Scarecrow

The heavy queen counted the days for us.

Not the way Wren counts. Not with numbers. She didn’t think in numbers; the heavy young didn’t, Genny said, they thought in weights. But every morning, before the count, she reached down through the iron of the Ground and the ramp and the red glass and touched the soft door in Dot’s side. And Dot came to the foot of the steps of Scarecrow, where Okafor stood with her slate, and said it.

Heavier.

Meaning: nearer. Meaning the three old Hands, crawling across the dark between the pages from the ring toward the human world, a little at a time, were a little closer to the end of the rope than they’d been the day before. And the weight of them, of everything they carried, was pressing a little harder on the thread.

Heavier.

Heavier.

Okafor wrote it on the slate every morning. Just a mark. Four lines down. One across. She’d learned it from Tally.

By the end of the first month, there were six fives and two more.

”How long?” said Okafor. On the thirty-second morning. To Dot. To the heavy queen.

Dot was quiet for a long time.

”Not many more,” she said at last. For the heavy queen. ”They are old and tired and they have not crossed in a long time. They stop. They rest. The keeper wakes them again.” A pause. ”But the end of the rope is close now. I can feel it in the iron.” Another pause. ”Ten days. Perhaps twelve.”

Okafor looked at the slate.

Then she turned it over. To the back. And wrote at the top, very small, 10.

And under it, a list.

It was the longest list she’d ever written.

I watched her write it. Standing at the foot of the steps of Scarecrow at dawn, with the slate on her knee, writing very small. Not names, at first. Places. Things.

New Halcyon. The ring street. The Ministry. The Senate Annex. The east locks. The old Program floors. The vault.

Then she looked up.

”Dask. The files.”

”What files?”

”Selwyn’s,” said Okafor. ”He said they had the coordinates. Every file Crane ever sent home. The names of every child born on Avalon to a finished parent. From Marsh’s counts.” She looked at the slate. ”They’re still there. In New Halcyon. In the Ministry. We took three million people out of that dome and never once went into the archives.”

I hadn’t thought of it. Nobody had.

”When the Hands come,” said Okafor, ”the children are going to come out of them looking for whoever called. And whoever called is gone. He’s on Tally’s page.” She tapped the slate. ”So they’ll look for what’s left. And what’s left is a building full of paper with a map on it.”

So that was the first thing on the list.

Luna and Voss went on the Steady, nine days before the Hands, with the General and Marlo and a squad of light-benders. Voss knew the Ministry archives. She’d run the Council for twenty years. She knew every room, every lock, every shelf where somebody might have put something they didn’t want anyone to read.

They came back four days later with a hundred crates.

Every file. Every report Crane had ever sent home. Every one of Wren’s counts. Every scrap of paper in the whole of New Halcyon that had the word Avalon on it, or a number that might be a place.

”Burn them?” said the General. On the plain, beside the crates, in his greatcoat.

”No,” said Voss.

Everyone looked at her.

”They’re records,” she said. Very quietly. ”Of what was done. Every name in them is someone who was cut, or sent, or kept in a chair with a spoon. Every count Mara sent is a count of people who were alive.” She put her hand flat on the nearest crate. ”I’m not burning them. I’m putting them in the records room. With Ruth’s files. With the green book.” She looked at the General. ”Somebody should be able to read what was done. Afterwards. So they know.”

The General looked at her for a long time.

”Ma’am,” he said.

Ruth gave them a room. At the end of the records room, past the green book on its shelf. Voss put every crate in it herself, one at a time, and sorted them for a week, and Wren came every evening and sat on the floor with her and read her own counts, the ones she’d sent to Crane’s office every week for two years, page after page, without saying anything.

On the last evening, she found one she’d forgotten.

The week Dory was born. The count she’d sent that Monday. Every name on Avalon. And at the bottom, in her own handwriting, in the flat careful way she’d written everything then, a line.

New: 1. Dask, D. Born dawn.

Wren looked at it for a long time.

”I sent her,” she said. ”Her name. To them.”

”You counted her,” said Voss. ”You were the first person on Avalon who wrote her name down.” She put her hand on Wren’s shoulder. ”That’s what this is. Not what they did with it. What you did.”

Wren didn’t say anything.

But she didn’t put the page back in the crate. She folded it once, very carefully, and put it in her pocket, next to Toby’s stone.

The rest of the list was people.

Okafor wrote it at the map table, late, with the big map on the wall behind her and the new slate beside it that said Every one. I sat across from her. So did the General, and Holt, and Luna, and Kwame, who’d come down from the head of the long table because Okafor had asked him to. This is going to be the war again, she’d said. For a little while. The table should know what I’m doing.

She wrote slowly.

”The Scarecrow,” she said. ”Over the dome. With her arms out. The Drenn queen, if she’d like to.” She wrote. ”The Ground. On the ash. The heavy queen.” She looked up. ”She’s asked. She said she’d like to be the first thing her young see when they come out.”

”Yes,” I said.

”Every other ship whose queen has young under the ring.” She wrote them. ”The Harness. The furred queen says one. The Long Legs. The marsh queen still hasn’t said anything. She’s still listening.” Okafor paused. ”The Wing, for the Kethri queens. They say some.”

”Every queen on Avalon,” said Kwame. Quietly. From the end of the table. ”Singing. Even the ones who can’t cross. The Karst queen. The moth queen. Our queen. The first queen.”

”Yes,” said Okafor. She wrote it. ”Every one.”

Then she wrote the people.

Genny. To sing through the doors.

Garnet. To hold anything that falls.

Tally.

She stopped at that one. Looked at it.

”She asked to be the first face the child from the bench sees,” she said. ”Halloway?”

Ruth was at the door. Of course she was. In her coat, buttoned wrong.

”There’s no medical reason she can’t,” said Ruth. Before anyone asked. ”There’s never been a medical reason. Damn it.”

Okafor wrote it.

Jory. Because he’d asked. Because when the children came out, and the voice that told them what to do stopped, someone would need to tell them it wasn’t their fault.

The Overseer. Because it had asked. Because it was the only thing on Avalon that had been made by the Sorn and told the same thing the children had been told, and had found out there was something else.

Juno. For the seed.

Wren. To count.

Sigmund. For hearts.

Halloway. And the twins, when they’re not singing or holding.

The General. She looked at him. ”You said you’d like to stand in front of them.”

”Yes,” said the General.

”Not to fight.”

”No,” said the General. ”Not to fight.”

Mother.

Okafor didn’t ask her. She wrote it. Then she looked up at me.

”Dask. Your mother.”

”She’ll want to come.”

”I know she’ll want to come,” said Okafor. ”She held sixty soldiers in the Senate Annex to the width of a hair. She held every handler on the Kethri world. She lifted a marsh out of a flood.” She looked at the name. ”And these are children. Taken from their mothers. Taught to forget there was ever anything else.” She was quiet for a moment. ”She’s the only person on this list who’s been a mother whose children were nearly taken.”

She left it written.

Liam. Sera. Anja. In case anything burned. In case anything needed standing in front of.

Risa. In case the weather turned. In case the children brought weather with them.

Luna. Okafor didn’t look up when she wrote that one. ”Operations. From the Scarecrow. Every plan through her.” A pause. ”Including mine.”

Dory.

Okafor stopped.

She looked at the name for a long time. I didn’t know she’d written it until I saw it upside down. I’d learned to read upside down a long time ago, through the glass, in quarantine.

”Not on the ship,” she said. Before I could say anything. ”On the glass. Here. At home.” She looked at me. ”Holding everything. The way she did on the Kethri world. The way she did when Hana’s twins came and you were at Halden.” She put the stylus down. ”She’s the knot, Dask. You know she is. Every queen on Avalon goes through her when they sing across the dark. When they all sing to the children under the ring, they’ll all be going through her. A little girl standing on the red glass with her hand flat on the ground.”

”She’s not five.”

”I know how old she is,” said Okafor. ”I wrote her on the slate the day she was born.” She was quiet. ”I’m not asking her to fight. I’m asking her to do what she already does every time any of you go anywhere. Hold everything.” She looked at me. ”If you’d rather I didn’t ask, say so. I won’t.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

”Ask her,” I said. ”Don’t tell her.”

”I never tell her anything,” said Okafor. ”She’d only tell me I was wrong.”

Dory said yes before Okafor finished asking.

She was on the porch. With Pebble. And Ash. And small Sigmund on a blanket, crackling, and Trevor beside him freezing the blanket’s edge, and Efua, who’d come back with Hana from the eastern plains for a week, shouting at a pigeon. Kwame on Mother’s lap. Watching.

Okafor came up the steps. And sat down on the top one. At Dory’s height.

”There’s going to be a lot of singing,” she said. ”Every queen on Avalon. To some children a very long way away who’ve forgotten their mothers. And all of it’s going to go through you.” She looked at Dory. ”It might be very big. Like the storm the night Sigmund came. Like holding the wind on the plains world.”

Dory considered this very seriously.

”Are the children frightened?” she said.

Okafor didn’t answer at once.

”I think so,” she said. ”I think they’ve been frightened for a very long time. I think they’ve forgotten that’s what it is.”

Dory nodded.

”Then I’ll hold it,” she said. ”All of it. I’ll hold it so the singing gets there.” She looked at Pebble. ”Pebble will help. And Ash.” She looked at the babies. ”And them. They can’t do anything yet. But they can be there.” She looked back at Okafor. ”That’s mostly what holding is. Being there.”

Okafor looked at her for a long time.

”Yes,” she said. ”That’s mostly what it is.”

Hana went back to the eastern plains the next morning.

She didn’t want to. She said so, very clearly, on the porch, with Efua on her hip and Kwame in his sling.

”I’d like to be there,” she said. ”When they come. I’d like to be on the ash. I can hold water. I can hold a thousand ropes of it.” She looked at me. ”Children frightened for a long time sometimes cry so hard they can’t breathe. I could hold that. I could hold the air for them.”

”I know you could.”

”But the horses,” said Hana. ”And the old woman, who’s eighty-one and stayed up three nights with a mare who wouldn’t foal. And the first families from the Reach who came out to work the grass and don’t know how a single thing works yet.” She shifted Efua. ”If I go, there’s nobody out there who’s been there longer than a week. And something will go wrong. It always does.” She looked out at the plain. ”Ruth taught you. Pell taught you. I’m learning too. Somebody has to stay and make it run.”

”Then stay,” I said.

Hana looked at me.

”You’re supposed to say no, come,” she said. ”So I can be cross and come anyway.”

”I’m not going to say that.”

”No,” said Hana. ”I know you’re not.” She leaned over Efua’s head and kissed me. ”That’s why I married you.”

”You haven’t married me.”

”Not yet,” said Hana. ”When you get back. Risa says there’s a hat.”

The day before, Okafor walked the ships.

All of them. On the plain, at dusk. The Scarecrow and the Ground and the Harness and the Long Legs and the Wing and the rest. Every one with its ramp down. Every queen in her room in the middle, with her door open.

She stopped at the foot of every ramp. And looked up. And said, to every queen, through Juno, who walked beside her with the seed:

”Thank you. You don’t have to. You can leave whenever you like.”

And every queen said the same thing back. Juno told me afterward. Not in the same words. In their own. The furred queen in her cold hill-way. The marsh queen, who still hadn’t said anything else, said only this. The three Kethri queens together, on the wind. The heavy queen, very slowly, a long time coming.

We know. That is why we are going.

The Overseer came down from the hollow that night.

It didn’t go to the ships. It came to our house. To the porch. Where I was sitting in Father’s chair with small Sigmund asleep on my chest, crackling very faintly, and Sera in the other chair with Ash, and Risa and Luna on the steps. Mother was inside with the twins and the babies.

It stood at the bottom of the porch steps. Very tall. Very grey. With the old brown dog beside it, and a loaf of Thorne’s rye in one long hand.

”Operator,” it said.

Nobody said anything. The Overseer had never called me anything.

”That is what the unit calls you,” said the Overseer. ”The one who counts. I have heard her. Every evening. I thought—” It stopped. ”I do not know what to call you. I was never told. I thought I would use what she uses.”

”That’s all right,” I said.

The Overseer looked down at the loaf.

”Tomorrow,” it said. ”The children will come out of the Hands. They will not see a keeper. They will not hear the voice. Not here. Not yet. The keeper’s voice is at the ring, far away, and it will only come down the rope after them, faint.” It looked up. ”So they will look for what is nearest that looks like what they know.”

”You,” said Luna. Quietly. From the steps.

”Me,” said the Overseer. ”I am grey. I am Sorn. I am tall and I have pale eyes. I was made to stand over a world and be obeyed.” Its thin dry voice was very steady. ”They will look at me first. They will wait for me to tell them what to do.”

Nobody said anything.

”I would like to tell them something,” said the Overseer. ”Tomorrow. When they look at me.” It looked down at the dog, leaning on its leg. ”I have never told anyone anything that was not an order. I do not know how. I would like you to tell me what to say.”

I didn’t know.

I sat in Father’s chair with my son asleep on my chest and looked at the tall grey thing at the bottom of the steps, with a loaf of bread in its hand and a dog leaning on it, asking me what to say to fifty-eight thousand children.

It was Sera who answered.

She stood up. With Ash asleep on her shoulder. And went down the porch steps. And stood in front of the Overseer, very close, with her chin up and her free hand flat against its long grey chest.

Testing it. The way she tested iron. The way she’d tested me in the map room, before the keeper, when I was too hot.

”You’re cold,” she said.

”I am always cold.”

”I know,” said Sera. She kept her hand there. Warm. ”When I was very small, my mother used to put her hand on my chest when I was frightened. Like this. She said a Calder’s fire starts in the middle and if you warm the middle, the rest knows where it is.” She looked up at the Overseer’s long grey face. ”You don’t have to tell them anything. You don’t have to give them an order. When they look at you, just—” She stopped. Thought. ”Do what the dog does.”

The Overseer looked down at the dog.

The dog was leaning on its leg. As it always did. Its whole weight. Its head against the long grey knee. Its eyes half shut.

”Lean,” said the Overseer.

”Lean,” said Sera. ”Be there. Let them lean on you, if they want to. Don’t tell them to. Just be something that doesn’t fall over.” She took her hand away. ”That’s all the dog’s ever told you. And look what happened.”

The Overseer stood there for a long time.

Then it bent down. Very slowly. All its long grey limbs folding. And put the loaf of rye down on the bottom step of the porch.

And with its long grey hand, very lightly, it touched the top of the dog’s head.

The dog leaned harder.

Mother found the twins on the roof.

Not the roof of our house. The roof of Father’s. The copy, at the end of the street, with the field in front of it and the scarecrow standing at the edge with its arms out and the blue scarf at its neck. The twins went up there sometimes, when they wanted nobody to find them. Garnet said it was because you could see the whole of the city from it. Genny said it was because nobody ever looked up.

Mother looked up.

She didn’t fly. She’d never needed to. She lifted herself, very slightly, the width of a hair at a time, up the side of Father’s house to the roof, and sat down on the ridge between them. Garnet had the old brown dog’s head in her lap, because the dog had followed the Overseer as far as the gate and then changed its mind. Genny had her notebook.

”You’re frightened,” said Mother.

”No,” said Garnet.

”Yes,” said Genny.

Mother didn’t say anything for a while. She sat between them on the ridge of Father’s roof in her dark coat with her hands perfectly still in her lap and looked out at the city. At the lamps. At the long table under the silver tree, empty now. At the plain, and the ships on it, dark, with their ramps down.

”When your brother left for the launch,” she said, ”I sat on the floor by the lift doors. You won’t remember. You were very small. Garnet climbed into my lap. Genny put her notebook down and held on to me and didn’t cry.” She looked at Genny. ”You never cried. Not once. I used to worry about it.”

”I cried on the porch,” said Genny. ”After Garnet tied the scarf on. I said I didn’t.”

”I know you did,” said Mother. ”Everyone knew.” She was quiet. ”I’d lost your father. I thought I’d lost Lucas. I thought, sitting there on that floor, that if they ever came for you two, I wouldn’t be able to lift a spoon to stop them.” She looked at her hands. Still. Steady. ”And now I can lift a marsh.”

The twins didn’t say anything.

”Those children,” said Mother. ”Tomorrow. Some of them had mothers who sat on a floor once, and couldn’t lift a spoon.” She put one hand on Genny’s knee and one on Garnet’s. ”So tomorrow, if any of them falls, Garnet, you catch it. And if any of them can’t hear, Genny, you sing until it can. And I’ll be standing on the ash holding whatever needs holding.” She looked out at the plain. ”I’d like those mothers to know somebody did.”

Garnet put her face in the dog’s neck.

Genny wrote something in her notebook. Then she closed it, and put her head on Mother’s shoulder, and left it there.

We left at dawn. After the count.

All of them. Every ship whose queen had young under the ring, and the Scarecrow, and the Ground. Up off the red glass into the morning. With every queen on Avalon singing under us, and the whole of Scarecrow on the plain looking up, and the long table under the silver tree with every seat full, and Kwame at the head with his hands folded, not saying your turn to anyone, just watching.

And on the red glass, in the middle of everything, a small girl with her hand flat on the ground.

Pebble on one side. Ash on the other. Trevor on a blanket behind her with frost spreading out round him in a perfect circle. Small Sigmund, crackling, in Mother’s arms, because Mother had stayed on the glass to hold him until the last minute and was going to come up on the Ground.

Dory’s eyes were shut. The lattice of silver round them very bright.

”I’m holding,” she said. Through every queen. Through me. ”Papa. Go. I’m holding everything.”

Tally sat by the Drenn queen’s door for the whole crossing.

With the notebook open on her knee. Not to US, this time. Not to EARTH or HOME or THE FIRST NOTE. To THEM. To the one mark, under the word, that she’d made at the window under the ring, a long time ago now, for the child on the end of the bench.

Genny sat down beside her.

”Will you know her?” she said. ”If she comes?”

”I do not know,” said Tally. ”I never saw her face. Nobody had a face.” She touched the mark. ”I knew her finger. On my hand. Under the bench.” She looked down at her own hand. ”That is all.”

”That might be enough,” said Genny.

”It might not.” Tally was quiet for a long time. ”She is older now. She will be one of the oldest. The ones nearly finished. The ones who do not remember there was anything to ask.” Her flat careful voice wavered, very slightly. ”She might not remember my hand.”

Genny didn’t say anything for a while.

Then she held out her own hand. Flat. Palm up. On the deck between them.

Tally looked at it.

”What is that for?”

”Practice,” said Genny.

Tally looked at her for a long time. Then she put out one finger. And laid it, very lightly, on Genny’s palm.

”Like that?” said Genny.

”Like that,” said Tally.

They sat there like that for the rest of the crossing. Neither of them said anything else. The Drenn queen, in her room, with her door open, turned her great head and watched them, and didn’t stop singing.

We came out of the page over the human world at noon.

Brown. Poisoned. The domes on the plain like soap bubbles, most of them empty now, their glass gone dull. Carver, in the north, with its filter gone. Stillwater, with its black lake, very still. Halden, broken, under the ash.

And New Halcyon.

Still lit. Still full. Three million people who’d decided to stay, because it was the only place they knew, or they were frightened, or because somebody had to. Every window. The ring street. The towers like bones. The Ministry on its hill, with its archives empty now, every crate in a room at the end of Ruth’s records room eleven light-years away.

The Scarecrow went over the top of the dome. And the Drenn queen opened her arms. And the four long fins went out over New Halcyon like a scarecrow’s arms over a field.

Nothing from the sky would reach anyone under them.

The Ground came down on the ash to the east. Where Pell’s people had always come out. The heavy queen in her heart, humming so low I felt it through the Scarecrow’s deck from three miles off. And round her, in a great ring on the ash round the dome, the others. The Harness. The Long Legs. The Wing. Their ramps down. Their queens in their rooms with the doors open.

Waiting.

Wren counted the dome.

From the Scarecrow’s forward deck. With Toby’s stone against her ear and her eyes shut and Harriet’s note, very faint, coming out of it. She’d never counted a dome before. She’d counted Scarecrow, and Avalon, and the halls under the ring.

”Three million and four,” she said. After a long time. ”Under the arms. Every one.”

”Four?”

”Selwyn’s cleaner,” said Wren. Without opening her eyes. ”She came back. On the last crossing but one. Odell says she said she’d been cleaning that floor for thirty years and she wasn’t going to leave it dirty for whoever came.” A pause. ”And three others. I don’t know who. They weren’t on the list. They just came back.”

Luna had the forward deck.

She’d spread the map of New Halcyon across Safi’s chart table, the old one from the Ministry archives, with every street and tower and lock on it, and put small stones on it for everyone. The Ground, at the east. The ring of iron ships. Mother on the ash at the foot of the Ground’s ramp, with the General beside her. Liam and Sera at the north edge, in case anything burned. Anja at the south, in case anything needed standing in front of. Risa on the Scarecrow’s back, under the open sky, with her hair already lifting very slightly, watching the weather. The twins and Tally and Ruth and Sigmund and Jory with the Overseer, on the ash between the Ground and the dome.

And me. A stone at the forward window.

”Nobody moves first,” said Luna. To everyone. Through Juno. Through the seed. Very calmly. In her father’s voice. ”Nobody attacks anything. Nobody folds anything. Nobody tells anyone to do anything.” She looked down at the map. ”The queens sing. That’s all. Everything else is holding.”

”And if they attack?” said Liam. From the north edge.

”Then you hold the fire,” said Luna. ”You don’t throw any back.”

There was a long pause on the seed.

”Understood,” said Liam. And then, because he was Liam: ”I’d just like it on record that this is the least Calder plan I’ve ever heard.”

”It’s on record,” said Luna.

Then the heavy queen said: now.

I felt it before anyone. Through the deck. Through the iron. The rope, the thread that the heavy queen had been feeling in the Ground’s iron for a month, every morning, heavier, went very tight.

Then very heavy.

Then the sky over the human world opened.

Not like a page turning. I’d seen pages turn. A bright seam in the nothing, and then you were somewhere else.

This wasn’t bright.

It was grey.

A long grey tear in the brown sky, high over the dome, out past the edge of the Scarecrow’s arms. Slow. Ragged. Like something old and tired pushing through a door it hadn’t opened in a long time. And through it, one finger at a time, a Hand.

Old. The oldest I’d ever seen. Older than the Open Hand had been when it was still a Hand. Grey gone nearly black, cracked, mended badly and then not at all, with folds worn so smooth they shone. Its fingers half closed. Its palm turned down. Toward the dome.

Then a second.

Then a third.

They hung there.

Three old Hands, in the brown sky over the human world, just past the reach of the Scarecrow’s arms. Not moving. Not doing anything. Fingers half closed. As if they’d crossed the dark and come out the other side and didn’t know what to do now. As if nobody had told them.

And from somewhere very far away, down the rope behind them, faint, faint as the first note toward Voss’s seed, I heard it.

The voice.

Asking is not how it’s done.

The palm of the first Hand opened.

Very slowly. The way the old Hand’s palm had opened over the Kethri forest. A fold at a time.

And out of it, into the brown air, children.

Not walking. Not in a line, holding hands. Falling. Slowly. Dozens. Hundreds. Drifting down out of the open palm of the old Hand like seeds off a tree, the way the young of the floating queen had drifted on the gas moon. Every one with a smooth grey curve where a face would be. Every one with its hands together.

And every one with silver in it. Whole. Born whole. Bright as anything I’d ever seen.

Older than Tally. Much older. Some of them as tall as me. Some taller. Their silver not a small child’s silver, not Dory’s lattice or Ash’s branches, but grown. Strong. Every power their parents had had, both sides, and more, from every world the Sorn had ever held.

And taught.

They came down toward the ash. Toward the dome. Toward the ring of ships.

Slowly.

Waiting to be told what to do.

And on the ash, at the foot of the Ground’s ramp, the heavy queen came out.

She’d never come out of a ship onto someone else’s world. She came down the ramp of the Ground the way she’d come down the ramp of the Steady on Avalon, the morning she walked across the plain to the iron ship that didn’t know what it was. Very slowly. One step. Then a long time. Then another. Small and dense and grey. The shape of a stone that walks.

She stopped at the bottom of the ramp. On the ash. On the human world.

And looked up.

At the children falling out of the sky.

And she sang.

Not the low hum she’d sung to the iron. Not the slow thing she’d sung across the dark every crossing for a season. Something else. Something I’d never heard from any queen.

A name.

Not a word. A shape. Like the shape Dory had made the morning she was born, her own shape, bright and quick and very sure, with her grandmother’s name wrapped round it. But heavy. Slow. Very, very old. A shape the heavy queen had made a very long time ago, on her heavy world, for one of her young, the day it was born.

And had sung every night since, from the top of her world, toward where they’d taken it. And never heard anything back.

She sang it now.

Up. Into the brown sky. Into the falling.

High up, near the open palm of the first Hand, one of the falling children stopped.

In the air. Just stopped. Hung there.

It was small. Smaller than the others. Dense. Grey. Not just grey on the face; grey all through. Shaped like a stone.

Its smooth grey face turned.

Down.

Toward the ash. Toward the foot of the Ground’s ramp. Toward a small, very old, very heavy queen, standing on the human world, singing its name.

Days 2411–2448. Before they come.

The heavy queen counted the days in weights, through Dot, every morning: heavier. Okafor sent Luna and Voss for the Ministry archives; Voss wouldn’t burn them, she shelved them by the green book so someone could read what was done. Wren found the count with Dory’s name on it, the first time anyone on Avalon wrote it down, and kept it in her pocket by Toby’s stone. Okafor’s longest list: every ship whose queen has young under the ring; Genny, Garnet, Tally, Jory, the Overseer, Juno, Wren, Sigmund, Ruth, the General, Mother; Dory at home on the glass holding everything, because holding is mostly being there. Hana stayed on the eastern plains to make it run, and said not yet, when you get back. Sera told the Overseer to do what the dog does: lean. Three old Hands tore through the brown sky over New Halcyon, and out of the first palm fell children. The heavy queen walked down onto the ash and sang a name, and one small heavy child, high in the air, stopped falling and turned its face toward her.