Scarecrow

The Calders lived on the thirty-first floor of a building called Hearth Block, which Liam said was a joke, and then said wasn’t, and then couldn’t decide.

”It’s where they put the Retention families,” he said, in the lift going up, with his hands in his pockets and his hair combed flat for once, which made him look like somebody else’s brother. ”When we came in. Eleven of the thirty-one, all in one block. Near the heat plant, because we’re useful there.” He shrugged. ”Dad works the furnaces. Most of the Calders do. You’d be amazed how much fire it takes to keep a dome warm.”

Seraphina stood in the opposite corner of the lift with her arms crossed and didn’t say anything.

She hadn’t said anything to me since the training hall. Four days. Not at meals, not on the field, not on the beam, which we were back on every morning since the hall, all five of us, because Okafor said a squad that couldn’t put out its own fires could carry steel until it learned. She’d carried her end without a word. She’d looked through me as if I were a window.

The lift stopped at thirty-one. The doors opened onto a narrow corridor with a worn red carpet and doors all along it, very close together, and noise coming out from behind every one.

”Brace,” said Liam.

He opened the third door on the left, and the noise came out to meet us.

It wasn’t a big flat. That was the first thing. After the penthouse, with its sixty floors of glass and its rooms you could lose a whole family in, it felt like the inside of a cupboard. Three small rooms, and a kitchen you could touch both walls of, and a table in the middle of the biggest room that was much too large for it, so that everyone had to edge sideways round it to get anywhere.

And there were people everywhere.

A woman with flour on her arms and red hair going gray, coming out of the kitchen at a run, shouting Liam’s name. A man with a red beard and shoulders like a doorframe, getting up from the table with a newspaper in one hand, shouting Liam’s name louder. A little girl, six or seven, with red curls sticking out in every direction, hurling herself at Liam’s knees, shrieking. A dog. A large brown dog of no particular kind, who barked at everyone, wagged at everyone, and then sat down on my feet and stayed there.

And behind them, at the table, already sitting, Roan and Bree. And a woman who looked like the first woman but rounder and louder, who was Roan and Bree’s mother, and who was in the middle of telling a story that nobody was listening to.

”This is him,” said the woman with the flour, letting go of Liam and turning round to look at me. ”This is the boy who turned the Town into a beach.”

”Mum,” said Liam. ”This is Lucas. Lucas, this is my mum. Maura. Calder. Obviously.”

Maura Calder looked at me. Up. Quite a long way up. She was small, like Seraphina. Smaller. She had Seraphina’s chin, and Liam’s freckles, and a face that looked like it had laughed more than it had done anything else in its life, even the things that weren’t funny.

I thought about the photograph. A woman on her knees in the snow, with a baby on her shoulder.

”Hello, Mrs. Calder,” I said.

”Mrs. Calder,” said Maura Calder, delighted. ”Rory, did you hear that? Mrs. Calder. Nobody’s called me that since the Ministry tried to evict us.” She reached up, a long way, and took my face in both her floury hands, and pulled it down, and looked at it. Closely. The way Mother looked at me when she was memorizing. ”Oh, you’ve got her chin,” she said quietly. ”You’ve got Dot’s chin. Exactly.”

I went very still.

”You knew my mother.”

”Knew her?” said Maura Calder. She let go of my face. There was flour on it now. ”Love, I was three beds down from her in the intake ward. I held her hand through the second round of treatments, because they wouldn’t let anyone else in, and she held mine through the third.” She smiled. ”Dot Dask. Well. She wasn’t Dask then. She was just Dot. Used to read her own charts when the matrons weren’t looking.”

”My sister does that.”

”Of course she does,” said Maura Calder, and turned round, and shouted at the kitchen: ”Rory! The potatoes!”

Dinner was the loudest thing I’d ever been inside.

There were nine of us round a table built for six, and a dog underneath it. Rory Calder at one end, enormous, with his beard. Maura at the other, getting up every two minutes to fetch something. Roan and Bree and their mother along one side. Liam and the little girl, whose name was Pip, and who sat on Liam’s knee and ate off his plate, along the other.

And Seraphina, at the far corner, beside her mother. As far from me as the table allowed.

And me, beside Rory Calder, with the dog on my feet.

Nobody stopped talking. Not once. Not for the whole meal. They talked over each other and under each other and through each other. They argued about everything. Whether bread should be torn or cut. Whether Sergeant Okafor was a saint or a menace or both. Whether the heat plant’s new foreman knew which end of a furnace was which. Whether the Council would ever give the Retention families a floor above forty, which Rory said never and Roan’s mother said next year and Maura said she didn’t care, she liked thirty-one, you could hear the furnaces at night and it sounded like home.

Every argument ended in somebody laughing. Usually Maura. Sometimes all of them at once.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know how.

At home, in the field, dinner had been quiet. Father at one end. Mother at the other. The three of us in between. Father saying a few words. Mother saying a few more. Garnet saying everything. Genny saying nothing, and then one thing, at the end, that made Father laugh. The filter, humming under the floor.

And then after Father, quieter. And then, after Mother got sick, quieter still. Just the three of us, at a table for five, with two empty chairs.

In the penthouse, the last few nights, it had been different again. Big, and bright, and Mr. Dunmore’s food on white plates, and Mother at the head in her wheelchair. But still quiet. Careful. Everyone being careful with each other, because we’d nearly lost her, and we didn’t know how long we’d got.

Nobody here was careful.

Rory Calder put food on my plate without asking. Then more. He clapped me on the back when I ate it, hard enough to move me, and said, ”Good lad. You’re too thin. Okafor starving you? I’ll have words.” Bree asked me, across the table, very loudly, whether it was true I’d put out two hundred fires in the training hall, and Roan said two hundred and twelve, and Bree said how would you know, you were hiding behind the sandbags, and Roan said so were you, and then they were arguing about that.

Pip climbed off Liam’s knee halfway through, and came round the table, and climbed onto mine, and sat there eating my potatoes with her fingers, and didn’t ask, and didn’t say anything at all, and leaned back against my chest as if she’d been doing it all her life.

She was the size Garnet had been at six, the summer she first learned to make bread out of sand.

I sat very still, with my fork in my hand, and didn’t eat.

Across the table, at the far corner, Seraphina was looking at me.

It was Maura’s hand that did it.

She’d come back from the kitchen with the bread. A big round loaf, still hot, on a board. And she was passing it down the table, and it came to me, and I took one side of the board, and she still had the other. And for a moment, we were both holding it.

And her hand was shaking.

Just a little. The way Toby said his mother’s did. In the fingers, mostly. A fine fast tremor, so small you’d never see it if you weren’t looking. And she saw me see it, and her fingers moved, and a little spark jumped off the tip of one of them, and danced across the crust of the loaf, and went out. And everyone at the table looked at the spark, and Pip laughed and clapped, and nobody looked at the hand.

She’d done it on purpose. So nobody would see.

I’d seen.

And I didn’t mean to do what I did next. I need that understood. I didn’t decide it. I’d been looking at things for thirteen years, down into them, all the way to the bricks, the way other people breathed. And for three weeks, every night, I’d been teaching myself to look at living things. At cells. At walls, and gates, and sparks. Over and over. Until I could see them without trying.

And her hand was right there, in front of my eyes, on the edge of the board.

So I saw.

Not the bricks. The cells. The way I saw the fern leaf now. Thousands of them. Millions. Packed together under the skin of her fingers. Muscle, and nerve, and blood moving through it all. All of them humming, the way Risa said everything alive hummed.

And in among them, everywhere, threaded through all of it, something else.

Something that didn’t hum the same. Something that sat in among her cells like a stranger in a crowded room, built wrong, shaped wrong, with no mark on it, or the wrong one. Something that had been there since she was fifteen.

And around every piece of it, the hunters.

Thousands of them. Swarming. Pressing in against it from every side. Attacking it. Being thrown off. Attacking again. Every one of them doing exactly what it had been taught to do, perfectly, without stopping, without resting, the way they’d been doing every second of every day for twenty-four years.

And in the middle of all that, the nerves to her fingers. Caught in it. Damaged by it. Not much. Just a little. Just enough that they didn’t fire quite cleanly anymore. Just enough to shake.

It was a war.

Right there, in the hand passing me the bread, at a table full of people laughing about potatoes. A war that had been going on since before I was born, and that she was losing, very slowly, and that nobody at the table could see except me.

And I thought:

This is what’s inside Mother.

This, everywhere. Not just in her hand. In her lungs. In her heart.

Right now. Sixty floors up. While I sit here.

I let go of the board.

The bread fell on the table. Pip squeaked. Rory said something. Somebody laughed. I didn’t hear what.

I put Pip down on the chair, very carefully, and stood up, and said something, I don’t know what, and edged sideways round the too-big table, and found the door, and went through it, and kept going.

There was a stairwell at the end of the corridor.

Concrete, and narrow, and dim, with a small square window on every landing that looked out over the inside of the dome. I went down half a flight and sat on the steps with my back against the cold wall and my hands over my eyes.

Not because of the pressure. The pressure was there, the way it always was now, a dull weight behind my eyes. But that wasn’t why.

I had my hands over my eyes so I wouldn’t see anything else.

I sat there for a long time. I could hear the Calders through the wall. Still talking. Still loud. Somebody laughing. The furnaces, very far down, a low steady roar under everything, like the filter under the floor at home, except it never stopped.

I didn’t hear the door.

”You looked at her hand,” said Seraphina.

I took my hands away from my eyes.

She was standing on the landing above me, with her arms crossed, looking down. The light from the little square window was behind her, so I couldn’t see her face properly. Just the shape of her, and the red of her hair, and her arms crossed.

”Yes,” I said.

”Not the way everyone looks at it.” She came down two steps. ”Everyone looks at it and then looks away, and pretends they didn’t. Dad does it. Liam does it. Aunt Nessa does it every single time.” She came down another step. ”You didn’t look away. You went into it. I watched your face. You went into it, the way you went into the fire.”

I didn’t say anything.

She sat down. Not beside me. On the step above, a little to one side, with her knees up and her arms around them.

”What did you see?” she said.

I told her.

I hadn’t meant to. But she’d asked, and she was sitting there, and her mother was on the other side of the wall laughing at something with her hand shaking. So I told her. The cells. The thing that didn’t belong, threaded through everything. The hunters, swarming. The nerves caught in the middle. The war.

She listened to all of it without moving.

When I’d finished, she was quiet for a long time.

”Since last winter,” she said finally. ”The shaking. Just the mornings, at first. Now sometimes in the evenings too. She makes sparks so nobody notices. Pip thinks it’s a game.” She looked at the little square window. ”Dad notices. He pretends he doesn’t. He goes to the furnaces early so he doesn’t have to watch her try to hold a cup.” Her voice didn’t change. ”Dr. Halloway says it’s slow. She says it’s years. She says it like it’s good news.”

”It is good news.”

”It’s years,” said Seraphina. ”Not forever.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

”That’s why you went,” she said. ”Back there. That’s why you dropped the bread. Not because of Mum.” She looked down at me. ”Because of yours.”

”Yes.”

”Liam told me,” she said. ”About your mother. Not much. Just that she’s sick. That she was in the program, like Mum. That you nearly lost her the morning you came in.” A pause. ”He said you read at night. In Okafor’s room. With Windsor.”

”Yes.”

”Reading what?”

”How bodies work,” I said. ”Cells. Blood. How the body knows what belongs to it. What it does when it doesn’t.” I looked at my hands. ”I’m trying to understand it. Well enough to fix it. I’m a long way off.”

Seraphina looked at me for a long moment, with her black eyes, in the light from the little window.

”Can you fix it?” she said. ”Mum’s hand. If you understood it.”

”I don’t know.”

”That’s not an answer.”

”It’s the only true one I’ve got,” I said. ”I don’t know. Nobody’s ever done it. Nobody understands it well enough. Dr. Halloway doesn’t. My father didn’t.” I looked up at her. ”I’m going to try.”

She didn’t say anything.

Then she said, ”Then learn faster.”

We sat on the stairs for a while without talking.

Through the wall, Rory Calder was singing. Badly. Something about a ship. Pip was singing with him, worse. Somebody was banging the table in time.

”I didn’t have it,” said Seraphina.

I looked up.

She was looking at the little window, not at me. Her arms were tight round her knees.

”In the hall,” she said. ”I said I had it. I didn’t. I was pulling and pulling and it wasn’t coming back. It was getting bigger. It was going to get the ropes, and then the racks, and then the walls, and then the doors, and I couldn’t—” She stopped. ”I’ve never not been able to put it back. Not once. Not since I was four. And I stood there, and it was eating the ceiling, and I thought, this is how it happens. This is how a Calder burns a building down with everyone in it. Not because she wants to. Because she can’t stop.”

”You’d have got it.”

”Don’t,” said Seraphina. ”Don’t be kind. I can’t stand it when you’re kind.” She pressed her forehead against her knees for a moment. Then lifted it. ”I was so angry. At Brock. At that word. At that stupid picture, on the walls, in their offices.” Her voice went very low. ”You know she was nineteen? In the picture. Nineteen. With Liam on her shoulder not breathing. And they put it on their walls and laugh.”

”I know.”

”And then you put it out. All of it. In front of everyone. Two hundred and twelve fires, one at a time, Windsor said. Without hurting anyone.” She turned her head and looked at me. ”And I was so angry at you for that, I couldn’t see straight. For four days.”

”I know.”

”Because if you hadn’t been there,” said Seraphina, ”I’d have killed someone.”

The stairwell was very quiet.

”Maybe Toby,” she said. ”Maybe Liam. Maybe Brock, and I’d have been glad for one second, and then I’d have had to live with it.” She looked at the window again. ”So I’m not angry anymore. Not really. I’m just—” She stopped. Couldn’t find the word. Shook her head.

”Thank you,” she said instead. Stiffly. As if the words were a pair of boots that didn’t fit. ”For the hall.”

”You’re welcome.”

”Don’t tell Liam I said that. He’ll be unbearable.”

”He’s already unbearable.”

The corner of her mouth moved. Not a smile. The place where one would go, the way it had with Luna in the reading room.

”Sera,” she said.

I looked at her.

”You can call me Sera,” she said. ”At dinner. At home. Not in front of Brock.” A pause. ”Not on the field. Not on the beam. And not in front of Windsor.”

”Why not in front of Windsor?”

Seraphina Calder looked at me for a long moment, as though I were the stupidest person she had ever met, which I was beginning to think I might be.

”Come back inside,” she said, and stood up. ”Mum’s made a pudding. If you don’t eat some, she’ll take it personally, and then she’ll cry, and then Dad will cry, and then the dog will cry. It’s a whole thing.”

Maura Calder didn’t ask where I’d been.

When I came back round the edge of the too-big table, she just put a bowl in front of me. Something hot and brown and sweet, with custard on it. And then she put her hand on the top of my head, very briefly, as she went past. The way you’d touch a child’s head. The way Mother used to, at the table in the field, without thinking about it.

Her hand was shaking.

I didn’t look into it.

I’d learned, sitting on those stairs, that I had to learn something new. Not just how to look. When not to. That I couldn’t go into every living thing I saw just because it was there in front of my eyes. Not at dinner. Not at a table full of people laughing. Not into the hand of a woman who’d held my mother’s hand in an intake ward when they were both fifteen.

So I looked at the pudding instead, and ate all of it, and Rory Calder clapped me on the back hard enough to move me.

Pip climbed back onto my knee. Seraphina, at the far corner, didn’t look at me. But she’d moved one chair closer.

At the end of the night, at the door, Maura Calder took my face in both her hands again and pulled it down.

”Ruth Halloway told me she’s back,” she said quietly, under the noise of everybody else saying goodbye. ”Dot. In the penthouse. I’ve been meaning to go up. I haven’t had the courage. Twenty years.” She looked at me. ”Do you think she’d want to see me?”

I thought about Mother, in the wheelchair, in the big room with the glass walls, with the city below her. Alone, most of the day, except for the girls and Miss Pell and Dr. Halloway with her silver case. Nobody from before. Nobody who’d known her when she was just Dot.

”Yes,” I said. ”I think she’d want that very much.”

Maura Calder nodded once. Her eyes were very bright.

”Then I’ll go,” she said. ”This week. I’ll take her a loaf.” She let go of my face. ”And I’ll tell her she’s got a very tall son with a very good chin, who turned the Town into a beach, and dropped my bread on the table, and ate two puddings.” She smiled. ”She’ll like that.”

”See?” said Liam, in the lift going down, with his hair no longer flat and pudding on his shirt. ”Restful.”

Seraphina stood in the opposite corner of the lift with her arms crossed. But she was standing closer to the middle than she had been on the way up.

I didn’t say anything. I was holding something in my pocket. Maura Calder had pressed it into my hand at the door, without a word, while everyone else was shouting goodbye. A small, flat, round stone, warm all the way through, the way the bread had been. Warm in a way that didn’t fade. A Calder thing, Liam told me later. A hearthstone. You heated it once, properly, all the way to the middle, and it stayed warm for a week.

I held it in my pocket all the way back down to the cave.

That night, in the reading room, I told Luna Windsor about the hand.

She listened without saying anything, the way she always did. When I’d finished, she looked at me for a long time across the table.

”You can see it,” she said. ”Inside a person. Now.”

”Yes.”

”Since when?”

”Tonight. I didn’t know until tonight.” I looked at the cup with the fern leaf in it. ”I didn’t mean to do it. It just happened. I’ve been looking at cells every night for a month. And then there was a hand in front of me.”

Luna was quiet.

”That’s going to happen again,” she said. ”Everywhere. On the field. In the mess. Every time someone’s hurt, or shaking, or bleeding in front of you.” She looked at me steadily. ”You’re going to see inside everyone.”

”I know.”

”Can you stop?”

”I don’t know,” I said. ”I’m going to have to learn.”

She opened the cell biology book. She didn’t ask me a question from it. She just held it open, on the table, between us.

”Then that’s on the list too,” she said.

I opened notebook fifteen, to the list, and wrote it at the bottom, under Slowly.

8. When not to look.

And above To learn, under Not only Mother. Thirty-one families, very small, I wrote:

Maura Calder. Right hand. Since last winter.

The hearthstone was still warm in my pocket when I went to bed. I put it under my pillow. In the morning, it was still warm.