Scarecrow

Mother built a scarecrow.

On the first morning after Konrad’s words went out down the threads to the sixty-four worlds, when there was nothing anyone could do but wait for answers. Okafor said so. She stood in the map room with the slate and said, ”Everyone go home. I mean it. Go home and do something that isn’t this,” and for once nobody argued.

Mother went home and built a scarecrow.

I didn’t know until I came up the hill at noon.

She was in the field behind the house. The one Garnet had planted with Earth wheat from the seed vault, because Garnet said if we were going to have a field it was going to look like Father’s, and the wheat was up now, green, knee-high, moving in the wind off the plain.

In the middle of it, Mother. In her dark coat with her sleeves rolled up. With a pile of sticks and an old coat and a sack of straw.

And all of them round her.

Dory. Ash. Trevor. Small Sigmund. Efua and Kwame, on a blanket at the edge of the wheat because they were too small to be any use and Kwame had said so, very calmly, and Efua had agreed by holding the air still round the blanket so the wheat wouldn’t tickle.

”What is it?” said Ash. With her hinge face. Deciding.

”A scarecrow,” said Mother.

”What’s it for?”

Mother didn’t answer at once. She was tying two sticks together into a cross, with string, very carefully, the way she tied everything.

”Your grandfather built one,” she said. ”A long time ago. On Earth. In a field he made out of dead ground behind our house. So that anything out there in the wasteland would think twice before it came near.” She pulled the string tight. ”He made it out of an old coat and some straw and a lot of stubbornness.”

”Did it work?” said Trevor.

Mother looked at the cross of sticks for a long time.

”Yes,” she said. ”Everything that ever came near our house thought twice.” She looked at the children. ”And then it turned out your father was the scarecrow all along. But that’s a longer story.”

She told them the longer story.

All afternoon. In the wheat. While they built it.

I sat on the fence at the edge of the field and listened. I’d never heard her tell it. Not all of it. Not the way she told it to them. The field Father made out of dead earth with his hands. The filter-machine on the roof. The scarecrow at the edge of the wheat with its arms out and its old coat flapping, and Garnet, very small, going out in her nightdress in the dark to tie Mother’s blue scarf round its neck so it wouldn’t be cold.

”It’s at the end of the street,” said Dory. ”Grandpa’s. Papa built it again. With his coat. And Aunt Garnet went to Earth and got your scarf and tied it on.” She looked at the sticks. ”So why are we building another one?”

Mother didn’t answer at once.

”That one’s your grandfather’s,” she said. ”Your father built it for him. Garnet tied my scarf on it for him.” She pulled another knot tight. ”This one’s yours. All of you. You’ll decide what it’s like.”

Dory considered this.

”Then it’ll need its own scarf,” she said.

They built it the way Father had. Out of sticks and an old coat and straw. Mother let them do it. She held things and told them where to tie and when to stop, and they did all the rest.

Ash stuffed the straw. She stuffed far too much. The scarecrow came out very fat in the middle, like Maura’s loaves when they’d risen too long.

Trevor did the arms. He made them very straight, out to the side, and then, when nobody was looking, he froze them that way. A thin skin of frost along each stick, so they’d never bend. Mother saw. She didn’t say anything. She smiled.

Small Sigmund did the face. Not with paint. With a spark. Very small. Very careful. Two dots for eyes, scorched into the sack, and a line for a mouth. The line came out crooked. Small Sigmund looked at it for a long time and was going to scorch it again, and Mother put her hand on his.

”Leave it,” she said. ”Your grandfather’s was crooked too.”

Dory did the scarf.

She went into the house and came back out with something in her hands. Not Mother’s blue scarf; that was on Father’s scarecrow at the end of the street, faded nearly white, where Garnet had tied it.

Her own. The one Hana had knitted her the first winter. Green, with a stripe of orange, because Garnet had chosen the wool.

She stood on her toes in the wheat and tied it round the scarecrow’s neck.

”So it won’t be cold,” she said.

Mother didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she knelt down in the wheat. In her dark coat. With Father’s ring. And put her arms round Dory. And held on.

”Your aunt Garnet said that,” she said. Very quietly. Into Dory’s hair. ”Word for word. When she was smaller than you.”

”I know,” said Dory. ”She told me.”

They stood it up at dusk.

At the edge of the wheat. Where the field met the plain. With its frozen arms out and its fat straw middle and its crooked scorched mouth and Dory’s green scarf round its neck. Facing out. Toward the dark.

Mother stood back and looked at it for a long time.

”There,” she said. ”Now anything out there will think twice.”

Kwame, on the blanket, pointed at it.

Which everyone had agreed counted.

Mother taught Kwame to hold a spoon.

Not to eat with. To hold. Still. In the air. Over the kitchen table, the morning after the scarecrow, while the porridge went cold.

Kwame had my feeling. Everyone knew it. The stone that floated on the blanket. Every grain of it, felt, held, by a boy who wasn’t old enough to say more than a handful of words. He could feel where things were. He could ask them to move.

He couldn’t ask them to stay.

”That’s mine,” said Mother. To Hana. Who’d come to the kitchen door with Efua on her hip and stopped. ”Not his father’s. His father moves things. Changes them. Takes them apart and puts them back.” She looked at the spoon in her hand. ”Holding still is mine.”

She put the spoon on the table in front of Kwame.

And put her hand flat on the table beside it.

”Feel it,” she said.

Kwame put his hand out. Flat. The way he’d put it on my chest at the foot of the ramp, a long time ago, when Luna said that was how he said it.

He felt the spoon. I felt him feel it. Every grain.

”Now feel this,” said Mother.

And held it.

She didn’t lift it. She didn’t move it. She held it exactly where it was, on the table, so still that the light coming through the window and falling across it seemed to stop on its surface. The markings on her arms, under her rolled sleeves, came up very faintly silver. Bowls. Flour. Spoons. The kitchen in the dome.

Kwame looked at the spoon for a long time.

Then he looked at his grandmother.

”There,” he said.

His word. The one he’d said to me on the porch. The one he’d said when Dory asked if he’d know where I was on the thread.

Mother nodded.

”There,” she said. ”Exactly there. Not anywhere else.” She took her hand away. ”Now you.”

It took him three days.

On the third morning, at the kitchen table, Kwame put his hand flat beside the spoon. And the spoon went still. Not floating. Not moving. Still. On the table. Where it was. The light stopped on it.

And stayed.

Hana, in the doorway, put her hand over her mouth.

Mother didn’t say anything. She put her own hand on the table beside Kwame’s. Not touching. Beside.

And the two of them sat there, grandmother and grandson, holding a spoon still on a kitchen table in the morning light, for a long time.

”Your grandfather,” said Mother. Very quietly. To Kwame. ”He used to say I could hold the whole house still if I wanted. When the children were shouting. When the forge was going.” A pause. ”I never did. I didn’t know I could.”

Kwame looked at her.

”There,” he said again. And pointed. Not at the spoon.

At her.

Ingrid took small Sigmund flying.

Not far. Not fast. Not as lightning. Risa said absolutely not as lightning, and Ingrid said she wouldn’t dream of it, and Risa said you would, and Ingrid didn’t argue.

She took him up off the plain at dawn. After the candles. Holding his hand. Slowly. The way she’d hung in the air on the day I finished her, very still, like the flame.

Small Sigmund came up off the grass with his eyes screwed shut and his other fist clenched and a spark running round his ear so fast it was a blue ring.

”Open your eyes, love,” said Ingrid.

”No.”

”You can’t see anything with them shut.”

”I don’t want to see anything.”

Ingrid hung in the air a few feet off the grass with her grandson dangling from her hand and considered this.

”All right,” she said. ”Then hold still. That’s the first thing. Before you open them. Hold still in the air, the way you hold the flame.”

It took him the whole morning.

Not to fly. To hold still. In the air. With his eyes shut. With his grandmother’s hand in his. Risa sat on the grass below them with her arms folded and her hair on end and a small black cloud over her head the whole time, and didn’t say a word, which Mother said afterward was the bravest thing she’d ever seen Risa do.

At noon, small Sigmund’s spark slowed down.

Round his ear. From a ring to a line. From a line to a dot. Still.

”There,” said Ingrid. Very quietly. ”Now open them.”

He opened them.

He was six feet up. Over the plain. In the noon sun. With the whole of Avalon going out round him to the edge of the world. The town. The forge. The long roads like spokes. The red glass with the ships on it. The town under the garden wall, with fifteen thousand windows catching the light.

And his grandmother. Beside him. In the air. Holding his hand.

”Oh,” said small Sigmund.

The same thing Ingrid had said. The same thing everyone said.

He didn’t let go of her hand. He didn’t move. He hung there and looked at everything for a long time.

Then he said, ”Grandma.”

”Yes, love.”

”Can we go higher?”

Below them, on the grass, Risa’s cloud went black.

”No,” said Risa.

”Yes,” said Ingrid. ”A little.”

They went a little higher.

Then a little more.

By dusk, Risa had given up and gone up too, and the three of them hung over the plain together in a row in the last of the light. Grandmother, mother, son. Hand in hand. Hair on end. The same blue running between all their fingers.

Dory watched from the porch.

”I want to do that,” she said.

”You can already fly,” said Mother.

”I know,” said Dory. ”I want to do it with someone holding my hand.”

Konrad watched from the bottom of the long road.

That evening. When Ingrid took small Sigmund up, and Risa gave up and went up too, and the three of them hung over the plain together in a row in the last of the light.

He’d come up from the guest house with a loaf. It wasn’t his night. He’d come anyway, the way Ingrid had told him he could, when she wanted him on an ordinary night, and she’d sent word that morning by Dot. Supper. If you like.

He stood at the bottom of the road with the loaf under his arm and looked up.

At his wife. His daughter. His grandson. In the air. Holding hands.

He’d never once flown. He couldn’t climb a ladder without holding on with both hands. He’d been called the Storm for thirty years for something he couldn’t do.

He stood there and watched them for a long time.

When they came down, small Sigmund saw him first. And ran. Across the plain, with his spark going round his ear in a ring, all the way to the bottom of the long road.

And stopped in front of his grandfather. Out of breath.

”Did you see?” he said.

”I saw,” said Konrad.

”I held still. In the air. Grandma held my hand.”

”I saw,” said Konrad again. He looked at his grandson for a long time. ”You were very good at it.”

Small Sigmund looked up at him. With the lattice round his eyes. With his grandmother’s storm in every thread.

”Can you fly?” he said.

”No,” said Konrad.

”Do you want to?”

Konrad didn’t answer at once.

”I always did,” he said. ”My whole life.” A pause. ”I’m glad you can.”

Small Sigmund considered this.

Then he took his grandfather’s hand. The one that wasn’t holding the bread. And held it.

”Then you can hold mine,” he said. ”On the ground. That’s nearly the same.”

Ingrid saw it. From the plain. She stood very still on the grass with Risa beside her, and watched her husband and her grandson at the bottom of the long road, hand in hand, with a loaf of bread.

She didn’t say anything.

But at supper she let Konrad sit at the table. Not on the step. At the table. Beside small Sigmund.

He didn’t say anything either. He ate his supper. He passed the bread.

It was still not very good.

Nobody said so.

So the next morning, Ingrid took Dory up.

Not because Dory needed it. Dory had Risa’s storm and Luna’s ice paths and Sera’s fire and my scattering and everyone else’s everything. Dory could fly further and faster than anyone on Avalon except perhaps Ingrid herself.

But she’d asked to have her hand held.

Ingrid took her hand. And took her up. Slowly. And held still in the air with her, over the plain, for a long time.

Neither of them said anything.

When they came down, Dory went straight to the porch and climbed into Mother’s lap, which she hadn’t done in a year, because she said she was too old for laps now. And fell asleep there.

”Holding things,” said Mother. Very quietly. With her hand on Dory’s hair. ”All day. Every day. Since the day she was born.” She looked at Ingrid. ”Nobody ever holds her.”

Ingrid sat down in the chair beside her.

”They will now,” she said.

The two of them sat up on the porch that night. Mother and Ingrid. After everyone had gone in.

I was on Father’s roof. I didn’t mean to listen.

I listened.

”I missed all of it,” said Ingrid. Very quietly. ”Risa’s first word. Sigmund’s first spark. The first time either of them flew.” A pause. ”I was in a room. With a wall in me. While they grew up thinking I didn’t want them.”

Mother didn’t say anything.

”And now I’ve got grandchildren,” said Ingrid. ”Two. Nearly three. And I can fly with them. And I can teach them the quiet. And I can sit on a blanket in the sun.” She looked at her hands. ”And I keep thinking it’s not mine. That I stole it. That it belongs to some other woman who didn’t miss everything.”

”It’s yours,” said Mother.

”How do you know?”

Mother was quiet for a long time.

”Because I missed things too,” she said. ”Not like you. Not a room. But after Trevor died, my health declined. My kids watched me get worse. Then Crane and Halloway showed up five minutes before the end and my son had to make a choice. Watch his mother die, or sign his life away so me and his sisters would be safe. Then he came to Avalon. And I sat in a penthouse with a spoon in my hand that the Council used to keep me still, and waited for a voice on a band once a week.”

Ingrid looked at her.

”I missed Dory being born,” said Mother. ”I heard her. Through the hello. Forty-one seconds. I thought I was dreaming.” She put her cup down. ”I missed her first year. Her first word. I was eleven light-years away.” She looked out at the field. At the scarecrow, with its frozen arms and its green scarf, facing out into the dark. ”And this morning she lay in my lap on a blanket and asked if this is what it’s like for other people.”

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

”It’s ours, Ingrid,” said Mother at last. ”Not because we earned it. Because we’re here.” She picked up her cup again. ”That’s all it takes, on Avalon. Being here.”

Maura taught Ash to make things warm without burning them.

It was Sera’s idea. She came to the Calder kitchen one evening with Ash by the hand, and Ash’s hands wrapped in wet cloths, because Ash had been explaining something to the dog at the forge and got excited and set the dog’s blanket on fire. Not the dog. The dog was fine. The dog had seen worse. But Ash had cried, and Sera had said, very gently, your hands are doing the thing, and Ash had said I know, Mama, I don’t want them to.

”She’s got fire,” said Sera. To her mother. In the Calder kitchen. ”Mine. All of it. She can do it. She just can’t stop it.” She looked at her daughter. ”I never could either. Not until you.”

Maura looked at Ash. At the wet cloths. At Ash’s hinge face, deciding whether this was going to be all right.

”Come here, love,” said Maura.

She didn’t teach her with fire. She taught her with bread.

She sat Ash on a stool at the kitchen table, in front of a bowl of dough, and took the wet cloths off her hands, and put Ash’s hands in the dough. Then she put her own hands over them.

”Feel that?” said Maura.

Ash felt it. The dough. Cool. Soft. Heavy.

”Now feel this,” said Maura.

And made her hands warm. Just a little. Kitchen warm. Through Ash’s hands. Into the dough.

Ash’s eyes went very wide.

”It’s getting bigger,” she said.

”It’s rising,” said Maura. ”That’s what warm does. It doesn’t burn things. It makes them rise.” She took her hands away. ”Now you.”

Ash’s hands caught fire.

In the dough. All at once. Orange. From wrist to fingertip. The dough went black round them and smoked.

Ash pulled her hands out and burst into tears.

Maura didn’t move.

”Again,” she said. And put a new bowl of dough in front of her. ”From the start.”

It took eleven bowls.

Sera said afterward she’d never seen anyone go through that much flour in one evening. Maura didn’t mind. Maura said flour was for this. She said she’d burned more bread than that when she was learning, and nobody ever told her it was all right, and it was.

On the eleventh bowl, Ash put her hands in the dough.

And they didn’t catch fire.

They went warm. Just warm. The way Maura’s did. A small clean warmth, from her palms, into the dough. Not orange. Not burning. Just there.

And the dough rose.

Ash watched it. Her hands very still in the bowl. Her hinge face doing something nobody had ever seen it do.

”Grandma,” she said.

”Yes, love.”

”It’s rising.”

”Yes.”

Ash took her hands out of the dough. Very carefully. And looked at them. And then at Maura.

”I can make things bigger,” she said.

Rory the second wanted to learn too.

Liam’s son. Who set things on fire in his sleep, the way small Sigmund made thunder, and had set fire to the bread bin, and the curtains, and once, Liam said, a very small part of the ceiling. He came into the Calder kitchen the next evening with his hands behind his back and stood beside Ash’s stool and looked at the bowl.

Maura looked at him.

”You too?” she said.

Rory the second nodded. Very seriously.

”I set fire to the bread bin,” he said.

”I know, love,” said Maura. ”I was there.” She put a bowl of dough in front of him. ”Sit down.”

He went through fourteen bowls.

Ash sat beside him the whole time. Not helping. Watching. With her hinge face. And every time his hands caught fire, she said, very kindly, the way you’d say it to the dog, ”That’s all right. I did eleven.”

Hana’s mother came up the hill on the sixth day.

Abena Osei. Who’d lived in two rooms on Harbor Block Forty-four with her husband and her mother and three children, and slept on the floor beside her mother’s mat so the children could have the bed. Who’d come to Avalon on the first crossing with the thirty-one, a long time ago, and lived in the house with the pond in the yard at the edge of the city, where her husband Kwame kept the water moving, and didn’t come up the hill much, because she said the Dask porch was always very full and she’d rather not be in the way.

She came up the hill now. With a basket.

She stood at the bottom of the porch steps. Small. Grey-haired. In a headwrap the colour of the sea.

”I’ve come for my granddaughter,” she said. ”The loud one.”

Efua was on the bottom step. With her hand out, flat, holding the air still, the way she always did. She looked up at her grandmother.

Abena knelt down in front of her.

”Your great-grandmother,” she said. ”The one you were named for. Did your mother tell you about her?”

Efua didn’t answer. She was very small. She was still mostly not talking. She held the air still to hear better.

”She shouted at pigeons,” said Abena. ”Every morning. On the balcony on Harbor Block Forty-four. The pigeons came to eat the seeds she put out for the sparrows, and she stood on the balcony and shouted at them until they went away.” She smiled. ”They never came back. Not once. In eleven years.”

Efua looked at her.

”There are no pigeons on Avalon,” said Abena. ”I’ve looked.” She opened her basket. Inside, seeds. ”But there are birds. On the plain. Big ones. Brown. They come for Hettie’s seed every morning and Hettie’s at her wits’ end.”

Efua looked at the seeds. At her grandmother. At the plain.

Then she took her hand down. And let the air go. And stood up.

They went down to Hettie’s fields together.

Every morning for a week. Grandmother and granddaughter. With the basket. And stood at the edge of the seed rows at dawn, and when the big brown birds came down out of the sky onto Hettie’s seed, Abena said, ”Now, love.”

And Efua opened her mouth.

I didn’t hear it. I was on the plain with Okafor. But I heard about it.

Everyone heard about it.

Efua had been mostly not talking since she was born. She held the air still. She watched. She filled cups with water when someone she liked held her.

She had Hana’s voice. All of Hana’s voice. And all of mine. And something else nobody had worked out yet.

She shouted at the birds.

And every bird on Hettie’s seed rows, and every bird on the plain, and every bird in the sky over the north farms for a mile in every direction, went up all at once in a great brown cloud. And didn’t come back. Not that day. Not the next.

Hettie Crale stood at the edge of her field with her hands on her hips and her mouth open.

Abena laughed so hard she had to sit down in the furrow.

Efua looked at the empty sky. At her grandmother, laughing in the dirt. At her own hands.

And then she laughed too. For the first time. Out loud.

”Named for her,” said Abena. That night. On the porch. With Efua asleep in her lap. ”Every bit.” She looked at Hana. ”I told you she’d shout at things and they’d never come back.”

”You did,” said Hana.

”I’m never wrong,” said Abena. ”Your father will tell you.”

”He’ll tell me you’re never wrong out loud,” said Hana.

Abena laughed again.

Hana’s father came up the hill too. The day after the birds.

Kwame Osei. Papa. Who’d turned a river his whole life under the dome so it went where everyone needed it, and nobody ever thanked him. Who’d held Hana’s hand every day after the cistern, a long time ago, when she couldn’t find her words, and didn’t say anything because he knew she couldn’t say anything back.

He didn’t come for Efua. He came for the other one. The one named after him.

He stood at the bottom of the porch steps and looked at his grandson for a long time. At Kwame, on the step, with his hand flat beside a spoon, holding it still.

”Little fish,” he said.

His word for Hana. The first thing he’d said on the hello, a long time ago, when I finished him. Hana. Little fish.

Kwame looked up at him.

”I’ve got a pond,” said Papa. ”At my house. With water in it that goes round and round. I keep it moving.” He held out his hand. ”Would you like to see?”

Kwame considered this. Calmly. The way he considered everything.

Then he let go of the spoon. And stood up. And took his grandfather’s hand.

They were gone all day.

Hana said afterward, when she went down to fetch him at dusk, she found the two of them sitting at the edge of the pond in the yard of the house with the river in it. Not talking. Watching the water. Papa with his hand out over it, keeping it going round. And Kwame with his hand out beside him.

Holding one small leaf still. On the surface. In the middle. While all the water went round it.

The General took Trevor fishing.

He didn’t tell anyone. He just turned up at dawn at the bottom of the porch steps in his greatcoat with the frost at its edges and two rods over his shoulder, and Trevor came out of the house and looked at him, and the General said, ”The seventh lake. If you’d like,” and Trevor went.

They came back at dusk.

With no fish.

With ice. A whole block of it. Clear as glass. The size of a table. Carried between them, the old man and the boy, one at each end, up the long road from the lakes.

Inside the ice, perfectly preserved, a fish.

”We caught one,” said Trevor. Very seriously. To Luna. At the bottom of the steps. ”Grandpa said we should keep it.”

Luna looked at the block of ice. At the fish inside it. At her father. Who was standing very straight beside his grandson with his face doing nothing at all.

”Why is it in ice?” she said.

”Trevor froze the lake,” said the General. ”To catch it.” A pause. ”Most of the lake.”

Luna didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she put her hand over her mouth. And her shoulders started shaking.

And the General, who never laughed, looked at his daughter laughing at the bottom of the porch steps, and at his grandson beside a block of ice the size of a table with a fish in it, and the corner of his mouth went up.

Very slightly.

Trevor saw it.

He told everyone. For a week. Grandpa smiled.

On the eighth day, the Mom Squad took all of them out together.

All the grandchildren. Every one. Dory and Ash and Trevor and small Sigmund and Efua and Kwame and Rory the second. On a blanket. On the plain. With a basket. Mother and Ingrid and Maura and Abena, because Abena said if there was going to be a squad of grandmothers she didn’t see why it should only have three.

Nobody argued.

I’m going to write down what they did. Because Genny says the brood book should have the good days in it too.

They didn’t do anything.

That was the point. Mother said so. She said she’d spent her whole life holding things and the grandchildren had spent their whole lives being told they could do anything and the one thing nobody had ever taught any of them was how to sit on a blanket on a plain in the sun and not hold anything or do anything at all.

So they sat.

Ingrid taught them to make the air go quiet. Not to stop anything. Just to listen to it. The wind in the grass. The birds Efua hadn’t frightened away. The far-off sound of the interceptors over the north farms.

Maura made the blanket warm.

Abena told them about the pigeons. And the sparrows. And Harbor Block Forty-four, where she’d grown up, where the window looked out at another window, and how she used to lie on the floor at night and imagine there was sky behind it.

Mother told them about Father.

Not the war. Not the Varran pass. Not the scarecrow, which they’d already heard. Other things. How he burned the toast every morning for eleven years and said it was on purpose. How he whistled. Badly. How he used to come in from the forge with ash in his hair and pick her up off her feet in the kitchen, every night, whatever else had happened, and she’d say put me down, Trevor, and he never did.

”He’d have liked you,” she said. To all of them. On the blanket. ”Every one of you.” She looked at them. ”He’d have been insufferable about it.”

Kwame fell asleep first. Then Efua. Then Rory the second, against Maura’s side, faintly smoking.

Ash and Trevor and small Sigmund lay on their backs on the blanket and looked at the sky and argued about clouds.

Dory lay with her head in Mother’s lap.

She didn’t hold anything. Not the blanket. Not the air. Not anyone’s hand.

She just lay there. With her eyes shut. In the sun.

”Grandma,” she said.

”Yes, love.”

”Is this what it’s like? For other people?”

Mother didn’t answer at once.

”Is what like?”

”Not holding,” said Dory. ”Just lying here. And somebody else doing it.” She opened her eyes. ”Is this what it’s like all the time?”

Mother looked down at her for a long time.

”It should be,” she said. ”For you. More often than it is.”

Dory considered this.

”I like it,” she said. And shut her eyes again.

They came home at dusk.

All of them. Up the long road from the plain. Four grandmothers and seven grandchildren and a basket and a blanket. Slowly. The way you walk at the end of a long day when nobody’s in a hurry.

Sigmund was at the bottom of the porch steps.

He was very white. With his fence round him so tight it didn’t spark at all.

Ingrid saw his face and stopped.

”Jessa,” said Sigmund.

Days 3521–3530. Grandmothers.

Okafor sent everyone home to wait for the sixty-four worlds to answer. Mother built a scarecrow in Garnet’s wheat with the grandchildren and told them the longer story: Ash stuffed it fat, Trevor froze its arms, small Sigmund scorched it a crooked mouth, and Dory tied her own scarf round its neck so it wouldn’t be cold. Ingrid taught small Sigmund to hold still in the air before he opened his eyes, and then held Dory’s hand in the sky, because nobody ever holds her. Maura taught Ash, in eleven bowls of dough, that warm makes things rise; Rory the second took fourteen. Abena Osei took Efua to shout at Hettie’s birds, and they never came back, and Efua laughed out loud. The General and Trevor froze most of the seventh lake to catch one fish, and the General smiled. On the blanket, Dory didn’t hold anything. At dusk, Sigmund at the steps: Jessa.