Scarecrow

The first house said it at dawn.

The Overseer had been going at dusk. Every evening since the birthday. Kneeling by the iron candle with his hand flat, and Dory beside him carrying the words, and the two houses at the bottom of the deepest crack practising.

Good morning, they said. At dusk. Every evening. Very carefully. The wrong time of day.

The Overseer told them every evening that it was the wrong time of day.

They said every evening that they knew.

Then on the nineteenth evening, the second house said something different. It said: When is the right time?

The Overseer thought about it. He said he’d never been asked that. He said in four years of learning it himself, nobody had ever asked him when.

“When it starts,” said the Overseer. In the end. “The day. When the light comes. When you didn’t know if it would, and it did.”

The houses were quiet for a long time.

Then we would like to try it then, said the first house.

So the Overseer went at dawn.

He came through the Root arch in the dark, with Dory, and walked up the plateau past Varra’s ring, past the place where Andraste stands on her nights, to the iron candle. And knelt. And put his hand flat on the green ground.

And waited.

Root’s dawn comes up over the southern range. Over the white line of cloud the Scarecrow queen put back. It goes gold on the peaks first, very slowly, and then all at once it’s on the plains, and then on the plateau, and the grass lifts a little, the way it does, and the eldest starts to sing.

The Overseer waited for the light to touch the iron candle.

Then he said it. Out loud. On the green ground. To the bottom of the world.

“Good morning.”

The first house didn’t answer for a long time.

Dory says she thought it wasn’t going to. She says she was going to tell the Overseer it was all right, it was only the first time, it had taken him four years.

Then the first house said it back.

Good morning.

And Dory says it was different. She says she can’t explain how. She says the words were the same as every evening, at dusk, the wrong time. But they weren’t the same at all.

She says it sounded like it had been surprised. By the light. By being there when it came.

The Overseer didn’t say anything. He knelt by the iron candle with his hand on the grass until the sun was all the way up over the southern range. Then he got up, very slowly, and came home through the arch, and sat on his step by the river with his cup, and didn’t say anything for the rest of the day.

Mother went down in the afternoon and sat with him. She didn’t say anything either.

She told me later he’d cried. Just a bit. She said it was the first time she’d ever seen a Sorn cry, and that she’d sat with a great many Sorn, the swaying ones, every morning for years, and none of them ever had.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He said it took him four years,” said Mother. “And it took them nineteen days.” She poured herself a cup. “He said he wasn’t jealous. He said he was very glad. He said that’s how you know you’ve learned it properly. When someone learns it faster from you than you did from anyone, and you’re glad.”

That was the first thing.

The second was the river.

Isar Thenn came up the hill with his bag. Again. Carrying it himself. He’s playing my father now, in the prequel, in the memories at the start. Mother said yes, at the long table, sitting very suddenly on the top step. He said he’d only come for a few days. He said there was one thing he needed to learn that he couldn’t learn from a book or a recording or Imre Oshan.

He needed to learn the rope.

I should say what the rope is. For anyone who doesn’t know.

Before I was born, in the war on Earth, there was a river. And a man in it, in the black water, with his leg pinned under a girder. And my father went in after him. With a rope round his middle and no light. Because he didn’t need a light. Because he could see. The water, and the girder, and the bolts in the girder, and the man.

The man was Ezra Holt. He’s on the porch most evenings. He’s got the heart of a man of forty and the knees of a man of seventy-two. And he’s never once told the story without stopping at the same place, where my father put his hand on the girder in the dark, and the bolts gave up.

Isar Thenn needed to learn that.

Holt took him down to the river.

Our river. On Avalon. At the bottom of the hill, past the north field, where it runs deep and dark under the old kit bridge that Crane rebuilt. At night. Because Holt said you can’t learn it in the daylight. You can’t learn what it’s like to go into black water if you can see.

I went with them. I didn’t mean to. Holt asked. He said it would be right for the son to be there.

Holt didn’t make Isar Thenn go in. Not at first. He sat on the bank in the dark with his bad knees and told it. All of it. Slowly. The way he always does. The black water and the cold and the girder and his leg, and how long it was before anyone came, and how he’d stopped shouting because he’d thought there was no point.

And then the rope.

“He didn’t call out,” said Holt. “Your man. He didn’t say I’m coming. He just came. I felt the water move. And then I felt a hand. On my shoulder. In the dark.”

He stopped. The way he always stops.

“And then he put his other hand on the girder,” said Holt. “And he looked at it. I couldn’t see him look. But I felt him. The way you feel someone looking at the back of your neck.” Holt rubbed his knees. “And the bolts just gave up. All of them. Like they’d been asked.”

He looked at me. In the dark.

“They’d been asked,” said Holt. “Hadn’t they. I didn’t know that then. I know it now. I’ve watched you.”

“Yes,” I said.

Isar Thenn sat on the bank for a long time after that. Not saying anything.

Then he took his coat off. And his shoes. And tied the rope round his middle. The way Holt showed him. A real rope, from Rory’s barn, very old, very rough.

And went into the river.

In the dark. Not deep; Holt made sure of that, and I was there, and nothing in that river would let anything happen to anyone I was watching. But dark. Very cold. Very black.

He went in up to his chest. And stood there. And put his hand out, under the water, flat, the way you’d put it on a girder you couldn’t see.

And stayed.

He stayed for a long time. Long enough that Holt got up off the bank, very slowly, on his bad knees, and went and stood at the edge of the water.

“That’s enough,” said Holt. “You’ve got it.”

Isar Thenn didn’t move.

“I haven’t,” he said. Very quietly. Through his teeth; he was shaking. “I can’t see anything. I can’t see the bolts. I can’t see the girder. I’m standing in the dark with my hand out and I can’t see anything at all.”

“No,” said Holt. “You can’t. Neither could I.” He waded in. Up to his own knees. In his boots. “That’s the bit you need. Not what he could see. What it’s like not to. And to have someone come anyway.”

He put his hand on Isar Thenn’s shoulder. In the dark. In the water.

The way my father did.

Isar Thenn came out of the river. Holt brought him out. And sat him on the bank, and put his coat round him, and I asked the water on him to be warm, and it was.

He didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then he said: “I’ll play it from his side. Holt’s. Not your father’s.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because nobody can play what your father saw,” said Isar Thenn. “Nobody. Not even you could, if you hadn’t got his eyes.” He pulled the coat round him. “But anyone who’s ever been in the dark can play a hand on their shoulder. And knowing it’ll be all right.”

Holt didn’t say anything. He sat down on the bank beside him. And the three of us sat there in the dark by the river until the sky started to go grey.

Mother was on the porch when we came up the hill. With a cup for each of us. Even though nobody had told her when we’d be back.

She gave Isar Thenn his first. And looked at him for a long time. At his wet hair, and the coat, and his face.

“Did you learn it?” said Mother.

“I learned the shoulder,” said Isar Thenn.

Mother nodded. Slowly.

“That’s the right half,” said Mother. “That’s the half he’d have wanted.”

The fifth of Trevor and Teva’s nine meetings was at the long table.

Because Mother is Trevor’s grandmother. By every kind of counting. And Teva’s father, who has stopped bringing his slate and now has the whole family in his head, said it was obvious, and he was only surprised it had taken till the fifth.

So the engineer’s family came up the hill on a bright morning. Teva’s father and mother and grandmother, and Tovi, and an uncle nobody had met before who turned out to be very quiet and very good at holding babies. And sat at the long table. All of them. On the bench. Even the grandmother, very slowly, on her stick, because Mother made her.

And Mother poured.

I’ve written about Mother pouring a great many times. I’ll write about it once more, because this time was different.

She poured for Teva’s grandmother first. And Teva’s father. And the uncle, with Luka on his knee, very warm. And Tovi, and Teva. And every time, she put the pot down and turned the handle round. Towards Oona, at her elbow. Who lifted it, and poured the next.

Teva’s mother watched.

She’d watched it before. At the first meeting, and in the film, on the great wall, the long table and Maelis Orr. But she watched it differently this time. Very still. The way Aldri watch something they want to learn.

When it came to her, Mother poured. And put the pot down. And turned the handle round.

Towards Teva’s mother.

Teva’s mother looked at the handle for a long time.

Then she looked at Mother.

“You’re passing it,” said Teva’s mother. Very slowly. In our language. “To me.”

“I’m passing it,” said Mother.

“We don’t have handles,” said Teva’s mother. “I told you. In my house. A handle is for passing to someone else. We never had anyone.”

“I know,” said Mother. “You’ve got us now.” She sat back. “Go on. Pour for me. I’ve done forty.”

Teva’s mother picked up the pot.

By the handle. For the first time, I think, in her life. She held it the wrong way at first, too tight, the way people do when they’ve never held a thing that’s meant to be passed. Then she held it right. Oona showed her. Oona’s been lifting that pot for years, and she put her small hand over Teva’s mother’s long one and moved it a finger’s width, and said there.

Teva’s mother poured. For Mother.

The first pour. Then the second. Lower.

Then she put the pot down. And looked at the handle.

And turned it round.

Towards her own mother. Teva’s grandmother. At the end of the bench.

Nobody at the long table said anything.

Teva’s grandmother looked at the handle, facing her. She didn’t pick it up for a long time. Her long old hands stayed folded on the table.

Then she picked it up.

And poured for her daughter.

I’ll say what happened after that, because Andraste counted it, and Andraste doesn’t usually count anything except forms.

The pot went round the long table nineteen times. Every Aldri at the table poured for someone. And put it down. And turned the handle round. And the next one poured for someone else. All the way round. The uncle, holding Luka in one arm and pouring with the other. Tovi, for Sigmund. Teva, for Trevor, and then for Mother, and then, very carefully, for Teva’s father, who’d never in his life had his daughter pour for him, because in their house nobody ever passed anything.

He drank it. All of it. Then he held the cup out for more.

Teva laughed. Out loud. The way Lio laughed on the plateau.

When they went home, Mother gave Teva’s mother a pot.

Not hers. Not the one with the chip. A new one, from the market in the town, brown, very plain. With a handle.

She’d chipped the spout herself. That morning. Very small. With the back of a spoon. I watched her do it, at the kitchen window, before anyone came.

“So it knows it’s been passed,” said Mother.

Teva’s mother held the pot in both hands. The Aldri way. For a long time. Then she shifted it. And held it by the handle.

“I’ll pour for the street,” said Teva’s mother. “The whole street. Every door. They all came out to watch, the day you came. Every one of them. I’d like to pour for every one.”

“That’s a lot of tea,” said Mother.

“We’ve got a lot of time,” said Teva’s mother. “We stopped running.”

Imre Oshan heard about it. Of course. The eating hall woman told her. And by the end of the week there were brown pots with handles in every shop window in the third city.

The toymakers made one too. Small, the size of a thumb, brown, with a tiny chip in the spout. It comes in a box with two very small cups.

The card says: For passing.

Halvane says the third city has been pouring for its neighbours every evening since. He says he’s never seen so many Aldri on their front steps at once. He says Ilas has started going out with a cup and standing at the end of their street, at dusk, very slowly, on her stick, and waiting for someone to pour for her.

He says somebody always does.

The Hedge Table met for the fifth time on the thirtieth evening. And a new world asked.

It was the hill town. The second world on the list. Where Mattick gave the Word to an old man who’d bought a soft Taveth, and the old man said then I’ll tell the hill.

He’d told the hill.

The world is called Orsk. It’s high and cold and very steep, all mountains, with towns built up the sides of them in steps, one house on top of the next, so that from below a town looks like a staircase going up into the cloud. The people are small and stocky and wear a great many layers. They grow a kind of barley in terraces, and keep long-haired animals for wool, and they’ve lived there since before the Collective had a name.

Their sun is on the list. Eleven months.

They asked early. Like Sallow.

The old man came himself. Through Dory’s arch, at dusk, onto the eastern plain. He’s very old. Very small. In nine layers of wool, Wren counted. With a soft Taveth tied to his belt by a bit of string, the way you’d tie a lantern.

His name is Gath. He sat at the Table between Orra and the Caddi grandmother, and Mother poured him a cup, and he looked at it for a long time before he drank it.

Then he asked.

He didn’t ask the way Orra did, or Mira. He asked very slowly, in a high thin voice, in the hill tongue, and Ilka translated.

He said: Our mountains have never moved. Not since the world was made. We’d like them to keep not moving. Just somewhere warmer.

Mira Tannock laughed. The miner’s laugh. Then she put her blue hands on the river of blue and said that Thole would send miners, again, if they were wanted. Orra said Sallow’s engine was nearly done and Sallow’s people would send boats, if boats were any use on a mountain, which she doubted, but she’d ask.

The Kiln smith said iron.

The walker at the end made the mountain sound. Gath turned round very slowly in his nine layers and looked at her. A long way up.

Then he made the same sound back. Exactly the same. Very low.

The walker went completely still.

Ilka says the hill tongue and the walkers’ tongue are related. Very distantly. Nobody knew. Gath didn’t know. The walker didn’t know. They looked at each other across the end of the Table for a long time, in the light from the river of blue.

Then the walker made the sound again. And Gath made it back.

Nobody knows what they said. Ilka says she doesn’t think either of them does yet. She says she thinks it was something like hello. Or you too. Or I didn’t know there was anyone else.

After the Table, when everyone was getting up, Gath didn’t go back to the arch.

He went to the end of the Table. Where the walker was. Standing on the grass in her shoes, the first pair Rory made, very still, very tall, looking down at him.

He was about as tall as her ankle.

He looked up at her for a long time. In his nine layers. With his soft Taveth on its string.

Then he made the sound again. Quietly. Just for her.

The walker bent down. It takes a walker a long time to bend down. Everyone on the rise stood very still while she did it, because when a walker moves you stand still; it’s polite, and it’s sensible.

She put her hand on the grass. Flat. Palm up. In front of him. It was bigger than the long table.

Gath looked at it.

Then he climbed on.

He sat in the middle of her palm with his legs crossed and his soft Taveth in his lap, and she lifted him. Slowly. All the way up. To where her face was. In the dark, under the stars, with the river of blue lit up on the Table far below them.

And they talked. In the old sound. For a long time. Up there.

Ilka listened from the slope. She says she could only understand one word in ten. She says she thinks the walker was telling him about her valley, and her shoes, and how it doesn’t hurt any more. She says she thinks Gath was telling the walker about his mountains, and how they’ve never moved, and how he’d like them to keep not moving, just somewhere warmer.

She says at the very end, the walker said something, very low, very long, and Gath laughed. A high thin old man’s laugh, from very high up, in the dark.

Ilka says she doesn’t know what was said.

She says she’s fairly sure it was a joke about short people.

The Table said yes. Of course it did. Before the kettle went cold.

Halvane says Orsk will be the hardest yet. He says you can’t put an engine under a lake or a river, not on Orsk. He says it’ll have to go under the mountains themselves. He says the Thole miners will love it.

Mira Tannock says he’s right. She says they’ve been reading about Orsk’s rock all week and they can’t wait.

Sallow’s engine is three-quarters built.

Bell came down from the Meridian the morning after the Table with the distance on a slate. She said the eater coming for Sallow’s star is on time. Not faster. Not slower. She said she’d been watching it every night since Thole, waiting for it to speed up, the way Thole’s did, the way it does when something’s pulling it.

It hasn’t.

“They don’t know,” said Bell. “The Collective. They don’t know Sallow’s leaving.” She put the slate down. “If they knew, they’d pull it. They’d make sure. The way they did with Thole.”

“So Orra’s rowing well,” said Mother.

“Orra’s rowing very well,” said Bell.

Halvane says forty days. Bell says the eater’s sixty-one.

Bell says that’s the first time she’s ever been happy with a sum.

I went to Sallow on the forty-ninth day. Quietly. At night. To see the engine.

Orra met me at her landing with her lamp. The girl from the end of the landing was with her. The one whose mother had the river-cough. Her mother’s well now. Halloway’s been eleven times. The girl had her soft Mother under her arm, the one with the chipped pot, its brown coat gone darker where her hand holds it.

“She wanted to see the miners,” said Orra. “She’s heard them singing. Through the floor of the stilt house, at night. She thinks they’re the river.”

So the three of us went down.

You go down through a shaft the Thole miners cut in the high bank, where the water doesn’t reach. A long way. Into the dark under the riverbed. And the further down you go the louder the singing gets.

Five thousand miners. Singing. Under a river. In a dark cut out of blue-grey rock, with their lamps turned low and their picks going, very steady, in time with the song.

The girl stopped at the bottom of the shaft. And held her soft Mother very tight.

And listened.

“It’s not the river,” she said. Very quietly.

“No,” said Orra.

“It’s people.”

“It’s people,” said Orra. “From a cold world, far away, that was left to die. Who came here to dig so that we wouldn’t be.”

The girl thought about that for a long time.

Then she went over to the nearest miner. A big woman, broad, with blue in the creases of her hands. Brom’s mother, it turned out. She was swinging a pick at the gallery wall, very steady, singing.

The girl stood beside her. And held up her soft Mother.

Brom’s mother stopped. Looked down. At the girl, and the soft one, and the chipped pot.

“She pours for everyone,” said the girl. “Dory said.”

Brom’s mother looked at the soft one for a long time. At the chip in the brown pot. At the hem, gone dark with river water and the girl’s hand.

Then she put down her pick. And knelt down. And put her blue hand flat on the soft one’s head. The way the miners put their hands on the rock, when they go down a new shaft, so it knows them.

“She poured for us,” said Brom’s mother. “On Avalon. When we came out of the arch with nothing. She poured for every one of us.”

She picked up her pick again.

And started singing again. Louder. And the girl stood beside her with the soft one and sang too, without knowing the words.

Kyrie has two new words.

Andraste’s been teaching her. The two Kyria said she should learn. The old Hyrrani ones. The one for holding something. And the one for holding on to it. Andraste says Kyrie’s too small to know the difference, but she wants her to have the words in her mouth before she’s old enough to understand them, so that when she does understand, the words are already hers.

So every evening at bedtime, Andraste sits by the basket with Holdfast leaning on the end of it, and holds Kyrie’s hand, loosely. And says the first word.

Then she holds Kyrie’s hand very tight. And says the second.

And then she lets go.

Kyrie can say the first one now. Badly. With her mouth full of the old sounds.

She can’t say the second one yet.

Andraste says that’s the right way round.

Tam Orrin asked me something at the dawn count. He’s been coming every few days. He stands at the back with his slate and writes down what Wren writes, and doesn’t say anything, and goes home.

This time, when the count was done and Wren had written Orsk: asking, he came over to me. Very tall, very thin, very young.

“Your first morning,” he said. “On Avalon. After the lander. Before any of it. What did you do?”

I thought about it. I had to think hard. It was a long time ago.

“I looked at the ground,” I said. “All the way down. To see what it was made of.”

“And?”

“And it was made of things I knew,” I said. “Silica. Iron. Water. Carbon. Things from the chart on the kitchen wall. My father’s chart.” I looked at the red glass under our feet. “It was a whole new world, and it was made of the same things as home. I sat down. In the dirt. Next to the kit. And I didn’t get up for a long time.”

Tam Orrin didn’t write that down. He just looked at me.

“Were you happy?” he said.

“I was seventeen,” I said. “And frightened. And on my own. And the ground was made of the things on my father’s chart.” I thought about it. “Yes. For about as long as it takes to say good morning.”

He went home. He didn’t come to the count for a week after that. When he came back, Wren says, he stood at the back, the way he does, and before the count started he sat down on the red glass. Just for a moment. And put his hand flat.

Wren says she didn’t ask him why. She says she knew. She says everyone who stands at that count long enough ends up doing it, sooner or later.

The other things. Quickly.

Dory says the gladness has changed. Far away. Past the Watch. In the Collective, where the houses went. She says for the first week it was very loud, the houses and the thing with a face on, being glad together. Now it’s quieter. She says it sounds like work. Like a forge, very far away, when someone’s striking and striking and not stopping.

She says she doesn’t know what they’re making.

She says she can guess.

The toymakers wrote to the Overseer.

Very respectfully. They’d heard about the plateau, and the dawn, and good morning. Not the houses; Halvane made sure. Just an old Sorn officer who goes up a hill every morning to say good morning to someone who’s learning.

They asked if they could make a soft one of him.

The Overseer wrote back. One line. He showed it to Mother before he sent it.

Make the cup instead.

So they made a cup. Soft. Grey. Plain. The size of a child’s two hands together. With nothing on it at all.

The card says: Somebody gave him this.

Mother has one on the sill. Next to the soft Ister, and the leaf, and Luna’s chin, and the playset with the forty surprised faces. She says it’s the only one of the lot she’d have made herself.

Corvan hasn’t sent his word.

Sorrel’s started writing a new letter under the C. Every morning. She says it’s for when he does. She says she wants to be ready.

It’s a Y.

She says it’s for yes.

The stars said Not yet this morning. Two hundred and eighty-eight. Orsk’s star asked to be asked, the morning after Gath sat at the Table. It said it very slowly, in a cold thin voice, from very high up.

Wren wrote it at the top of the slate.

Orsk: asking.

And under that, the line she’s written every morning since the birthday, in her careful hand, very small.

Two: learning.

Days 9962–10006. Good Morning.

The two said good morning at dusk for nineteen evenings, the wrong time; then: when is the right time? When it starts; when the light comes, when you didn’t know if it would, and it did. The Overseer went at dawn and waited for the light on the iron candle; good morning; and the first house said it back, and it sounded surprised. He sat on his step all day; Mother: the first Sorn she’s ever seen cry; four years, and they took nineteen days; he wasn’t jealous; that’s how you know you learned it properly. Isar Thenn came to learn the rope. Holt took him to our river at night, because you can’t learn black water in daylight; the hand on the shoulder, and the bolts that gave up as if asked; they’d been asked, hadn’t they; I’ve watched you. Isar went in to his chest in the dark and put his hand out flat and could see nothing; Holt waded in: that’s the bit you need, not what he could see, what it’s like not to, and to have someone come anyway; his hand on Isar’s shoulder. I’ll play it from Holt’s side; anyone who’s been in the dark can play a hand on their shoulder. Mother: did you learn it? The shoulder. That’s the right half. The fifth meeting at the long table; the uncle good with babies; Mother turned the handle towards Teva’s mother: you’re passing it, to me; you’ve got us now; Oona moved her hand a finger’s width, there; she poured, and turned it to her own mother; nineteen times round the table, Andraste counted; Teva poured for her father, who’d never had his daughter pour for him, and he held his cup out for more. A plain brown pot with a handle, the spout chipped by Mother with the back of a spoon: so it knows it’s been passed; I’ll pour for the whole street; we’ve got a lot of time, we stopped running. Brown pots with handles in every window in the third city; a thumb-sized one with two cups: For passing; Ilas at the end of her street at dusk with a cup, and somebody always pours. The fifth Table: Orsk, the hill town, eleven months; towns like staircases into the cloud; old Gath in nine layers with a soft Taveth on a string: our mountains have never moved; we’d like them to keep not moving, just somewhere warmer. Mira: miners; Orra: boats, though she doubts it. The walker made the mountain sound and Gath made it back; the hill tongue and the walkers’ are distant kin and nobody knew; I didn’t know there was anyone else. Gath climbed into the walker’s palm and she lifted him to her face, and they talked in the old sound, and he laughed from very high up; Ilka thinks it was a joke about short people. Yes. Under the mountains themselves; the miners can’t wait. Sallow three-quarters built; the eater on time, not pulled; they don’t know; Orra’s rowing very well; Halvane forty days, Bell sixty-one; the first sum she’s been happy with. I went down under Sallow’s river on the forty-ninth day with Orra and the girl from the end of the landing; she thought the singing was the river; it’s people, from a cold world left to die, who came to dig so we wouldn’t be; Brom’s mother knelt and put her blue hand on the soft Mother’s head: she poured for us; the girl sang without knowing the words. Kyrie has the first of the two old words, holding, not yet the second, holding on; the right way round. Tam Orrin: your first morning? I looked at the ground all the way down and it was made of the things on my father’s chart, and I sat in the dirt by the kit; happy for as long as it takes to say good morning; he came back and sat on the red glass with his hand flat. Dory: the gladness has changed to a forge far away, striking and striking; she can guess. The Overseer to the toymakers: make the cup instead; a soft plain grey cup: Somebody gave him this; the only one Mother would have made herself. Sorrel has a Y under the C, for yes, to be ready. Two hundred and eighty-eight. Orsk: asking. Two: learning.