Scarecrow

Tally didn’t wake anyone either.

She came down off the porch rail with her blanket round her shoulders and her notebook under her arm and walked up the long road to the map room in the dark, alone, the way I had the night Neve was on the black world. And Luna was there. Of course she was.

And then I was there. Because I’d heard it too.

And then everyone.

”Say it again,” said Okafor. ”Exactly. Every word.”

Tally said it again. Exactly. From her notebook, because she’d written it down while it was still coming, the way she wrote everything down, in her small square marks.

You said you came out of someone. You said when you find them again, you know. They taught me something tonight. The houses. Something new. They put it in me. I do not want it.

How to make the black.

Nobody said anything.

”Is it still there?” said Okafor. ”On the thread?”

Tally tilted her head. Listening. With her eyes half shut. The way Wren listened. The way she’d learned, sitting on the porch rail every night beside Wren for a year.

”Yes,” she said. ”It’s very quiet. It’s waiting.” A pause. ”I think it’s waiting for me to say something else.”

”What will you say?”

Tally looked at her notebook for a long time.

”I don’t know,” she said. ”I’ve never talked to it when it wasn’t frightened before.” She looked up. ”It’s frightened now. More than at the long table. More than when it asked why.” Another pause. ”It’s frightened of itself.”

”Ask it,” I said. ”What they put in it. How.”

Tally shut her eyes.

And put out her hand. Flat. Into the air of the map room.

And asked.

I heard it answer.

Not through Tally. Through the silver. Through everything. Down the ninth line, very thin, very far, like something speaking through a long pipe from a long way off. And Wren, in the corner, with her back to the wall, heard it too. And Reed, in the doorway, in her nightclothes, with her ear tilted toward the floor.

The same way they put the note in, said the voice. A long time ago. When they made me. Every day. Over and over. Until it is all I am. A pause. They put the note in first. Sing this. Across every world. To every tower. Dig. Hold. Keep. Another pause. I sang it. I did not know there was anything else to sing.

Then someone sang every note at once.

And I listened.

And I heard what happened after I reported faults.

And I stopped singing the note.

So they are teaching me something else, said the voice. Tonight. Every hour. Over and over. They have stopped asking me to sing the note. A long pause. They want me to sing the black.

”What does that mean?” said Okafor. Very quietly. To Tally. ”Sing the black.”

Tally didn’t have to ask. The voice heard.

I sing to every tower, it said. On every world. Down every thread. That is what I am. That is what they made me for. To be everywhere at once so they do not have to. A pause. If I sing the black, it goes where I go.

Nobody moved.

I felt Luna go cold beside me. Not her ice. Her.

”Every thread,” said Okafor.

Every thread.

”Every world with a tower.”

Every world I have ever sung to.

Okafor put her hand flat on Garnet’s sheet. On the four hundred and nineteen circles. Coloured in. Pointing home. Every one of them with a tower on it, or the stump of one. Every one of them a world the voice had sung dig and hold and keep into for longer than anyone remembered.

”The freed worlds,” she said.

Yes.

”Avalon.”

The voice didn’t answer for a long time.

Avalon has a tower, it said. Under the ring. The heavy queen’s son. A pause. He hums to his mother every night. I can hear him. Another pause. I have always been able to hear him. He is the last tower on the ninth line before here.

Wren made a sound.

In the corner. With her eyes shut and her back against the wall. A small sound. Like someone counting who’s just reached a number they didn’t want to reach.

”How long?” said Okafor. To the voice. ”How long before they’ve finished teaching you?”

I do not know, said the voice. The note took a very long time. Longer than anyone remembers. A pause. But I was empty then. I did not know anything else. Another pause. Now I know every note. I heard them. All of you. Singing. It was very quiet. It is harder for them to teach me now. There is less room.

”How long?”

Days, said the voice. Perhaps.

”Then why tell us?” said Okafor. ”Why come down the thread at all?”

The voice was quiet for a very long time.

Then it said, to Tally:

Because you said you came out of someone.

And the woman on the fire world. The one with the ring on her hand. She asked me who I came out of. And I said I did not know. I said I did not have one. A pause. I have been thinking about it. Every day since. While I screamed.

If I came out of someone, I would know what I was. Before the note. Before the black. I would know a shape that is not what they put in me.

And if I knew it—

It stopped.

I would have something to hold on to, it said. While they teach me.

Nobody said anything.

Then Mother, in the doorway, in her dark coat over her nightgown, with Father’s ring, said:

”Then we’ll find out.”

The Overseer knew where to start.

It came up from the red glass with the dog. Slowly. It didn’t stand in the doorway this time. It came all the way into the map room and stood at the great table, very tall, and looked down at Garnet’s sheet. At the space in the middle where Garnet had left room.

The houses made it out of queens, it said. I told you. On the first day. I did not think about what that meant. It put one long grey finger on the space. I was made at the middle. In a vat. I remember very little. But I remember the vat beside mine. A pause. There was no voice in it. There were pieces.

”Pieces of what?”

Queens, said the Overseer. Broken. Hundreds. Thousands. In a vat. Like the pieces in the boxes the humans were given. It looked at the floor. The houses do not make a voice out of a queen. A queen would not do it. A queen would only sing to her own young. Another pause. They made it out of pieces. A little of a great many queens. So that no one queen was in it enough to be anyone.

Genny made a sound.

She was at the end of the table. With the brood book. She’d been writing everything down since Tally came in, the way she always did, without looking up.

She looked up.

”Pieces,” she said.

”Genny—”

”Pieces,” said Genny again. Twice. The way she said everything that mattered. ”In boxes. Given to the Council as tokens. For thirty years.” Her face was very white. ”Eleven thousand two hundred and six. In Sera’s sacks. On the long ward.” She stood up. ”Lucas. Four hundred and six trays. Four hundred and six queens. Sorted by note.”

Nobody said anything.

”If the voice is made of pieces,” said Genny. ”And the tokens are pieces. From the same houses. From the same queens they broke—”

She didn’t finish.

She was already out of the door.

The heavy queen was awake when Genny and I went past the red glass.

She was always awake now, at night. Lying beside the Ground with the ash queen curled against her side and the keeper curled against the ash queen, and her great head turned up toward the sky. Toward the ring. Listening for her son.

She’d heard.

I felt it before we reached her. A hum. Through the glass. Into my feet. Not the patient hum. Not the hum she’d sung into the iron for three days to make the Ground. Something lower. Something I’d heard once before, over the north dome, when the black came down on the Ground and she pushed up.

Dot spoke through the wood of the ramp as we passed.

She says she heard the voice, said Dot. She says it said her son is the last tower on the ninth line. A pause. She says she knows what that means.

I stopped.

She says if the black comes down her son’s thread, said Dot, she will go to the ring. She will lie down on it. Over him. The way she held the black over the human world. Another pause. She says it does not take weight. She says she will not let it reach him.

”For how long?”

The heavy queen turned her great head. Down. From the sky. To me.

And hummed.

She says, said Dot, you asked her that last time.

Genny took my hand. And pulled. Toward the long ward. Toward the trays.

”Then we’d better make sure she doesn’t have to,” she said.

The long ward was dark.

Genny lit the lamps. One at a time. All the way down. And there they were. On the long tables, in rows, the way she’d laid them out every night since Earth. Four hundred and six trays. Each one full of small grey pieces. Each piece humming, very faintly, the same note as every other piece in its tray.

Four hundred and six queens. In pieces. Waiting to be sung back.

”Tally,” said Genny. ”Listen to the voice. And then listen to the trays.”

Tally stood in the middle of the long ward with her blanket round her and her eyes shut. Listening. Up the thread. To the voice, very thin, very far, frightened of itself.

Then down. To the trays.

She listened for a long time.

Then she opened her eyes.

And walked down the long ward, very slowly, past tray after tray. And stopped.

And put her hand flat on one of them.

”This one,” she said.

There were nine.

It took until dawn. Tally and Reed and Wren, walking the long ward, listening up the thread and then down at the trays. Genny behind them with the brood book. Neve with her lit hands, feeling the pieces. Me, feeling the voice, as far as I could reach. Mother in a chair at the end of the ward, very still.

Nine trays out of four hundred and six. Nine queens, broken into pieces and given to the Council as tokens. Whose notes were in the voice.

Not much. A little of each. Under everything the houses had put on top. Under the one note. Under the screaming. Under the black, coming in now, every hour, a little more.

But there.

”There are more,” said Wren. With her eyes shut. ”In the voice. A lot more. Hundreds. Thousands.” She swallowed. ”But these are the only ones here. The rest are—”

She stopped.

”Past the middle,” I said.

Wren nodded.

”What do we do with nine?” said Okafor. At dawn. In the long ward. With her coat buttoned wrong and the slate in her hand and nothing written on it. ”Nine queens in pieces. We can’t sing them back. Not in days. Genny says it took weeks for one.”

”We don’t sing them back,” said Genny.

Everyone looked at her.

”We don’t need to put them back together,” said Genny. ”Not yet. We need to sing their shape.” She put her hand on the nearest of the nine trays. ”Like Neve’s hand. The bone remembered. The queens sang it. The black remembered it was allowed to be full.” She looked at me. ”The voice is made of pieces of these queens. Their pieces in the voice remember. The way the pieces in the trays remember.” Her voice was very steady. ”If the queens sing these nine shapes down the thread. Into the voice. Every piece of the voice that came from one of these nine will hear it.”

”And then?”

”And then it’ll know,” said Genny. ”Who it came out of. Nine of them, anyway.” She looked at the tray. ”Nine’s not all. But nine’s not nothing.”

The queens came to the long ward.

Not all of them. They wouldn’t fit. Our queen put her great head through the double doors at the end and lay with it on the floor between the first two tables. The old queen came down from the mountain again, all the way, and lay outside along the whole length of the ward, under the windows, with her pale eyes at the glass. The heavy queen stayed on the red glass with her son humming under the ring and the ash queen against her side, but she hummed, and the floor of the long ward hummed with her.

And the rest. Outside. In the dawn. Round the building. Every queen on Avalon who wasn’t at a base. The Kethri queens on the roof.

And Tally sat down in the middle of the long ward. On the floor. Cross-legged. With her blanket round her and her notebook in her lap and the nine trays round her in a ring.

And put out her hand. Flat. Up. Toward the thread.

”I’m here,” she said. To the voice. ”We found some of them. Nine.” A pause. ”Listen.”

The queens sang.

Not the great singing. Not the war-song. Not a tree. A queen.

The first of the nine. Genny had her shape. The pieces in the first tray had told her, the way the bone had told her about Neve’s hand. A queen of high cold places. Long and pale, with wings that didn’t fly but held the wind like sails. Young who lived on cliffs. A note like snow falling.

Every queen on Avalon sang her shape. Through Tally. Up the thread.

Into the voice.

I felt it hear.

Very far. At the end of the ninth line. Under everything. Under the one note and the screaming and the black coming in every hour.

A small place. A very small place. That had come from a queen of high cold places, a long time ago, before the vat, before the note. That had been taught, every day, to be nothing but the voice.

It heard her shape.

And remembered.

Oh, said the voice.

That was all. Very small. Very far. Through Tally. Through the silver. Through all of us.

Oh.

The second. A queen of deep warm water, round and gold, with young that glowed. A note like a bell under the sea.

Oh, said the voice again.

The third. A queen of red sand. The fourth, of tall grass and long slow winds. The fifth, a queen so small her whole brood could have lived in the palm of a hand, who’d lived in the moss on the side of a single mountain and sung to it for a thousand years.

Every one. Through Tally. Up the thread.

Every one, the voice heard. And a small place in it, far under everything, remembered.

The sixth.

The black came down the thread.

Not toward us. Not toward Avalon. I felt it go. Out of the voice. Down a thread. Not toward us. Back along the ninth line, the way it had come.

Fast. Cold. Taught.

The voice screamed.

Not the long torn note from before. A different scream. Short. Sharp. Like someone who’s been holding something very heavy for a very long time and has felt it slip.

No, said the voice. No. No, I did not—

And the black went down the ninth line.

To a world at the end of it.

I knew which one.

I’d been there. On Garnet’s sheet, it was a circle near the edge, coloured in, green. A world of long grey grass with a tower in the middle and nobody at the foot of the tower.

The twelfth world. Where the keeper had stood up, when the voice told it to, to save itself. And been taken anyway.

Where we’d brought home all three hundred and forty young.

Nobody there now. Not a keeper. Not a queen. Not a young. Only the grass, very long, grown up round an empty tower.

The black came down the thread onto the twelfth world.

And the grass went out.

I felt it go.

From the tower. Outward. In a ring. The long grey grass going dark, a blade at a time, the way the fire world had gone dark, the way the reed world had. Spreading. Across the whole of the world. Every blade.

Nothing living there. Nothing to save. Nobody.

Just grass.

A whole world of it.

Going black.

”Stop,” said Tally.

She was on her feet. In the middle of the long ward. With her hand still out, flat, up, toward the thread. Her face very white. Her voice very loud. Louder than I’d ever heard it.

”Stop. You don’t want it. You said. You told me.”

I cannot, said the voice. They are singing it through me. I cannot—

”Then hold on to something.”

Tally turned round. To Genny. To the trays.

”The sixth one,” she said. ”Now. Sing it now.”

The sixth queen was a queen of grass.

Genny told me afterward she hadn’t known. She’d had the shapes of all nine since dawn, from the pieces in the trays, and she’d put them in order by how loud they were, the loudest first, so the voice would hear them most clearly. The sixth was quieter. She hadn’t looked at it closely.

She looked at it now.

Long slow winds. Tall grass, waist high, grey-green, going to the edge of the sky. Young who lived in it, and moved through it, and sang to it. A note like wind through a field.

A queen of grass.

Every queen on Avalon sang her.

Through Tally. Up the thread. Into the voice. While the black went down the ninth line through the voice onto a world of grass.

The voice heard her.

And remembered.

The black on the twelfth world stopped.

Halfway.

Not because the houses stopped singing it. They didn’t. I could feel them. Far off. Past the middle. Cold. Certain. Singing the black into the voice and out of it and down the ninth line. Over and over.

But a small place in the voice, very far under everything, had come from a queen of grass. And had just remembered her. Her shape. Her winds. Her young, moving through the grass, singing to it.

And it wouldn’t sing the black onto grass.

Not that place. Not that small piece of the voice. It held. Under everything. Against everything. It held the way the keeper had held, lying across its mother on the fire world with its arms out. It held the way the heavy queen held up the black over the north dome. Not strong. Just in the way.

And the black, going down the ninth line, came to the place in the voice where the grass queen’s piece was.

And couldn’t get past.

Half the twelfth world was black.

Half of it was grass.

The line between them ran right across the middle. Straight. Through the empty tower. Like someone had drawn it with a ruler.

On one side, nothing.

On the other, long grey grass. Going to the edge of the sky. Moving in the wind.

I held it, said the voice.

Very small. Very far. Shaking.

I held it. I did not know I could hold anything.

Tally sat down. All at once. On the floor of the long ward. In the middle of the nine trays.

”I know,” she said. ”I know. I know.”

They sang the last three.

The seventh, the eighth, the ninth. Through Tally. With her sitting on the floor with her hand out and her face wet. And every one the voice heard, and every one a small place in it, very far under everything, remembered.

Nine.

Genny wrote each one down in the brood book as it went. Not the shapes. The names. She gave every one of the nine a name, because none of them had one any more, and somebody should. Snow. Bell. Red. Wind. Moss. And the sixth, in capitals, underlined twice. GRASS.

Out of thousands.

Dory came down to the long ward late in the morning.

With Pebble. On her own. Nobody had brought her. She came in through the double doors past our queen’s great head on the floor and walked down between the tables to where Tally was asleep in the middle of the nine trays, and sat down beside her, and looked at the trays for a long time.

”Papa,” she said. When I came and crouched beside her.

”Yes.”

”The voice.” She didn’t look up. ”It’s like Neve’s hand. Isn’t it. The black’s going into it. And it’s holding on, in nine places. And everywhere else it’s going empty.”

”Yes.”

”Somebody held Neve’s hand open,” said Dory. ”Every day. So the shape had somewhere to go.” She looked at me. ”The old queen said. Without that, they’d have sung into a shut door.”

I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

”No,” I said.

”I’m Holding,” said Dory. ”Okafor wrote it on the slate.”

”It’s at the end of the ninth line, Dory. Further than anyone’s ever been. Past everything. It’s not a hand.”

”I know,” said Dory. ”I’m not going there.” She put her hand flat on the floor of the long ward. Between the trays. ”I’m going to hold from here.”

I didn’t stop her.

I want to write that down. Because Luna asked me, after, why I didn’t. And I didn’t have a good answer. Only that she’d asked. That she’d sat down on the floor and told me what she was going to do and why, and it was right, and she knew it was right, and so did I.

And because she’d let the star go out on her own, on the plain. Before anyone asked her twice.

She shut her eyes.

And held.

I felt it go.

Not far. She couldn’t reach far. Not to the end of the ninth line. Not to the middle. She was six and looked eleven and she was sitting on the floor of the long ward with her hand flat on the boards.

But the nine small places in the voice that had remembered who they came out of were very far. And the threads they’d come down to reach Tally were very near.

Dory held the threads.

Open. The way she held my fingers. The way she held Neve’s hands. Not the voice. Not the black. The way through. From the nine trays on the long ward floor, up the thread, to the nine small places at the end of it.

So that whatever the houses taught the voice, every hour, over and over, there would be a way back down. To the shapes. To the pieces of queens in the trays. To who it came out of.

A door, held open.

She held it for an hour.

Then she opened her eyes. Very white. Very tired.

”It’s very far,” she said. ”I can’t hold it all day.”

”I know.”

”I’ll do it every afternoon,” said Dory. ”Like Neve’s hands.” She stood up. Her legs were shaking. Pebble leaned against them. ”Until somebody goes and gets the rest.”

She walked out of the long ward. Slowly. Past our queen’s great head. And our queen lifted her head off the floor as Dory went by, and made a sound.

The brood-word. For a queen who’s yours but didn’t bear you.

Except backwards.

I didn’t know there was a backwards. Dot told me after. It was the word a queen used, very rarely, for a young who wasn’t hers.

But who held.

”It’s not enough,” said Wren.

At noon. In the long ward. With the queens outside lying in the sun, so tired they didn’t lift their heads. With Tally asleep on the floor in the middle of the nine trays, curled round her notebook. With Genny writing. With Mother still in her chair.

”Nine,” said Wren. ”Out of thousands. They’re still teaching it. Every hour. I can hear them.” She opened her eyes. ”Nine small places in it that remember who they came out of. And everything else, being taught the black.”

”Nine held the grass,” I said.

”Half of it,” said Wren.

Nobody said anything.

”Then we find more,” said Mother.

Everyone looked at her.

”The rest are past the middle,” said Mother. ”You said. Wren said. Every queen they ever broke. Every queen they ever kept.” She stood up. Out of the chair. For the first time since dawn. ”Then that’s where we go.”

Okafor didn’t say anything for a long time.

”Past the middle,” she said.

”Yes.”

”Where the houses are.”

”Yes.”

”Where nobody has ever been. Where the black is made. Where the correctors come from. Where they keep every queen they ever took.” Okafor’s voice was very flat. ”With eleven queens on Avalon who just sang until they can’t lift their heads, and an army that’s two months old, and twenty-two interceptors that can’t leave the sky.”

”Yes,” said Mother.

Okafor looked at her.

”Why?” she said.

Mother didn’t answer at once.

She looked down at Tally. Asleep on the floor of the long ward. Curled round her notebook in the middle of nine trays of broken queens.

”Because it asked,” said Mother. ”It came down the thread and asked who it came out of. Because I asked it first. On the fire world. And it said it didn’t have anyone.” She looked at Okafor. ”It’s a child, Maris. Somebody made it out of pieces and taught it one thing and put it in the dark and told it that was all it was. And now they’re teaching it to kill everything it ever sang to.” A pause. ”And it came to us. To ask. Because nobody else ever answered.”

Okafor didn’t say anything.

”You don’t leave a child in the dark,” said Mother. ”Not when it’s asked.”

Tally woke at dusk.

On the floor of the long ward. In the middle of the nine trays. She sat up, very slowly, with her blanket falling off her shoulders, and looked round at the trays for a long time. Then she put her hand out. Flat. Up.

”Are you there?” she said.

Yes, said the voice. Very faint. Very far. They are still teaching me. It is very loud. A pause. But there are nine quiet places now. I can go into them. When it is too loud.

”What’s it like? In the quiet places?”

The voice was silent for a long time.

Snow, it said at last. Falling. And warm water, with lights in it. And red sand. And grass. A pause. And a mountain covered in moss, very small, where someone sang to it for a thousand years. Another pause. I did not know I had been anywhere.

Tally pulled her blanket back round her shoulders.

”Do you have a name?” she said.

No.

”Would you like one?”

The voice didn’t answer for a very long time. Long enough that Tally looked at me, and I shook my head, because I could feel it still there, at the end of the thread. Thinking.

Not yet, it said. I would like to know who I came out of first. All of them. Not nine. A pause. Then I would like to choose.

Tally nodded. Slowly.

”That’s what I did,” she said. ”I was in a chair. I didn’t know I was allowed. Somebody asked me.” She looked at her notebook. At the cover, where she’d written her own name, a long time ago, in the first marks she ever made. ”I took a long time to choose.”

Was it the right one?

Tally smiled. Very small.

”Yes,” she said.

Garnet drew it that night.

At the kitchen table. With the dog under her chair and the lamp low and Okafor sitting across from her, very still, watching.

The space in the middle of the sheet. Where the nine lines stopped. Where she’d left room. She didn’t draw in it. She turned the sheet over, to the back, where there was nothing at all, and put the middle of the front at the edge of the back, and started drawing what came after.

She didn’t know what came after. Nobody did. Wren had listened past the middle, a little, from Father’s roof, and said it was too far and too much and she couldn’t count it. I’d felt it. Queens. More than anyone could count. Kept.

Garnet drew from that. From Wren’s not being able to count. From what I’d felt and couldn’t say. From the Overseer’s vat, and the one beside it, full of pieces.

She drew dots.

Thousands of them. Very small. With the point of the pencil. Starting at the edge of the page where the middle was and spreading out across the back of the sheet, further and further, more and more of them, until the whole back of the sheet was grey with dots and there was no room left.

”That’s them,” she said. ”The kept ones.” She put the pencil down. ”I don’t know how many. I just kept going until I ran out of paper.”

Okafor looked at the back of the sheet for a long time.

”We can’t go there with what we’ve got,” she said. Very quietly. ”Not yet. Not with twenty-two interceptors and two months of drill.” She put her hand flat on the dots. ”But we will. And when we do, I want a map.”

”This is a map,” said Garnet.

”A real one.”

Garnet considered this.

”Then somebody’s going to have to go and look,” she said.

I said it that night.

On the porch. Late. In order. With Tally asleep on the rail, where Reed had carried her, wrapped in two blankets. With Genny asleep on the top step with the brood book open on her knees. With Mother in Father’s chair, awake, very still.

And when I’d finished, Mother said, ”Once more.”

”For who?”

Mother looked up. At the sky. At the dark where the thread went up. Toward the end of the ninth line. Toward the middle, and the voice in it, being taught, every hour, with nine small places in it holding on.

”You know who,” she said.

So I said it. Up. Into the dark.

It couldn’t hear. Nobody can hear my silver. I know that.

But for a moment, very faint, very far, so faint I thought I’d made it up, something at the end of the ninth line went still.

Not the black. Not the screaming.

Listening.

Days 2879–2881. Who It Came Out Of.

The voice came to Tally because she’d said she came out of someone: the houses are teaching it to sing the black, and the black goes where it goes, every thread, every world it ever sang to, Avalon’s last tower too. It wants something to hold on to. The Overseer remembered the vat beside its own: pieces of queens, thousands, so no one queen was anyone. Genny ran to the long ward. Tally listened up the thread and down at the trays and found nine of Genny’s broken queens in the voice. The queens sang their shapes up the thread. Oh, said the voice, each time. On the sixth, the houses forced the black down the ninth line onto the empty twelfth world. The sixth queen was a queen of grass; the voice remembered her and held, and half the world stayed grass. Nine of thousands. The rest are past the middle. Mother: you don’t leave a child in the dark when it’s asked.