Scarecrow

She was late.

That was the first thing anyone noticed about her. Before her name. Before anything.

Corin and Thessaly came at ten weeks. Ten weeks and fifty-eight minutes, Halloway says, because Halloway counts. Dory came quick. Small Sigmund came quicker. Abena took eighteen weeks and sat in Hana by the oven the whole time like someone waiting for a kettle, and old Efua said about time when she finally came, and that was the slowest any of mine had ever been.

The one at the wall took longer.

”She’s waiting,” said Andraste.

On the roof. Where she sits at night. With her back against the chimney and her hand flat on Odra’s wall over her middle and her face turned out. Past the lake. Past the edge of the sky.

”For what?”

Andraste didn’t answer for a long time.

”I don’t know,” she said. ”She doesn’t tell me. She listens.” She moved her hand. ”Every night I sit here, and she turns. Inside. Until she’s facing out. And then she’s very still.” She looked at me. ”Like a sentry at the top of a wall.”

”Halloway says it’s been twenty-six weeks.”

”Halloway is not First Blade,” said Andraste. But she said it very quietly. And she didn’t take her hand off her middle.

The Scarecrow queen said the same thing.

I asked her. In the hall under the house. In the grove. Lying in the leaves with her great head beside me, and her young round us in a ring, and the double handful of the Merrow queen on a shelf of warm stone by the water where Tally had put her, humming very faintly to herself.

She is waiting, said the Scarecrow queen.

”For what?”

For it to be quieter.

I didn’t need to ask what it was.

Some children are born facing the edge, she said. I told you. So that someone will. She breathed out, very slowly. The leaves moved. But a child who faces the edge does not come out into the world while the edge is loud. She waits. Until she can hear past it.

”Past it to what?”

The Scarecrow queen didn’t answer.

It was quieter after Merrow.

Ilka said so. Every morning. At the porch steps. Quieter. A lot quieter. Not gone. Never gone.

And every morning after Merrow, Andraste came down from the roof a little slower.

We didn’t stop, while she waited.

Okafor wouldn’t let us. Sixty-two, she’d written on the slate after Imber, and All of them. Before the Hands, and then Orrin had made it sixty-one, and she’d wiped the number and written the new one and kept going.

So we went out. Not thin. Never one person.

I’ll write it short, because it was the same every time, and because the same every time was the point.

Konrad chose. From the sheet. Every morning at the dawn count he’d stand up from his stool with the old tithe sheet unfolded and read out one name, and the reason. Kessen, fifty-first. Coded outbound four tithes running. They’ll be first. And Crane, at the table, with his spanner, would check it against everything he’d ever sent home, and nod or not nod. And the Overseer, in the doorway, would say what the middle had heard.

Then I’d go up the thread. And stand. And Kyria would cut. And Dory would sing. And someone from Imber or Orrin would walk through first and stand in the square or the field or the cave and say, in whatever language they had, We’re from a world that burned. Come now. Don’t pack.

Kessen came. Eight hundred thousand. In a day.

Lir-Anwe came, which was mostly water and had to be fetched by the Lir, deep down, in the dark, with the queen of deep cold water singing the way.

Greyfold, which was a human world, a very old one, from before the domes, that nobody on Earth had ever known about, and whose people spoke a kind of English nobody on Avalon could follow except Edda, who said it was the English in the oldest books on the archive floors. They came with their dogs. All their dogs. Eleven thousand dogs. Garnet’s old dog went down to the red glass to meet them and came back three days later looking very pleased with itself.

Some of them didn’t come. Some councils said no. Some said wait. One said they’d rather take their chances with the houses, who’d always kept the terms. Okafor didn’t argue. She left an arch on every one, with a smith beside it, and a cup of tea, and said: when you change your mind.

Two of them changed their minds before the Hands came.

One didn’t.

Konrad wrote it on the sheet. Under the line. Asked.

And Thera grew. Every week. Down the long folds toward the river and past it. Crooked houses round every school. And Miss Pell walked through all of them with her stick, and Wren counted, with her hand on her middle, and Voss mended bicycles in the evenings in a shed by the river with nine children telling her she was doing it wrong.

Twelve worlds, while Vessa waited. Twelve lines on Konrad’s sheet with Home beside them.

Forty-nine to go.

And then, on the fortieth night after Thera got its name, she didn’t come down at all.

I was in the kitchen. With Mother. Late. The house asleep. Mother was at the table with her tea, the way she is when she can’t sleep, and I was at the stove, not making anything. Just standing there.

And the house went still.

Not quiet. Still. The way it went the night before Corin and Thessaly, when Elin and Goldie woke and looked at the door. Every cup on every shelf. Every board. The water in the kettle. The flame under it.

Mother put her cup down.

”Love,” she said.

”I know.”

I went up the ladder to the roof.

Andraste was standing.

Not against the chimney. At the edge of the flat roof. With her blade in her hand, point down, on the stones. With Odra’s wall over her middle and the little figure on top of it, looking out. And her face turned out. Past the lake. Past the edge of the sky.

She didn’t turn round.

”The ridge,” she said. ”Please.”

”It’s the middle of the night.”

”Yes,” said Andraste. ”She wants the stars.”

So we went to the ridge.

I’ve written this before. The going. Corin and Thessaly’s night. I won’t write it all again. But I’ll write who came. Because it matters who comes.

Halloway, furious, with her bag. Ruth. Doctor Bell, with both pairs of spectacles and her coat over her nightdress. Hana, because Andraste asked for her, the way she did the first time. Maura, because Maura is always there, with warm hands, at the end of everything.

Luna and Sera and Risa. In their nightclothes. Luna with frost on her bare feet, and Sera keeping them warm, and Risa with a cloud over her head, the size of a plate, very still.

Mother, in her dark coat over her dressing gown. With the dark blue ribbon.

Kyria. Who’d been asleep in the guest wing with Taveth, and came through the courtyard arch already in her mended iron, as if she’d been waiting for this every night for twenty-six weeks with her armour on. Which Taveth says she had.

And the children.

All of them. Because Dory woke them. Because Dory hears everything. She came through the courtyard arch holding Corin’s hand and Thessaly’s, with the rest behind her in their nightclothes in a line, and Abena on Efua’s hip, and Elin and Goldie together, and Pebble at the back, making sure nobody was left.

”She wants us,” said Dory. Very seriously. To Halloway, who’d opened her mouth. ”She said.”

Halloway shut it again.

The ridge was dark.

The highest one. Over the hall where the Hyrrani queen lives. Where we were married. Where Corin and Thessaly made a door. Where Vessa sat down in the snow three hundred years ago and didn’t speak for a year.

There was no snow. Not that night. It was cold and very clear, and the iron sea was black below, and above it the sky over Hyrran was so full of stars it looked white.

And the ridges round it were full.

I don’t know how they knew.

Nobody told them. It was the middle of the night. But when we came out of the courtyard arch onto the ridge, every ridge and every pass and every mountain round the highest one had women on it. In iron. Silent. Standing. Forty thousand. More. With no lamps. In the starlight.

Facing out.

Not toward the highest ridge. Not toward us. Out. Every one of them. Away from Hyrran. Toward the edge of the sky. The way Andraste was facing. The way the Hathri face. The way the one at the wall faced every night inside her mother.

”They know,” said Kyria. Very quietly. Behind me. ”A First Blade’s daughter born at night. Under the stars. They stand facing out.” She swallowed. ”So she knows someone else is watching the edge. While she’s busy being born.”

The queens came.

The Scarecrow queen and the old queen and the heavy queen, through the arch. The coral queen and the ash queen. And the Hyrrani queen, up out of her hall under the mountain, very old and very strong, with silver like snow, onto the ridge.

They didn’t lie down at the top this time.

They went to the edges. Every one of them. To the edge of the highest ridge, all the way round it, and lay down there with their great heads on the stone.

Facing out.

Andraste walked to the top of the ridge.

Where she stood the last time. With her blade. She put the point of it in the stone between her feet, where the little arch had grown, where Corin and Thessaly asked the ridge for a door home. The little arch was still there. Waist-high. Red-grey. With the water pattern in it. Closed.

She stood in front of it.

And turned round.

Away from us. Away from the queens. Away from Hyrran.

Out.

I knelt down behind her. And put my hands flat on the ridge.

And held it. Every atom. The stone and the air and the cold. The way I hold a kitchen when a baby’s being born. So nothing would break.

And then, because I could, because Andraste had told me she was facing out and I wanted to know what she was facing, I listened.

Out.

It was very quiet past the ring.

Quieter than I’d ever heard it. Quieter than Ilka had told me. The breathing was there, always, a long way off, but it was a long way off. Smaller. Further. As if something very big had pulled back after Merrow to think.

And in front of it, nearer, the houses. The towers. The voice. Grey and flat and very, very busy. Writing something down.

And past all of it—

Past the ring. Past the breathing. Past anywhere I’d ever been, or reached, or felt.

Something else.

I don’t know what it was.

I want to write that plainly. I don’t know. I felt it for one breath on the ridge with my hands on the stone, and then it was gone, and I’ve never felt it again.

It was small. Very small. Very far.

And it was singing.

Andraste laughed.

The way she laughed the first time. On this ridge. Ten weeks and fifty-eight minutes before Corin. Head back. At the sky. A First Blade laughing on the highest ridge of Hyrran at the edge of everything.

And then she didn’t make a sound for a long time.

Halloway says it was the slowest birth she’s ever seen. Not the longest. Andraste wasn’t on the ridge more than an hour. But slow. Andraste stood with her blade in the stone and her back to us and her face to the stars and didn’t make a sound, not one, and every few minutes she’d stop. Completely. Stand very still. With her head tilted.

As if listening.

”She’s checking,” said Dory. Beside me. Very quietly. With her hand on my back. ”Every few minutes. She stops and checks. If it’s quiet enough.” She put her other hand on the ridge beside mine. ”It is. She keeps checking anyway.”

”Like you,” I said.

”Like me,” said Dory. ”Only outward.”

And then, very near the end, Andraste turned round.

Not all the way. Just her head. Over her shoulder. To us. To me.

Her face was very white and very calm and very tired, and the scar was white with it.

”She says,” said Andraste. ”She says it’s quiet enough.”

And then she made the sound.

Not a roar. Not like the first time. Not like a door falling off its hinges.

Like a door opening.

Very slowly. All the way.

Hana caught her.

Not Maura. Andraste had asked. Hana knelt in front of her, behind the little arch, in the cold, with her hands out. And breathed. For both of them. The way she breathed for Abena under the water before Abena knew what air was.

And the one at the wall came into her hands.

She didn’t roar like her brother. She didn’t come quiet and fast like her sister.

She came facing out.

Her face. Not toward Hana. Not toward her mother. Out. Past Hana’s shoulder. Past the edge of the ridge. To the sky. To the stars.

And she didn’t cry.

She opened her eyes. Grey, like Thessaly’s. With the ring round them already, very faint, the way all of mine have it. Silver. And in the silver, a pattern I’d never seen in any of their eyes before. Not a lattice, like Dory’s. Not branches, like Ash’s. Not flickering.

A wall. A small one. Round each pupil. Very fine.

With a single figure standing on top of it. Looking out.

Nobody on the ridge said anything.

Then she listened.

I felt it. Everyone did.

Not with ears. With everything. The way you feel the hush before lightning. The way the house went still in the kitchen.

She listened. Out. Past the ring. Past the breathing. Past everything. Very small, three breaths old, in Hana’s hands on the highest ridge of Hyrran.

And for one breath, everyone on the ridge heard what she heard.

The houses. Grey and flat and writing.

The breathing. A long way off. Pulled back. Thinking.

And past it, small, very far, the thing I’d felt with my hands on the stone.

Singing.

Then it was gone.

And she shut her eyes. And turned her face, at last, away from the sky. Toward Hana. Toward her mother. Toward all of us.

And went to sleep.

Mother sat down on the ridge.

Just sat. In her dark coat over her dressing gown. On the cold stone.

”What was that?” she said. Very quietly. ”Lucas. What was that, at the end?”

”I don’t know.”

”It was singing.”

”Yes.”

Mother looked at the stars for a long time.

”It sounded,” she said, ”like someone saying hello.”

I don’t know if she was right.

I’ve thought about it every day since. Doctor Bell has filled a notebook with it. Ilka listens for it every morning from the Meridian and hasn’t heard it once. Tally sat on the floor of the long ward with the voice in her ear for nine nights after, listening past the houses for it, and wrote at the top of a new page PAST, and nothing under it.

Dot says she felt it too. On the relay. Behind her soft door. For one breath. In the place where the pulse goes every day at the hour, that I didn’t know about for years.

She didn’t say any more than that.

Not that night.

Andraste sat down on the ridge.

The way she did the first time. All at once. In the cold, with her back against the little arch.

Hana put the baby in her arms.

Andraste looked at her for a long time. At the small face. At the grey eyes, shut now. At the wall in them, that she couldn’t see, that we’d all seen.

Then she looked up.

Not at me.

At her mother.

Kyria was standing at the edge of the ridge. Where she’d been the whole time. In her mended iron. With her first blade across her back. She’d taken it off me on the way through the courtyard arch without a word.

Facing out. Like the queens. Like the forty thousand on the ridges. She hadn’t turned round once.

She turned round now.

”Mother,” said Andraste.

Kyria came across the ridge.

Slowly. In the starlight. And knelt down in front of her daughter and her granddaughter. On the stone. Where every First Blade of Hyrran had stood for a thousand years.

”Name her,” she said. Very low.

Andraste looked at the baby.

”Vessa,” she said.

Kyria didn’t move.

I’ve never seen Kyria cry. Not when Teshka lived. Not when Andraste married me. Not when Corin and Thessaly made a door.

She didn’t cry now.

She did something else.

She put her hand flat on the stone of the ridge. Beside her daughter. Beside her granddaughter. The way she put it on Vessa’s wall every year of her life, on the day the first Vessa came back.

And said the twelve names.

Out loud. In Hyrrani. One at a time. The twelve who went through the arch with the first Vessa three hundred years ago and didn’t come back. The way she said them at the arch the morning Mother took the wall down.

Dot didn’t translate them. I didn’t ask her to.

When she’d finished, she looked at the baby.

”She came back alone,” said Kyria. ”And said one thing. In seventy years. And never went back.” Her voice was very steady. ”She sealed the door and said: leave it, until someone can go through and come back and tell us what it was.”

She touched the baby’s face. One finger. Very lightly.

”Someone did,” said Kyria. ”Your father. And came back. And told us.” She took her finger away. ”And now there’s a Vessa who faces out. And hears it. And hears past it.” Her voice cracked, very slightly, for the first time. ”And she won’t have to go through any door alone.”

On the ridges round the highest one, forty thousand women in iron turned round.

All at once. In the starlight. From facing out to facing in. Toward the ridge. Toward the First Blade and her daughter.

And raised their blades.

No sound. Not one. Forty thousand blades going up in the dark.

And then the queens at the edges of the ridge lifted their great heads. And sang.

Not the war song. Not not still. Not the young-going-out song.

Something I’d never heard. Very low. Very old. The Hyrrani queen began it, and the others followed, one at a time, until all of them were singing it round the edge of the ridge in the dark.

Tally told me afterward what it was. She’d heard it through the voice, on the floor of the long ward, and she came up through the courtyard arch in her nightgown to tell me, and stood in the snow with her bare feet and didn’t care.

”It is the song a queen sings,” said Tally, ”when one of her young goes to the top of the nest. To keep watch. For the first time.”

She looked at the baby in Andraste’s arms.

”They are singing her up the wall,” she said.

The grandparents came up the ridge one at a time.

The General first, in his old uniform, because he always is. With Elin on one side and Goldie on the other, holding his hands, making the night smell, very faintly, of rain. He looked at the baby for a long time and then saluted her. Very properly. And Elin and Goldie saluted too, badly, because they’d seen him do it.

Rory and Maura. Maura gave Andraste a bun from one of her eleven pockets. Still warm.

Kwame and Abena Osei, and old Efua with her stick, who looked at the baby and said, very loudly, ”Another quiet one,” and then shouted at a bird that wasn’t there.

Konrad and Ingrid. Konrad didn’t say anything. He took off his hat. Ingrid put her hand on the baby’s head, very lightly, and the air round them went still.

Taveth, who’s good at nothing. Who knelt down beside his wife and his daughter and his granddaughter and didn’t say a word, and put his arms round all three of them at once, and held on.

And Teshka. Last. On her own two feet. In the grey armour that’s hers. Who stood at the edge of the ridge for a long time looking out, the way the Hyrrani had. And then came and knelt in front of the baby. And said something in Vaeli that Dot didn’t give me.

Kyria understood it.

She didn’t translate it either. But she took Teshka’s hand. And held it.

Mother was last.

She’d sat on the stone the whole time. Not getting up. Watching.

She got up now. Slowly. And came across the ridge. And knelt down.

And looked at Vessa for a long time.

”Oh,” she said. Very quietly. ”There you are.”

That’s what she says. To all of them. To every one of mine. The first time.

And then, very softly, so only Andraste and I could hear:

”Trevor used to stand like that. At the pass. Facing out. All night. So the rest of us could sleep.” She touched Vessa’s hand. ”He’d have liked her very much.”

I said it on the ridge.

In order. The way I do on the porch. To all of them. To Andraste, sitting against the little arch, very tired, with her blade across her knees and Vessa on her chest. To Kyria and Taveth. To Mother. To the Mom Squad and the grandfathers.

To my wives. Luna, with frost on her feet. Sera, glowing. Risa, with her cloud. Hana, still kneeling, still breathing for everyone without anyone noticing.

To Dory, and Trevor, and Ash, and small Sigmund, and Efua, and Kwame, and Elin, and Goldie, and Corin, and Thessaly, and Abena.

And then to the newest one. On her mother’s chest. Asleep. Facing in, now. For a while.

”Vessa,” I said. ”I love you. I’m proud of you. You don’t have to face out all the time.” I put my hand on her back. ”Somebody else will. For a while. You can sleep.”

She opened her eyes.

Grey. With the wall in them.

And looked at me. Very steadily. For a long time.

And then turned her head. Out. Toward the stars. Just for a moment.

And back.

Andraste laughed. Very quietly. Tired.

”She says she’ll take turns,” she said.

Corin met her in the morning.

On the porch of the house on the rise. In the big chair Andraste sits in, that used to be Hana’s. With Vessa asleep on her chest, and the sun coming up over the seventh lake, and everyone else asleep on top of each other in the long room because nobody had made it to a bed.

Corin climbed up the side of the chair. The way he does. With his weight on the back foot, waiting for something to fall so he can catch it.

And looked at his sister for a long time.

Then he asked her for something.

He’s done that since he was three breaths old. On the ridge. He asked me for something in the snow and I didn’t understand it, and I gave it to him anyway. He asked Wenna, at the long table, and she said no. He asks everyone. Every day. Things nobody understands, that only Thessaly can give him, because she’s the only one who’s ever known what he means.

He asked Vessa.

And Vessa opened her eyes.

And turned her head. Out. Past the porch rail. Past the lake. To the edge of the sky. And held it there. For a long breath. Very still.

Then turned back. And looked at her brother.

And Corin went very still too.

”What did he ask?” I said. To Andraste. Very quietly.

Andraste didn’t answer straight away. She was watching them. Her son and her daughter. Looking at each other.

”He asked her what’s out there,” she said. ”He asks everyone. All the time. He’s always asked.” She swallowed. ”Nobody could ever tell him.”

”And she did?”

”She showed him,” said Andraste.

Corin climbed down off the chair.

He went across the porch to where Thessaly was asleep in the heap with Elin and Goldie. And woke her. Very gently. And sat down beside her.

And for the first time since he was born, he didn’t ask her for anything.

He gave her something.

I don’t know what. I felt it go. Small. Bright. From him to her. Like a picture passed under a table.

Thessaly opened her grey eyes. And looked out. Past the rail. To the edge of the sky.

And smiled.

Dot found me on the steps at the hour.

Her rivers were moving in the colour between blue and gold. The one she only uses for one thing.

”It wasn’t them,” she said.

I knew who she meant. The pulse at the hour. Behind her soft door. The one she sent every day for years without telling me. Hearth.

”I checked,” said Dot. ”Last night. After. I asked them, at the hour, if they’d sung anything. Toward us. In the night.” Her rivers slowed. ”They said no. They said they’d felt something too. In their silver. A long way off. For one breath.” A pause. ”They said it felt like a door they didn’t know was there, opening.”

”Opening where?”

”They don’t know,” said Dot. ”Nor do I.” Her rivers went very still. ”But they said to tell you: whatever it was, it wasn’t hungry.”

Kyria and Mother sat on the long porch that afternoon. In the two chairs at the end. Father’s, and the one beside it that Kyria has taken without asking since the forges.

The rest of the Mom Squad came one at a time. Maura with tea. Ingrid with nothing, because Ingrid never brings anything, she just arrives and the air goes still. Teshka last, on her own two feet, with her blade.

They didn’t talk about the ridge.

They talked about the forty-nine. About which world was next on Konrad’s sheet, and whether the council there would say yes, and whether Kwame Osei had dug enough. About Thera, and Miss Pell, and Voss’s bicycles. About the weddings in the spring, and whether Nan Vey would let anyone else iron the shirts, which she wouldn’t.

And then, near the end, when the sun was going down over the seventh lake, Kyria said, without looking at anyone:

”I stood at that arch every year of my life.”

Nobody said anything.

”On the day she came back. With my hand on the stone. And said the twelve.” Kyria turned her first blade over on her knees. ”I thought I’d do it until I died. I thought Andraste would do it after me.” She was quiet for a long time. ”There’s no arch now. Hesk brought it down.”

Mother put her hand on Kyria’s arm.

”Now there’s a girl,” said Kyria. ”With the name. Facing out.” She swallowed. ”I don’t know what I’ll do on the day.”

”Bring her to the porch,” said Mother. ”And say the names. And we’ll all sit with you.”

Kyria didn’t answer.

But she didn’t take her arm away.

Okafor came to the dawn count.

She always does. But she came early, that morning, before anyone else, and stood at the wall in the map room for a long time. At HEDGE. At THEY ARE FIGHTING TOO. At ORRIN and Not again and ASKED. STAYED. And at the map beside it, with THE HUNGRY across the top, and the grey on the far side of the ring.

Then she took the chalk.

And past the grey, past the edge of Garnet’s drawing, past the place where the map stopped because nobody had ever been further, on the bare wall, she drew a very small circle.

Nothing in it. No name.

And beside it, a question mark.

”What’s that?” said Keir. Coming in with his drawings.

”I don’t know,” said Okafor. ”That’s why it’s there.” She put the chalk down. ”Lucas heard something. Vessa heard it. Everyone on the ridge heard it. Hearth heard it.” She looked at the circle. ”I want it on the wall. So nobody forgets we heard it.”

”And if it’s another one?” said Keir. Quietly. ”Another thing like the Hungry?”

Okafor looked at the small empty circle for a long time.

”Then it’s another one,” she said. ”And we’ll have heard it first.”

She turned round.

”But Dot says it wasn’t hungry,” she said. ”And I’ve decided to believe Dot.”

The five of us sat on the roof that night.

All five. My wives. Luna and Sera and Risa and Hana and Andraste. With their backs against the chimney, in a row, with blankets, because it was cold, and Sera keeping it a little less cold, and Risa’s cloud the size of a plate over all of us, not raining.

And me at the end. And Vessa, on Andraste’s chest, awake. Facing out.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Hana laughed. Very quietly.

”What?” said Luna.

”I told her,” said Hana. ”On the porch. When she was carrying the twins. I said you get used to how fast they come.” She looked at Vessa. ”And this one took twenty-six weeks and stood on a ridge in the dark and made the whole of Hyrran listen to the edge of everything.” She shook her head. ”I’d like to take it back.”

”You can’t take it back,” said Risa. ”Andraste remembers everything anybody’s ever said to her.”

”I do,” said Andraste.

”She’s got a list,” said Risa.

”I have,” said Andraste.

Sera laughed. And set the edge of her blanket alight, very slightly. And Luna put it out without looking.

”Twelve,” said Luna. After a while. Very quietly. Counting on her cold fingers. ”Twelve children. Five of us.” She looked down the row. ”When we sat at the kitchen table that winter with my notebook, and I asked how many each, and I crossed out two and wrote three—”

”You wanted three,” said Sera.

”I’ve got two,” said Luna. ”Trevor and Elin.” She looked at me. ”And all the others. Because they’re all mine. Every one.” She put her cold hand on Vessa’s foot, very lightly, and Vessa didn’t mind. ”That’s twelve.”

Nobody said anything.

Then Andraste turned Vessa round. Very gently. So she was facing in. Toward the row of us against the chimney. Toward her mothers.

Vessa looked at us. One at a time. Very steadily.

Then turned her head out again. Toward the stars.

”She says it’s very loud in here,” said Andraste. ”And she likes it.”

Days 4441–4474. Facing Out.

She was late: twenty-six weeks, waiting for it to be quieter. After Merrow it was. On the fortieth night after Thera, the house went still; she wanted the stars. The ridge at night, forty thousand on the mountains facing out, the queens at the edges facing out. I listened past the ring: the houses writing, the breathing pulled back, and past it something small and far, singing. Andraste laughed and then was very quiet, stopping to check. Hana caught her. She came facing out, with a wall in her eyes. For one breath we all heard what she heard. Mother: it sounded like someone saying hello. Dot asked Hearth; it wasn’t them; they felt it too, a door opening, and it wasn’t hungry. Vessa. Kyria said the twelve names: she won’t go through any door alone. The queens sang her up the wall. She’ll take turns. In the morning Corin asked her what’s out there, and she showed him, and for the first time he gave Thessaly something instead of asking.