Scarecrow

I went to our queen in the morning.

After the count. After the hello came down out of the sky and went into everyone on the red glass and came back up, the way it had every morning since Day 401. I didn’t go home. I went up the canyon to the garden wall.

Hana came with me. With Kwame in his sling. Efua was with Mother, filling every cup on the porch with water because a Kethri child had smiled at her.

Our queen was where she always was. At the top of the garden wall, gold and silver in the morning light, very still. Her young round her on the terraces. Pebble wasn’t there; Pebble was on the porch, at Dory’s feet. He was always on the porch now.

She turned her head when we came up the path.

You have a question, she said.

”Yes.”

About her. She looked at Hana. At Kwame. About the air.

”Yes.”

Our queen was quiet for a long time.

Sit, she said.

We sat. On the warm stones at the foot of the wall. Where I’d sat a long time ago, in the first year, with my hands flat on the ground, learning to hear her. Where Dory had sat with Pebble the morning Ash came. Where the keeper in the box had sat with its face unfolded, at noon, in the light, and told us what happened to the children.

”Her power’s changed,” I said. ”Since the twins. It was water. Now it’s what water’s made of. She can put air together. Or take it apart.” I looked at Hana. ”She didn’t know until the ice.”

I know, said our queen.

”How?”

I heard it, said our queen. Her silver. It changed its note. She lowered her great head toward Hana. Very close. Until I could feel the warmth of her breath. It used to sing water. Now it sings something smaller. Something that water is made of. It sang that note for the first time the night her twins were born.

Hana sat very still.

”Why?” she said.

Our queen didn’t answer at once.

She lifted her head. And turned it. Toward the north wall of the hollow, where the oldest of her threads went down into the rock and away. Under the canyon and the plain and the hills. All the way to the mountain.

That is a question for the old one, she said. She is older than me. She was singing before I was hatched. Before the Sorn came to any world I know of.

”Can you call her?”

She is asleep, said our queen. In the light. On her terrace. She sleeps most days now. A pause. It would be better to go to her.

So we went.

I carried Hana. Not the way I carried the twins when I taught them to fly, a long time ago, with my hands under their arms. The way the old queen had made it possible, on that same mountain, when she made what was in me as strong as Mother’s. I asked the air to hold us. And it held us. And we went up, out of the canyon, over the plain, over the city with its crooked roofs and its rails going out like spokes, north and east and west.

Toward the mountain.

Hana held Kwame against her chest with both arms. He didn’t cry. He looked down at the plain going by under us, very calmly, the way he looked at everything. As if he was counting it.

”He likes it,” said Hana. Over the wind.

”How can you tell?”

”The air round him,” said Hana. ”It’s very still. He’s keeping it still.” She looked down at him. ”I think he’s keeping it still for me.”

The mountain was a long way.

I’d forgotten how far. It took us most of the morning. Over the hills past the plain, and the forest beyond them that the Kethri had brought, growing out north now further than I’d ever seen it, and a river nobody had named yet, and then the foothills. Grey-green. Rising. And above them, the mountain.

Very old. Very still. With its peak in cloud.

And halfway up it, on the south side, where the sun hit it all day, a terrace.

Wide and flat and warm. Where the old queen had chosen to live, after we let her out. Because she’d said she wanted somewhere to lie in the light. After four hundred and eleven years under the mountain in the dark.

She was there.

Lying in the sun. Asleep. With her young round her.

She was enormous.

I’d forgotten that too. Or I’d stopped noticing, the way you stop noticing a mountain when you live under it. She lay along the whole length of the terrace, grey and silver and very old, her plates dull with age, her great head resting on the warm stone. Older than our queen. Older than the heavy queen. Older than anything on Avalon except the rock under her.

Her young were round her. Small. Very still. Asleep too, most of them, in the sun.

We came down at the edge of the terrace. Very quietly.

She didn’t wake.

We waited.

Hana sat down on the warm stone at the edge of the terrace, with Kwame in her lap. I sat beside her. We didn’t say anything. You don’t wake a queen who’s spent four hundred and eleven years in the dark and has only just found the light.

The sun moved.

After a long time, one of the old queen’s young woke. Small and grey. It lifted its head from the warm stone and looked at us. At me. At Hana.

At Kwame.

Then it got up. Very slowly. And came across the terrace. And stopped in front of Hana. And looked at Kwame for a long time.

Kwame looked back.

And opened his hand.

And the air on the terrace, for a moment, smelled of rain.

The old queen woke.

I felt it. The way you feel a mountain lean in at a window. Vast and slow and very old. Her great head didn’t move. But her attention came round. Across the terrace. To us.

The one who opened the door, she said.

”Yes.”

You have brought someone.

”Hana,” I said. ”And our son. Kwame.”

The old queen looked at Kwame.

For a very long time.

He smells of rain, she said.

I told her.

All of it. Hana’s water, all her life. The coral world, the sea over the wall. The lake up through the green. The twins. And after, the air. On the ice. In the halls. On the ramp. The drop of water from nothing, coming together and coming apart.

Since the twins, said the old queen.

”Yes.”

And now the son smells of rain.

”Yes.”

The old queen didn’t say anything for a long time. The sun moved on the terrace. Her young slept round her.

Then she spoke. Very slowly. Like rock settling.

Silver listens.

You know this, said the old queen. You were told. On the evening you asked why your children were stronger than you. A long pause. Your queen told you. The silver listens. It grew your sister lines like a page and your mother bowls and flour and eggs.

”Yes.”

It listens to what is sung to it, said the old queen. Always. That is what it is. That is all it is. Her great head shifted, very slightly, on the warm stone. A queen sings, and the silver in her young listens, and grows to fit what she sings. On my world, before the Sorn, I sang every morning. And my young grew. Every one. Not the same. Each to fit what it heard.

”And the Sorn?”

The Sorn sing one note, said the old queen.

Hana went very still beside me.

One, said the old queen. Always one. Through the towers. Through the collars. Through the voice in the halls. Dig. Hold. Asking is not how it’s done. A long pause. One note, over and over. And the silver listens. And grows to fit one note. And never grows again.

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

I was thinking about the halls. About fifty-eight thousand children on benches, with the same voice coming down into them every few minutes for years. About the red world. Dig. About the ice. Hold.

About Wren. Program silver, with a small door in the middle of it, built before she was born.

About me. Cut. Narrowed. Opened again.

You were one note too, said the old queen. As if she’d heard me. Before. All of you from the human world. The program sang one note into you. Be useful. Be not too much. Her voice was very slow. And then you came here. And your queen sang. And the first queen. And the hello every morning. And then more queens. And more.

A long pause.

How many queens sing on Avalon now, opener of doors?

I tried to count. Our queen. The first. The second. The spine-queen on the Meridian. The nine. The Kethri queens. The Drenn queen. The heavy queen. The red queen’s song from her rock, faint across the dark. The blue queen under her ice. The small green queen. Tally’s queen in her green shallows. The three new ones. All of them singing. Every morning. Every crossing. Every night the heavy queen listened toward the ring.

”I don’t know,” I said. ”More than forty.”

More than forty, said the old queen. Singing. Every day. Not one note. Every note. Her great head turned, very slowly, on the warm stone. Toward Hana. And her silver has been listening to all of them.

Hana’s hands tightened round Kwame.

”Is that why?” she said. ”The air?”

It heard more than water, said the old queen. For a long time. Every morning, at the count. Every crossing. Every night. It heard the coral queen sing to her reef, and the salt queen to her crystals, and the blue queen through her ice, and the red queen down into her cracks. A pause. All of them sing what their world is made of. And your silver heard. And listened. And grew to fit.

”And the twins?”

The twins opened it, said the old queen. A finished mother’s silver is told, when her child comes, that there is more room. You have seen it. In the others. It grows into the space. A long pause. Yours grew into what it had been hearing.

Hana didn’t say anything for a long time.

Kwame, in her lap, had gone to sleep. With his hand open. With the air round him very still.

”Will it happen to everyone?” said Hana. Very quietly.

The old queen looked at her for a long time.

Yes, she said.

Not the same way, said the old queen. Not all at once. Not all in one year, or ten. Each one will grow to fit what they hear. And each one hears differently. Her great head lowered, very slightly, until it was nearly level with the terrace. But everyone on Avalon with silver in them has been standing in the singing for years now. Every morning. Every night. Every crossing. More queens every season. A pause. Silver listens. It cannot help it. It is what it is.

”Everyone,” I said.

Everyone, said the old queen. The children first. They are listening hardest. They have never heard only one note. They were born into the singing. Her eyes, very old, very slow, turned toward Kwame. Asleep in Hana’s lap. This one is listening to everything. He smells of rain because he heard the Kethri queens sing to their wind. He keeps the air still because he heard the moth queen sing to her dark.

Hana looked down at him. Her face was very still.

And the grown ones next, said the old queen. Slower. The ones who were one note for a long time. The program’s note. The Sorn’s. A pause. Their silver has to remember how to listen first. It has been listening to one thing so long it forgot there was anything else.

”Is it safe?” I said.

The old queen didn’t answer at once.

Silver does not grow into anything it has not heard, she said at last. It does not grow into what it is told. It grows into what it hears. A long pause. On Avalon, it hears queens. Singing what their worlds are made of. Water. Air. Ice. Stone. Light. Dark. Fire. Her great head shifted. It hears young being sung to. It hears children asking questions.

Another pause. Very long.

It is the safest thing I know, said the old queen, to let silver listen to that.

”And if someone doesn’t want to change?”

I was thinking of Wren. Who’d said not yet, a long time ago, when I asked if she’d like to be finished. Because she counted. And if she turned out to be something else, she didn’t know if she’d still be able to count.

Then it will grow slowly, said the old queen. Silver listens. It does not push. A pause. Only the Sorn push. Only one note pushes. The singing does not.

”Wren’s still program silver. With a door in the middle. Built before she was born.”

The old queen was quiet for a long time.

The one who counts, she said. I have heard her. Every morning. At the north wall. A pause. Her silver has a door. Yes. And on the other side of the door, it has been listening to her count. Every morning. For years.

Another long pause.

I do not think it will grow into anything she does not want, said the old queen. I think it will grow into counting.

The sun was going down when we left.

The old queen had gone back to sleep. Her young round her on the warm terrace. I lifted Hana and Kwame off the edge of it, very gently, and we went down the side of the mountain into the evening, and south, toward the plain.

Hana didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then, over the wind, very quietly:

”Everyone.”

”Yes.”

”Liam. Sera. Risa. Luna.” She held Kwame tighter. ”Your mother. Toby. Sigmund. Jessa. The children from the halls. The ones on the porch.” A pause. ”Everyone who came through the glass. Three and a half million.”

”Not all at once.”

”No,” said Hana. ”But everyone.” She looked down at the plain, going by under us in the dusk. At the rails, with a train going along one of them very slowly, its white plume of steam lit gold by the last of the sun. ”We’ll need to tell Ruth.”

”Ruth will need another book.”

”Ruth will need a library,” said Hana.

We told Ruth that night.

In the records room. With Genny, and Neve, and Edda, who’d come up from the delivery rooms with her green book under her arm. I told them everything. The old queen. The terrace. Silver listens. The Sorn sing one note. On Avalon it hears every note.

Ruth didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she took down the white book. The one for the children with no brood. And opened it. To the last page. What we don’t know yet.

And under it, at the top of the first empty page, she wrote one line. In her small upright writing.

Everyone may change. The queens say it is the singing. Watch for it. Write it down. Don’t be frightened of it.

She looked at it.

Then she crossed out the last sentence. And wrote it again, underneath. Bigger.

Don’t be frightened of it.

It started happening that week.

Or it had been happening for a long time and that week was when we started noticing. Because we were looking. Because Ruth had written it down, and Genny had told the twins, and the twins had told everyone, and Edda had told every finished mother who came through the delivery rooms, and Voss had read it out at the long table under the silver tree, and Kwame at the head had said your turn to the next seat and nobody had taken it for a long time because everyone was thinking.

Toby noticed first.

He was in the Karst hall at the hospital. Holding a hurt young in a low note, the way he did every afternoon. And he heard something.

Not the young. Not the Karst queen, under the park. Further.

He came out of the Karst hall very white and found me on the square.

”I can hear the Karst,” he said. ”All of them.”

”You always could.”

”No,” said Toby. ”All of them. Not just under the park. Under the hills. Under the plain. There are Karst under Carver, Lucas. Under the Reach. Under Stillwater’s lake. Thousands. All singing to each other through the rock. All over Avalon.” He put his hands over his ears. It didn’t help. It wasn’t that kind of hearing. ”I’ve been holding young in the Karst hall for a year. Every day. Listening to their queen sing to them through the floor.” He took his hands down. ”I think my silver’s been listening too.”

Then Liam.

At the forge. On the fourth night of Hana’s lessons. He put his hand out over the furnace, and Hana didn’t do anything, and the fire went down. Not out. Down. Very slightly. Exactly where he’d looked.

He stared at it.

”I didn’t put it back,” he said. ”I didn’t take it into me. I just—” He looked at Hana. ”I just saw where the air was. And I asked it to be somewhere else.”

Hana looked at him for a long time.

”You’ve been standing next to me at the furnace for four nights,” she said. ”Listening to me do it.”

”So?”

”So your silver’s been listening too,” said Hana. ”To me.” She almost smiled. ”I’m not a queen. But I suppose I sing.”

Then Wren.

At the north wall. At dawn. During the count. She stopped halfway through. Very suddenly. With her lips open on a number. Toby beside her with his hand on her back. Harriet in her sling, singing the note.

Wren turned her head.

Not toward the city. Not toward the plain. North. Past the canyon. Past the ninth lake. Past Carver and the cold towns along the river.

”There’s more,” she said.

”More what?”

”People,” said Wren. ”Coming back off the note. Further than it’s ever gone.” She tilted her head. ”I can hear Carver. I’ve never heard Carver. Not from here.” Her eyes were wide. ”I can hear the Reach. I can hear Ashby, under its hills. I can hear—”

She stopped.

”I can hear the keeper,” she said. Very quietly. ”Under the ring. Humming. I can hear it the way the heavy queen can.” She looked at Toby. ”It’s very far. It’s the furthest thing I’ve ever counted.”

”Wren—”

”It’s still counting,” said Wren. And put her hand on the stone in her pocket. Toby’s stone. With Harriet’s note in it. ”That’s all it is. It’s still me. It’s still counting.” She was crying, very quietly. ”It’s just further.”

Toby walked Wren home from the north wall that morning.

Slowly. With Harriet in her sling between them. Wren didn’t say anything all the way down the steps and along the street. She held the stone in her pocket so tightly her knuckles went white.

At the gate of their house she stopped.

”I said not yet,” she said. To Toby. Not looking at him. ”When Lucas asked. A long time ago. If I’d like to be finished.” She looked at the stone. ”Because I didn’t know if I’d still be able to count. If I turned into something else.”

”I know,” said Toby.

”And now I’m turning into something else anyway.” Her voice was very flat. Very careful. The way it went when she was frightened. ”And nobody asked. Not the queens. Not the silver. It’s just happening.”

Toby didn’t say anything for a while.

Then he took Harriet out of her sling. And held her up, between them. Harriet looked at her mother with her very fine close rings, like the lines of a song.

And sang the note.

Very quietly. Just for the gate.

And Wren, without meaning to, the way she’d done every morning since Harriet was born, tilted her head. And heard it come back off Toby’s face. And off the gate. And off the house. And off the street, and the city, and the plain.

And Carver.

And the keeper.

”You’re still counting,” said Toby. ”Aren’t you.”

Wren looked at him for a long time.

”Yes,” she said.

”Then it asked,” said Toby. ”The silver. It asked the only way it knows. It listened to you count every morning for years, and it grew into that.” He put Harriet back in her sling. ”That’s not turning into something else, Wren. That’s turning into more of you.”

Then Mother.

Nobody told me. I found out because Dory told me, at supper, with her mouth full, the way she told me everything.

”Grandma held the whole porch,” said Dory. ”This afternoon. All the children. Off the ground. At once. The width of a hair.” She swallowed. ”They thought it was a game. They wanted her to do it again.”

I looked at Mother.

Mother was cutting Trevor’s potato into very small pieces. Which he froze and ate like sweets.

”I didn’t mean to,” she said. Without looking up. ”I was holding the bowl. For the feathered one, the way I do every morning. And then I thought, I wonder if I could hold all of them. Just a thought.” She put the knife down. ”And I could.”

”How many?”

”Two hundred and forty,” said Mother. ”Wren counted.” She picked up her fork. ”I was frightened. For about a second. And then I wasn’t. It felt like holding three bowls and the flour and the eggs.” She looked at me. ”It felt like the first time. In the kitchen. Before I knew what I was doing.”

It didn’t stop with Mother.

All that season. All over Avalon. Ruth’s white book filled up so fast she started a second one, and then Neve started a third, at the hospital in Carver, and sent pages down on the train every week.

Sera found she could feel heat in other people. Not touch it. Feel it. Across a room. Who was cold. Who had a fever. Who was angry. She walked into the long room on the ward one morning and stopped in the doorway and said that one, pointing at a child from the halls three beds down who looked perfectly well, and Ruth put it in the ring and found a fever just beginning, deep, that nobody would have seen for a day.

Risa found her weather went further. Not bigger. Further. She stood on the porch one evening and frowned north and said it’s going to rain in Carver tomorrow, and the next day it did, and the farmers there sent a Kethri down the line with a basket of the first apples and a note that said thank you for the warning.

Sigmund found he didn’t need Toby to tell him now. He could feel the spark himself. In any heart. From across a room. The way Toby heard them. Because he’d stood beside Toby holding hearts for a year, and listened to Toby listen.

Genny found she could hear grey from much further away. Not a tower in front of her. Towers on other worlds. Faint. Very far. Like the keeper’s humming, at the end of the longest thread. She sat on the floor of the long room one night with her hand flat on it and said, very quietly, to nobody, there are a great many of them, and wrote down the number she heard, and didn’t show it to anyone but Okafor.

Garnet found she didn’t need to draw things from the outside first any more. She’d always had to. Since she was small. The light-benders, the animals on the carousel, the collars. Outside, then inside. Now she just looked at a thing and knew what was in the middle of it. She said it was like Genny was in her head, saying it twice, even when Genny was in another room. Genny said that was ridiculous. Then Genny said, very quietly, that she could hear Garnet looking at things from the other side of the house.

Dory found she could hold further. Not more. She’d always held more than anyone. Further. On the morning after the old queen, she put her hand flat on the red glass during the count and said, very surprised, I can feel the red world, and then, and the ice, and then, and the moss, and sat there for the rest of the morning with Pebble on one side and Ash on the other, holding three worlds she’d never stood on, because their queens were singing and she could hear them.

And the children.

The children were the fastest. The old queen had said so. They’d been born into the singing, or found it, and they were listening to everything.

The feathered child flew.

Off the porch. One morning. Just like that.

It had been holding Mother’s bowl the width of a hair every morning for a season. Then two bowls. Then the bowl and a spoon. And one morning, Dory said, it stood on the top step with its arms out and the feathers along them spread, the way the Kethri spread their wings when they heard their queens sing.

And it went up.

Not far. The height of the porch roof. It hung there, very still, with its arms out and its eyes very wide, while two hundred and forty children on the steps below stared up at it and Mother sat in Father’s chair with her hands perfectly still in her lap.

”I didn’t—” said the feathered child. From up there. Very high and frightened. ”I didn’t mean—”

”I know,” said Mother. Very calmly. ”Nobody ever does. The first time.” She didn’t lift her hand. She didn’t hold it. ”You can come down whenever you like. Slowly. The way you went up.”

The feathered child looked down at her for a long time.

Then it came down. Slowly. The way it went up. And landed on the top step. And sat down very suddenly on it, the way Wren sat down on the wall.

”What was that?” it said.

”Listening,” said Mother.

Okafor called the map room at the end of the season.

Not about a war. Not about a world. She stood at the head of the table with Ruth’s white books stacked in front of her, all three, and Neve’s pages from Carver, and Edda’s green one with a new page in it headed Everyone.

”The Sorn sing one note,” she said. ”The old queen says. Through every tower. Every collar. Every keeper.” She put her hand flat on the books. ”That’s how they hold everything. One note. And the silver listens and grows to fit it and never grows again.”

Nobody said anything.

”And we’ve got more than forty queens,” said Okafor, ”singing every note there is. Every morning. And everyone on Avalon listening.” She looked round the table. ”Every world we free has a queen who sings. Every queen who sings makes everyone who hears her grow.” She was quiet for a moment. ”The Sorn have one note. We have all of them.”

”And when they see?” said the General. Very quietly.

Okafor looked at him for a long time.

”They’ve already seen,” she said. ”Three keepers flew home along the ninth line to tell the rest that a queen couldn’t be lifted and a keeper said no.” She picked up her slate. ”What they haven’t seen yet is what the rest of us are turning into.” A pause. ”I’d like to keep it that way. For as long as we can.”

She wrote it on the slate. Under Every one. Very small.

They sing one note. We sing all of them.

That night I sat on the porch in Father’s chair and listened.

Not with my ears. With the silver. The way I listened to steel, and stone, and grey. I listened to Avalon.

And I heard it.

Not one note. Every note. Every queen. Our queen at the garden wall, singing to her young on the terraces in the dark. The first queen in the hollow. The old queen on her mountain, asleep, singing in her sleep. The heavy queen on the red glass beside the Ground, listening toward the ring. Tally’s queen in her green shallows. The red queen, faint, very far, across the dark, singing down into her cracks. The blue queen under her ice.

The children. Fifty-eight thousand of them. All over Avalon. Asleep. With their silver listening.

And under all of it, very faint, from very far away, at the end of a long thread nearly off the edge of anything, a keeper. Humming. At the top of a small grey world under a ring.

I’d never been able to hear it. Not without the heavy queen. Not without Dot.

I could hear it now.

I went inside.

Luna was at the kitchen table with her notebook. She looked up when I came in.

”You heard it,” she said.

”How do you know?”

”Your face,” said Luna. ”It does a thing. When something changes in you.” She put her pen down. ”It did it at the forge, the first time. And on the day Dory was born. And under the ring, when the keeper said no.” She looked at me for a long time. ”What did you hear?”

”Everything,” I said.

Luna didn’t say anything for a while.

Then she picked up her pen again. And opened the notebook. To a page near the back. And wrote something. I read it upside down.

Lucas. Listening.

And under it, a date.

”For Ruth,” she said. ”She’ll want it in the book.” She looked up at me. ”Everyone else is.”

Hana was awake when I went to bed.

In the dark. With Kwame asleep between us, his hand open on the blanket, and the air round him very still. She didn’t say anything for a long time.

”What do you think you’ll turn into?” she said at last.

”I don’t know.”

”You must have thought about it.”

”I’ve been thinking about it since the terrace.” I looked at the ceiling. At the dark. ”I already see through everything. I already ask things what shape they want to be. I can already fly.” I was quiet. ”I don’t know what’s left.”

Hana turned her head on the pillow and looked at me.

”Listening,” she said. ”That’s what the old queen said. You are listening hardest of all.”

”She didn’t say that.”

”She didn’t say it out loud,” said Hana. ”She said it when she looked at you. At the end. Before she went back to sleep.” She put her hand on Kwame’s back. ”I can hear things now too, Lucas. Not the way Toby does. The air. When someone breathes. When they hold their breath.” She was quiet. ”She looked at you. And I heard her breathe out. Like she’d been waiting a long time to see something.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Go to sleep,” said Hana. ”You’ll find out. Everyone will.” She shut her eyes. ”Ruth said not to be frightened of it. Twice.”

Days 2683–2690. The silver listens.

Our queen heard Hana’s silver change its note the night the twins were born, and sent us to the old one. I flew Hana and Kwame to the mountain terrace; the old queen woke and said he smells of rain. Silver listens to what is sung to it; that’s all it is. The Sorn sing one note, dig, hold, asking is not how it’s done, and silver grows to fit one note and never grows again. The program sang one note into us too. On Avalon more than forty queens sing every note, every day, and Hana’s silver heard what their worlds are made of; the twins opened room for it to grow into. It will happen to everyone: children first, grown ones slower; it doesn’t push, only the Sorn push. Wren’s will grow into counting. Ruth wrote: don’t be frightened of it. That week Toby heard every Karst on Avalon, Liam moved air in a fire by watching Hana, Wren counted as far as the keeper under the ring, and Mother held all two hundred and forty children on the porch at once. That night I heard the keeper humming without anyone’s help. Luna wrote my name in her book.