Taveth, and the three. One on every pole the Prime had walked past. All the way round the square.

“Nobody saw who,” said Mattick. “Nobody ever does, on Carrow. It was night. The watch didn’t see anything.” He turned his cup. “The Collective took them down by noon. Burned them. In the middle of the square. Where everyone could see.”

He looked at Sorrel.

“By the next morning,” said Mattick, “there were more.”

Sorrel didn’t say anything. She’d gone very still on the bench beside Dory, with her green ears flat.

Then she asked: “Why the lamp poles?”

Mattick thought about it.

“My granddaughter said,” he said slowly, “it was so the lamps would have someone with them. Next time. When he walks past. So they’d have someone to hold on to.”

The Collective put it on every band.

I should say that. Ilka found it that night. Not the voice, this time. A picture. The Prime walking the square on Carrow, all the way round, slowly, with Corvan a step behind. And the lamps going out as he passed, one after another, and coming back behind him, brighter. Over and over. On every band at once, so the Meridian’s ears had to turn them down.

And under it, the voice. The grave one.

The Collective has its own strength, said the voice. It does not need the criminal of Avalon. It does not need his queens. It has always had everything it needs within the family.

A pause.

Let those who looked outward for protection look again. Let them see who walks in the square.

We watched it at the long table. Ilka put it on the big slate. All of us. The wives, and Mother, and Halvane, and Okafor, and every child old enough to sit still.

The Prime walked round the square. The lamps went out. The lamps came back.

Kesh said it was just a trick. A light trick. Something the Collective did with the lamps.

Halvane said no. Very quietly. He said the Aldri have made films for longer than anyone, and he knew a trick, and that wasn’t one.

Queenie, on Hana’s knee, in her crooked glasses, looked at the slate. All the way down. Through it. At the man walking round the square.

Then she closed her eyes. And opened them again. And looked away from the slate. At Hana’s face.

She didn’t say leaf.

She didn’t say anything at all. She turned round on Hana’s knee and put her face in Hana’s shoulder and stayed there, very still, until Ilka turned the slate off.

Hana held her for a long time after.

“She saw something,” said Hana. Very quietly. On the roof, later. “Even through a picture. She saw something in him.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” said Hana. “She can’t tell me. She’s one.” She looked down through the trapdoor, to where Queenie was asleep below with Kyrie and Luka. “But she’s looked at everything. Everything. Every person who’s ever come up this hill. The Prime’s son, on the recording, the day he wanted Dory. She looked at him. The Refined at the Assize, on the recordings. She looked at them. She’s looked at Taveth’s soup and the Scarecrow queen and the eldest’s planet and a hundred Aldri actors.” Hana’s voice went odd. “She’s never once turned away from anything, Lucas. Not once. She just looks, and then she comes back out, and says leaf.”

She was quiet.

“She turned away from him,” said Hana.

Dory went to the second city the next morning. To the baby Dory. I went with her.

The baby’s mother let us in. The pilot from Aune’s squadron, with her long serious face. The baby was nearly walking now. Copper hair, a good deal of it. She was holding onto the edge of a low table in the long front room, swaying, looking at us.

Her mother picked her up. Brought her to the window. It was dusk. The street lamps outside were just coming on.

“Say it,” said her mother. Very softly. “Say your name, love.”

The baby looked out of the window. At the lamps.

“Dory,” she said.

And I felt it. For the first time. Not watching. Feeling. Something very small and very warm going out of her, out of the window, down the street, to the lamps. Like a hand. Reaching. Not grabbing. Reaching, and stopping, just before it touched. Waiting.

And the lamps went out. Every one. All down the street.

And came back on. Brighter.

Not because she made them. Because she’d asked, and they’d said yes.

Dory didn’t say anything for a long time. On the way home, through the arch, onto the red glass.

Then she said: “That’s the difference.”

“I know.”

“Did you feel it? The waiting? The bit just before?”

“I felt it.”

Dory stopped on the glass. And looked back at the arch.

“The lamps on Carrow didn’t get that bit,” said Dory. “There wasn’t any waiting. He walked past, and they went. Like they’d been pushed.” She put her glasses back on. “They didn’t get to say yes.”

“Or no,” I said.

“Or no,” said Dory. She was quiet. “In the dream room, on Ister, the stone can say no. Now. Since you told them. One time in a few hundred.” She started walking again. “I’m going to write to the dream-maker. I’m going to ask him to make it more. More than one in a few hundred.”

“Why?”

“Because the children should know,” said Dory, “that sometimes it says no. And that when it says no, that’s all right. That’s what makes it asking.”

The eldest heard it too.

Not the picture. She can’t see pictures. But Dory took the words to Root, the night after, and sat by the iron candle with Andraste standing behind her with Holdfast, the way Andraste does every third night now, and told her.

The eldest was quiet for a long time.

The houses have gone still, said the eldest.

“Still?” said Dory.

They have stopped talking to him, said the eldest. Since the door. Since he told them it was finished. They do not ask. They do not tell. They do not speak to each other. A pause. They are waiting.

“For what?”

The eldest didn’t answer for a long time. The plateau got very slightly colder. The way it did the night she learned about them.

I do not know, said the eldest. But I have felt this before. Not from them. From the queens, a long time ago, before the green. When something was coming and they could feel it and could not stop it.

Another pause.

They feel like children, said the eldest, who have been told they are going on a journey. And are sitting very still by the door with their things. Waiting to be fetched.

Andraste didn’t move from the plateau for three nights after that. Not every third night. Every night. Kyria came through and stood with her on the second. Varra brought her people up from the plains and stood them in a ring at the foot of the plateau, inside Crane’s wall, very quiet, in the dark.

Nothing came out of the cracks.

The houses sat very still at the bottom of the eldest. Waiting to be fetched.

On the third night, I went up to Root and stood with Andraste.

She didn’t say anything when I came. She didn’t need to. She shifted a little on the green ground, by the iron candle, and made room. And I stood beside her. In the dark, inside Crane’s wall, with Varra’s ring very quiet at the foot of the plateau and the stars of Root’s sky very far up.

Kyrie was in a sling against Andraste’s chest. Asleep. With her small blunt blade in her fist. She’d fallen asleep holding it, Andraste said, and nobody had the heart to take it away.

Holdfast hummed. Two notes.

We stood there for a long time.

“She asked me today,” said Andraste. “Kyrie. In her way.” She looked down. “She pointed at the plateau. On the playset. The Eldest one, the round one. She pointed at the plateau and then at Holdfast and then at me. Three times.”

“What did she want?”

“To know why I come here,” said Andraste. “I think. She can’t ask. She’s got five words. But she wanted to know.”

“What did you tell her?”

Andraste was quiet.

“I told her that when something’s coming up the slope,” said Andraste, “you go to the top of the ridge and you stand there, where it has to see you. Not so you can fight it. So it knows somebody’s standing.” She shifted Kyrie in the sling. “And then I told her that sometimes the thing coming up the slope is very frightened too. And seeing someone standing at the top is the only thing that makes it stop.”

“Did she understand?”

“She said no,” said Andraste. “She always says no.” She almost smiled. “And then she went to sleep holding her blade. So I think she understood enough.”

Under our feet, very deep, the houses sat very still at the bottom of the eldest. Waiting to be fetched.

The eldest was very still too. Listening.

And above all of it, on the green ground, by the iron candle, a woman stood with a sword point-down and a sleeping child against her chest. So that whatever was coming would know.

I’ll put down the other things now. Because the month went on. It always does. And because if I only write down the frightening parts, Mother says, I’ll forget there were any others.

The Hedge Table met on the thirtieth evening, the way it does. On the rise. At dusk. With the river of blue lighting up down the middle.

Everyone had seen the square. Every world on the Hedge has a slate now, and the Collective made very sure the picture went on every band there is.

The Kiln smith with the burned arms spoke first. He said it very loudly, the way he says everything. He said the Prime had walked round a square making lamps go out, and called it strength, and put it on every band so the small worlds would be frightened.

“Are you?” said Mira Tannock.

The smith thought about it.

“No,” said the smith. “I’ve seen strength. I’ve seen Odra strike iron for forty years. I’ve seen a man hold a mountain up off sixty miners.” He folded his burned arms. “That wasn’t strength. That was a man showing off a thing he doesn’t understand.”

The walker at the end made the mountain sound. Ebb’s granddaughter says it means yes. Mira says it means yes, and I’m frightened anyway.

Then the Caddi grandmother said something. Two words, the way she does. Very quietly.

Poor lamps.

Nobody at the Table said anything for a long time after that.

Then Orra, from Sallow, who’d come through quietly at dusk with river mud still on her boots, lifted her cup. And poured a little of it out onto the river of blue down the middle of the Table.

“For the lamps,” said Orra. “So the river knows them.”

Every one of them did the same. All the way down the Table. One from every world. A little tea on the blue, for the lamps on Carrow that didn’t get asked.

Mother, at the side, with the pot, said she’d never been so proud of a table in her life. She said that, and then she refilled every single cup.

The fourth of Trevor and Teva’s nine meetings was at the General’s.

On Avalon. In his rooms at the end of the long building by the north field, where he’s lived since he came through on the safe channel, all those years ago, and turned the pictures face down. Very plain rooms. Very tidy. A bed and a table and a chair and a stack of old papers squared at one corner, and a small tin box on the shelf.

The General is Trevor’s grandfather. Luna’s father. He doesn’t say much. He never has. Luna says he once went nine days without speaking to her mother and she was sure he was furious and it turned out he’d been thinking about how to propose.

Teva’s father had prepared. He’d asked Luna what to expect.

Luna said: Silence.

It was silence.

The General sat at the end of his plain table in his plain chair, very straight, very old, very grand. Teva’s father sat at the other end. Very tall, very thin, very organised, without his slate, because he’s stopped bringing it. Trevor and Teva sat between them. And Luna, and me, and Teva’s mother, and Mother, who’d brought the pot, because Mother brings the pot to everything.

Nobody said anything.

Mother poured. Turned the handle round. There’s no Oona at the General’s. She turned it round anyway.

The General drank his tea.

Teva’s father drank his tea.

Nobody said anything.

It went on for a long time. Luna says forty minutes. Trevor says an hour. Teva says it was the most comfortable silence she’d ever sat in, and she’s Aldri, and the Aldri are very good at silence.

Then the General put his cup down. And reached up to the shelf behind him. And took down the small tin box.

He opened it. And took out a medal. One. Very old. Very small. A silver bar on a faded grey ribbon, worn nearly white at the edges where someone’s thumb had rubbed it for years.

He put it on the table. And slid it all the way down the long plain table to Teva’s father. Slowly. Without saying anything.

Teva’s father looked at it.

“What is it?” he said. Very carefully.

The General didn’t answer for a while.

“The first one I ever got,” said the General. “For staying. At a post. When everyone else had gone.” He looked at Teva’s father. “I’m told your people stopped running.”

Teva’s father didn’t say anything.

“That’s staying,” said the General. “At a post. When everyone else had gone.” He picked up his cup again. “Keep it. For the boy who married my granddaughter’s son. So he knows what he’s marrying into.”

Teva’s father held the medal in his long hand for a long time.

Then he did something I’ve only ever seen Halvane do. He stood up. All the way. The way the Aldri stand for important things. In the General’s plain small room, so tall his head nearly touched the ceiling. And put his hand flat on his chest.

The General looked at him.

Then the General stood up too. Very slowly. He’s very old. And straight. And put his hand flat on his own chest. The Kasrai way, that he must have learned from Varra.

They stood like that. Two old men. Two fathers. In a plain room. Saying nothing.

Then they sat down again. And Mother poured.

And that was the fourth meeting.

Teva wore it to the next long table. The medal. On its faded grey ribbon, pinned to her robe, just under her collar, where Aldri wear the things that matter.

Her father had given it to her. On the walk home from the General’s, she said. He’d said it was meant for the boy, but the boy would lose it, and she wouldn’t.

Trevor said that was true.

The General saw it at the long table. He didn’t say anything. He looked at it for a long time, over his cup. Then he looked at Teva.

Then he nodded. Once. Very slightly.

Teva told me afterwards that her whole family has been trying to work out for a week what that nod meant. Her grandmother thinks it meant good. Her mother thinks it meant it suits you. Her father thinks it meant I see you.

I asked Luna.

Luna said it meant all three. She said her father has been nodding like that for sixty years, and it always means all three, and he’s never once explained, and that’s the point.

Luna walked home through the north field with me afterwards. She was quiet. She put her hand on the ground once, by the gate, and a little ring of frost came up round it.

“He’s never given anyone one,” said Luna. “Not one. He gave small Sigmund the whole tin, the day of the hall, because he thought he might not come back. But that was different. That was in case.” She stood up. “This wasn’t in case.”

“No,” I said.

“That was him saying yes,” said Luna. “To all of it. To them. To the Aldri.” She looked back at the long building. “He spent his whole life being told who the enemy was. By the government. Every war. Every posting.”

I didn’t say anything.

“He believed them, for a long time,” said Luna. “About the Teeming. About everyone.” She walked on. “And now he’s given the first medal he ever got to an Aldri engineer. For staying.”

The soft cadets came out at the end of the month.

Imre Oshan sent a box. One of each. Liam with his flask. Sera with a spark in her hand that lights up if you squeeze it, which Goldie has already worn out. Risa with very small lightning stitched in silver thread up one arm. Toby with a book under his arm, and the book has a real page in it, tiny, with a column of numbers: hands, and breaths, and heartbeats. Anya with a mirror. Big Sigmund, scowling, which big Sigmund says is very accurate and he’d like eleven.

And Luna. With her chin up.

Luna looked at it for a long time.

“They got the chin,” said Luna.

“Is it right?” said Imre Oshan, who’d come with the box, and who was very nervous.

“It’s right,” said Luna. “It’s exactly right.” She turned it over in her hands. “It’s the chin I had when I was seventeen and frightened and didn’t want anyone to know.” She put it on the windowsill. “I’d forgotten I ever had it.”

“You’ve still got it,” said Mother.

“I know,” said Luna. “I just didn’t know other people could see it.”

And there’s a soft cadet Lucas. Of course there is.

Seventeen. In the training greys. Very thin. Black eyes. And a face that Imre Oshan says they spent longer on than any face they’ve ever made.

It looks frightened.

Not very. Just a bit. Round the eyes. The way Luna’s chin looks frightened. You’d only see it if you knew.

I looked at it for a long time.

Then I put it on the windowsill. Next to Luna’s.

Sallow’s engine is half built.

Halvane sends word every few days, through Dory, from under the river. He says the Thole miners dig better under water than anyone he’s ever seen. He says they sing while they do it, the way they sang in the deep gallery on Thole, because the river’s dark and cold and they’re frightened, and when they’re frightened they sing. He says the fish have started coming to listen. He says Orra says that’s never happened before.

Orra rows every morning. Across the wide brown river, the way she always has.

Eleven days ago, a ship came. Not white. Grey. A survey ship, Asha says, the kind the Collective sends round its member worlds now and then to check they’re still there and still paying. It came down very slowly over Sallow’s widest river and hung there, in the mist, for a whole morning.

Orra rowed.

Across the river. Under the grey ship. Slowly. Pulling against the current, the way she has for forty years, with her lamp on the bow and her face turned down to the water.

The five thousand miners under the riverbed stopped singing. The queens stopped singing. Halvane says the whole engine went quiet, under the water, the way a house goes quiet when someone’s on the stairs.

The grey ship hung there all morning.

Then it went.

Orra rowed to the far bank. Tied up. Sat in her boat for a long time. Then rowed back.

She told Halvane afterwards that she’d never been so frightened in her life. She said she’d thought about every person under the river with every pull of the oars.

Halvane told her she’d rowed very well.

Orra said she always does. She said that was the point. That was what they’d see.

The other things. Quickly.

Mattick’s granddaughter sent a message. Through Mattick, on the thin band. To Sorrel. She’s seven. She’d heard about the girl with the green ears who painted the name on the ship.

It said: I saw him in the square. He wasn’t asking. Tell Dory.

Sorrel brought it to Dory on the red glass. Dory read it. Then she wrote something back, on the same thin band, through Ilka, in the small worlds’ tongue.

I know. Thank you for looking. Keep looking. D.

Mattick went back in ten days later. The Hesta was full again: crates of soft ones, and comics, and Tholes that light up, and a crate the toymakers packed themselves and wouldn’t say what was in. Halvane says he thinks it’s soft ones on string. Already tied. For lamp poles.

Mattick flashed twice at the Watch.

Sorrel has a new letter on her wrist. Under the C. and the M.

It’s for Mattick’s granddaughter. Sorrel doesn’t know her name. Nobody does. So she’s written a small drawing instead. A girl on a man’s shoulders. With her eyes open.

The long record has had another strange week. Halvane says nineteen Aldri families have named sons Tam. After Tam Orrin, who’s playing me young. Tam Orrin is mortified. He came to the dawn count and stood at the back and said he hadn’t done anything yet, the film isn’t even made. Wren said that wasn’t the point. Wren said they’d named them for what he was going to do.

The stars said Not yet this morning. Two hundred and eighty-seven.

And under the stars, and the ring, and Root is listening, and Corvan: soon, and Sallow: early, and Hesta: out, Wren wrote a new line. In her careful hand. Very small. Underlined.

The houses are waiting.

On the last night of the month I walked down the hill into the town. Late. When everyone was asleep.

The lamps on Avalon’s streets are old ones. Kit lamps, from the beginning, that Crane rebuilt. They stand at every corner, very quiet, giving their light.

I stopped at the first one. And put my hand on the pole. And asked it if it would go out for me. Just for a moment. If it wanted.

It thought about it. I felt it think. Not long. A breath.

Then it went out. And came back.

I asked the next one. It did the same.

I asked the third one.

It didn’t.

It stayed lit. Very steady. Very bright. Humming very slightly under my hand, the way Holdfast hums.

No.

I stood there for a long time with my hand on the pole. In the dark street, under the one lamp that had said no.

Then I said thank you. Out loud. To a lamp.

And went home.

Days 9896–9937. Seen.

The Prime walked the square on Carrow on the first day of the new year, the first time in two, with Corvan a step behind looking at the stones. Mattick: younger, ten years maybe, as if he’d rested; slow, but every step further than it should be, as if the ground were helping; and every lamp he passed went out and came back brighter. His granddaughter on his shoulders: that’s not him; he didn’t ask them. Dory went white: like the baby Dory, who asks without knowing; he didn’t ask; something in him made them. Is it the voice? Not only; they’ve started making him what they think Dad is; not something that asks. The morning after, a soft one tied to the foot of every lamp pole he’d passed, so the lamps would have someone to hold on to next time; burned by noon; more by morning. The Collective put it on every band; the grave voice: the family has its own strength; look again; see who walks in the square. Kesh: a trick. Halvane: I know a trick; that isn’t one. Queenie looked all the way through the picture, came back out, and turned her face into Hana’s shoulder and didn’t say leaf; Hana: she’s never once turned away from anything. In the second city the baby Dory said her name at the window, and I felt it: reaching, and stopping just before, waiting; the lamps went out because she asked and they said yes. Dory: the lamps on Carrow didn’t get the waiting; they didn’t get to say yes, or no; she’ll ask the dream-maker to let the stone say no more often, because that’s what makes it asking. The eldest: the houses have gone still since the door; they don’t ask or tell or speak to each other; like children told they’re going on a journey, sitting very still by the door with their things, waiting to be fetched. Andraste on the plateau every night; Kyria on the second; Varra’s ring at the foot inside Crane’s wall; nothing came out. I stood with her on the third, Kyrie asleep in the sling with her blade; she pointed at the plateau and Holdfast and her mother three times; you stand at the top so it knows somebody’s standing; sometimes the thing coming up the slope is frightened too; no; and she slept holding her blade. The Hedge Table: the smith: that wasn’t strength, that was a man showing off a thing he doesn’t understand; the Caddi grandmother: poor lamps; Orra poured a little tea on the river of blue, for the lamps, and every world did the same. The fourth meeting, at the General’s plain rooms; Luna: silence; forty minutes, or an hour; the first medal he ever got, for staying at a post when everyone else had gone, slid down the table: I’m told your people stopped running; that’s staying; so he knows what he’s marrying into. Teva’s father stood with his hand on his chest, and the General stood and did the same. Teva wears it under her collar; the General nodded once; good, and it suits you, and I see you; Luna: all three, for sixty years. Luna: he gave small Sigmund the tin in case; this wasn’t in case; he spent his whole life being told who the enemy was. The soft cadets: Liam’s flask, Sera’s spark that Goldie wore out, Risa’s silver lightning, Toby’s book with a real page of counts, Anya’s mirror, big Sigmund scowling, and Luna’s chin: the chin I had at seventeen; I didn’t know other people could see it. Soft cadet Lucas, frightened round the eyes; next to Luna’s. Sallow half built; the miners sing under the river and the fish come to listen. A grey survey ship hung over the widest river all morning; Orra rowed under it; the engine went quiet like a house with someone on the stairs; it went; I always row well; that’s what they’d see. Mattick went back in with a crate the toymakers packed and wouldn’t name; Halvane thinks it’s soft ones already tied on string. Mattick’s granddaughter to Sorrel: he wasn’t asking, tell Dory; Dory: keep looking; Sorrel’s wrist: a girl on a man’s shoulders with her eyes open. Nineteen Tams, named for what he’s going to do. Two hundred and eighty-seven. Wren: The houses are waiting. On the last night I asked the street lamps in the town; two went out and came back; the third said no, and stayed lit, humming; I said thank you, out loud, to a lamp.