Scarecrow

Okafor woke me at six.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. She stood at the end of my bed in the gray light from the corridor with a slip of paper in her hand, and I sat up, and she gave it to me.

Departure Order 4. Cadets will collect personal effects from family residence, 0700–0800, under escort. Personal allowance: 2 kg. Cadets will report to Quarantine Block C at 0830.

One hour.

I’d thought last night was the last of it. The roof. The pool. The count at the lift. I’d gone to sleep thinking that was it, that was the goodbye, and it had been a good one, and I’d been glad.

I’d been wrong. There’s always one more. That’s what nobody tells you about goodbyes. There’s always one more, and it’s always the one you weren’t ready for.

Across the aisle, Toby was already dressed. Sitting on the edge of his bed with his boots on and his hands between his knees. Liam’s bed was empty, the blanket thrown back.

”Hearth Block’s further,” said Toby. ”He went at half five. Sera too.” He looked at his hands. ”Mum’s only on twelve. I’ve got time.”

”Are you all right?”

Toby thought about it. Properly. The way he did.

”No,” he said. ”But I’ve already said the important bit. It’s in the envelope.” He stood up. ”So now I just have to have breakfast with her. I can do breakfast.”

Okafor walked me to the gold lift.

She didn’t get in. She stood outside it with her hands behind her back, and when I turned round she was looking at me the way she’d looked at me in her office with the lamp off. All the way in. Steel and bone.

”I’ll be here,” she said. ”At eight. Not five past.”

”Yes, Sergeant.”

”And Dask.” The doors had started to close. She put her hand out, flat, and stopped them. ”It’s an hour. Don’t spend it being brave. Nobody needs you brave up there. Spend it being their brother.”

The doors closed.

I went up sixty floors and thought about that the whole way.

Miss Pell opened the door.

She was dressed. Properly dressed. Gray wool skirt and her cardigan buttoned to the neck and her hair up, and her spectacles on, with the little hinge I’d put a flaw in. But her eyes behind the spectacles were red at the rims, and there was a crease down one side of her face from a cushion.

”You haven’t slept,” I said.

”I’ve slept a little. In a chair.” She stood back to let me in. ”Come in, Lucas. Quietly. She’s only been asleep since twenty past four.”

”Who?”

Miss Pell didn’t answer. She just looked past me, at the sofa.

Garnet was asleep on it.

Curled up at one end, in her nightgown, with a blanket half over her and half on the floor. Her hair was everywhere. Her mouth was open. And in her lap, held in both hands even in her sleep, were two knitting needles. And hanging from the needles, down over her knees, and over the edge of the sofa, and onto the floor, and along the floor in a long gray heap like something that had been poured, was the scarf.

I stood and looked at it.

”She stayed up,” said Miss Pell, very quietly, beside me. ”After you’d all gone down. She came into the kitchen in her nightgown at a quarter past twelve with the basket and said, I have to finish it before he goes, and I said it was very late, and she said, Miss Pell, it’s been late for a year.” Miss Pell took her spectacles off and cleaned them on her cardigan, which didn’t need it. ”So I sat with her. I wasn’t to help. She was very clear about that. I wasn’t to touch it, and her mother wasn’t to straighten anything with her mind, and if she dropped a stitch, she’d pick it up herself or leave the hole.” She put her spectacles back on. ”She left four holes.”

”Did she finish?”

”Nearly,” said Miss Pell. ”She was on the last row when she fell asleep. She wanted to cast off in front of you.” A pause. ”She said it doesn’t count unless you see the end.”

Mother was in the chair by the window.

The tall chair, with the high back. The window looked east, over the dome. The sky beyond the glass was going from gray to gold, and the light was coming in across the floor in a long slant, and it touched the end of the scarf where it lay on the carpet, and made it look almost silver.

She was dressed too. Her good blue dress. The ribbon on her wrist. She hadn’t brought the frame out. It was standing in the corner of the room, folded, like it had been put away for good.

She didn’t get up. She held out one hand.

I went and took it, and crouched down by the chair, and she looked at me.

She didn’t say anything for a while. She just looked. The way she’d looked at Liam and Toby and Seraphina and Luna, last night, one at a time. All the way in. Except she’d been looking at me like that my whole life, and I’d never once got used to it.

”You’ve grown,” she said.

”Since last night?”

”Since last night,” said Mother. ”I’m almost sure.”

Genny was at the kitchen table.

She was dressed for school. Her gray pinafore and her white socks pulled up straight and her hair in two plaits so tight they looked like they hurt. Her notebook was open in front of her. Number sixteen. She was writing in it. She didn’t look up when I came in.

”You’re early,” she said.

”I’m on time. Seven o’clock.”

”It’s six fifty-eight.” She turned a page. ”That’s early. For you, it’s practically unheard of.” She wrote something. ”Miss Pell’s made toast. You’re to eat two pieces. I’ve told her.”

”Genny.”

”And you’re to drink a glass of water. A whole one. Luna said.”

”Genny.”

She looked up.

Her face was perfectly still. Perfectly calm. Her eyes were dry. She looked at me the way she looked at a chemistry problem. As if I were something that could be solved if she only got the order of operations right.

”What?” she said.

I didn’t know what. I’d said her name because I wanted to say it. That was all.

”Nothing,” I said.

”Then eat your toast,” said Genny. And went back to her notebook.

Her pencil wasn’t moving.

Garnet woke up at ten past seven.

All at once. The way she always had, since she was tiny. Eyes shut, and then eyes open, and then sitting bolt upright, all in the same second, with her hair standing up on one side.

She saw me.

”No,” said Garnet. ”No, no, no. You weren’t to come yet. I wasn’t ready.”

”It’s all right.”

”It’s not all right. I was going to be dressed. I was going to do my hair.” She looked down at herself, at the nightgown, at the blanket on the floor. At the needles in her hands. Her face changed. ”I didn’t finish. I fell asleep. I was on the last row, Lucas, I was nearly—”

”Then finish it,” I said. ”I’ll watch.”

Garnet looked at me.

Then she pushed the blanket off and sat up properly, cross-legged on the sofa, with the needles held up in front of her. And her tongue came out of the corner of her mouth. The way it had, at the kitchen table, at home, the first morning Mother sent the needles into her hands.

And she cast off.

It took a long time. She was very slow. She lifted each stitch over the next one as though it might break, and twice she stopped and looked at it and breathed through her nose, and once she said a word I hadn’t known she knew, and Miss Pell, in the kitchen doorway, very carefully didn’t hear it.

Mother watched from the chair. Her hands were in her lap. They didn’t move. I could see the effort it cost her not to move them. Not to reach out, just a little, with her mind, and straighten the one that was going wrong.

She didn’t.

Genny watched from the kitchen door, with her notebook shut against her chest.

And I watched. Crouched on the carpet, in the slant of gold light, with my black eyes. And I didn’t look into anything. I didn’t look at the wool or the needles or the little bright pieces they were made of. I just looked at my sister’s hands. At what she was doing.

The last stitch came off the needle.

Garnet pulled the wool through it. Tight. And bit the end off with her teeth, because she couldn’t find the scissors, and spat out a bit of gray fluff.

”Done,” said Garnet.

She stood up on the sofa, in her nightgown, and held it up.

It was too long. That was the first thing. It was much, much too long. It went from her hands, held up over her head, all the way down to the carpet, and then along the carpet for a good way after that.

”I didn’t know when to stop,” said Garnet. ”Every time I thought it was long enough, I thought, but what if it’s very cold there.” She looked at it. ”So I kept going.”

”It’s perfect.”

”It’s not perfect. It’s got holes in.” She turned it round, looking for them. ”Four. Miss Pell counted.”

She got down off the sofa and came and stood in front of me, with the scarf held across both her arms like something in a church. And she showed it to me. All of it. From the beginning.

”This bit,” said Garnet, holding up the first end, ”is Mama’s. From before your birthday. Before her hands stopped.” Six inches. Smooth and flat and even, every stitch the same as the one beside it. The wool from the ridge settlement’s last two sheep, that Father had traded honey for. ”And this bit’s both of us. From the kitchen. When she taught me.” Eight inches. Smooth, and then lumpy, and then smooth, and then lumpy, back and forth, like two people talking. ”She did a row and I did a row.”

Then she held up the rest. All the rest. Yards of it.

”And this is all me,” said Garnet. ”From here. From the dome.”

It was terrible. I want to be honest. It was the most terrible piece of knitting I’ve ever seen. It was too tight in places and too loose in others. It went wide, and then narrow, and then wide again, like a river. There was a place in the middle where she’d clearly lost her temper for several rows. And there were the four holes, where stitches had got away from her and she’d left them gone.

”The lumpy bit starts here,” said Garnet. She put her finger on it. The exact row. ”That’s how you’ll know. The smooth bits are Mama. The lumpy bits are me.” She looked up at me. ”So when you’re there, and it’s cold, you’ll know which bits are which. You can hold the Mama bit when you want Mama. And the me bit when you want me.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

”Say something,” said Garnet.

”It’s the best thing anybody’s ever made me.”

”You’re lying,” said Garnet happily. ”That’s all right. I like it when you lie about the scarf.”

And she wound it round my neck. Once. Twice. Three times. Standing on tiptoe, and then on the arm of the sofa, to reach. And it was still long enough that the ends hung down past my belt.

She tied it in a loose knot at the front. The way she’d tied Mother’s blue one, on the scarecrow, in the wheat, at a quarter to five on the morning we left.

”So you won’t be cold,” said Garnet.

Genny weighed it.

Of course she did. She took it off me again, very carefully, the minute Garnet went to get dressed, and put it on Miss Pell’s kitchen scales, in a heap.

”Two hundred and sixty-one grams,” said Genny. She wrote it down. ”Your allowance is two kilograms. Father’s anatomy book is eleven hundred and forty. I weighed it last time you were here, when you weren’t looking. Your notebooks are ninety each and you’ll want at least two. The spectacles are thirty-one.” She did the sum in her head and wrote down the answer without checking it. ”That leaves you three hundred and eighty-eight grams for anything else.”

”There isn’t anything else.”

”There might be.” She closed the notebook. ”You don’t know what you’ll want. You never do. You’ll get there and want something and not have room.” She put the scarf back round my neck herself. Not the way Garnet had done it. Briskly. Once, twice, three times, and a hard knot, like she was tying up a parcel. ”So I’ve left you some room.”

We had breakfast.

I ate two pieces of toast. I drank a whole glass of water. Genny watched me do both and made a small mark in her notebook each time.

Garnet came back dressed, in the blue dress with the white collar, and talked the whole way through. About the scarf. About the four holes, and which one had been the worst. About Biscuit, whom she’d never met but had heard all about from Seraphina last night and now wanted very badly. About whether Avalon had a moon.

”Two,” I said. ”One’s big. One’s very small.”

”Then you’ll have to do the fish again,” said Garnet. ”On both.” She considered. ”Or on the little one. So it’s not showing off.”

”It’s always showing off,” said Genny, without looking up.

Miss Pell poured tea. She put a cup in front of me, and stood beside my chair a moment longer than she needed to, with the pot in her hands.

”That’s the best cup of tea I’ve ever had,” I said.

Miss Pell’s hand went very still on the pot.

”Your father said that,” she said. ”In my kitchen. At the orphan hall. The only time I ever met him.” She put the pot down. ”Your mother says he said it about every cup for twenty years. I used to think that was being polite.” A pause. ”It isn’t. It’s deciding to.” She looked at me over her spectacles. ”Drink it while it’s hot, Lucas. It’s the last one I’ll get to make you for a while.”

Mother didn’t eat anything.

She sat at the end of the table, in her blue dress, with a piece of toast she never touched, and watched. Not me. All of us. Garnet talking, and Genny marking, and Miss Pell pouring. As if she were looking at the whole table at once. Learning it. Writing it down somewhere inside, where she could take it out later.

At half past seven she said, ”Lucas. Come and help me with the window.”

There was nothing wrong with the window.

She stood at it. By herself. Without the frame. One hand on the sill, not leaning. Just touching. In the gold light.

”I want to say one thing,” said Mother. ”And I want you to let me say it all the way through.”

”All right.”

”Crane is going to use my vials.” She said it quite calmly. Looking out at the dome. ”Not this month. Maybe not this year. But one day, on that world, he’s going to want you to do something, and you’re not going to want to do it, and he’s going to remind you that there are three a day, delivered on Mondays, and that they come from his office.” She turned her head and looked at me. ”And I want you to know now, before he says it, what I want.”

I didn’t say anything.

”I want you to do the right thing anyway,” said Mother.

”Mother—”

”I said all the way through.” Her voice didn’t rise. It never did. ”I’ve lived longer than anyone thought I would. I’ve had the field, and the twins, and you, and a roof with a swimming pool, and a governess who sings.” She almost smiled. ”I walked to this window without a frame. I’ve told Ruth. If he ever stops them, to make you do something, she’s to tell you the truth. Straight away. And you’re to do what’s right.” She looked at me. All the way in. ”I’m not asking you to promise. I know you can’t. I’m only telling you what I want. That’s a different thing. You’ll do what you’ll do. But you’ll do it knowing.”

Never choose for them without telling them.

She was telling me.

I couldn’t say anything. So I didn’t. I just stood beside her at the window that didn’t need any help, and she took her hand off the sill, and put it on my face.

Her thumb moved under my eye. Under the black.

”Like his,” she said.

”Do you mind?”

”Love,” said Mother. ”I married them.”

Genny was on the back stairs.

The service stairs. The ones that went up to the roof, where the new padlock was, locked again, the way I’d left it. She was sitting on the fourth step with her notebook on her knees and her plaits very straight. She’d gone there while I was at the window. I’d watched her go.

I sat down on the step below her.

She didn’t say anything for a while. Neither did I. Below us, through the door, I could hear Garnet telling Miss Pell about the worst hole.

”Are you coming back?” said Genny.

She said it the way she’d ask about the boiling point of something. Flat. Waiting.

And I thought about Rory. At the furnace. Bring my children home. And me saying I will, and not knowing if it was a lie, and him believing me because I didn’t know.

I couldn’t do that with Genny. Genny would see it. Genny had read Mother’s face across a monitored line and known the marker had gone up. Genny had looked at Halloway saying it goes up and down and known exactly what that meant. Genny had sat through a year of people being gentle with her, and she’d caught every single one of them.

”I don’t know,” I said.

Genny looked at me.

For a long time.

And then she nodded. Once. Slowly. And something in her face that had been held very tight since six fifty-eight that morning came loose. Not much. Just a little.

”Thank you,” she said.

”For what?”

”That’s the first time anybody’s told me the truth about somebody going.” She looked down at her notebook. ”Everybody says of course. Of course he’s coming back. Of course she’ll be fine.” Her pencil made a small mark on the cover. ”Miss Pell said it about Juno. For years. And she was only saying it to herself.”

I didn’t say anything.

”So I want you to promise something,” said Genny. ”Something you can keep. Not that. You can’t promise that. So something else.”

”What?”

She looked up at me. Steady. The way she looked at a chemistry problem she’d already solved.

”That you won’t ever lie to me,” said Genny. ”Not about Mother. Not about you. Not about the silver, when you find out what it is. Not about Avalon. Not about anything.” Her voice didn’t change at all. ”Not even to be kind. Especially not to be kind. Not even about the scarf.”

”Even if Crane’s listening?”

”Then you’ll find a way to say it so he can’t hear.” She said it as if it were obvious. ”You’re clever. I’m cleverer. We’ll work it out.”

I thought about it.

It was a big promise. Bigger than I’ll come back. Because I’ll come back is one thing, and it happens once, or it doesn’t. And this was every call. Every letter. Every time she asked me anything, for the rest of my life, on any world, however bad the answer was.

”I promise,” I said.

Genny opened her notebook. Number sixteen. She turned to a clean page and held it out to me with the pencil.

”Write it down,” she said. ”Father said if it isn’t written down, it didn’t happen.”

So I wrote it. On the back stairs of the sixtieth floor, with the light coming down from the little window at the top.

I will never lie to Genny. Not about anything. Not even to be kind.

Lucas Dask. Day 267.

She took the notebook back. Read it twice. Then she wrote underneath, in her small square hand: Witnessed. G. Dask. And shut it.

”What did you write last night?” I said. ”At the bottom of the stairs. For later.”

Genny tucked the notebook under her arm.

”It’s still for later,” she said. ”You’ll have to come back to find out.” She stood up. ”That’s not a lie. That’s an incentive.”

At five to eight, they walked me to the lift.

All of them. Miss Pell with her hands folded in front of her. Garnet holding my hand on one side and the end of the scarf on the other, like a lead. Genny a step behind, with her notebook. And Mother last. Walking. No frame. All the way down the corridor, slowly, one hand on the wall, then not.

The lift came.

Garnet cried. Of course she did. Loudly, and all at once, with her face pressed into the scarf round my middle, and her arms round me, saying I don’t want you to go, I don’t want you to, I don’t want, over and over, until Miss Pell came and gently unwound her and held her instead.

”I know, chick,” said Miss Pell, into her hair. ”I know.”

Genny shook my hand.

She did. She held it out, very straight, like a little general, and I took it, and she shook it twice, firmly, and let go. Her eyes were dry. Her jaw was set like Father’s.

”Drink water,” she said.

”I will.”

”Eat.”

”I will.”

”Remember what you wrote.”

”I will.”

She stepped back. Next to Mother.

And Mother looked at me.

She was standing on her own in the corridor. In her blue dress, with the ribbon on her wrist. She’d walked all the way from the window. She was holding herself so straight and so still that I could see what it cost, even without looking for it. Every muscle. Every breath.

”Go on, love,” said Mother. Steady. Smiling. ”Go on. Okafor’s waiting.”

I stepped into the lift.

”Count us,” said Mother.

”Every night.”

The doors began to close. Her face, smiling. Garnet’s, wet, in Miss Pell’s cardigan. Genny’s, perfectly still.

And then the doors met in the middle.

I could still see them.

Of course I could. The doors were steel and the walls were steel and none of it had ever been anything to me since the infirmary. It was a page. I didn’t even have to try.

I could have stopped. Mother had told me once to take the spectacles off for the people who love you. I could have closed my eyes and let the steel be steel. I thought about it.

I didn’t.

I watched Mother’s hand go out to the wall. Slowly. And then the other one. And then she sat down. Right there, on the corridor floor, in her good blue dress, all at once, the way a coat comes off a hook. And put both hands over her face.

The lift started to go down.

I watched Miss Pell kneel. With Garnet still holding on to her. I watched Garnet let go of Miss Pell and climb into Mother’s lap, all of her, ten years old and far too big for it, and Mother’s arms go round her.

And I watched Genny.

Genny stood very straight in the middle of the corridor, with her back to the lift doors, holding her notebook against her chest. For a long time. Not moving. Not crying.

And then she put her notebook down on the floor. Carefully. Squared it up with the edge of the carpet.

And sat down next to Mother. And put her arm round her. And held on.

She didn’t cry. Not then. I watched her the whole way, down through fifty-nine, and fifty-eight, and fifty-seven, with the floors stacking up between us like pages, until there were too many of them, and the corridor went faint, and small, and gone.

She never cried once.

Okafor was at the bottom. Eight o’clock. Not five past.

She looked at me when the doors opened. At my face. At the scarf, wound three times round my neck, with the ends hanging down past my belt.

She didn’t say anything about it.

We walked toward Quarantine Block C. Halfway along the long corridor under the tower, she took something out of her pocket and held it out to me without looking. A handkerchief. Folded. Plain gray.

”I’m not—” I said.

”I know,” said Okafor. ”It’s for later.”

I put it in my pocket.

Day 267.

Garnet stayed up till twenty past four. Cast off in front of me. Bit the end off.

The smooth bits are Mother. The lumpy bits are Garnet. Four holes. She left them.

261 grams. Genny left me room.

Mother: ”Do the right thing anyway.” She’s not asking me to promise. She’s telling me what she wants.

”I married them.”

Genny asked if I’m coming back. I said I don’t know. She said thank you.

I promised never to lie to her. It’s written down. Witnessed. G. Dask.

Mother sat down on the floor after the doors closed. I watched. I shouldn’t have. I’m glad I did.

Genny didn’t cry.

I’m writing this in the white room with the scarf still on. They want me to take it off for the scan.

Not yet.