Scarecrow

The first argument in the new square was about a washing line.

I found that encouraging.

Not the argument itself. The two people having it looked as though they had been saving their irritation for several days, and the wet shirt hanging between them was suffering for it.

But nobody was arguing about whether there would be food.

Nobody was deciding who had to sleep outside.

A woman from the mountain wanted the line in the sun. Gareth wanted it moved because he had already marked that space for a covered bench.

They both turned towards me when I approached.

I stopped.

Behind me, Risa made a small, unhelpful sound.

“You could make another place,” Gareth said.

“I could.”

The woman folded her arms.

“I’ve only just washed these.”

“I can see that.”

Risa stepped around me.

“Could the bench go there?” she asked, pointing across the square.

Gareth looked.

There was shade beneath the wall, enough room for people to pass, and a clear view of the kitchen doors.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“And the washing can stay here?”

The woman nodded.

That seemed to be the end of it.

We walked on.

“I was about to do that,” I said.

“No, you weren’t.”

“No,” I admitted. “I wasn’t.”

She took my hand.

“You’d have built another square.”

It was unfair how well she knew me.

Scarecrow smelled of bread that morning.

Priya had found three people among the new arrivals who knew more about baking than she did. She said this was a relief. Dov said she had spent an hour explaining where they should put everything.

Both things could be true.

The eastern brood was leaving after breakfast. Keir had the large transport ready, and Aster was making its last checks with Vell watching from a place that did not block the controls.

Twenty-four young and six attendants were going home.

Their mother had reached the agreed meeting ground during the night. Our queen had spoken with her, and the older queen at the mountain had confirmed the route through the country between them.

I was going along to help if needed.

Luna came out of the medical building carrying a folded page.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Nearly.”

She handed me the page.

The attendants had asked for the feeding containers to stay with the young. Someone had put them on the list of equipment to bring back.

I crossed that out.

“Better?”

“Much.”

Risa leaned against my side while Luna checked the rest of the page.

Sera joined us with her hair tied up and a pencil behind one ear.

She had already been to the building site beside the western courtyard.

“Don’t promise anybody a house while you’re gone,” she told me.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“You didn’t plan the last mountain either.”

Luna folded the page.

“She has a point.”

“I could stay home.”

Risa kissed my cheek.

“And miss the reunion? You’d be impossible all afternoon.”

She was right about that too.

The young boarded with less difficulty than they had leaving the prison.

Their attendants knew the compartments now. They knew which supports moved, where the water was kept, and how to open the doors from inside.

One of the smallest stopped in the passage and refused to go farther.

I stayed clear while its attendant waited.

After a while the little one turned towards the receiving court.

A feeding bowl sat beside the doorway.

The attendant touched it, then looked at me.

“Take it,” I said.

Dot translated from beside the ramp.

The attendant lifted the bowl.

The young one followed at once.

Keir watched them go.

“Every passenger has luggage.”

“Apparently.”

“Have you checked yours?”

I patted the bag Luna had made me carry.

Water. Food. A clean shirt. An ordinary local receiver.

Things I could make if I had to, but things other people could use without asking me.

Keir nodded towards the seat beside him.

“Good. Try sitting still this time.”

He flew the aircraft himself.

I watched the ground move beneath us and kept my hands in my lap.

It felt stranger than carrying the whole craft.

Keir noticed.

“There’s a handle beside your seat.”

“I don’t need a handle.”

“Then stop gripping the seat.”

I looked down.

Aster turned one small light towards me.

I let go.

The journey took longer under the engines than it would have if I had lifted us directly. Keir used the time to show Vell how the systems separated from one another, and why a damaged unit did not have to take the others with it.

Vell asked more questions than I would have thought possible about a door control.

Keir answered them all.

Nobody told Vell to return to a work station.

Behind us, the young rested with their attendants.

There were no guards between their compartment and the exit.

I looked out of the window and tried to imagine what that difference felt like to someone who had never known it.

Their mother waited in a shallow valley where the dark ground opened into pale stone.

She was smaller than the mountain queen, larger than ours had been before her recent growth. Her brood stood well back from the landing place.

They stayed there while Keir brought us down.

Even when the engines stopped, they waited.

I went to the ramp with Dot. Luna stood behind us, holding the manifest rather than a weapon.

The mother reached towards me through the introduction our queen had offered.

A question.

*All?*

“All twenty-four,” I said.

Dot spoke aloud as well.

The first attendant came down carrying two young.

The mother moved one foot, then stopped herself.

I could feel the effort in that stillness.

She had agreed to wait until we were clear of the ramp. She intended to keep the agreement, even now.

I stepped aside.

“So can you,” I told her.

She came forward.

The attendant lowered its body, and the young slipped free.

One stopped at the edge of her shadow.

The other went straight beneath her.

After that, the valley filled with movement.

Adults bent low around small bodies. A young one climbed a forelimb and had to be steadied. Another pressed itself against the mother’s plate and remained there while three more crowded close.

Luna stood beside me with the page held loosely in her hand.

She did not look at it again until the last attendant had left the aircraft.

Then she counted once more, quietly.

Twenty-four.

Six.

Home.

The mother touched the feeding bowl with one limb.

The smallest young was still beside it.

*This came with mine?*

“Yes.”

*You made it?*

“Someone at Scarecrow did.”

I was not certain who. That mattered less than it once would have.

She settled the bowl on the ground near her.

Then she asked what we wanted.

I had been expecting the question.

“Nothing for bringing them back.”

She considered that answer for a long time.

Around her, the brood continued its quiet reunion.

*There are humans beyond the cut ground,* she said at last. *I have kept my people away from them.*

Luna turned towards me as I translated.

“Alive?”

The mother showed us a narrow hollow beneath a broken ridge. Small movements at dusk. Water being carried. A little roof made from materials that had not grown there.

*Alive when my people last passed.*

“How long ago?”

She gave the memory of two dark periods and the rain that had fallen between them.

“About two days,” I told Luna.

“Can someone show us?”

The mother drew her young closer.

*Yes. After I have held these.*

“Of course,” Luna said.

I did not need Dot to translate the patience in her voice.

We stayed on the terrace above the valley and ate while the mother counted her children for herself.

We did not rush straight to the ridge.

Luna asked the questions Holt would have asked if he had been sitting beside us.

Was there room to land? Had the humans seen the brood? Were there injured people moving slowly? Was anyone else visiting the shelter?

The mother answered what she knew and left the rest unanswered.

A guide came to the aircraft after the young had settled. It had watched the hollow from a distance and could show us the approach without taking us through occupied brood chambers.

Keir studied the route.

“We can look from the southern bend. If there’s nowhere to land, we don’t put this down on a guess.”

“I can make somewhere,” I said.

“Yes. Once we know what’s under it.”

I nodded.

That was becoming a familiar part of working with him.

He did not doubt that I could do something.

He wanted to know whether it was the right thing to do.

We saw smoke before we saw the roof.

A little of it, carefully hidden against the dark face of the ridge.

The shelter lay beneath a shelf of stone. Its roof was patched with cloth and thin metal. Three water containers stood near the entrance.

A person moved beneath the overhang.

Then stopped.

Keir settled the craft on the broad ground below after I checked and strengthened the surface.

We left the guide aboard, where it had agreed to wait.

Luna came down the ramp beside me.

“Hello,” she called.

No answer.

“We’re from Scarecrow. We’re looking for survivors.”

Something shifted behind the roof panel.

A man’s voice answered.

“Stay there.”

We stayed.

“How many?” he asked.

“Two outside,” Luna said. “Our pilot, two kits, and a Teeming guide in the aircraft.”

The silence after that was sharp.

“You brought them here?”

“They showed us where you were. They’re waiting aboard.”

A woman appeared at the edge of the shelter.

She had a long strip of cloth wound around one hand.

“You said Scarecrow.”

“Yes.”

“We saw the tower once.”

Luna took a small step forward, then stopped again.

“It’s still there.”

The woman looked at my hair.

“What happened to you?”

I was beginning to think I needed a shorter answer to that question.

“A lot,” I said.

For some reason, that made her laugh.

It was not a happy laugh, but it was a beginning.

There were four of them.

All adults. All from the second wave, although none had travelled with Dane’s group.

The woman with the wrapped hand was Elinor Pell. The man who had spoken first was Cassian Rook. The other two, Maeve Senn and Ivo Rennick, came out only after Luna set down her bag and sat on a stone where they could see both her hands.

Elinor had cut her palm opening a damaged container. The wound was clean enough, but deep, and she had been working with it because everyone had needed water.

Ivo had a cough.

Maeve carried a little book tied shut with string.

Cassian kept looking past us at the aircraft.

“Where are your escorts?” he asked.

“We haven’t got any,” Luna said.

“The uniforms.”

“We aren’t travelling with station guards.”

He looked at Elinor.

She unwound the cloth around her hand.

“Can you spare a clean dressing?”

“Yes,” I said. “I can help more than that, if you want.”

She watched as I knelt in front of her.

I explained before touching her hand. The cut, the damaged tendons, the small patch of tissue that was beginning to fail beneath the swelling.

She let me repair it.

When she flexed her fingers afterwards, Cassian sat down abruptly.

Maeve opened the little book.

I thought she meant to write something.

Instead she took out a folded scrap and handed it to Luna.

It was a transport notice.

Report for collection. Bring essential personal equipment. Further allocation to follow.

The date was old.

“We hid,” Maeve said. “There were six of us then. Two went with the first collection. They said they’d send a message.”

Luna read the notice again.

“Names?”

Maeve told her.

I did not recognise either.

We wrote them down exactly as she said them.

“We’ve just brought people out of a place where some transfers ended,” Luna said. “We can check the records.”

Cassian looked up.

“Brought them out how?”

“We opened the doors.”

He watched her for a long time.

Then he asked whether the aircraft had room for four more.

They took nearly everything in the shelter.

I helped with the water containers. Keir came out to check how the bundles would fit. Dot introduced itself before anyone had to step past it.

The guide remained in the rear compartment until I asked whether it would prefer to leave us there and return by the sheltered route the mother had shown it.

It would.

I told our passengers before opening the rear door.

Cassian moved close to Maeve. Elinor kept her newly healed hand against her chest.

The guide came down slowly and stopped well clear of them.

For a moment nobody moved.

Then Elinor said, “Thank you.”

Dot translated.

The guide touched the ground with one forelimb, turned, and went beneath the ridge.

Cassian watched until it disappeared.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” he said.

“Neither did we,” Luna told him. “At first.”

He picked up the last bag.

That was enough for now.

Ivo’s cough came from an old chest infection that had never quite cleared.

He asked for my help once we were airborne and he had watched Elinor open and close her hand for the tenth time.

I treated him in the quiet forward space while Luna sat with Maeve and went through the places the four of them had passed.

Some shelters had been empty.

One had contained fresh ash and a broken cup, but no one had answered when they called.

Another had a warning painted on the approach. Maeve had copied it into her book without understanding all the marks.

We did not turn every sign into a rescue already waiting for us.

We put them on the map.

When I finished, Ivo took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I forgot I could do that.”

I sat beside him until he had tried it again.

Across the compartment, Vell was showing Cassian the passenger door release.

Cassian listened as though it were the most important piece of machinery he had ever seen.

It might have been.

Our queen carried the news ahead of us.

By the time we landed, Wren had four spaces ready on the arrival page and Priya had food on the way.

One hundred and seventy-five.

I said the number quietly to myself while Keir shut down the engines.

Luna heard.

“Still counting?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Sera met us at the ramp with Risa.

She looked at the four new passengers, then at me.

“I said no houses.”

“I didn’t promise them houses.”

“Rooms,” Luna said.

Risa laughed and went to help Elinor with a bag.

Sera took mine.

“Was it good?” she asked quietly.

“The reunion?”

She nodded.

I looked towards the empty nursery compartment.

“Yes.”

She touched my arm.

“Tell us later.”

“I will.”

Then she went with Maeve towards the square, talking about food and where she could put her things.

The remaining visiting broods were quieter that afternoon.

Thirty-one young now, with eight attendants. Eighteen in one court, thirteen in another.

The numbers matched the mountain queen’s first account. Knowing that did not make it easier to walk past the two empty courts beside them.

Their mothers had not yet been reached directly.

Our queen had found someone who recognised the descending country. Messages were still travelling between queens who chose to pass them on.

The other mother’s last known territory lay beyond places the mountain queen had been able to hear while captive.

No one knew whether she was still there.

I sat on the low wall outside the nearer court while Dot spoke with an attendant.

A young one moved to the opening, stopped in the shade, and watched me.

I watched it back.

After a while it tapped the earth with one forelimb.

I put my palm on the ground.

Dot turned towards me.

“What did I just say?” I asked.

“Probably that you have a hand.”

“Useful.”

“To someone encountering you for the first time, perhaps.”

The young one tapped again.

This time Dot showed me a slower pattern.

I tried it.

The little body settled lower.

“Better,” Dot said.

“What did that mean?”

“That you will remain where you are.”

I stayed there until it went back to its attendant.

Later, beneath Scarecrow, our queen asked me to help her open a new chamber.

She had chosen the space herself. The old passages would remain where her brood knew them. The larger chamber would give her room as her body grew, with a broad connection to the place where we usually met.

Sera had come down with us, carrying the drawing she had made from the queen’s description.

Risa sat beside the water channel. Luna stood with Dot near the marked edge of the work.

Our queen showed me the changes she had already made inside herself.

The new silver branches were orderly and alive. They did not pull against the old paths. The mountain queen had taught her how to let separate parts carry different kinds of attention without forcing every thought through the same narrow connection.

I could feel the difference when she spoke.

Not louder.

Roomier.

As though I had been invited into a house where another window had opened.

*You have grown again,* I said.

*I have practised.*

There was pride in that.

She deserved it.

I began moving the stone at the back of the chamber. She worked beside me, shaping the lower surface while I carried the roof into a higher arch.

We left the water’s old route intact and made another shallow basin where she wanted the young to drink.

Sera walked along the new edge as it formed.

“Less slope here,” she said.

I adjusted it.

The queen paused.

*She does not change stone herself.*

“No.”

*But she sees where it should be.*

“Yes.”

I repeated that aloud.

Sera looked down at her drawing, suddenly shy in a way I did not often see.

“Tell her I like making places people want to stay.”

The queen considered her for a moment.

Then she changed a small section of the floor herself, making a dry ledge beside the water where a human could sit comfortably.

Sera put down her drawing and tried it.

“That’s very good.”

The queen was pleased enough that I felt it all the way through my chest.

The lesson began when the mountain queen joined us.

She asked permission before reaching into the conversation. Our queen welcomed her, and Dot settled closer so everyone could hear what could be put into human words.

The older queen wanted our queen to make something she had never made before.

Not another cup.

A living part of her own chamber that could respond to a simple touch without needing her attention every moment.

I understood the structure when the older queen showed it. A small network, separate from her body but grown from material she chose to share. No captive fragment. No mind caught inside it.

A tool, like a muscle carrying out a familiar movement.

Our queen asked several questions.

Then she began.

The silver formed beneath a thin layer of pale stone. It spread into delicate branching lines, joined at a few clear points, and settled.

She touched one point.

A little opening beside the basin widened, allowing water to pass into it.

She touched it again.

The flow stopped.

Risa leaned forward.

“She made a tap.”

Dot paused before translating.

The older queen asked what a tap was.

I explained.

Our queen seemed entirely satisfied with the comparison.

*The small ones spill less this way.*

I looked at the neat opening, then at the broad living silver inside her.

World-changing power, and the first independent thing she wanted it to do was keep children from tipping over the water.

I thought Priya would understand her very well.

The older queen stayed after the lesson.

Luna took out the copied page from the mountain records.

“May I ask about the people who came there?”

The queen agreed.

Luna described the uniforms, the transfer lists, the ordinary human voices directing work around the old Sorn machinery.

“Did the same people build it?”

*No.*

“Were humans there from the beginning?”

*No.*

The answer carried a memory of bodies moving around the first housings. Different joints. Different voices. Shapes I could not turn into a useful drawing without more help.

The Sorn had built the first restraints and the pathways that took her silver.

Humans had come later.

Some had repaired the machinery. Some had asked questions. Some had been brought in guarded, as the people we rescued had been.

She could not tell us what all of them knew.

Luna kept her pencil still until the queen had finished.

“Did you ever hear the name Windsor?”

I passed the question carefully.

The queen did not recognise the name as something separate from the many human sounds she had heard.

Luna nodded.

She wrote that down too.

No proof was still no proof, even when uncertainty hurt.

Then the queen offered something we had not asked for.

*There was a human who stopped a cutting once.*

I looked up.

She remembered a voice raised above the machine noise. A person standing between the operators and a control surface. The cutting had stopped. Later, it had begun again with different people present.

“Could you show us the person?” Luna asked.

The queen’s memory was clearer in movement than face. I felt urgency, a hand striking the edge of a housing, the operators retreating.

It was not enough to identify anyone.

Dot marked the event against the records we had copied. Perhaps there would be a maintenance interruption that matched it. Perhaps there would not.

We did not make a rescuer or a villain out of a shape we could not name.

But Luna put the pencil down more gently than she had picked it up.

On the way back up, Nessa stopped me to ask whether the new schoolroom could have a shelf low enough for her to reach.

“Which shelf?” I asked.

“The one with the good pencils.”

“Are they high up for a reason?”

She considered that for longer than I expected.

“Probably.”

“Then ask whoever put them there.”

She sighed with the full disappointment of someone who had expected unlimited power to be more useful.

Risa would have enjoyed it.

I decided to tell her when I got home.

At supper, Toren asked whether I could restore his arm.

He did not ask in front of everyone.

He waited until I was carrying bowls back to the kitchen, then stepped beside me beneath the covered walk.

“I saw what you did for Elinor.”

I stopped.

He held his empty sleeve close to his side.

“This is older.”

“I can look, if you want.”

“Just look?”

“Yes.”

We went to a quiet room in the medical building. Toby joined us at Toren’s request.

The injury had healed badly, but the body beyond it was clear to me. I could restore what was missing. Bones, muscles, nerves, skin. An arm that belonged to him, not something strapped on in its place.

I told him that.

He sat without speaking for a long time.

Then he said, “Tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“You aren’t going anywhere?”

“Not tomorrow morning.”

He nodded, stood, and walked to the door.

There he stopped.

“I used to make hinges.”

Toby looked towards me and wisely said nothing.

“We need people who can do that,” I said.

Toren glanced at my hands.

“You can make them already.”

“I can make a lot of things. That doesn’t mean I know where everyone wants their doors.”

He considered that.

Then he left the room with his sleeve hanging loose instead of held tightly against him.

When I got home, Risa was asleep on the bed with a book open beside her.

Sera stood at the table measuring cloth. Luna was trying to find a place for the growing pile of maps without taking over Sera’s work corner.

I put my bag down quietly.

“She all right?”

Sera nodded.

“Tired. She said to tell you she’s allowed.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“That’s what I told her.”

I went to the bedroom and moved the book before it fell.

Risa opened one eye.

“Did they get home?”

“Yes.”

“All of them?”

“All twenty-four.”

She smiled without quite waking.

“Good.”

I sat beside her.

After a moment she took my hand and laid it over hers against her stomach.

There was nothing for me to fix.

I did not look for anything.

I just stayed with her.

Sera came in after a while, carrying the piece of cloth she had been measuring. Luna followed with a lamp.

“What is that?” I asked.

“A curtain,” Sera said.

“For where?”

“The little room.”

I looked through the adjoining doorway.

The room was still mostly empty. There was time before we needed it for anything in particular.

Sera held the cloth against the window.

“It doesn’t all have to happen at once.”

Risa pushed herself upright, leaning against my shoulder.

“I like that colour.”

Luna held the lamp higher.

“So do I.”

We sat there discussing a curtain while the city outside settled into evening.

Later I told them about the bowl, the eastern mother’s careful first step, and the young one that had waited at the edge of her shadow.

Sera listened with her feet tucked beneath her.

Luna filled in the parts I missed.

Risa kept my hand in hers.

For once, the story we brought home had room for a happy ending before the next question began.

Day 582. Speaks.

Eastern brood reunited with their mother. Twenty-four young and six attendants delivered safely. Thirty-one visiting young and eight attendants remain at Scarecrow: groups of eighteen and thirteen. Contact with their mothers still being sought through willing queens.

Eastern queen provided a survivor location. Four adults found alive and brought home voluntarily: Elinor Pell, Cassian Rook, Maeve Senn, Ivo Rennick. Elinor’s hand and Ivo’s chest infection treated with permission. Their account and copied travel notes added to the search records. Two former companions taken in an earlier transfer; names recorded for checking, whereabouts unconfirmed.

Roster now one hundred and seventy-five: one hundred and sixty-nine humans and six kits. Visiting broods counted separately.

Our queen’s new chamber opened. Growth continuing under the planetary queen’s teaching. She made an independent water control from freely grown silver, without a captive mind or harvested fragment. Sera approved the new sitting ledge.

Mountain queen confirms humans arrived after the original Sorn restraints were built. Different humans held different roles. One remembered interruption of harvesting may be traceable in the copied records. No reliable identification yet. General Windsor’s personal involvement remains unknown.

Toren asked about restoring his arm. Examination completed with permission. He wants treatment tomorrow.

Risa chose a curtain with Sera and Luna.

I think we are getting better at having tomorrows.