Scarecrow

Wren counted at dawn.

The way she always did. On the north wall. With Harriet in her sling singing the note, and Toby beside her playing the counter-note under it, and the stone in her pocket. Out loud. Under her breath.

But she didn’t count the city.

She counted everyone.

It took her the whole of the grey before the sun.

Every town. Every rail line. Carver past the ninth lake, where the farmers were already kneeling in the orchards with their hands flat on the ground. Stillwater on its clear lake, where people stood in the shallows with the water to their knees. Ashby in its tunnels by the western sea, two hundred thousand people sitting on the floors of the long galleries under the hills. The Reach, out on the eastern plains, where the old woman from the horse family stood at the edge of the grass with her hand on Bess’s neck and Hana’s mares round her, and a hundred children from the new town knelt in the grass.

Halden’s people, in their town past the ninth lake, with their filters round their necks.

The long table under the silver tree. Every seat full. Kwame at the head with his hands folded. Voss at the foot with her book open and her pen in her hand. And in the plain chair beside her, the one with the slate that said The ones without queens, Tally.

The porch of the crooked house at the end of the street. Two hundred and forty children on the steps, holding hands. The feathered child on the top step. Mother in Father’s chair.

And the plain.

The red glass, from the steps of Scarecrow out to the horizon, full. Fifty-eight thousand children from the halls, kneeling in rows, because that was the only way they knew to kneel, with their hands flat on the glass. And among them, everyone else. Everyone who’d come. Three and a half million, Wren said, give or take, all over Avalon, with their hands on the ground or in the water or on the wood of a porch or on each other.

”Everyone,” said Wren. At the end. Very quietly. ”I counted everyone.” She opened her eyes. ”Nobody’s missing.”

The queens were already singing.

Not the singing. Not yet. Just the hello. The way it came down every morning. Out of the dawn sky, along the silver, into everyone on the red glass. Our queen at the garden wall. The first queen in the hollow. The old queen, awake, on her mountain, with her great head lifted off the warm stone for the first time in a season.

And the others.

All of them. More than forty. In their places. Wherever they’d chosen to be.

The heavy queen on the red glass beside the Ground, with her head turned toward the sky. Tally’s queen in her green shallows on the green, tall and pale as a reed, with her silver top bent down over Reed, who’d come to sit in the water at her feet. The sound-queen, who was only a sound, standing in the middle of the square under the silver tree so that the whole city was full of her. The Kethri queens in the forest. The Drenn queen in her room on the Scarecrow, with her door open, and her young round the school, facing out. The salt queen on her terrace, glittering. The furred queen on her cold hill. The moth queen in the dark grove, awake in the day.

And further. Across the dark. Faint. The red queen, singing down into her cracks from the top of her rock. The blue queen under her ice. The small green queen in her moss.

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

Because his mother had asked.

Dory stood in the middle of the plain.

On the red glass. At the foot of the steps of Scarecrow. With Pebble on one side and Ash on the other. Trevor on a blanket behind her with frost spreading out round him in a perfect circle. Small Sigmund in Risa’s arms, crackling. Efua and Kwame in Hana’s, one on each hip.

She had her hand flat on the ground.

Her eyes were shut. The lattice of silver round them was so bright it lit her face.

”I’m holding,” she said. Through everything. Very small. Very steady. ”Papa. I’m holding everyone.”

I stood beside her.

Not holding. Okafor had said: you listen. You’re the only one who can hear all of it. You tell Genny where it’s working and where it isn’t. So I stood on the red glass beside my daughter with my hands at my sides, and listened.

To everything.

The way I’d learned to, a month ago, lying awake. Not one thing. All of it. Every queen. Every child. Every silver on Avalon, listening.

And out. Along the threads.

To the grey.

Everyone had a place.

Luna had drawn it. On the kitchen table, the night before, after Garnet finished her drawing of the porch. Not a battle. Not a crossing. A singing. But Luna said everything that mattered had a shape, and she’d like to know where everyone was standing when it mattered.

So Mother was on the porch. In Father’s chair. With two hundred and forty children on the steps below her and her hands perfectly still in her lap. Not holding anything. She’d said so. I’ll hold the porch. That’s all. They’ll want someone there who’s been held.

Sera and Liam were at the edge of the plain, at the north, with their hands flat on the red glass. In case anything burned. Nothing would. Okafor knew it. Sera knew it. But Okafor said everyone should have somewhere to put their hands.

Risa was on the low hill behind the house, with a cloud the size of a hat over her head, very still. Watching the weather. In case it turned.

Hana stood beside Dory. With the twins. Holding the air.

Luna was at the map table. With every window of the map room open so she could hear. With her notebook. Every plan across her table, including Okafor’s. Including this one.

The General stood at the foot of the steps of Scarecrow. In his greatcoat. With frost very faintly at its edges. Not holding anything. Standing. In front of the plain. The way he’d said he would, at New Halcyon, a long time ago. An old man who should have done this thirty years ago, and is doing it now.

And the Overseer sat at the edge of the plain, beside the heavy queen, with its bread and the dog. Very tall even folded. Very still.

It had asked to be there. If the voice at the middle pushes back, it had said, in the map room, I would like to be somewhere it can see. So it knows that something it made is sitting on the ground with a dog.

Genny was at the top of the steps of Scarecrow.

Kneeling. With her hand flat on the stone of the top step. With Garnet kneeling beside her, holding her other hand. With Okafor standing behind them both with her slate.

Genny didn’t look round.

”Ready,” she said.

Okafor looked out at the plain. At three and a half million people with their hands on the ground. At fifty-eight thousand children in rows. At Dory in the middle, holding.

At me.

”Ask them,” said Okafor.

Genny sang.

It wasn’t loud.

Genny was never loud. It was the lullaby. The one she’d sung through the doors to the choir. To the three hundred slivers at Halden. To the halls under the ring. The one she’d sung, at night, for weeks, to a single sliver under her bed in a box, until it sang back.

You can stop now. Nobody’s going to make you. You don’t have to.

And under her, the queens.

All of them.

At once.

I’d heard them sing together before. On the ash at New Halcyon, every queen singing a name. In the halls, every queen singing down the cracks. On the moss, every queen on Avalon under the small green queen, singing towers into moss.

This was different.

This was every queen singing everything.

The heavy queen sang what her world was made of: weight, and stone, and things that sit very heavily where they are. The coral queen sang warm shallow water. The salt queen sang dry white light. The blue queen, across the dark, sang ice and the deep water under it. The red queen sang stone and heat and the sound of being sung down to in the dark. Tally’s queen sang green shallows and silver-tipped reeds. The Kethri queens sang wind. The moth queen sang the dark. The sound-queen sang the thing music’s made of.

Every note.

Not one. All of them.

And under all of them, three and a half million people with silver in them that had been listening for years.

Singing back.

It went out along the silver.

I felt it go. Not across the dark. Along the silver. Already on both sides. Out of every queen on Avalon, and every child, and every person kneeling on the red glass and in the orchards of Carver and the tunnels of Ashby and the shallows of Stillwater. Into the hello. Along it. Out to the red world and the ice and the moss. Out to the keeper under the ring.

And further.

Along the threads. The grey ones. The ones I’d only started to hear a month ago. Thin. Going out in every direction. From the end of the ninth line to every tower on every world. The threads the keepers had sent take them along, in the night.

The singing went along them.

The wrong way.

I heard it reach the first tower.

On the water world. The one Genny had tried, alone, with only our queen under her. The one with the small young going round and round in their collars under the water. Swim. Swim. Swim.

And under that, newer. Louder. Take them.

The singing reached it.

Every note. All at once. Coming along the grey thread from the wrong direction. Into the tower. Through it. Down into the water. Into every collar.

You can stop now.

I didn’t see what happened. I couldn’t. It was a world I’d never stood on, at the far end of a thread so thin I could barely hear it.

But I heard.

I heard the young stop swimming.

Not one. Not the one small young that had hung in the water listening, a week ago. All of them. Hundreds. All at once. They stopped going round and round. They hung in the water with their collars on and the tower pushing swim into them, and didn’t swim.

They listened.

To something they’d never heard. Coming from the other side of the dark. Every note there was.

”Genny,” I said. ”The water world. It’s working.”

Genny didn’t open her eyes. She kept singing.

But her hand on the step went very white.

The second tower. The third.

Then I stopped counting towers and started counting worlds.

The singing went along every thread at once. Hundreds. Thousands. Every grey thread the keepers had ever sent anything along. And I heard it arrive. One world after another. Faint. Very far. Worlds I’d never heard of, that nobody on Avalon had a name for.

A world of fire, where young in collars were feeding something with their heat. They stopped.

A world of glass, where young in collars were singing it into shapes for the Sorn. They stopped.

A world of nothing but dark, where young in collars lay very still in the cold and were made to be still. They were already still. But they turned their heads.

A world where children born whole, small and furred and frightened, were being walked in a line toward a Hand. Right now. At this moment. Holding hands. Because the voice had told every tower, in the night, take them.

They stopped walking.

All of them. In their line. On the way to the Hand.

They stopped. And stood there. Holding hands. And turned. Every one. Away from the Hand. Toward something they’d never heard, coming from very far away.

You don’t have to.

”Genny,” I said. ”The children. On the—there’s a line. They were being taken. They’ve stopped.”

Genny’s voice didn’t change. But Garnet, beside her, put her free hand over her mouth.

And then the queens answered.

Not ours.

Theirs.

I didn’t understand it at first. I was listening to the threads. Grey, and thin, and going out in every direction, carrying the singing to every tower. And then, along one of them, something came back.

Not grey.

Silver.

Faint. Very faint. Very old. Like the nine had been, in Dot’s side, when they first started humming somewhere else. Like the slivers on the floor of the long room when they first heard the queens and started pointing home. A sound so faint and so far that I thought, for a moment, I’d made it up.

Then another.

Then another.

Coming back along the threads. From worlds where the singing had reached. From under the towers. From inside things.

Queens.

In pillars. In housings. In the palms of Hands. In collars. Broken into pieces and grown into towers and pressed into the hearts of grey things that were made to carry them. Queens who’d been held so long they’d forgotten almost everything. Who’d been made to sing one note into their own young for longer than anyone remembered.

They heard the singing.

Every note.

And they remembered there was something besides the one.

And they answered.

It came back along the threads like rain coming back up out of a crack.

Faint. Hundreds of voices. Thousands. Queens on worlds I’d never heard of. Very small. Very far. Most of them only a sound. A breath. A note. The way the nine had been, at first, before Genny sang them back. Before Garnet drew the map.

But every one of them pointed.

Toward Avalon.

Toward the sound of every queen singing every note there was.

And the keeper hummed louder.

Under the ring. At the top of its small grey world. Where it had hummed every night since its mother rested her head on it, so she could hear it from Avalon.

It heard the singing go past. Along the threads. Every note.

And it hummed louder.

Not one note. Its mother’s note. The heavy, slow, stone-settling hum of a world where everything sits where it is. Along the threads. Under the singing. So that every tower the singing reached, every grey thread, every keeper standing over every world, heard it.

A keeper. Humming.

I heard what it did. Along the threads. On worlds I’d never seen. Keepers standing over towers, over young in collars, over children in lines. Hearing the singing come from the wrong direction. And under it, faint, unmistakable, one of their own.

Humming.

Some of them stopped pushing. Not many. Not most. A few. Here and there along the threads. A keeper on a world of dark stopped telling its young to be still, and stood there, listening, the way the keeper under the ring had stood looking down at its mother.

I told Genny. She didn’t stop singing. But I saw her shoulders shake.

And at the edge of the plain, the heavy queen lifted her head off the red glass. Very slowly. And turned it toward the sky. And I felt her hear her son.

He is louder, she said. Through Dot, beside her. He is humming for everyone.

I don’t know how long it lasted.

Wren said afterward it was four hours. She said she counted every minute. She said it was the longest four hours of her life and she’d counted fifty-eight thousand children under a ring for nine.

I don’t remember it as four hours. I remember it as everything.

Every queen on Avalon singing. Every queen on every world answering. Three and a half million people with their hands on the ground. Dory in the middle, holding all of it, with her face very white and her lattice so bright it hurt to look at.

And Genny at the top of the steps. Singing. Never loud. Never stopping. With her hand on the stone going whiter and whiter, and Garnet holding her other hand so tight their knuckles were the same colour.

And me. Listening. Telling her. The fire world. The glass world. The line of children. Another queen. Another. Another.

Then the voice came.

From the end of the ninth line.

From the grey at the middle of everything. So large the halls were a pebble beside it. The voice I’d heard in the night, a month ago, at the middle of thousands of keepers.

Then take them.

It had heard.

Of course it had heard. We were singing along its threads. The wrong way. Into its towers. Into its collars. Into its children, in lines, on their way to its Hands.

And it pushed back.

One note.

The way the old queen said. The way the Sorn always did. One note, along every thread, from the middle, all at once. Not loud. It didn’t need to be. Certain. Flat. Older than anything I’d ever heard.

Asking is not how it’s done.

It hit the singing like a wall.

I felt it. All along every thread. The singing going out, every note, and the one note coming back. Meeting. In the grey. Somewhere between Avalon and every world. Pushing.

On the water world, the young started to swim again.

On the world where the children had stopped walking, the line turned back toward the Hand.

The queens who’d answered, all along the threads, went quiet. One. Then another. Then dozens. As if a hand had come down over them.

And on the red glass, Dory cried out.

Not loud. A small sound. A sound like someone who’s been holding something very heavy for a very long time and has just felt it get heavier.

She didn’t take her hand off the ground.

But her whole body shook.

”Papa,” she said. Very small. ”It’s pushing. It’s pushing on everything. It’s so—” She stopped. Her face was white. ”I can’t hold it. Not that. Not against that. It’s too—”

I knelt beside her.

I didn’t know what to do. Okafor had said listen. I was listening. I could hear the one note pushing along every thread, and the singing bending under it, and my daughter on the red glass shaking.

And then I heard something else.

Behind me. On the plain.

Fifty-eight thousand children.

In rows. On the red glass. With their hands flat on the ground. Who’d sat on benches under a ring for most of their lives while that same voice came down into them every few minutes. Asking is not how it’s done.

They’d heard it all their lives.

And they heard it now. Coming along the threads. From the middle. Pushing.

And they did something nobody had told them to do.

They stood up.

All of them. At once. Fifty-eight thousand. In their rows. On the red glass. With the one note pushing into them from the end of the ninth line, the note that had kept them sitting on benches with their hands together for years.

They stood up.

And didn’t sit back down.

The Overseer stood up too.

At the edge of the plain. Beside the heavy queen. All its long grey limbs unfolding. With Thorne’s rye in one hand and the old brown dog pressed against its leg. Very tall. Very grey. The tallest thing on the red glass.

It didn’t sing. It couldn’t. It was made, not born. It had no queen.

It stood there. Where the voice at the middle could see it. If the voice at the middle could see anything. Something grey, made from grey and a piece of a queen and an order, standing on the red glass of a world it had been told to hold and report on. With a dog leaning on its leg.

And it broke the bread.

And held half of it out. Toward the sky. Toward the end of the ninth line. Toward the grey so large the halls were a pebble beside it.

It didn’t say anything. It didn’t need to.

I heard the one note falter.

Not stop. Not yet. Falter. Just for a moment. The way a step falters on a stair you’ve climbed every day of your life, when something you’ve never seen before is sitting on it.

The dog leaned harder.

And Tally sang.

From the chair at the foot of the long table. The only song the ones without queens knew.

Will you come with me?

Very badly. Very flat. She’d never sung in her life. She sang it anyway.

And Reed sang it. In the green shallows, at her queen’s feet. And Moon. And the feathered child on the top step of the porch, with the third part slightly wrong. And two hundred and forty children on the steps behind it. And Jory, in the schoolroom by the cisterns, with every person who’d ever had a housing taken off holding a pencil in their hands. And the old man from Halden. And Selwyn, at his table in the school on the green, who’d never sung anything in his life, who’d never asked anyone anything until a small child put her finger on his book.

Will you come with me? You don’t have to.

Not a queen’s song. Not every note. One line. Over and over. From everyone who’d ever been told, all their lives, that asking was not how it’s done.

Asking.

It went out along the threads.

Under the queens. Under every note. A line of it. Very thin. Very stubborn. The only thing the one note didn’t know how to push against.

Because the one note said asking is not how it’s done.

And fifty-eight thousand children who’d heard that every day of their lives were standing on the red glass asking anyway.

The wall broke.

Not all at once. Not everywhere. But I heard it. Along thread after thread. The one note pushing, and the singing bending, and then under the singing, that one thin stubborn line, will you come with me, and the one note not knowing what to do with it.

Because it was a question.

And keepers do not answer questions.

On the water world, the young stopped swimming again.

On the world with the line of children, they turned away from the Hand. And sat down. On the ground. Holding hands. Not because anyone told them to. Because the line had come along the thread and asked if they’d like to, and they would.

And the queens came back.

All along the threads. The ones who’d gone quiet under the one note. One. Then another. Then dozens. Then hundreds. Answering. Pointing. Toward Avalon.

And Dory stopped shaking.

”Papa,” she said. Very quietly. With her eyes shut and her hand on the ground. ”It’s not pushing on me any more.”

”No.”

”It’s pushing on everyone,” said Dory. ”On everyone who’s holding me. And they’re—” She stopped. Her face was wet. ”They’re all holding. All of them. All at once.” She opened her eyes. They were very bright. ”The rope’s holding the knot.”

The one note stopped.

Not faded. Stopped. In the middle. The way the keeper under the ring had stopped, the day it looked down. Like a clock that had been ticking on its own for longer than anyone remembered feeling a hand on it, for the first time.

And the grey at the end of the ninth line went very quiet.

Genny stopped singing.

She took her hand off the step. It was white to the wrist. She looked at it for a long time. Then she leaned sideways, very slowly, against Garnet, and shut her eyes.

The queens stopped.

One at a time. Not all at once. The way people stop clapping. Our queen. The first. The old queen, putting her great head back down on the warm stone of her terrace. The heavy queen. The sound-queen, last, getting quieter and quieter until the city was only a city again.

And Dory took her hand off the ground.

And fell over.

I caught her.

She was asleep before I had her. Breathing. Slow and deep. With the lattice round her eyes very dim. Pebble pushed his head under her arm and lay down against her. Ash sat down beside her and put her hand on Dory’s back, very flat, the way Dory did.

Hana was there. With her hand out. Holding the air round Dory. Rich. Clean. So that every breath was easy.

Mother came down off the porch. Ruth came from the hospital. Neither of them said anything. Ruth knelt and took Dory’s wrist. Counting.

”She’s all right,” said Ruth. After a long time. ”She’s asleep. That’s all.” She looked at Dory. ”She’ll sleep a long time. Let her.”

Genny’s hand didn’t come back for three days.

Ruth looked at it on the steps, with Garnet holding Genny up. White to the wrist. Cold. Not hurt. Just used. As if she’d held it flat on the stone so long, singing, that it had forgotten how to be anything else.

”It’ll come back,” said Ruth. ”Slowly. Like a foot that’s gone to sleep.” She looked at Genny. ”Four hours. Nobody’s ever sung for four hours along every thread the Sorn have. Nobody’s ever sung along them at all.”

”I wasn’t singing alone,” said Genny. Very tired. With her eyes shut.

”No,” said Ruth. ”But you were the one at the top.” She wrote it in the white book. On her knee. On the steps. G. Dask. Four hours. Left hand cold to the wrist. Will come back. And under it: What we don’t know yet: what happens to the one who sings first.

I sat down on the step below Genny.

She opened her eyes. Looked at me.

”You’ve got the face,” she said.

”I know.”

”You said it all yesterday,” said Genny. ”You don’t have to say it again.”

”I know,” I said. ”I’m going to anyway.”

So I said it again. Out loud. On the steps of Scarecrow, with the plain still full of fifty-eight thousand children standing up.

Genny listened to all of it. Then she shut her eyes again.

”Twice,” she said. ”That’s twice.” She leaned her head against Garnet. ”Ruth says twice is how you know someone’s listening.”

At the long table, Voss was still writing.

She’d written the whole four hours. Every word anyone said. There weren’t many. Mostly she’d written what she heard. Genny began. The queens. The children stood. Tally sang. Selwyn sang.

She stopped at that one. And looked down the long table. At the end. At Selwyn. In his corner chair. Very white. With his hands shaking.

”You sang,” she said.

Selwyn looked at her.

”I didn’t know the words,” he said. ”I’ve never sung. In my whole life.” He looked at his hands. ”The child at my table. Moon. Last week. She asked me if I knew any songs. I said no. She said she’d teach me one.” He swallowed. ”She taught me that one. Will you come with me. It took her four days. I kept getting it wrong.”

”And today?”

”I got it wrong today too,” said Selwyn. ”The whole four hours.” He was quiet. ”But I sang it.”

Voss looked at him for a long time.

Then she wrote it in the book. Exactly. Selwyn sang. He got it wrong. He sang it anyway.

Wren counted again.

Not Avalon. The threads.

She stood on the north wall with Toby’s stone in her hand and Harriet’s note going out, and tilted her head, and listened. Further than she’d ever listened. Along every thread. To every world the singing had reached.

It took her until noon.

When she came down she went straight to Okafor, at the foot of the steps of Scarecrow, and stood in front of her very straight.

”Queens,” she said. ”Answering. Pointing home. Here.” She took a breath. ”Four hundred and twelve.”

Okafor didn’t move.

”And children,” said Wren. ”Born whole. On the worlds the singing reached. Who were being taken last night.” Her voice cracked. ”I can’t count them. Not all. Too far. Too many.” She looked at Okafor. ”But most of them sat down. When it asked. They sat down and didn’t get up.”

Okafor took out her slate.

She turned it over. To the back. Past Selwyn. Past Now. Past A keeper said no. Past Everyone. Past the one mark she’d made for the small young on the water world who’d stopped swimming, a week ago.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she wrote a number. Under the one mark.

412.

And under that, very small, something else. I read it upside down.

They sat down.

At dusk, the voice spoke again.

I heard it. Lying on the porch, in Father’s chair, with Dory asleep on my chest and Pebble on my feet and the whole house asleep round me. Listening to one thing. Dory, breathing.

And then, very far, at the end of the ninth line, the grey.

Not pushing. Not one note. Not take them. Not asking is not how it’s done.

One voice. The one at the middle. Very old. Very large. Speaking along every thread at once. Not to its towers. Not to its keepers.

To us.

To whatever had sung.

It was very quiet. For something so large.

And it was the first time in all the time I’d been listening to the Sorn, all the years since the forge and the needles and the ring and the halls, that I’d ever heard one of them do it.

Who is singing?

It was a question.

I didn’t answer it.

I didn’t know how. I didn’t know if I should. Okafor would want to know first. Luna would want to draw it. The long table would want to sit.

I lay in Father’s chair with my daughter asleep on my chest and listened to the question go out along every thread, and come back, and go out again. Very quiet. Very large. Waiting.

The way the children on the benches had waited.

Dory stirred.

She didn’t wake. She turned her head on my chest, the way she had in the first second of her life, toward something very far away. And her lattice brightened, just for a moment.

Then she sighed, and went still.

”Not yet,” I said. Very quietly. Into the dark. Not to the voice. To her. ”Sleep. Somebody asked a question. We’ll answer it in the morning.”

Pebble lifted his head off my feet and looked at me.

Then he put it down again.

Days 2725–2726. Everyone.

Wren counted everyone on Avalon, nobody missing. Every queen in her place, the heavy queen’s son humming from the ring. Dory in the middle holding; me beside her, listening; Genny at the top of the steps. Okafor: ask them. Genny sang the lullaby and every queen sang every note, and it went out along the grey threads the wrong way, into every tower. On world after world collared young stopped, and a line of children being walked to a Hand stopped. Then their queens, in pillars and towers and Hands, remembered there was more than one note and answered. The voice at the end of the ninth line pushed back one note, and the queens went quiet, the children turned back, and Dory couldn’t hold it. Then fifty-eight thousand children from the halls stood up on the red glass, and Tally and everyone without a queen sang the only song they know, will you come with me, and the one note didn’t know what to do with a question. It stopped. Dory fell asleep. Wren counted four hundred and twelve queens answering. Okafor wrote: they sat down. At dusk the voice at the middle asked: who is singing?