Scarecrow

Nobody tells you how loud a baby is.

I don’t mean the crying. Dory cried, of course. She cried when she was hungry and when she was wet and when Liam held her the wrong way up, which he did twice on the second day before Sera confiscated her and told him he could hold Pebble instead.

I mean the silver.

She was awake. That was the thing. Even asleep, she was awake. Her silver never went still the way mine did when I slept. It moved all the time, slowly, turning from point to point, the way it had turned through the city counting the completions. Touching things. Pebble in the lower court. The queen at the garden wall. Dot on watch. Sera in the next room. Luna at the table. Me.

All night.

Every few minutes, a small bright touch. There you are. And then on to the next.

”She’s checking,” Risa said, on the second night, at three in the morning, when neither of us had slept. ”She’s making sure we’re all still here.”

”I know.”

”Do you think she’ll stop?”

I thought about it.

”No,” I said.

Risa laughed into the pillow.

”Good,” she said.

Edda came every morning for the first week.

She weighed Dory on the scale from the medical building, and measured her length with a tape, and looked into her eyes with a small light, and listened to her heart, and wrote everything down in a book with a green cover that she wouldn’t let anyone else see.

On the third morning she put the tape away and sat back on her heels and frowned.

”What?” Risa said at once.

”Nothing’s wrong.”

”Then why are you frowning?”

”Because she’s grown,” Edda said, ”a quarter of an inch since yesterday.”

Risa looked down at Dory, who was lying on the blanket between us with her fists up by her ears, watching the light move on the ceiling.

”Is that a lot?”

”For one day,” Edda said, ”it’s a great deal.” She looked at the green book. ”And she’s lifting her head. Properly. Holding it. That’s two months, usually. Not three days.”

I’d noticed that.

I hadn’t said anything, because I didn’t know if it was strange. I’d never had a baby before. But she lifted her head when Pebble came up the porch steps, and turned it, and held it there, wobbling only a little, while she looked at him.

”Is she all right?” Risa said.

Edda looked at me.

I didn’t need to look at Dory’s bones. I’d been looking at them, quietly, all night, every night, since she was born. I couldn’t help it.

”She’s building,” I said. ”The way she did before. Her silver’s laying down new paths every hour. Everything’s whole. Everything’s exactly where it should be. She’s just doing it faster than anyone else would.”

”She was always going to,” Risa said quietly.

Edda closed the green book.

”Then I’ll stop being surprised,” she said, ”and start writing down how fast.”

The young came every day.

The queens had agreed it. Not at the courts, not yet. Edda said no to that, firmly, for at least two weeks, and our queen had accepted it with a dignity that made Edda look slightly ashamed of herself. So instead the young came to her.

An attendant brought them up the agreed path every afternoon, three or four at a time, to the porch. Pebble first, always. He’d decided that was his right. Then whoever the queen had chosen that day.

They didn’t climb on Risa any more. Pebble had tried, on the second day, and Dory had pulsed something sharp at him, and he’d stopped at once and backed down the step and stood there looking abashed.

”She said,” Dot reported, ”mother is sore.”

So now they stood on the porch boards round Gareth’s chair, very close, very careful, with their flat heads turned up toward the bundle in Risa’s arms.

And Dory talked to them.

All afternoon. In the brood-speech. Fast, bright little pulses I could barely follow. Dot could follow them, mostly, and translated in a low voice for the rest of us, though she admitted after the fourth day that she was missing things.

”She speaks it better than this unit,” Dot said. ”She has words this unit has not been taught. She uses the queen’s words, and the attendants’ words, and the young’s own words, and some words that this unit believes she has made.”

”Made up?” said Sera.

”Made,” Dot said. ”Not up. They are correct. The young understand them. This unit does not know where they came from.”

On the fifth day, Pebble brought her a feather.

It was grey and white and very small, from one of the cliff swifts that nested in the canyon wall. He held it carefully in one forelimb and put it on the blanket beside her.

Dory looked at the feather.

Then she reached out with one tiny fist, very slowly, and closed it round the feather.

Pebble hummed so loudly that the porch boards shook.

”She has said,” Dot reported, ”that it is the best thing she has.”

”Better than the nursery stone?” Risa said.

There was a pause.

”She has said,” Dot said, ”that the stone is for keeping and the feather is for holding. And that both are best. In different ways.”

Risa looked at me over Dory’s head.

”She’s five days old,” Risa said.

”I know.”

”She’s five days old and she’s already more diplomatic than Sera.”

”I heard that,” said Sera, from the doorway.

Sera was the one who held her most, apart from Risa.

I hadn’t expected that. I don’t think Sera had either.

She’d been wary, at first. Not of Dory. Of herself. On the first afternoon she’d stood at the end of the porch with her arms folded and watched Liam and Sigmund and Luna and half the city take their turns, and she hadn’t come forward.

”Do you want to hold her?” Risa had said.

”I’ll drop her.”

”You won’t drop her.”

”I’ve never held a baby. Not once. Not in my whole life.” Sera’s jaw was set. ”In the dome they took them away to the nursery wards before you could. And on Avalon there weren’t any.”

”Then this’ll be the first time,” Risa said. ”Come here.”

So Sera came.

She held Dory the way people hold something that might explode. Stiff. Very far from her own body. Both arms out. Her face set like she was holding a live charge.

Dory looked up at her.

Then her silver came out, slow and bright, and touched Sera. Not the quick little there you are she gave everyone. Something longer. Slower. Something that stayed.

Sera’s arms came in.

I watched it happen. I watched her elbows bend and her shoulders drop and the stiffness go out of her all at once, as if someone had cut a string. She drew Dory in against her chest. Close. The way Risa held her. The way you hold something you already know.

Sera didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she said, very quietly, ”Oh.”

That was all. Just oh.

After that, she held her every day. In the mornings, so Risa could sleep. In the evenings, walking up and down the porch while Dory fussed and Toby played something low on the fiddle in the street below. At night, sometimes, when Dory’s silver went on checking and checking and wouldn’t let anyone rest, Sera would get up and take her out to the garden steps and sit there in the dark with her, and the checking would slow down, and stop.

”What do you do?” I asked her, on the sixth night.

”Nothing,” Sera said. ”I just sit. I tell her we’re all here. I tell her who’s where.” She looked down at Dory, asleep in the crook of her arm. ”I tell her the names.”

”Like the dawn count.”

”Like the dawn count,” Sera said. ”She likes it. She stops checking once she’s heard all of them.”

I sat down beside her on the step.

The garden was dark. The queen’s head was a great pale shape at the wall, resting on the stones. Her plates rose and fell, very slowly. She hadn’t gone back down to the deep since Dory was born. She’d said she wasn’t going to. Not yet.

Sera was quiet for a long time.

Then she said, ”I want one.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Next,” Sera said. ”I want one next.” She didn’t look at me. She kept her eyes on Dory’s face. ”I didn’t know I did. I really didn’t, Lucas. I thought I’d be the one who taught them to fight. Aunt Sera. Hits people. Teaches the small ones where to put their feet.” She stopped. ”And then she touched me. The first time. And I knew.”

”Knew what?”

”That I want to hold one that’s mine,” Sera said. ”Ours. And I don’t want to wait until after the war, because there isn’t going to be an after the war. There’s going to be this. Station coming over twice a day. Crane deciding things. Letters in Luna’s numbers that say careful.” She looked up at me at last. ”I’m not going to let them decide that for me. I’m not going to wait for permission that’s never coming.”

I looked at her.

Her face in the dark. The silver around her eyes, faint and steady. The set of her jaw, which hadn’t changed since the first day I met her.

”All right,” I said.

Sera blinked.

”That’s it? All right?”

”What did you want me to say?”

”I don’t know. Something. Argue. Tell me it’s dangerous. Tell me about Article Fourteen.” Her voice wobbled. ”By descent.”

”I know about Article Fourteen,” I said. ”So do you. So does Risa. She had Dory anyway.” I took Sera’s free hand. ”I’m not going to argue, Sera. I want one too. With you. I always have. I just didn’t know if you did.”

Sera stared at me.

Then she laughed. Wet and startled and too loud, so that Dory stirred in her arm, and Sera hushed her, and laughed again, quieter, with her forehead pressed against my shoulder.

”We should tell them,” she said into my coat.

”Now?”

”Not now. It’s two in the morning.” She lifted her head. ”Tomorrow. All four of us. Properly. At the table.”

”Like the terms.”

”Like the terms,” Sera said.

So the next evening, we sat at the table.

The four of us. Liam had been sent home, protesting. Dot was on watch in the garden. The queen’s head was at the wall. Dory was asleep in the basket Dov had made, which sat on the floor between Risa’s chair and mine, so that either of us could reach her.

Luna had her notebook open.

”Is this a meeting?” she said.

”It’s a talk,” said Sera.

”The last time you three had a talk, I was locked in the mess hall with Liam for four hours.”

”That was a different talk,” said Risa.

Luna put her pen down.

”All right,” she said. ”Talk.”

Sera told them.

She didn’t make a speech. She said it plainly, the way she’d said it to me on the steps. That she wanted a baby. That she wanted one next. That she wasn’t going to wait for an after that wasn’t coming.

Risa smiled before she’d finished.

Luna didn’t.

Luna sat very still, with her hands folded on the notebook, and looked at Sera for a long time.

”Article Fourteen,” she said.

”I know,” said Sera.

”By descent. Every child any of us has is the Project’s under the Accord. Crane’s office would have the right to take them. Not just to examine. To take.” Luna’s voice was very level. ”Dory’s already one. Whatever my father finds, whatever he takes back, that clause is still there until someone with the authority strikes it out. And nobody has that authority except the people who signed it.”

”I know.”

”So you’re choosing to have a child that the law says you won’t be allowed to keep.”

”Yes,” said Sera.

Luna looked at her.

”Good,” she said.

Sera blinked.

”Good?”

”Good,” Luna said again. She unfolded her hands. ”I wanted to be sure you’d thought about it. You have. So: good.” She looked down at the basket, where Dory was asleep with the swift feather clutched in one fist. ”If we wait until the law lets us, we’ll never do anything. They wrote it that way on purpose. To make us wait. To make us small.” Her mouth thinned. ”My father sat in that room. Your father drafted the words. They wrote down that our children belong to them, and then they went home to their own children.” She looked up. ”I’m not going to let a clause decide how big my family is.”

Nobody said anything.

Then Risa reached across the table and took Luna’s hand.

”Your family,” she said gently.

Luna went pink.

”Our family,” she said. ”You know what I meant.”

”I know what you said,” said Risa.

It turned into a long evening.

We hadn’t talked about it before. Not like this. Not all four of us. We’d agreed on terms, back before the station and the General and the quiet room. Nobody is pretending. Nobody is rushing. Nobody gets hurt in secret. But we’d never talked about what came after. About what the family would look like in five years. In ten.

We’d never had time.

Now Dory was asleep in a basket on the floor, and the queen was at the wall, and for one evening nothing was happening, and we talked.

Sera wanted at least two.

”So they’re not alone,” she said. ”I was never alone. Liam followed me everywhere first, then Pip later. Having siblings is the best experience. So someone is always on their side, no matter what. Parents have to be parents. Brothers and sisters can be best friends.”

”They won’t be alone,” Risa said. ”They’ll have Dory.”

”And Pebble,” I said.

”And a hundred Teeming young,” said Luna dryly, ”who’ll teach them to climb walls.”

”Two at least,” Sera said firmly. ”And not too far apart. I want them to be friends.”

Risa wanted more.

She said it quietly, looking at the basket.

”I always thought I’d have a lot,” she said. ”Before. When I was small. Before the Project. Before Sigmund’s lightning and my storms and the dome and the drop.” She smiled a little. ”Our house was so quiet. Father was always in the Senate. Mother was always somewhere else. It was just me and Sigmund and a nanny who was frightened of us.” She reached down and touched the edge of the basket. ”I want a loud house. I want so many that I can’t hear myself think.”

”You already can’t hear yourself think,” said Sera. ”She checks on you every four minutes.”

”More,” Risa said. ”I want more of that.”

Luna was the last to say what she wanted.

She took a long time. She sat with her pen in her hand, turning it over, not writing anything.

”I want one,” she said at last.

We waited.

”Not yet,” Luna said. ”Not next. Not after Sera. Later.” She looked up. ”Not because of the clause. I meant what I said about the clause. But because of my father.”

”Because he’s not here,” Risa said softly.

”Because he’s not here.” Luna’s voice was steady. Her eyes weren’t, quite. ”He wrote expected back. I want him to be back. I want him to be standing on that porch when I tell him. I want him to be in the room.” She swallowed. ”He wasn’t in the room when I was born. He was at a review board. Mother told me. He came the next week and looked at me through the nursery glass and went back to work. I don’t want that. I want him to see it.” She looked down at the notebook. ”So I want to wait until he comes home. Until Crane’s finished. Until there’s something to come home to.”

”That could be a long time,” Sera said gently.

”Then it’ll be a long time,” said Luna. ”I’m good at waiting. I waited eighteen months for Lucas to notice me.”

”I noticed you,” I said.

”You noticed me on Day 431,” said Luna. ”I wrote it down.”

Sera laughed so hard she had to put her head on the table.

Then they all looked at me.

I’d known they would, eventually. I’d been sitting quiet, listening, with one hand hanging down by the basket so that Dory’s silver could find me every time it went checking. Which it did. Every four minutes.

There you are.

”What about you?” Risa said.

”What about me?”

”You’ve heard what we want. Sera wants two, close together. I want so many I can’t hear myself think. Luna wants one when her father’s home.” Risa looked at me. ”What do you want?”

I thought about it.

I thought about the dome. The small grey room I’d grown up in, with Mother’s shaking hands and the tea in half-full cups. My father’s empty chair. The twins, who’d grown up with only half a family and a guard on the door.

I thought about the canyon. The first night I’d spent alone on Avalon, in the dark, with the silver screaming in my head and nobody to tell me what it was.

I thought about Dory, asleep in the basket with a feather in her fist, checking on all of us every four minutes because she wanted to be sure we were still here.

”I want them to know they’re wanted,” I said.

The table went quiet.

”That’s all,” I said. ”However many. Whenever. Two or ten or one. I don’t care. I want every one of them to know, from the first day, that someone was waiting for them. That they weren’t an accident or a number or a clause. That they were wanted.” I looked down at the basket. ”That’s what she knows. She’s known it since before she was born. She’s known it so well she checks on it every four minutes.”

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Sera reached across the table and took my hand. And Risa took Sera’s. And Luna, after a moment, put her pen down and took Risa’s and mine.

The four of us. Round the table. Holding hands like children in a dome schoolroom, which none of us had ever been allowed to be.

Under the table, in the basket, Dory’s silver came round on its check.

It found all four of us at once.

And stopped.

It didn’t move on. It didn’t touch the next thing. It stayed there, resting against us, all four of us joined, the way a young one rests against its mother’s plates.

There you are, it said.

And then, after a moment, something new.

Something I’d never felt her say before. A brood-word. One Dot would have to translate for us later, because none of us knew it yet.

But I could feel what it meant.

Dot translated it the next morning.

”It is a word the young use,” she said, ”when the whole brood is in the hollow at once. When no one is out foraging, and no one is lost, and the queen has counted all of them. It means” Her lamps flickered. ”This unit is not certain of the translation. It means something like: everyone home.”

Liam found out about the rest by lunchtime.

Nobody told him. Nobody had to. He came up the porch steps, took one look at Sera holding Dory, and at Sera’s face, and stopped dead.

”No,” he said.

”No what?” said Sera.

”You’re doing the face. The Risa face. From before.” He pointed at her. ”You’re next. Aren’t you. You’re next.”

Sera didn’t answer.

Liam sat down on the top step very heavily.

”I’m going to need a bigger chair,” he said. ”To carry. I’m going to be carrying chairs across this city for the rest of my life.”

”Yes,” said Sera.

Liam put his head in his hands.

Then, through his fingers, he said, ”Can I be the one who teaches them to climb walls? Before Pebble does?”

”No,” said Sera. ”Pebble’s got seniority.”

The queen had views, of course.

She waited until the evening, when I came out to the wall to sit with her the way I did every night now. She lowered her head until it was level with mine.

You are planning more, she said.

How did you know?

The little one told me. The queen’s voice was warm and amused. She tells me everything. She told me the four of you held hands at the table. She told me the one called Sera wants two. She told me the one called Luna is waiting for the forager.

She’s six days old, I said. She can’t know all that.

She knows the shapes of things, the queen said. Not the words. She knows that the four of you were joined, and that it was about her, and about others like her who have not come yet. A pause. She is very pleased about it.

I laughed.

Then I said, Will they be like her?

The queen was quiet for a long time.

Sera’s silver is whole, she said at last. You finished it. So is Luna’s. So is Risa’s. So is yours. Her plates rose and fell. Risa’s daughter built herself from whole silver, on both sides. That is why she is woven. No narrow places to grow around. No stops. Every path free to join every other.

So the others will be woven too.

They will be whole, the queen said. Whether they will be woven as she is, I do not know. Each hatchling is its own. A brood is not a set of copies. She hummed, very low. But they will be whole, and they will be yours, and they will be ours. And she will be the eldest. She will teach them.

Teach them what?

How to check, said the queen. Every four minutes. That everyone is home.

On the seventh day, the courier case didn’t come.

It should have. It came every other day with the supply drop, on the afternoon pass, and Gareth carried it up the street like a loaf of bread and put it on the table, and Luna opened it and decoded the numbers. Nothing yet. Still looking. Careful.

On the seventh day, the supply drop came down on schedule.

The courier case wasn’t in it.

Gareth checked twice. He went through every crate on the landing apron with Dov and two of the third wave, and then he went through them again. He came to the house with his hands empty and his face very carefully blank.

”Maybe it’s late,” he said.

”It’s never late,” said Luna.

”Maybe he didn’t send one.”

”He’d send one if there was nothing to say. He’d send nothing yet.” Luna’s hands were very still on the table. ”He wouldn’t send nothing.”

Nobody said anything.

Then Dot rolled in through the door, which she never did, because the doorframe was narrow and she scraped her lamps on it.

”Dask,” she said. ”The station pilot did not make her scheduled contact this afternoon.”

I looked up.

”This unit has spoken to her on every pass for nine months,” Dot said. ”She has never missed a contact. Not once. This afternoon the station came over on schedule, and the drop came down on schedule, and the pilot did not answer this unit’s call.” Her lamps flickered. ”This unit called four times.”

”Maybe she’s ill,” said Sera.

”Maybe,” said Dot.

But her lamps had gone very low.

In the basket between Risa’s chair and mine, Dory woke.

She didn’t cry. She lay very still, with the swift feather in her fist, and her silver came out and went round on its check. Me. Risa. Sera. Luna. Dot. The queen at the wall. Pebble in the lower court.

And then up. Out. Through the roof and the sky, toward the place where the station had just passed over.

Toward the forager.

And it came back.

Not with there you are.

With a small, rising shape. Uncertain. The one she’d used on the night he left.

Comes back?

I put my hand down into the basket. She took my finger in her fist, beside the feather.

Yes, I told her.

I hoped I wasn’t lying.

Days 623–629. Next.

Nobody tells you how loud a baby is. Her silver never sleeps. Every few minutes she checks on everyone: there you are. Risa asked if she’ll stop. I said no. Risa said good.

Edda: a quarter of an inch in one day. Lifting her head properly at three days, which is usually two months. Everything whole, everything exactly where it should be, just faster. Edda has stopped being surprised and started writing down how fast.

The young come to the porch every afternoon. When Pebble tried to climb on Risa, Dory told him: mother is sore. Dot says Dory speaks brood better than Dot does, and has made words the young understand that nobody taught her. Day five: Pebble brought her a swift feather. The stone is for keeping and the feather is for holding. Both are best.

Sera held her like a live charge. Then Dory touched her, slowly, and something stayed, and Sera said ”oh.” Now Sera takes her to the garden steps at night and tells her the names until she stops checking.

Night six, on the steps, Sera: ”I want one. Next.” She won’t wait for an after-the-war that isn’t coming, or for permission that’s never coming. I said all right. I want one too, with her, always have. She laughed into my coat.

At the table, all four of us. Luna asked about Article Fourteen, ”by descent.” Sera: yes, I know. Luna: good. If we wait until the law lets us, we never will. They wrote it that way to make us small. Risa: ”Your family.” Luna went pink.

Sera wants at least two, close together, so nobody’s alone. Risa wants so many she can’t hear herself think: a loud house. Luna wants one later, when her father is home and can be in the room; he wasn’t, when she was born. She says I noticed her on Day 431. She wrote it down.

I want every one of them to know they were wanted. However many, whenever.

We held hands round the table. Dory’s check found all four of us at once and stopped. Then a new brood-word. Dot: what the young say when the whole brood is in the hollow and the queen has counted all of them. Everyone home.

The queen: the others will be whole. Whether woven like Dory, she doesn’t know; a brood isn’t a set of copies. Dory will be the eldest. She’ll teach them how to check that everyone is home.

Day 629. The courier case didn’t come. He would have sent ”nothing yet.” He wouldn’t send nothing. The station pilot missed her contact for the first time in nine months. Dot called four times.

Dory asked again: comes back?

I said yes.

I hope I wasn’t lying.