Scarecrow

Okafor read the list on the red glass at dawn, the morning we went.

It wasn’t short, this time.

”Keir, flying. Aster. Gareth.” She didn’t look up. ”The youngest queen, who’s asked to carry us, and who can stop whenever she likes.”

On Sesh’s shoulder, the youngest queen fluffed her copper-tipped feathers and looked, Garnet said afterward, extremely pleased with herself.

”Sesh. And every winged Kethri who wants to go home and look.” Eight of them besides Sesh, in their ring, with the one place left open. Every one of them stepped forward. ”Juno, for the queens. Jessa, to feel up into the Hand. Marlo and the light-benders, to fold the light till we’re close.”

”The General. Ice.” The General, very straight, nodded once. ”Sigmund. Lightning. A fence round the palm, if the handlers come out.” Sigmund’s hands sparked, once, and went still. Jessa, beside him, put her hand on his arm.

”Osei. Hana.” Hana stood up very straight. ”Water. Ropes. Rain, if it comes to that.”

”Calder. Liam.”

Liam’s head came up.

”No fire,” said Okafor.

”Ma’am—”

”It’s a forest, Calder. The whole world. Pole to pole. If you so much as warm your hands, I’ll have you put back in the hold with the Karst.” She looked at him over the slate. ”You’re coming because if anything else starts a fire, I want a Calder there to put it out. Understood?”

Liam looked at her for a long moment.

”Understood,” he said. And then, under his breath, to me: ”She knows I can’t put it out. You know I can’t. I told you myself, in the dome. The Calder temper isn’t the fire. It’s not being able to put it back.”

”Sera can now,” I said.

He stopped.

”She pulls the heat out of a horseshoe when it’s done,” I said. ”Every day. In the forge. She didn’t used to be able to.” I looked at him. ”You’re whole now. Same as her. You just haven’t tried.”

”Dask, Lucas. Collars. All of them.” Okafor glanced at me. ”And whatever else needs opening.”

”Yes, ma’am.”

”Dask, Dorothy.”

Mother, at the edge of the glass, with Dory on her hip, didn’t move.

”Hold whatever I ask you to hold,” said Okafor. ”And don’t let go.”

”I won’t,” said Mother.

She handed Dory to Risa. Dory didn’t cry. She looked at Mother very seriously, with her silver turned all the way out, and said, quite clearly: ”Come back.”

Mother put her hand on Dory’s head.

”Yes,” she said. Not I will. Luna had taught all of us that.

”And Dask,” said Okafor. ”Genny. Garnet.”

Pell, at the back, made a small sound.

Okafor didn’t look at her. ”Genny, to sing through the doors, with the queens. The way you did when the choir came for Sera.” She looked at Garnet. ”Garnet, to hold. Anything that falls.”

”Like the people in the square,” said Garnet.

”Like the people in the square.”

Garnet thought about this.

”There’s a lot more of them,” she said. ”In a forest. There’ll be thousands. Falling out of trees.”

”Yes,” said Okafor. ”Can you?”

Garnet looked at Genny. Genny looked back. Something went between them that I’d seen go between them since they were born, the thing nobody else ever caught but Mother.

”Yes,” said Genny. For both of them.

Pell, at the back, didn’t say anything else. But she came forward. Through everyone. And knelt in front of the twins on the red glass, and straightened Garnet’s collar, which didn’t need straightening, and pushed Genny’s hair behind her ear.

”Be careful,” she said.

”We’re always careful,” said Garnet.

”You’ve never been careful in your life,” said Pell. ”Be careful anyway.”

”And me,” said Okafor.

Holt, at her elbow, said nothing. He’d known. He’d known since the night Okafor said we’ve never gone out and knocked.

”Holt has the city,” said Okafor. ”Windsor, Luna, has operations, from the map room. Every plan goes across her table. Including mine.” She tucked the slate under her arm. ”Marsh stays. He has a daughter a week old and he’s carried enough.” She looked at Toby. ”I’ll need you to carry the hello from here. Through Dory. So we can hear Avalon and Avalon can hear us.”

Toby, with Harriet asleep in a sling against his chest, nodded.

”That’s everyone,” said Okafor.

She looked out at the ship. At the gold letters on its point.

”Let’s go and knock,” she said.

The crossing took forty minutes.

I didn’t count. Aster did. I sat in the squad seats with Genny on one side and Garnet on the other, and Mother across from me with her hands perfectly still in her lap, and watched the window go dark, and the thread come out of the point of the ship and run away into the dark between, very long, very thin, much longer than the thread to Earth.

At the end of it, a forest.

And over the forest, a Hand.

We came out of the dark at dawn.

Not Avalon’s dawn. The Kethri world’s. A small white sun coming up over the edge of a forest that went on forever, so that the light came slanting through the tops of the trees, pale silver-green, swaying. The whole world moving in the wind. Like water. Like breathing.

And over it, very low, very still, the old Hand.

It was worse in daylight. Older. The grey was pitted and scarred, worn soft at every edge, the way the wardens had been worn. One of its three fingers had a crack running all the way down it that nobody had ever mended. Lichen grew on the knuckles. Something like moss hung from the underside of the palm in long grey beards.

”It hasn’t moved,” said Aster, very quietly, ”in a very long time.”

”Then let’s not wake it before we have to,” said Okafor.

The light-benders folded the light.

And the Open Hand went down. Under the old Hand. Into the tops of the trees.

They were waiting.

That was the first thing. That was what nobody had expected, not even Sesh.

The Kethri in the trees. A few thousand. Grey and small and quick, unwinged, with collars round their necks. When Keir brought the Open Hand down into the canopy, they were already there. Not perched in long silent rows with their heads down, the way they’d been when the scouts came.

Facing us.

Every one. On every branch. For as far as I could see through the window, through the silver-green leaves, grey heads turned toward the place in the air where the Open Hand was. Where the light-benders had folded the light round it so nobody could see.

They couldn’t see it.

They didn’t need to.

”They’ve been waiting,” said Juno. Her voice was very small. ”Since the scouts. Every morning. Since they saw her.” She swallowed. ”They’ve been facing this way since.”

On Sesh’s shoulder, the youngest queen went very still.

Then the old Hand woke.

I felt it. Everyone with silver felt it. A great slow shudder, all through the grey overhead, like something enormous turning over in its sleep. And then the voice.

Not loud. Not like the voice that came from the sky over Scarecrow the first time. Old. Tired. Worn as soft as the grey. The voice of a queen who’d been made to carry it for so long that she didn’t even sing it any more. She just let it out. Like breath.

It went into the collars.

And the Kethri in the trees turned.

They didn’t attack. Not at once. They turned their heads, very slowly, away from the Open Hand, and back down. Toward the branches. Toward the forest floor, so far below that I couldn’t see it through the leaves.

And they began to fall.

Not jump. Fall. Every one of them, all at once, letting go of the branches. A few thousand small grey bodies with no wings, dropping out of the tops of the trees toward a forest floor that was so far below you couldn’t see it.

”They’re not attacking,” said Juno. She was white. ”It’s not telling them to fight. It’s telling them to—”

She didn’t finish.

She didn’t need to.

The Sorn had seen the heads lift. Somebody in the old Hand had seen. And they’d decided a world that lifted its head was a world that wasn’t useful any more.

So they were throwing it away.

”Garnet,” said Okafor.

Garnet was already out of the door.

I’d seen her hold two hundred people over the square. Red-faced, crying, all evening, not letting go. I’d thought that was the most I’d ever see her do.

I was wrong.

She went out of Aster’s door into the open air of the Kethri world, a hundred feet up in the canopy, with nothing under her but leaves and wind and a long way down. Silver hair like a dandelion clock. Arms out wide.

And she caught them.

Not one at a time. All of them. Every small grey body falling through the leaves, on every branch, for as far as I could see. She went round the outside first, the way I’d taught her, the way she drew the light-benders, getting the outside right so she could see what went in the middle. And then the middle. Every one.

They stopped.

All at once. In mid-air. Thousands of them. Hanging in the forest among the leaves, at every height, from the canopy to as far down as I could see, like dust caught in a sunbeam. Like a picture.

Garnet hung in the middle of them with her arms out and her face screwed up and tears running down it.

”I’ve got them,” she said. Through her teeth. ”I’ve got them. They keep pulling.”

”Genny,” said Okafor.

”I know,” said Genny.

She didn’t go out of the door. She didn’t need to. She sat down in the squad seats very straight, with her hands in her lap, the way Pell sat. And closed her eyes.

And sang.

Not out loud. Through the hello. Down the thread, through Toby on Avalon, through Dory, to our queen, and the old one on the mountain, and the first queen and the second, and the spine-queen and all the new ones. And back. Through the youngest queen on Sesh’s shoulder. Out into the forest.

The lullaby.

The one the queens had sung through the doors in Sera and Juno and Wren and Brock and two hundred people, the night the choir came for Avalon. You do not close it. You sing to what is on the other side.

Only this time it wasn’t going through doors in people.

It was going into collars.

I felt it hit them.

The collars. Every one. With a piece of a queen in each, pulling, telling a small grey body to let go of the branch and fall. And then, very faint at first, from very far away, a lullaby. Sung by every queen on Avalon. Through a girl of twelve sitting very straight in a seat on a ship.

The pieces of the queens in the collars heard it.

They didn’t stop pulling. They couldn’t. The old Hand’s voice was in them. But they listened. The way the queens had listened, a long time ago, when the voice was first put through them. When they’d first been asked to do something they didn’t want to do, and hadn’t known how to say no.

They listened.

And Garnet, hanging in the middle of the forest with thousands of small grey bodies frozen in the air round her, said through her teeth: ”They’re pulling less. Lucas. They’re pulling less.”

”Hold them,” I said.

”I am holding them.”

”Hold them a bit longer.”

I went out of the door.

I’d never flown so fast.

The queens had made me able to, months ago, in our hollow. I’d taught the twins. I’d flown across the plain, and over the rim, and up to the Meridian to check the spine-queen. But I’d never had a reason to go as fast as I could.

I had one now.

I went out through the canopy over the frozen forest, over thousands of small grey bodies hanging in the air where Garnet held them. And I looked.

The way I looked at Sorn grey. Through it. All the way through. Every collar. Every one. For as far as I could see.

And I unfolded them.

Not one at a time. I’d done that on Avalon, with Sesh’s, gently, the way you open a hand. There wasn’t time for gently.

But there was time for exactly.

Every collar, every fold, all at once, to the width of a hair. The way Mother held bowls. I didn’t pull them off. I asked the grey to remember being something else. To forget being tight. To open.

They opened.

A few thousand collars, all at once, across a forest that went on forever. Like a flock of grey birds taking off from a field. They came away from a few thousand small grey necks and hung in the air for a moment, held in my mind, every one, with a piece of a queen in each.

And the voice had nowhere to go.

The old Hand screamed.

Not the queen inside it. The handlers. I heard them. Felt them. Forty-one of them, in the palm, where Aster had counted them. Pushing the voice into the collars and finding the collars gone. Pushing harder. And harder.

And then they did what the Sorn always did, when a thing they held stopped being useful.

They tried to burn it.

It came out of the underside of the palm. Out of the long grey beards of moss. A light, at first. White. Then orange. Falling. Like rain made of fire, out of the old Hand, down into the forest.

Onto the trees.

The canopy caught. Silver-green leaves curling, blackening. A line of flame running across the tops of the trees under the palm, fast, in the wind, the way fire runs across a field of dry grass. Toward the place where Garnet was hanging with thousands of Kethri frozen in the air round her.

”Calder,” said Okafor.

Liam had been at the door of the Open Hand since Garnet went out. I’d seen him there. Standing very still. Holding something in. Not fire. He hadn’t made any. He’d been told not to.

He was holding everything else.

I heard his own voice in my head, from the dome, a long time ago, the night Sera set the training hall on fire and couldn’t stop: It’s not the fire. It’s not being able to put it back.

Liam stepped out of the door.

Into the air. He couldn’t fly. Not like the twins. Not like me. He just stepped out, onto nothing, a hundred feet over the burning forest.

And the General’s ice came up under his feet.

A path. Out of nothing. White and blue and very cold, out of the open air, from the door of the Open Hand to the edge of the fire. The General, in the doorway behind him, with his bare hands out and frost pouring off them. Not stopping. Not hurrying. Building it one step ahead of his feet, the way his daughter built stairs.

Liam ran.

Down the ice path. Toward the line of fire running across the canopy. Toward the wall of heat coming off it, so hot I could feel it from where I was hanging over the forest, so hot the ice under his feet was melting at the edges as fast as the General could make it.

He didn’t stop.

He ran straight into the fire.

Hana screamed his name.

I’ll always remember that. Hana, at the door of the Open Hand, who never screamed. Hana with her water. Already pulling it. Out of the air, out of the leaves, out of the clouds that were so low over the Kethri world that the tops of the trees were in them. Ropes of it. Rain.

She didn’t need to.

Because Liam had his hands out.

And the fire was going into them.

I’d never seen anything like it. Not from Rory, with his fire the size of a house. Not from Sera in the forge, with the iron. Not from anyone.

He put it back.

All of it. The whole line of flame running across the canopy, the falling rain of fire out of the palm, the heat curling the silver-green leaves. He stood on the General’s ice in the middle of it with his hands out and his face set and he pulled. The way Sera pulled the heat out of a horseshoe when it was done. The way Rory had stood at the heat plant on Hearth Block for twenty years with no fire of his own, holding someone else’s in check by hand.

It went into him.

The flames bent toward his hands. Then into them. Then up his arms. His sleeves went first. Then his shirt. Then the silver markings on his arms lit up, every line of them, white, so bright you couldn’t look at them.

And the fire went out.

Not all at once. In a wave. Out from where he stood, along the line it had run, back toward the palm of the old Hand where it had come from. The burning leaves going dark. The heat going out of the air. The orange going out of the falling rain, so that by the time it reached the canopy it was just ash, grey and harmless, drifting down through the leaves like snow.

And Liam stood on the General’s ice in the middle of it with his shirt burned off and his arms blazing white to the shoulder.

Holding it.

”Calder,” said Okafor. Through the hello. Very quietly. ”Can you hold that?”

”Yes, ma’am,” said Liam. His voice was very strange. ”I think so. Ma’am.” A pause. ”Where do you want it?”

Okafor didn’t answer straight away.

Then she said: ”Sigmund.”

Sigmund had built his fence while the fire was coming.

I hadn’t seen him do it. Nobody had. But when I looked down at the old Hand, there it was. A ring of white lightning, round the whole of the palm, spitting and cracking, not touching the grey, not touching anything. Just there. Between the palm and the forest. So that anything that came out of it would have to come through him.

Forty-one handlers came out of it.

They came out of the underside of the palm in a dark rush, the way they’d come out of the knuckle on our plain. Tall and blank and grey, with blades. Dropping out of the palm toward the forest. Toward the Kethri. Toward Garnet.

They hit Sigmund’s fence.

And stopped.

Not because it hurt them. Because Mother stopped them.

She’d come out of the door behind Liam.

Not flying. She couldn’t fly either. She’d never needed to. She stood on the edge of the General’s ice path, very straight, in her plain dark coat, with Father’s ring on her hand and her grey streak bright in the light of Sigmund’s fence. And she lifted her hand, palm out, the way she’d lifted it in Okafor’s flat on Earth. The way she’d stop a child at a road.

And every blade on every handler stopped dead in the air.

Every one. All forty-one. Every buckle and every fold and every sharp edge, held to the width of a hair. The way she’d held three bowls and the flour and the eggs, every morning in the kitchen of the house in the dead field, when I was too small to know what I was watching.

Not strength. Exactness.

Forty-one handlers hung in the air in front of Sigmund’s fence like the Kethri hung round Garnet. Not moving. Not able to.

Mother looked at them. Very calmly.

”Dask,” she said. ”I’ve got them. Do what you need to.”

So I did.

The handlers first. I’d done it before, with the one in the box and the four wardens on the tender. I looked inside them, all forty-one at once, and found what they were made of, and folded them. Not killing them. Folding them. Smaller. And smaller. Into themselves. Until they were forty-one small grey shapes hanging in Mother’s grip like stones.

Then into a box.

I put the box in my coat pocket, with the others.

Then the palm.

I went up into it. Through Sigmund’s fence, which opened for me, a door of nothing in the lightning. Into the old Hand. Up through the underside, where the moss hung in beards. Into the grey.

It was old. So old. Older than anything I’d ever been inside. Folds on folds on folds, worn smooth, cracked, mended badly and then not mended at all. Holds that had been empty so long they’d forgotten they were holds. Passages that went nowhere.

And at the very bottom of it, at the heart of the palm, a queen.

She was very small.

Not small like the youngest. Small like something that had been big once and had worn away. Like a stone at the bottom of a river that has been rolled for so long that it’s almost nothing. Pale. Smooth. Curled in on herself, in a housing of grey so old it had grown into her and she into it.

I couldn’t tell what she’d been. What world. What shape. The silver had listened to her world once, a very long time ago, and grown her to fit it. But she’d been in the dark so long that whatever she’d fitted had worn away.

”Ma’am,” I said.

Nothing.

”Ma’am. Can you hear me?”

A long time.

Then, very faint, so faint I almost didn’t hear it, a question.

Juno would have had the words. I didn’t. But I knew the shape. I’d heard it before. In the fourth finger of the second Hand, from the last gardener, curled in its moss.

Is anyone else here?

I sat down.

On the grey floor of the old Hand, in the dark, beside the small worn queen in her housing.

”Yes,” I said. ”Lots of people. Ma’am. More than you can count.”

I opened the hello.

Through me. Through Toby, on Avalon, carrying it. Through Dory. Out. All of them. Every queen on Avalon. Our queen at the garden wall. The old one on her mountain. The first and the second in their Hands. The spine-queen. The Hesk and the Ulu and the Karst and the Sef and the Nivi. The gardener’s queen, small and white, in the green.

And the youngest of the Kethri, on Sesh’s shoulder, on a ship in the tops of the trees.

All of them. Singing.

To her.

There you are.

The old queen didn’t say anything for a very long time.

Then the voice stopped.

Not because I stopped it. Not because Genny sang it out, or the collars were gone, or the handlers were folded in a box in my pocket.

Because she stopped carrying it.

Just like that. After longer than any of us had been alive. Longer than Sesh had been alive, or Sesh’s mother, or her mother’s mother’s mother. She put it down. The way you put down something heavy at the end of a very long walk.

And all through the old Hand, the grey went quiet.

What do you want? I asked her.

The question nobody had ever asked her. I asked it very slowly. The way the first queen asked things. Every word right.

She was quiet for a long time.

Then she told me.

Not in words. In a shape. A very small one. Worn smooth, like her.

To listen.

To what?

To them. A pause. They used to sing. When I came. Every morning. In the trees. All of them. Another pause, very long. Then I made them stop.

I would like to hear them sing again. Before I am gone.

The Kethri sang.

That was how it ended. Not with the handlers. Not with the fire, or the fence, or the box in my pocket. With the Kethri.

Garnet put them down.

All of them. Every one. A few thousand small grey bodies, hanging in the air of the forest at every height, without collars now. She put them down on the branches. Feet first. Very carefully. The way she’d put down the people in the square. Every one exactly where it had been when it let go.

Then she came down herself. Onto the General’s ice path, beside Liam, who was still standing there with his arms blazing white and the whole of the fire inside him. And sat down in a heap. And cried.

”That was so rude,” she said. ”Throwing them away. That was so rude.”

Liam put his arm round her. Carefully. It was very hot. She didn’t seem to mind.

And then Sesh went to the door.

With the youngest queen on her shoulder. And the eight winged Kethri of Avalon behind her. And she stood in the doorway of the Open Hand, in the tops of the trees of her own world, with the wind moving through them, and made the rising sound.

Up and up. Like wind going up a tree. Like something climbing out of a deep place into the light.

And the Kethri in the trees answered.

Not all at once. One. Then a few. Then a hundred. Then all of them.

They hadn’t sung in so long they’d forgotten how. You could hear it. Their voices cracked and wavered and went wrong. They clicked when they meant to whistle. They whistled when they meant to fall.

But they sang.

A few thousand Kethri, in the tops of the trees, on a world that was one great forest from pole to pole, with the wind moving through it. Singing. For the first time since before Sesh hatched.

And the old queen, at the bottom of the old Hand, in her housing of grey, listened.

I felt her listen. Every note. Every crack and waver and wrong whistle.

There, she said. Very faint. Very far. There. That is what it sounded like.

Dory woke the slivers.

From eleven light-years and forty minutes away. On Avalon, on the red glass, on Risa’s hip, with Toby beside her carrying the hello. I felt her reach down the thread. All the way down. Past the youngest queen. Into the few thousand collars I was still holding in my mind, hanging in the air over the forest like a flock of grey birds.

Into the pieces of six queens.

There you are.

And they woke.

I won’t tell all of it. It took the rest of that day and all of the night. The queens sang. Every one. Genny held out her hands. And I listened to every piece, and grew them back.

Six queens.

All feathered. All the silver had listened to the same world: the high forests, the wind. But not all the same. One with feathers so long they trailed behind her like streamers, so the wind would always find her. One dark as bark, who could sit on a branch and vanish into it. One white as cloud. One with a crest that opened like a fan. One with feathers patterned like the light coming through leaves. One very small and very quick, smaller even than the youngest, who went straight up into the highest branch of the tallest tree and sang so loud the whole forest heard her.

And every one of them, when she was whole, turned to the youngest on Sesh’s shoulder.

And the youngest, very carefully, very precisely, hopped across to each of them in turn.

And pecked them. Once. On the beak.

Days 1011–1013. The rising sound.

Okafor’s list at dawn, long this time. Keir, Aster, Gareth; the youngest queen, who can stop whenever she likes. Sesh and all eight winged Kethri, who stepped forward together. Juno, Jessa, Marlo and the light-benders. The General, ice; Sigmund, a fence round the palm; Hana, water and ropes. Liam: no fire; a forest pole to pole; warm your hands and you’re in the hold with the Karst. You’re coming in case anything else starts one. He reminded me what he told me in the dome: the temper isn’t the fire, it’s not being able to put it back. Sera can now; she pulls the heat out of a horseshoe every day. You’re whole too. You haven’t tried.

Me, collars and whatever needs opening. Mother: hold whatever I ask and don’t let go. Dory to Risa: come back. Yes, not I will. Genny to sing through the doors with the queens, as when the choir came for Sera; Garnet to hold anything that falls. Thousands, out of trees. Can you? Genny: yes, for both. Pell knelt and straightened a collar that didn’t need it: be careful. We’re always careful. You’ve never been careful in your life; be careful anyway. And Okafor herself. Holt has the city; Luna operations, every plan across her table, including mine. Marsh stays with a week-old daughter and carries the hello from Avalon through Dory. Let’s go and knock.

Forty minutes. The Kethri world’s dawn, a small white sun through a forest moving like breathing. The old Hand worse in daylight: pitted, a crack down one finger never mended, lichen on the knuckles, moss hanging from the palm in grey beards; it hadn’t moved in a very long time. Down into the canopy folded. And they were waiting: a few thousand grey heads on every branch turned to where we were, though they couldn’t see us; facing this way every morning since they saw her.

The old Hand woke, a slow shudder, and the voice came out tired and soft as breath into the collars. They turned their heads down and let go of the branches, all at once, falling toward a floor too far below to see. Not fight; the Sorn saw the heads lift and decided a world that lifts its head isn’t useful. Garnet was already out of the door: a hundred feet up, silver hair like a dandelion clock, round the outside first and then the middle, and stopped every one of them in the air at every height like dust in a sunbeam. I’ve got them. They keep pulling.

Genny sat very straight like Pell, eyes shut, and sang the lullaby through the hello, Toby, Dory, every queen on Avalon, and back out through the youngest into the collars. You do not close it; you sing to what’s on the other side. The pieces of queens listened, the way they first listened when asked to do something they didn’t want and didn’t know how to refuse. They’re pulling less. Hold them a bit longer. I went out faster than I’ve ever flown, looked through every collar for as far as I could see, and asked the grey all at once and exactly to forget being tight. A few thousand came away like a flock of grey birds off a field, and the voice had nowhere to go.

The forty-one handlers screamed and did what the Sorn do with things that stop being useful: fire like rain out of the moss under the palm, the canopy catching, a line of flame running in the wind toward Garnet. Calder. Liam stepped off the door onto nothing and the General’s ice came up under his feet, a path built one step ahead out of the open air, melting at the edges as fast as he made it. Liam ran straight into the fire. Hana, who never screams, screamed his name, already pulling rain from the low clouds. She didn’t need to. He put it back. The whole line and the falling fire, into his hands, up his arms, his sleeves and shirt burning off, every silver line on his arms white past looking at. It went out in a wave back toward the palm and the fire-rain reached the canopy as harmless ash like snow. Can you hold that? I think so, ma’am. Where do you want it?

Sigmund’s fence was already round the palm, white lightning touching nothing, so anything coming out had to come through him. Forty-one handlers dropped out with blades and hit it. Mother on the edge of the ice in her dark coat, Father’s ring, grey streak lit by lightning, lifted her hand palm out like stopping a child at a road, and every blade, buckle and fold of all forty-one stopped to the width of a hair. Not strength, exactness. Dask, I’ve got them. Do what you need. I folded them small into themselves, not dead, into a box, into my pocket with the others.

Through a door of nothing in Sigmund’s fence, up into the old Hand: folds worn smooth, cracked, mended badly then not at all, holds forgotten, passages to nowhere. At the heart, a queen worn small like a river stone, grown into her housing; whatever her world was had worn away. Ma’am. A long time. Then the gardener’s question: is anyone else here? I sat down beside her. Yes. More than you can count. I opened the hello through Toby and Dory to every queen on Avalon and the youngest in the treetops, all singing to her: there you are. And she put the voice down, after longer than Sesh’s mother’s mother’s mother, like something heavy at the end of a long walk. The old Hand went quiet. What do you want? To listen. They used to sing every morning when I came. Then I made them stop. I’d like to hear them sing again before I’m gone.

Garnet put them all down on their branches feet first exactly where they’d let go, then came down in a heap on the ice beside Liam and cried: that was so rude, throwing them away. He put his blazing arm round her; she didn’t mind. Sesh in the doorway with the youngest and the eight behind her made the rising sound. One answered, then a few, then a hundred, then all, cracked and wavering and clicking when they meant to whistle. But singing, for the first time since before Sesh hatched. The old queen listened to every wrong note: there, that is what it sounded like.

From Avalon, on Risa’s hip, Dory reached down the long thread into the collars still hanging in my mind and woke the pieces of six queens. All day and all night the queens sang, Genny held out her hands, and I grew them back. Feathered, the same forests and wind, but none alike: one with streamers so the wind always finds her; one dark as bark who vanishes on a branch; one white as cloud; one with a crest like a fan; one patterned like light through leaves; one tiny and quick who went to the top of the tallest tree and sang so the whole forest heard. Each turned to the youngest on Sesh’s shoulder, and she hopped to each in turn and pecked them once on the beak.