Scarecrow

The new Hand was still hanging over the Kethri forest.

Five fingers, folded. Silent. Exactly where it had stopped the night Sigmund put his lightning in after the fire and it shut like a fist off a stove. The youngest queen said her sisters didn’t mind it. They said it was like having a very large dead tree standing over the forest. You didn’t like it. But it wasn’t going anywhere, and in time things would grow on it.

Okafor minded it.

”That’s the newest grey we’ve ever seen,” she said, at the map table, a month after the north shelf. ”Sharp. Clean. Built for war, not for carrying. The keeper came in it to look, and it nearly burned a world to the ground in an afternoon.” She tapped the map. ”And it’s just hanging there.”

”Nothing in it,” I said. ”The queen’s here. The keeper’s in a box. The handlers are frozen in the General’s ice.”

”I know what’s in it,” said Okafor. ”I know what’s not in it.” She looked at Keir. ”I’d like it to be something else.”

Keir had been waiting for that.

I could tell. He’d been waiting since the morning after the forest, when he stood on the General’s ice platform in the canopy and looked up at the new Hand with its five fingers shut, and didn’t say anything for a very long time.

”The Open Hand carries people,” he said. ”The Steady carries weight. Neither of them was built to fight.” He put his hand flat on the map. On the Kethri world. ”You asked me, a long time ago, for a ship that could stand up to a Hand. I gave you two ships that could get out of the way of one.”

”I noticed,” said Okafor.

”I’d like to build you the other kind,” said Keir.

Aster, beside him, on her narrow limbs, went very still. Her lamps turned down low.

”This unit,” she said, ”has a question.”

It was the same question.

It was always the same question, with Aster. She asked it every time. On the plain, the day Okafor first said warship. In the hollow, when the first queen explained how a Hand crossed the dark. At the keel of the Steady, when the heavy queen sat down on her stone shelf.

”Who carries it?” said Aster. ”And can she leave?”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

”The youngest carries the Open Hand,” said Aster. ”Because she asked. The heavy queen carries the Steady. Because she chose. Both of them can open their doors from the inside whenever they like.” Her lamps went a shade brighter. ”A ship built to fight a Hand will have to go where Hands are. Into fire. Into the voice. Into places a queen would not choose to go if she were thinking only of herself.” A pause. ”This unit would like to know who would choose that. Before this unit builds a room for her.”

The Drenn queen answered.

Not that night. Not at the map table. She wasn’t there. She was at the school with no walls, at the edge of the park, where she’d been every day since she came. Standing very still on the grass with her four long arms folded and her blades crossed. Facing out. With a few hundred of her young in a ring round the school, standing the same way. Backs to the children.

Juno brought her the question the next morning.

I went too. I’d been going most mornings anyway, with Dory and Ash, because Dory checked everyone at the school and wouldn’t leave until she had, and Ash went wherever Dory went, and Trevor went wherever Luna went, and Luna went wherever the children were, now.

The Drenn queen listened to Juno for a long time.

Then she unfolded her arms.

I’d never seen her do that. Not since the forest. Not since she bowed to Anja between the roots of the biggest tree. She stood with her arms folded the way Anja stood, and her young stood the same way, and they hadn’t unfolded them once in a month.

She unfolded them now.

All four. Slowly. And held them out. The blades at the ends of them catching the morning light, long and blue-black and very sharp.

And then she turned them round.

Blade first. Toward herself.

And held them out to me handle first. The way you’d hold out a knife to someone you trusted. The way Liam held out the hammer, in the forge, when he wanted me to finish something.

”She says,” said Juno, very quietly, ”her young will stand in front of the children.”

”Yes.”

”She says she would like to stand in front of everyone else.”

Nobody said anything.

The Drenn queen stood on the grass at the edge of the school with no walls and held her four blades out to me, handle first. Behind her, in the school, Dory had stopped checking. Ash had stopped trying to change a stick into glass. A dozen children and Teeming young and two dogs and a Karst who’d come up from the caves to listen to the lessons had all stopped, and were looking.

”She says,” said Juno, ”she was held in a Hand built for war. She was made to carry it into fire, and into the voice, and into worlds where it burned things. She says she knows what that Hand can do. Better than anyone.” A pause. ”She says she’d like to carry it again. Once more. Only this time somewhere she chooses. And with the door on the inside.”

I looked at the four blades held out to me, handle first.

”Why?” I said.

The Drenn queen turned her long blue-black head. Away from me. Toward the school. Toward Dory, at the front of it, with the lattice round her eyes like frost and the fine silver net running up her arms, looking back at the Drenn queen very seriously.

”She says,” said Juno, ”the keeper told you why the Sorn take children.” A pause. ”She says she was a child once too. A very long time ago. On a world where nothing lives unless it can fight.” Juno’s voice went very small. ”She says she was taken.”

The Drenn queen had been a child.

Not a queen. Not yet. A child of her world, whole, born both, the way Dory was born, the way Ash was. And the Sorn had come. And they’d taken her. Young. Before anyone could teach her to ask.

And taught her not to.

”She says they tried to make her a keeper,” said Juno. ”They tried for a long time. She was too much of her world. She fought them. Every day.” A pause. ”So they made her a queen instead. And put her in a Hand. And pushed the voice through her into her own young, who’d been taken after her. Because if she wouldn’t be a keeper, she could still be useful.”

The Drenn queen looked at Dory for a long time.

”She says she’d like nobody to ever take another one,” said Juno. ”And she’d like to be in front when they try.”

I took the blades.

I didn’t know what else to do. She was holding them out, handle first, and her young were watching, and the children, and Dory. So I put out my hands and took hold of the nearest two. And the Drenn queen let go.

And they came away.

Not cut. Not broken. They came away. The way a tooth comes away, or a shell. Grown. Hers. Detached clean at the joint, two long blue-black blades as long as my arm, lying across my palms.

And on the ends of her arms, where they’d been, new ones. Small. Pale. Already growing.

”She says those are for the ship,” said Juno. ”She says the grey will listen to her. It was hers. It was built round her. She says put those in the room where she sits, and the grey will know whose it is.”

So we built it.

Not quickly. Keir wouldn’t let anyone hurry. He drew it for three weeks, on the big sheets from the schoolroom and then on the floor of the workshop and then on the red glass outside, in chalk, so big you had to stand on the porch to see the whole of it. Aster checked every line. Dot checked Aster. Vell checked Dot. Gareth checked the seats.

They weren’t too close together.

Gareth said so, very loudly, to everyone. He said it was the first time in his life.

The grey was the hard part.

I went to the Kethri world on the Steady, with the heavy queen humming on her shelf and Safi Arden flying, and Keir and Aster and the Drenn queen. And Garnet and Genny, because Okafor said the grey would fight, and I’d need someone to ask it and someone to touch it up and someone to hold.

It fought.

It was new grey. Sharp. Clean. It had never been tired. It had never been a cage long enough to want to be anything else. When I put my hand on the outside of the smallest of its five fingers and asked it to remember being something other than what it was, it didn’t remember anything. It didn’t want to. It was a Hand. It had been made a Hand. It had never been anything else.

I asked harder.

It held.

”Lucas,” said Genny. Beside me. With her hand flat on the grey. ”It’s not that it won’t. It doesn’t know how. Nobody ever told it there was anything else to be.”

”Then what—”

”Let her,” said Genny.

The Drenn queen put her four arms on the grey.

Two of them with new blades, small and pale. Two of them still long and blue-black. She put all four flat against the outside of the smallest finger of the Hand that had been built round her, that she’d been made to carry into fire, that she’d thrown the voice out of like a weapon.

And sang.

I’d never heard a Drenn sing.

Nobody had. They didn’t. Juno said they didn’t have a word for it. Their world hadn’t had room for singing. Only for fighting, and for standing, and for what you did after.

She sang anyway.

Low. Very low. Lower than the Hesk queen, lower than the old one on her mountain. Not a song. A word. Over and over. Into the grey she’d been held in.

The grey listened.

It knew her. Of course it did. It had been built round her. Every fold of it had been folded to hold her in. It knew her the way a collar knows a neck.

And she was telling it something.

”What’s she saying?” I said.

Genny had her eyes shut. Her hand flat on the grey beside the Drenn queen’s.

”She’s telling it what she was,” said Genny. Very quietly. ”Before. When she was a child. On her world. Before anyone took her.” She swallowed. ”She’s telling it there was something else to be. Because there was, for her. And she’s telling it, if it was hers, it can be something else too.”

The grey moved.

Not much. A fold, at the very tip of the smallest finger. Loosening. The way a fist loosens when the person holding it falls asleep.

Then another.

Then I put my hand on it beside hers, and asked again. And Garnet put her thumb on it, very gently, the way she softened a smudge. And Genny asked it, the way she asked stone.

And it remembered.

Not what it had been. It had never been anything else. It remembered what she’d been. The Drenn queen. A child, whole, on a world where nothing lived unless it could fight. Before.

And it decided it would rather be like her.

It took a month.

Five fingers and a palm and a knuckle, unfolded, refolded, carried home folded small in the bottom deck of the Steady, and then unfolded again on the plain beside the Open Hand, in the shadow of the first queen’s Hand, where everyone could watch.

People always came to watch when something large was becoming something else.

It wasn’t like the Open Hand. Or the Steady.

It was bigger. Longer. Darker. Not grey, quite. The grey had gone a colour I hadn’t seen it go before, very dark, with a faint blue sheen in some lights, like the Drenn’s plate. Narrow and sharp at the front. Broad at the back. With a long ridge down the top of it, like a spine, and four long fins along its sides that Keir said were for steering in air and Aster said were for something else she’d tell us later.

And no fingers.

Not one. Not a palm, not a knuckle, not a fold anywhere that could close round anything and hold it. Keir had drawn it that way. Aster had checked it. And the Drenn queen had told the grey, over and over, very low, in her one word.

Nothing on this ship holds anyone.

At the heart of it, the room.

Bigger than the Open Hand’s, or the Steady’s. Long and narrow, like her. With four places in the walls where her arms could rest, low, at the height she held them when they were folded. And in each place, set into the grey, one of the blades she’d given me. Two long and blue-black. Two that had grown back in the month since, and that she’d given me too, when they were long enough.

”So the grey knows whose it is,” she’d said. Every time it looks at itself.

And a window. Forward. So she could see where she was going.

And a door.

Aster made the door herself. As she always did. She wouldn’t let anyone else touch it. With four plates on the inside, at the height of four long folded arms. So that the Drenn queen could open it with any one of them. Or all four at once, if she wanted to make a point.

Nothing on the outside at all.

”Nobody opens this door,” said Aster, ”except the one inside.”

Keir wrote it across the middle of the room in big letters. The way he had on the Open Hand.

Then, underneath, smaller, he wrote something else.

Nothing on this ship holds anyone.

Garnet named it.

Of course she did. She’d named the Open Hand and the Steady and Thorne’s sign and the Overseer’s bread. She said naming was a thing you either did right or you didn’t do, and she’d been doing it right since she was small.

She came out onto the plain on the last day with her pot of gold paint and her brush and the old fat brown dog at her heels. She stood at the narrow sharp point of the new ship and looked at it for a long time.

Then she looked back. At the city. At the park. At Scarecrow, on the rim of the canyon, where it had all started. At the scarecrow field beyond the wheat, where the names were.

She painted the letters.

Very carefully. With her tongue between her teeth. In the same curling hand she’d used for everything else.

SCARECROW

”Why?” said Keir.

He’d come up behind her. He was looking at the letters.

Garnet put her brush down.

”Because that’s what a scarecrow does,” she said. ”It doesn’t fight. It doesn’t hurt anything. It just stands in a field with its arms out.” She looked at the ship. ”And everything that wanted to come and take what’s growing there looks at it, and goes away.”

Keir didn’t say anything.

”Father made one,” said Garnet. ”In our field. In the dead field, at home, a long time ago. And I put Mother’s blue scarf round its neck when I was nine, in the night, because it was cold.” She looked up at me. ”It’s still there. Pell went and looked. And everyone here calls Lucas Scarecrow. And the city. And the field with the names.” She shrugged. ”Because that’s what we do. Stand in front.

I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t.

”So the ship’s the same,” said Garnet. ”It stands in front. With its arms out.” She looked at the four fins along its sides. ”Those are its arms.”

Aster, on the plain beside Keir, very quietly, said: ”Yes. That is what they are for.”

The Drenn queen went aboard at dusk.

Not hopping, like the youngest. Not rolling slowly, like the heavy one. She walked. On her four long arms, up the ramp, down the long dark passage, to the room at the heart of the ship.

She looked at the four blades set into the walls. Hers. Two long, two newer.

She looked at the window. At the plain beyond it, and the city, and the park, and the school with no walls, where a few hundred of her young stood in a ring with their backs to the children, facing out.

Then she folded her four arms into the four places in the walls.

They fitted.

She stood there for a long time. Then she pressed one of the plates on the inside of the door. With one arm.

It closed.

She pressed it again.

It opened.

She didn’t do it eleven times, the way the youngest had. She did it once. Then she left it open.

And stayed.

Dot came to find me that night.

On the porch. Late. When the city was dark except for its crooked windows and the Nivi were ringing faintly on their mountain and the Scarecrow lay long and dark on the plain beside the Open Hand and the Steady, with a single light at its heart where the Drenn queen stood, not sleeping, with her door open.

Dot didn’t usually come to the porch at night. She came at dawn. To count.

She stopped at the bottom of the steps.

”Operator,” she said.

I looked up.

She opened the small door in her side. The soft one. The second kind of door. Lined with her own rivers of light.

The ninth was there. Alone. The piece of a queen that had forgotten everything but which way home was. Humming, very faint, toward somewhere none of us knew.

Only it wasn’t faint any more.

”She has remembered something,” said Dot.

I sat up.

”Not what she was,” said Dot. ”Not her world. Not her people. She still does not know those.” A pause. ”She remembered the keeper.”

”The one in the box?”

”She heard it,” said Dot. ”When you unfolded it. In the garden. When it spoke. She was in this unit’s side, and this unit was at the passage mouth with the Overseer, and she heard the keeper’s voice.” Another pause. Longer. ”She has heard that kind of voice before.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Where she comes from,” said Dot. ”The direction she hums toward. The end of the ninth line on Garnet’s map. The one that goes nearly off the page.” Dot’s rivers of light had gone very still. ”She says that is where the voice like that comes from. The keepers. All of them.”

”She’s sure?”

”She is not sure of anything,” said Dot. ”She has forgotten almost everything.” A pause. ”But she remembers that voice. And she remembers it came from home.”

I sat on the porch steps with Dot for a long time.

The ninth hummed in the soft cup in her side. Louder than it ever had. Toward somewhere very far, past north, past anywhere Juno had ever felt, past where the first queen had first heard the others singing. The end of the longest line on Garnet’s map. Nearly off the page.

Where the keepers came from.

”Dot,” I said at last.

”Operator.”

”Don’t tell Okafor yet. Not tonight.” I looked at the Scarecrow on the plain, with its single light. ”Let her have one night where she isn’t looking at a map.”

Dot considered this.

”This unit will tell her at dawn,” she said. ”After the count.” A pause. ”This unit thinks that is a reasonable compromise.”

”It is.”

”This unit has learned compromise from Okafor,” said Dot. And closed the door in her side. And went back down the street to the gate, where she always stood, to wait for dawn.

Days 1639–1702. Scarecrow.

The new Hand still hung folded over the Kethri forest; the six queens said it was like a big dead tree, not liked, not going anywhere, things will grow on it. Okafor minded: the newest grey, built for war, nearly burned a world in an afternoon, just hanging there; I’d like it to be something else. Keir had been waiting since the canopy: the Open Hand carries people, the Steady carries weight; I gave you two ships that get out of a Hand’s way; I’d like to build the other kind. Aster’s question, always the same: who carries it, and can she leave? A ship that fights goes into fire and the voice, where no queen thinking of herself would go. Who’d choose that?

The Drenn queen at the school with no walls, arms folded a month, her young in a ring with their backs to the children. When Juno asked, she unfolded all four arms for the first time since the forest, turned the blades and held them out to me handle first, like a knife to someone you trust. Her young stand in front of the children; she’d like to stand in front of everyone else. She was held in that war Hand, made to carry it into fire and worlds it burned; she knows what it can do; she’d like to carry it once more somewhere she chooses, door inside. Why? She looked at Dory. The keeper told you why they take children. She was one. A child of her world, whole, born both, taken young and taught not to ask. They tried to make her a keeper a long time; she was too much of her world and fought them every day; so they made her a queen instead and pushed the voice through her into her own young taken after her. She’d like nobody ever to take another, and to be in front when they try.

I took two blades and they came away clean at the joint like a tooth or a shell, as long as my arm; new ones already growing pale. For the ship: the grey will listen to her; set them in her room and it will know whose it is. Keir drew three weeks, finally in chalk on the red glass so big you had to stand on the porch to see it; Aster, Dot, Vell checking; Gareth: the seats aren’t too close together, first time in his life.

On the Kethri world the new grey fought; never tired, never a cage long enough to want anything else; it held. Genny: it doesn’t know how; nobody told it there was anything else to be. Let her. The Drenn queen put four arms flat on the smallest finger and sang, low, a single word over and over, the first Drenn song; their world had no room for singing. The grey knew her as a collar knows a neck. Genny: she’s telling it what she was before, a child on her world, that there was something else to be because there was for her, and if it was hers it can be too. A fold loosened at the tip like a sleeping fist; then I asked, Garnet softened it with her thumb, Genny asked it like stone, and it remembered not what it had been but what she had been, and decided it would rather be like her.

A month: carried home folded in the Steady, unfolded beside the Open Hand. Bigger, longer, darker, grey gone nearly black with a blue sheen like Drenn plate; sharp point, broad back, a spine-ridge, four long fins Keir says steer in air and Aster says are for something she’ll tell us later. No fingers, no palm, no knuckle, no fold that could close round anything. Nothing on this ship holds anyone. Her room long and narrow, four rests at the height of folded arms, a blade set in each, two from that day and two grown since: so the grey knows whose it is every time it looks at itself. A forward window. Aster’s door with four plates inside, any one or all four to make a point; nothing outside. Keir in big letters: nobody opens this door except the one inside. Underneath: nothing on this ship holds anyone.

Garnet with gold paint and the old dog at her heels looked back at Scarecrow on the rim and the scarecrow field where the names are, and painted SCARECROW. Keir: why? It doesn’t fight or hurt anything; it stands in a field with its arms out and everything that wanted to take what’s growing looks at it and goes away. Father made one in our field at home; she tied Mother’s blue scarf on it at nine because it was cold; it’s still there, Pell looked. Everyone here calls Lucas Scarecrow, and the city, and the field with the names, because that’s what we do: stand in front. The fins are its arms. Aster: yes; that is what they are for.

At dusk the Drenn queen walked aboard on four arms, looked at her four blades and out the window at her young ringed round the school facing out, folded her arms into the rests, and they fitted. She closed her door once, opened it once, and left it open, and stayed.

Late, Dot at the bottom of the porch steps, which she never is at night. The soft door in her side: the ninth, no longer faint. She’s remembered something. Not her world or people. The keeper. She heard its voice from Dot’s side at the passage mouth when I unfolded it in the garden, and she’s heard that kind of voice before. Where she comes from, the end of the ninth line nearly off Garnet’s page, is where the voice like that comes from. The keepers, all of them. Not sure of anything; forgotten almost everything; but she remembers that voice came from home. Don’t tell Okafor tonight; let her have one night not looking at a map. This unit will tell her at dawn, after the count; a reasonable compromise. This unit learned compromise from Okafor.