Scarecrow

Sera’s was the second night.

She didn’t tell me where to meet her. She told Pip, who told Rory, who told Maura, who told Mother, who told me at breakfast, very drily, over the kettle.

”The boats,” said Mother. ”At midnight. She says don’t be late and don’t be early. She says be exactly on time, for once in your life.”

”How do I know when midnight is?”

”Sera says she’ll tell you,” said Mother. ”She says you’ll know.”

I knew.

At midnight every lamp in the place went out.

All of them. Thousands. In every tree, from the roller coaster at the north end to the sand hill at the south. At once. And the whole of the place went dark, under the stars, with the wheel a black shape against the sky and the swings still and the channel where the boats go just a faint silver line in the grass.

And then one lamp came on.

At the end of the channel. By the first boat.

She was sitting in it.

In a dress the colour of the inside of Rory’s ovens, with her hands in her lap, and Goldie nowhere, and the one lamp above her, gold.

”You’re on time,” she said.

”You turned them all off.”

”I made them,” said Sera. ”I can turn them off.” She looked at the boat. ”Get in.”

I got in.

The boat went out onto the channel. Very slowly. Nobody pushing it. Sera doesn’t need to push things; she makes the water under them a little warmer at the back than the front, and it goes.

We went down the channel in the dark.

And as we went, the lamps came on.

One at a time. Ahead of us. Just ahead. In the trees over the water, one after another, gold, the way you’d light a path for someone coming home late. And behind us, as we passed, they went out again.

So there was only ever the light we were in.

We went all the way round. Under the bridges. Past the swings, very still now, hanging over the black water of the lake. Past the bottom of the roller coaster, which looked enormous and quiet in the dark. Past the sand hill, where the heavy young were asleep in their tunnels; I could feel them, every atom, curled up warm.

Sera didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then, under the last bridge, she said: ”I burned for four hours.”

I looked at her.

”On the ring,” she said. She was looking at the water. ”Over the cutters. Over Brock. Burning the black back.” She turned her hands over in her lap. ”I’ve never burned that long. Not ever. Not even the night the queens gave me the supernova.” She was quiet. ”I didn’t know if I’d be able to stop.”

”You stopped.”

”I know. Kyria said the arch was cut and I stopped.” She looked at her hands. ”But I didn’t know, Lucas. For four hours. I didn’t know if there was going to be anything left of me that wasn’t fire.”

I didn’t say anything.

I took her hands. They were very warm. They always are.

”Goldie glowed, and Ash was glowing too,” said Sera. ”The whole time. Rory said. So bright nobody could look at them.” She swallowed. ”I think they knew. I think they were burning with me. So I wouldn’t be on my own.”

”They’re your girls,” I said. ”Of course they know.”

Sera looked at me for a long time.

Then she put her head on my shoulder. In the boat. In the one light, in the dark, on the channel, going round very slowly.

”I wanted to sit somewhere,” she said, ”where I could see a light and know I made it. And know I could turn it off.” She was quiet. ”That’s all. That’s what I wanted. To sit in the dark with you and not be on fire.”

We went round four times.

On the fourth time, under the last bridge, I gave her the ribbon.

Red.

She looked at it for a long time.

”Pip’s stall,” she said.

”Eleventh try.”

”You asked the cups.”

”I didn’t,” I said. ”Why does everyone—”

Sera laughed. For the first time all night. Out loud, under the bridge, with her head back.

And every lamp in the place came on at once.

All of them. Thousands. From one end to the other. Gold.

She tied the ribbon round her wrist.

”For when I burn,” she said. ”So there’s something left that isn’t fire.”

The grandfathers had the children every night that week.

All of them. In the long kitchen of the house on the rise, with the young coming up the stairs from the hall underneath, and the General and Rory and Konrad and Kwame and Taveth sitting round the long table looking at each other, the way men look at each other when they’ve been left in charge of something and every one of them suspects the others know more about it than he does.

Konrad taught them chess.

He’d said he would. Nobody believed him. On the second night he brought a board down from the grandparents’ wing, a very old one, from Earth, that he said had been his father’s, and set it up at the end of the long table. And sat Corin in front of it, on the General’s knee. And began to explain.

Corin is nine weeks old. He looks about fifteen months.

He looked at the board for a very long time.

Carefully. One piece at a time. With Father’s eyes. Working out how it was made.

Konrad explained what the pieces did. Slowly. Very seriously. The way he reads to the children on the grass. The way he read four thousand one hundred and twelve codes with Garnet.

And then he moved a pawn.

Corin watched him do it.

Then, very slowly, he reached out. And put his hand on a knight. And moved it. Not where a knight goes. Not anywhere a knight’s allowed to go. He moved it into the middle of the board and set it down and looked up at Konrad.

And asked him for something.

Konrad felt it. The General said his face went very still.

”That’s not a legal move,” said Konrad. Very gently.

Corin looked at him.

And Konrad Friese, who had signed the tithe sheets every year for thirty years, every one, to the letter, exactly as written, looked at a baby’s knight in the middle of a chessboard for a long time.

And then he moved his own piece. As if it had been.

”Your move,” he said.

The General said they played for an hour. Corin made up every move. Konrad answered every one as if it were the most serious game of his life. Thessaly sat on Rory’s knee and watched both of them, very quietly, and every so often gave her brother something, and his next move was always stranger.

At the end of the hour Corin put his king in the middle of the board, beside the knight.

And stopped.

Konrad looked at it for a long time.

”I think that’s checkmate,” he said.

”It isn’t,” said the General.

”It is now,” said Konrad. And tipped over his own king. Very carefully. And shook Corin’s hand.

Kwame said afterward it was the most he’d ever seen Konrad smile.

Risa’s was the third night.

She didn’t tell anyone anything. She just came and found me on the porch at dusk and took my hand and walked me down the long road and across the plain and into the new place, past the queue for the wheel and the swings and the little cars, all the way to the north end.

To the roller coaster.

”Front,” she said.

”Risa—”

”Front,” she said. And got in. The very front car. Where you can see the track going down in front of you and nothing else.

I got in beside her.

The car started up the first slow climb.

She didn’t say anything on the way up. She sat with her hands on the rail and her chin up, very still, with a very small cloud over her head, the way she gets when she’s thinking about something she doesn’t want to think about.

At the top, the car stopped.

It does that. Keir made it. The way the wheel stops. One minute at the top, so you can see the whole of the seventh lake in the dark, and the lamps in the trees, and the long drop in front of you.

”I’ve been through a Hand,” said Risa. Looking at the drop. ”Front to back. As lightning. I’ve gone through towers on the ring and hushed queens in pieces. I’ve hushed a continent with my mother.” She looked at me. ”I’ve never been on one of these.”

”Neither have I.”

”I know,” said Risa. ”That’s why we’re in the front.”

And the car went over the top.

I’m not going to write what it was like.

I’ll write that Risa screamed all the way down. And all the way round. And through both loops. And over the marsh and round the edge of the lake, so low you could have put your hand in the water. And that the cloud over her head went from very small to very large to a thunderstorm, with lightning, all the way round the track, so that people on the swings and the wheel and the little cars all stopped to watch a roller coaster go round in the dark with a storm riding on the front of it.

And that I screamed too.

And that when we came back into the station she was laughing so hard she couldn’t get out of the car.

”Again,” she said.

We went eleven times.

On the eleventh, at the top, in the dark, with the car stopped and the lake underneath us and the lamps going out one at a time below as the place closed, Risa didn’t look at the drop.

She looked at me.

”I was frightened,” she said. ”On the ring. The whole time. Every tower.” She was very quiet. ”I’ve never been frightened going through anything. Not once. I’ve always been the one who goes first. Wing Commander.” She looked at her hands. ”And on the ring I went into the first tower and the queen was singing the note at me from so close and I thought, I’m not going to come out of this one.”

”I was frightened too. I was so relieved when you came out.”

”I know.” She swallowed. ”I came out. And went into the next one. And the next. And I was frightened every time.” She looked at me. ”I wanted to be frightened of something that wasn’t going to hurt me. Just once. With you.” She put her chin on her knees. ”That’s why we’re on this.”

”It’s a very good reason,” I said.

”If you tell anyone I said it,” said Risa, ”I’ll make it rain in your boots.”

”I know.”

And the car went over the top. And she screamed.

I gave her the ribbon at the bottom. Yellow. Like lightning.

She looked at it.

”Did you ask the—”

”No.”

Risa grinned. And tied it in her hair. And got back in the car.

”Twelve,” she said.

Hana’s was the fourth night.

Not night. Morning. Very early. Before dawn. She came and woke me in the big bed and put her finger on my lips so I wouldn’t wake the others, and took my hand, and walked me out of the house on the rise in the grey light, with Abena asleep in a sling against her chest, because Hana said Abena was very patient and wouldn’t mind.

To the long road. The flat one. That goes round the outside of the whole place, two miles, with the lamps in the trees and nothing on it most of the day.

Where the bicycles are.

”I’ve never ridden one,” said Hana.

She was standing beside a green one. Very still. With her hands at her sides.

”On Earth,” she said. ”Harbor Block Forty-four. There wasn’t anywhere. Six of us in two rooms. And then I went to the cistern, for the stipend, because my father’s hands shook and Kofi was too young and Esi was too small. And I floated water for them. And hid the nosebleeds.” She looked at the bicycle. ”I was sixteen. I didn’t have a—” She stopped. ”I didn’t get to be small, Lucas. Not really. Not the way the children are getting to be small now. On the swings.”

I didn’t say anything.

”I watched you with Voss,” said Hana. ”From the wheel. That first morning. Before it opened.” She looked at me. ”I saw you let go.”

”Hana—”

”Hold the seat,” she said.

So I held the seat.

And ran behind her. Down the long flat road. In the grey before dawn. With Abena asleep against her chest in the sling and the lamps going out one by one in the trees as the light came.

She wobbled. Not as much as Voss. Hana’s very good at being still; she’s had to be. But she wobbled, and she laughed when she wobbled, which Voss hadn’t, and once she nearly went into the grass and I caught her and she laughed so hard she had to stop.

And then she stopped wobbling.

And I let go.

She knew.

That was the difference. Voss didn’t know. Hana knew the moment I let go; she said afterward she felt the air change behind her. And she didn’t look round.

She went on. Down the long flat road. Straight. Steady. With Abena in the sling and the sun coming up over the plain in front of her and her hair coming loose.

All the way to the bend at the bottom of the roller coaster.

And then she turned round.

And I was a long way back.

Waving.

She rode back. Slowly. Not wobbling at all.

She stopped in front of me. And put her feet down. And looked at me for a long time.

”I’m thirty,” she said. ”Or near it. I’ve had three children. I’ve married five people. I’ve breathed for a whole fleet.” She looked down at Abena, who’d woken in the sling and was looking up at her, patient, brown eyes, the silver ring very faint. ”And I’ve never once in my whole life been allowed to go somewhere just to see what it was like when I got there.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Thank you,” said Hana.

I gave her the ribbon at the bend. Green. Like the plain.

She didn’t ask about the cups.

She tied it round the handlebars of the bicycle.

”Can I keep it?” she said. ”The bicycle.”

”It’s yours.”

”Can I ride it every morning?”

”Every morning,” I said. ”As long as you like.”

Hana looked down the long flat road. Two miles. All the way round. With nothing on it but the lamps in the trees and the morning.

”I’d like to go all the way round,” she said. ”Just once. On my own.” She looked at me. ”Will you wait?”

”I’ll wait.”

So she went. All the way round. Two miles. With Abena in the sling. And I sat on the grass at the bend and waited.

She came back forty minutes later.

Laughing.

Callum asked Genny on the fourth night too.

Not the same place. Not the same time. Hana and I were on the long road at dawn; Callum and Genny were on the wheel, at the very top, after dark, in a little red house with windows on every side, in the one minute the wheel stops.

He’d asked Nan Vey first. And Mother. And me, on the porch, the night before, standing up when he did it, with Rowan beside him standing up too, so that Garnet and Genny, on the rail, both said sit down at once out of habit and then stopped, because they’d understood what he was asking.

I said yes.

He laughed last.

Genny told me what happened at the top of the wheel. Not Callum. Genny. Which surprised everyone. Genny never tells anyone anything; she writes it down and lets Garnet draw it and everyone finds out by supper.

She told me herself. At breakfast. With volume sixteen shut on the table in front of her, for once.

”He didn’t have a ring,” she said. ”He said they don’t on Thirty-three. He said on Thirty-three you give someone the thing you’d least like to lose.” She put her hand on the cover of volume sixteen. ”He gave me his left hand.”

I looked at her.

”Not really,” said Genny. ”Not like that.” She went pink. ”He took my hand and put it on his. The left one. The one the black went into on the reef. The one Maura warmed back, and the rain queen sang to, and I held the book with for a whole day on Tiel.” She looked at the table. ”He said it was the thing he’d nearly lost. And he’d like me to have it.”

”What did you say?”

Genny was quiet for a long time.

”I said I’d write it down,” she said. ”Twice.”

Garnet drew it, of course. From the next little house down, where she was with Rowan. She saw the wheel stop and the red house at the top with two shapes in the window, and she drew it, by the light of Sera’s lamps in the trees below.

She didn’t draw them. You couldn’t see them, really. She drew the wheel. The whole of it. Very carefully. In the dark, against the stars. With every little house dark except one, at the very top, red, with a light in it.

Under it she wrote: Eleven minutes after me. Always.

And then, smaller, crossed out, and then written again: Rowan asked too. In the green one. I said yes. Don’t tell Genny until she’s finished telling everyone hers.

Brock and Saska went on the roller coaster that week too.

I wasn’t there. Rowan was. Rowan says it was the best thing he’s ever seen and he’s seen Risa go through a Hand.

Brock had never been on it. He’d been asked. Every night since it opened. He’d said no every night, very politely, with his hands in his pockets. He said he didn’t like being carried by things. He said he was better at standing still while things happened to him than having things happen to him while he sat down.

On the fourth night, Saska didn’t ask.

She just got in the front car. And looked at him.

A heartbeat ahead.

And Brock got in beside her.

He went iron at the top of the first climb.

All of him. From his boots to his hair. Grey. The way he stood in front of the cutters on the ring for four hours. Rowan said the whole car sank a hand’s width on the track when he did it, and Keir, who was watching from the bottom, went very white and started checking his sums in his head.

And then the car went over.

And Brock didn’t scream.

Saska did. All the way down. Laughing. With her hair going back and both arms up in the air, a heartbeat ahead of every turn, the way she runs at him every morning on the north field and bounces off.

Brock sat beside her in iron. Completely still. With his hands flat on the rail. Not making a sound.

All the way round.

When the car came back into the station, he went soft again. Slowly. From the edges in. Until he was just a man in a coat Nan Vey had ironed, sitting in the front car of a roller coaster with his hands on the rail.

Saska looked at him.

”Well?” she said.

Brock thought about it for a long time.

”I’d like to go again,” he said.

”You didn’t make a sound.”

”No,” said Brock. ”I was busy.”

”Busy with what?”

Brock looked at her.

”Watching you,” he said.

Saska didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then she said, very quietly, in front of Rowan and the whole queue: ”We’re getting married on the north field. At dawn. In the spring. Teshka’s already said yes, and your mother’s already made the beans.”

Brock looked at her.

”I haven’t asked yet,” he said. ”Properly.”

”You asked with beans,” said Saska. ”On your knee. On the field.” She leaned against him. ”I stepped where you’d be. That’s yes. On the Barrow that’s the most yes there is.”

”I’d like to ask properly anyway.”

”I know,” said Saska. ”I knew you would. A heartbeat before you said it.” She closed her eyes. ”Ask me at the top. Next time round.”

So he did.

Rowan says that time, Brock screamed.

Andraste’s was the fifth night.

I brought a blade.

I don’t own one. I’ve never needed one. I asked Kyria, and Kyria looked at me for a long time and then went to her room at the end of the grandparents’ wing and came back with one of her own. Old. Very plain. Dark iron with the water pattern in it, very fine.

”My first,” she said. ”From when I was seven. Before I could lift a real one.” She put it in my hands. ”Don’t turn it to sand.”

”I won’t.”

”Don’t,” said Kyria. ”I’d like it back.”

Andraste was waiting at the bottom of the Kethri wind tower.

At midnight. In the dark. Barefoot. In plain dark cloth, with her arms bare and scarred, and her own blade on her back, and nothing else.

”You brought one,” she said.

”Your mother’s.”

Andraste looked at it.

”Her first,” she said. ”From when she was seven.” Something happened at the corner of her mouth. ”She gave you her first.”

”She said she’d like it back.”

”She will kill you if you don’t give it back,” said Andraste. ”Very slowly. On the ridge.” She turned round. ”Up.”

We went up the wind tower.

It’s very tall. Very thin. A stair inside it going round and round, the way the tower on the shallow seas goes round, the one Konrad climbed. At the top it opens to the sky, a round flat floor with no rail, and the wind comes down off the mountains and goes straight up through it, so that when the Kethri young jump off the edge it catches them and throws them out over the whole of the place.

At midnight it was empty.

Andraste walked to the middle of the round floor at the top. In the wind. With the stars over her and the lamps of the whole place spread out below in the dark, gold, all the way to the lake.

And drew her blade.

”On Hyrran,” she said, ”a First Blade and her husband fight once a year. On the ridge. In the snow. In front of no one. So they know neither of them has grown soft.” She held the blade out. ”Not to the yield. Not for anything. Just to know.”

”I’ll lose.”

”Yes,” said Andraste. ”You will.”

I lost.

I’ll write that, because she’d want it written. I lost very quickly. She came at me in the wind on the top of the tower and I had Kyria’s first blade in my hand and didn’t know what to do with it, and I didn’t turn anything to sand and I didn’t scatter and I didn’t feel for any atoms. I just tried to be a person with a blade, on a tower, in the wind, against a woman who’d been one since she was seven.

She put me on my back on the floor of the tower in about four breaths.

And stood over me. With her blade at my throat. Not touching. Very still. In the wind.

”You didn’t use anything,” she said.

”You said just to know.”

Andraste looked down at me for a long time.

”Yes,” she said. ”I did.”

And she put her blade away. And lay down on the floor of the tower beside me. In the wind. On her back. Looking up at the stars.

”I’ve never done this,” she said. After a long time.

”Fought your husband?”

”Lain down,” said Andraste. ”Somewhere high. With nothing to guard.” She was quiet. ”Every wall I’ve ever been on, I’ve been on to watch. Every ridge. Every roof. Even ours. I go up on the roof of the house on the rise every night and I sit with my back to the chimney and my blade across my knees and I watch the dark.” She turned her head and looked at me. ”I’ve never once lain down and just looked up.”

”Why tonight?”

Andraste didn’t answer for a long time.

”Because the twins are with the grandfathers,” she said. ”And the Mom Squad is in the town with the children from the ring. And Okafor is asleep, Ruth says, for the first time in two months. And the arches are all quiet.” She looked back up at the stars. ”And nothing is coming. Not tonight. I can feel it. Nothing is coming.”

She reached across the floor of the tower. And took my hand.

”So I can lay beside my husband with my guard down, and let go.” she said.

Then she rolled over on top of me and kissed me deeply.

I grabbed her waist and we enjoyed our night together.

We stayed there until it got light.

She didn’t say much more. Neither did I. At some point she fell asleep, with her hand still in mine, on the top of the wind tower, with the wind going over us and the stars going out one by one. She’s never once fallen asleep anywhere I could see her. She sleeps after everyone else, and wakes before.

She slept until the Kethri young came up the stair at dawn and found us there, and stood round us in a ring, very curious, the way young are about anything new.

Then she woke. And sat up. And looked at them.

And laughed. Like a door falling off its hinges.

And the Kethri young all jumped off the edge at once, and the wind caught them, and threw them out over the whole of the place in the morning light.

I gave her the ribbon at the bottom of the tower.

White. Like the snow on the ridge.

She didn’t put it in her hair, or round her wrist.

She tied it round the hilt of her blade.

”On Hyrran,” she said, ”a First Blade ties something to her blade for every fight she didn’t need to have.” She looked at it. ”This is the first one.”

I gave Kyria her blade back.

At breakfast. In the long kitchen of the house on the rise. With everyone there. I put it on the table in front of her very carefully.

Kyria looked at it.

Then at her daughter. At the white ribbon on the hilt of Andraste’s blade.

Then at me.

”You lost,” she said.

”In four breaths.”

”Three,” said Andraste. Through a mouthful of bread.

Kyria picked up her first blade. And looked at it for a long time. And then put it back down in front of me.

”Keep it,” she said. ”You’ll need to lose a great many more times before you’re any good.”

That was the fifth night.

But there were six ribbons.

I went back to Pip’s stall on the sixth evening. On my own. And stood in front of the row of tin cups with a bread-dough ball in my hand.

Pip looked at me very suspiciously.

”You’ve already got five,” she said.

”I need one more.”

”Who for?”

I didn’t answer.

Pip looked at me for a long time. Then she looked past me. Up the long road. To the house on the rise. Where the porch was, and Father’s chair at the end of it, and someone sitting in it with a cup.

”Oh,” said Pip.

She took a ribbon out of the box under the counter. And held it out.

”No,” I said. ”I’ll win it.”

Nineteen tries.

Pip said it was a record. Pip said she was going to write it on the board behind the stall. Pip said Rory definitely hadn’t weighted the cups and that she was going to have to have a word with him about why they were so hard to knock down, then.

On the nineteenth try, I knocked down three.

Pip gave me the ribbon.

Dark blue. Like a coat.

Mother was on the porch.

In Father’s chair. With her cup. Watching the lamps come on in the trees, all the way to the lake. With the five of them round her. Luna with the blue in her hair. Sera with the red round her wrist. Risa with the yellow. Hana with green on the handlebars of a bicycle leaning against the porch rail. Andraste on the rail with white on the hilt of her blade.

I came up the steps.

And knelt down in front of Father’s chair.

And held out the ribbon.

Mother looked at it for a long time.

She didn’t say anything.

Then she put down her cup. And took it.

And held it in both hands. In her lap. The way she held Father’s ring, the night he died, and every night since.

”Nineteen tries,” said Pip. From the bottom of the steps. Where she’d followed me up the long road. ”It’s a record.”

Mother laughed.

Out loud. With her head back. The way I don’t think I’d heard her laugh since I was very small.

”Your father,” she said, ”took twenty-three.”

And tied it in her hair.

Dot sent the picture that night.

Through the relay. Behind her soft door. To a room with a long table and a window over a field. Garnet’s drawing, from the top of the wheel, of the whole place. The lamps in the trees. The swings over the lake. The roller coaster coming up out of the Kethri trees. The sand hill and the wind tower and the long road with the bicycles.

And under it, in the old dictionary, slowly, one word at a time:

You asked about our gardens.

This is one.

The answer came at the hour.

A picture. One line at a time. A garden. Very small. Rows of something green. A low stone wall. A gate. And beyond it, a road, and a field, and a building with a window, and at the edge of the picture, filling exactly the part of it where anyone would have needed to stand, a great dark shape with its head on its paws.

And under it, in a different hand, slowly:

Ours.

Isolde says: it’s smaller than yours.

Isolde says: she’d still like to show you.

Isolde says: when you come.

I sat on the porch steps for a long time after Dot read it out.

Mother put her hand on my head. The way she did when I was small. With the dark blue ribbon in her hair.

”When,” she said. ”Not if.”

”I know.”

”That’s a lovely word,” said Mother. ”When.” She took her hand away. ”Hold on to it, love. We’re going to need it.”

Days 4226–4231. Ribbons.

Sera turned off every lamp and lit only the ones over our boat, and said she’d burned four hours on the ring and didn’t know if she’d stop; red, round her wrist, for when she burns. Risa took the front car and screamed eleven times, then said she’d been frightened in every tower and wanted to be frightened of something that wouldn’t hurt her; yellow. Hana had never had a childhood; I held the seat and let go, and she knew, and rode all the way round; green on the handlebars. Andraste put me on my back on the wind tower in three breaths and then lay down for the first time with nothing to guard; white on her blade. Kyria gave me her first blade. Pip’s stall, nineteen tries, dark blue, for Mother. Father took twenty-three.