Scarecrow

The names kept coming.

Konrad has two hundred and six thousand now. On sheets pinned at the corners with Voss’s wire, in boxes, on the long table, on the floor of the map room, in the cupboard under the stairs where Mother used to keep the good plates. One name a line, and under it, the thing their people do.

The grey ships haven’t come back. Not to the Marrah. Not to anywhere we’ve been. Tiamat’s ears can hear them, far out past the Watch, at the edges of the body of the Hungry, fighting. Pushing it. Dying, Dory says, one at a time, with the grey coming off them at the very end.

Okafor hasn’t written anything new on the slate. She stands in front of it most mornings with the chalk. GRANDMOTHERS CALL THEM HOME. She hasn’t worked out how yet. Nobody has. You can’t call someone home when you can’t get near them.

So we kept fetching. With the Standing at every arch now. Varra said so.

Dory heard the call on a wet night in the spring.

Not from a stock world. Not from Ithel’s points. From somewhere none of us had ever heard of, out to the side of where the body of the Hungry had been pushed by the grey ships.

She woke and sat up in the heap and Pebble lifted his head. Trevor woke. Kesh, in her basket by the door, frowned in her sleep.

Dory came out to the porch, where Mother and I were.

”They’re holding something up,” she said.

”What?”

”Everything,” said Dory. ”Their towns. Their houses. Their whole—” She stopped. She had her hand flat on her chest. ”They’re holding them up in the air. All of them. Together. And they’re very tired. And there’s something underneath, waiting for them to get tired enough.”

Mother put her cup down.

”Holding them up how?” said Mother.

Dory looked at her for a moment. Then she put her hand out, palm up, the way Ithel does.

Mother looked at it.

And put her own hand in it.

I felt it go between them. Through the net. Dory showing her, the way she showed Inga once, and Ithel.

Mother went very still.

”Oh,” said Mother.

She took her hand back. And looked at it. As if it had done something she hadn’t told it to.

”They lift,” said Mother. ”Lucas. They lift. Like me. Not like you and the girls, flying off. Like me. Standing still.”

I want to write about Mother lifting, because I’ve never put it down properly and I should.

Everyone in the house can do things. My wives. My children. My sisters. Me. But Mother’s was first. Before any of ours. The Project put a shaving of a queen’s bone in her, a long time ago, and what it gave her was the lift.

She can pick anything up. A cup. A truck. A spoke on One with a hundred grey ones on it. The top terrace of a world. She doesn’t think about it the way I think about atoms. She says she just decides something’s lighter than it is, and it believes her.

Genny and Garnet have it from her. Theirs was enormous from the start. Mine was weak until the planetary queen made it as strong as hers. Some of my children have it. But we fly with it, all of us. We go up and away with it and do other things.

Nobody’s ever done it the way she does. Standing still. Holding something up for someone else.

”Where?” said Mother.

Dory shut her eyes.

”Far,” she said. ”Past the Watch. To the side. Where the grey ships pushed the body.” She opened them. ”It’s not on Ithel’s list. The Sorn never went there.”

”Why not?”

”I don’t know,” said Dory. ”Maybe because they lift.”

Okafor was in the doorway. Of course she was.

”How many?”

”Lots,” said Dory. ”Millions. In towns. All up in the air, over water.” She swallowed. ”There’s one that’s very low. Lower than the others. They’re having trouble with it.”

Mother stood up.

”I’m going,” said Mother.

Okafor looked at her. Then at the teapot. Then at Mother again.

”You’d better,” said Okafor.

We went before dawn.

Mother. The Mom Squad, all of them, because Ingrid said if Dot was going to a world of people who lifted she wasn’t going without the people who’d stood beside her when she did. Dory to hold the arch, Risa at her back. Andraste and the Hyrrani. Varra and a thousand of the Standing. Halloway.

Me, under it.

Kyria cut to the net, the way she does now. It took a long time, because it was very far. Dory stood on the red glass with her arm out and her eyes shut and Halloway’s hand on her wrist, reaching, and the arch opened, slowly, onto grey light.

Mother went through first.

I came through behind her and stopped.

Sky.

That’s all there was, at first. Grey sky, early morning, very wide. And under it, a long way down, water. Shallow, Dory said afterward. A whole world of shallow sea, with no land in it anywhere except a few sandbars that went under at high tide.

And over the water, in the sky, towns.

Floating.

Whole towns. Stone and wood and glass, with streets, and roofs, and gardens hanging off the edges. Dozens of them. As far as I could see in every direction, hanging over the sea in the grey morning light, very still.

The arch had opened on the edge of one. We were standing on a street at the rim of it, with nothing past the end of the street but air.

And under the towns, on the water, in the shallows—

The Hungry.

Not the body. A piece of it. The grey ships had pushed the body back from the Hedge, and some of it had come sideways, the way water goes sideways when you push it, and found this.

It covered the sea. Black and brown. Moving. Waiting. It couldn’t reach the towns; they were too high. The fliers came up at them now and then and the towns’ people threw them back down, without touching them, out of the air.

But it was waiting. Under every town. Under all of them.

For them to get tired.

The people of the town came out of their houses to look at us.

The Tallis. That’s what they call themselves. Small, pale gold, with silver-grey hair that stood up a little off their heads, all the time, as if there were a storm coming. Very pale eyes. They came out into the street in their nightclothes and stood looking at the arch and the Hyrrani coming through it in iron and the Kasrai and Dory with her net up her arm.

And Mother.

An old woman came forward. Very old. Her hair stood straight up off her head, a hand high, and her eyes were nearly white.

She looked at Mother for a long time.

”She says,” said Dot. ”You’re holding the street up.”

Mother looked down.

She was. I hadn’t noticed. Neither had she. She’d come through the arch onto a town that was floating in the sky, and some part of her had felt the whole town hanging there on the tired hands of everyone in it, and she’d put hers out without thinking and taken a little of the weight.

The old Tallis woman was looking at her feet. Mother’s feet were a finger’s width off the street.

”She says nobody does that,” said Dot. ”Who isn’t Tallis.”

”I do,” said Mother.

The old woman looked at her a moment longer.

Then she held out her hand. Palm down. Flat. Over the street.

And Mother, after a moment, did the same.

They stood like that, the two of them, hands out flat over the stone. And I felt the town go lighter. The whole thing. All at once.

The old woman made a sound. Not a word. A long breath out.

”She says,” said Dot, ”the town says thank you.”

The low town was nine miles east.

Dory had felt it from Avalon. The one that was having trouble. We felt it from the edge of the first town as soon as we’d come through: lower than all the others, much lower, and tilted, one edge nearly touching the water. And the Hungry under it, not waiting any more. Climbing.

The old Tallis woman saw us look.

”She says it’s Fell,” said Dot. ”She says it was the lowest town. The oldest. The most people on it who were too old or too young to lift.” A pause. ”She says they’ve been sending lifters to it all night. From every town. As many as can be spared. She says it’s still going down.”

Mother didn’t wait for anyone.

She lifted herself off the edge of the street. Straight up. And then out, across the gap, nine miles, over the water and the Hungry, toward the low town. Faster than I’ve ever seen her go.

I went after her. The Mom Squad came. Risa took the wing.

I’ll write it the way it went.

We were late.

Fell was going down when we got there.

Tilted. The east edge in the water now, and the Hungry pouring up out of the shallows onto it, into the streets, into the houses on that side. And on the high side, in the main square, a ring.

Tallis. Two hundred of them, maybe more. Standing in a ring in the square with their hands out flat, palms down, the way the old woman had stood with Mother. Holding the town up.

Some of them were already lying down.

Not dead. Not all. Just lying down, where they’d been standing, because they couldn’t stand any more, with their hands still out flat on the stones. Still lifting. Lying down.

Mother landed in the middle of the ring.

She put her hands out.

And Fell came up.

Not all the way. It was too heavy, and too tilted, and half of it was in the water with the Hungry on it. But the east edge came up out of the sea, slowly, streaming, with the Hungry falling off it. And the town levelled. And rose. A little. Then more.

The ones in the ring who were still standing looked at her.

The ones lying down opened their eyes.

Then the Mom Squad came down round her. Ingrid hushed the east side, all of it, everything on the streets there gone still, and lit them. Maura burned the edge of the town where it had touched the water so nothing else could climb. Kyria and Teshka went into the east streets after the ones Ingrid hadn’t got, back to back. Rhiannon and Tiamat and Cleopatra and Isolde and every one of them, the way they’ve stood round Mother since the north field.

I went into the stone of the town itself and asked it to hold together. It was cracking. Old stone, very old, held up for a very long time on tired hands.

And Mother lifted.

Dory got there with the first arch an hour later.

She’d stayed at the first town to hold the way back. She came across the gap with Risa, and stood at the edge of Fell’s square, and put her arm out, and the arch opened behind her onto the red glass on Avalon.

And the Tallis on Fell started going through. The old first, and the very small, carried by the ones who could still walk. Then the lifters, the ones lying down, carried by Hyrrani.

Mother held the town up the whole time.

That’s when I saw the girl.

She was at the edge of the ring. Very small. Four or five. Pale gold, with her silver-grey hair standing straight up off her head like the old woman’s, and a long nightshirt with nothing on her feet.

She was standing next to two people lying down.

They were in the ring. With their hands out flat on the stones. They’d been lifting. All night, the Tallis told us afterward. From the first hour, when Fell started going down, until the end.

They weren’t lifting any more.

The girl wasn’t crying. She was standing next to them, very still, with her hands at her sides. Looking at Mother.

At Mother in the middle of the ring with her hands out, holding up the whole town on her own.

Then the girl walked across the square.

Between the lifters. Past the Hyrrani carrying the ones who couldn’t walk. Past Halloway kneeling beside someone. Straight across, to the middle of the ring, to Mother.

And stood beside her.

Mother didn’t see her at first. She had her eyes shut.

The girl didn’t say anything. She took hold of the hem of Mother’s coat with one hand. Just held it.

And put her other hand out. Flat. Palm down. Over the stones. Next to Mother’s.

A pebble lifted off the square. Very small. A finger’s width.

It hung there, under the girl’s hand, beside Mother’s.

Mother opened her eyes.

She looked down.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t take her hands away; she couldn’t. She was holding up Fell. But she moved, very slightly, the way you move when someone small is leaning on you and you want them to know it’s all right. So the coat hem in the girl’s hand didn’t pull.

The girl didn’t let go.

They stood like that for three hours.

While the Tallis went through Dory’s arch, and the Hyrrani carried the lifters, and the Mom Squad held the east streets, and I held the stone together from inside. Mother in the middle of the square with her hands out, holding up the town. And the girl beside her with one hand on Mother’s coat and the other out flat, holding up her pebble.

Neither of them said a word.

When the last of them were through, Mother let Fell go.

Slowly. She put it down on the water as gently as she could. The way she put the top terrace down on the Marrah’s world. It settled into the shallows with a long low sound, and the sea came up into the streets on the east side, and the Hungry still left in the water came for it.

There was nobody on it any more.

Except us. And the girl.

Mother looked down at her.

”Love,” said Mother. ”We have to go.”

The girl didn’t let go of the coat.

Mother looked over at the two people at the edge of the ring. They’d been carried through by then. The Hyrrani had carried them. They were on the red glass on Avalon, under blankets, with Kwame Osei beside them, who’d be digging for them later, very slowly and very well.

She looked back at the girl.

She didn’t say anything else. She bent down and picked her up. And the girl put her arms round Mother’s neck and her face in Mother’s shoulder and held on.

Mother walked through the arch with her.

We were on the Tallis world for six days.

Thirty-one towns. Every one of them floating over the shallow sea with the Hungry underneath. We brought them all. Dory held the arches, nine at a time, and the Tallis came through by town, the old and the small first, and the lifters last, carried. Mother went to every town and stood in the middle of every ring and took the weight while the lifters went through.

The Mom Squad round her. Every time.

On the sixth day, when the last town was empty, the Tallis did something none of us expected.

They didn’t let the towns down.

They threw them.

The last lifters on the last town, a hundred of them, and Mother, standing in a ring. With their hands flat. And at a word from the old woman with her hair a hand high, they lifted. Not to hold. To throw.

The town went up.

Straight up. Off the sea. Into the sky. Faster and faster. And then, very high, they let go.

And it came down on the Hungry.

They did it with all thirty-one. From the ring on the last town, one after another, all afternoon. Lifted each empty town off the sea, very high, and let it fall.

I asked the old woman why. Afterward. On the red glass.

”She says,” said Dot, ”they weren’t going to leave them anything.”

One million, nine hundred and four thousand Tallis came home. Wren counted them all.

Fell had had sixty thousand, the old woman said. Mostly the old and the young. We brought fifty-one thousand off it. The rest were on the east side when it went into the water before we got there, or in the ring.

The girl’s parents were in the ring.

Her name is Oona.

The old woman told Mother. On the red glass, on the first night. She said Oona’s grandmother was in the ring too. And an uncle. She said there wasn’t anyone else. She said the Tallis lift in families, at the turn of the day, when the towns are heaviest; a child’s first lift is beside their mother, and then their grandmother, and then everyone. She said Oona had lifted beside her mother every evening since she could stand.

She said Oona didn’t have anyone to lift beside any more.

Oona didn’t go to the Tallis.

The Tallis went to the coast south of the Aun’s cliffs, where I made them a long low shore with wide shallow water over sand, the way their world was, and towers on the sandbars they could lift their houses onto if they wanted to. Most of them did. They float over the shallows in the evenings now, a little, for the pleasure of it.

Oona stayed with Mother.

Nobody decided it. The old woman with the hair said she should go with the Tallis, where people lifted the way she did. She said it very kindly. Mother said of course.

Oona went to the coast with the Tallis on the first train.

She came back on the evening one.

On her own. Five years old. With nothing on her feet. Crane had her on the board; he said she got off at the red glass and walked straight up the hill without stopping at the bend, and up the porch steps, and sat down on the top one. Next to Mother.

Mother looked at her.

Oona took hold of the hem of her coat.

She went back to the coast the next morning, because Mother took her. She came back on the evening train again.

On the third day Mother stopped taking her.

She follows Mother everywhere now.

Down to the red glass in the morning, for the arrivals. To the long ward. To the end rooms, and the waiting step, and the trains. Into the kitchen. Out to the garden wall, where the queen is; Oona isn’t frightened of the queen. She stood in front of her head on the first morning and put her hand out flat, palm down, and the queen made a sound Genny says she’s only ever made at her own young.

She stands next to Mother. Not touching. Or holding the coat hem. She doesn’t say much. The Tallis don’t, Dot says, when they’re small.

And whenever Mother lifts anything, Oona lifts too.

The teapot.

That’s how it started. Mother lifts the teapot off the stove sometimes, when her hands are full, the way she has all my life. Not far. Across the kitchen. To the table.

On the fourth morning, the teapot went across the kitchen and there was a cup going across beside it. Very slowly. Wobbling. A finger’s width off the air.

Mother didn’t look round.

She slowed the teapot down. So the cup could keep up.

They landed on the table at the same time.

She lifts with Mother every evening now. At the turn. On the porch, at dusk, when the Tallis lift on their world because that’s when the towns are heaviest.

Mother lifts the porch.

Not much. A finger’s width. The whole porch, with the rail and the steps and the couch and the cups. And Oona stands beside her with her hand out flat and lifts a pebble. And then, by the end of the first month, a cup. And then the cup with tea in it.

And then, one evening, the corner of the porch step. The one she sits on. A finger’s width, at the same time as Mother’s, the two of them together.

Mother put it down very gently. And didn’t say anything.

But I saw her face.

Genny and Garnet came out on the porch the next evening at the turn.

They’d heard. Everyone hears everything. They stood at the rail for a moment, my sisters, who’ve lifted since before they could walk and flown since the queens finished them, and looked at Mother and Oona with their hands out flat.

Then Garnet put her board down. And Genny put her notebook down. And they stood on Mother’s other side, the two of them, and put their hands out flat too.

The porch went up. A finger’s width. Four of them.

”Well,” said Mother, very quietly, when they’d put it down. ”It only took you both your whole lives.”

Genny laughed. Garnet didn’t. Garnet drew it that night: four hands, flat, over a porch step, in a row, the smallest at the end. It’s on the kitchen wall now, beside the big sheet of the grandparents’ rota.

Genny and Garnet lift. I lift. Half my children lift. And not one of us, in all these years, ever stood beside my mother at dusk and lifted the same thing at the same moment, the way the Tallis do, in families.

We were always going somewhere. Up, and out, and away. She was always the one standing still underneath, holding it.

I never knew she’d minded.

I don’t think she knew either. Until there was someone small beside her with a hand out flat.

Oona listens to the names.

Every night. On the porch. At the end, after the lift, when everyone’s gone to bed and Mother sits on the step and says them. Father’s first. Then everyone’s. All the ones she’s ever said. Ferrin’s. The nine Marrah. Tey’s grandson’s.

Oona sits on the step beside her with her hand on the coat hem and listens.

On the thirtieth night, when Mother had finished, Oona said three names.

Very quietly. In Tallis. Dot was asleep in the map room, so nobody translated. But Mother didn’t need it.

She said them back.

The Tallis way. As close as she could get. Three names.

And then she added them. To the end. Every night after.

Ione taught her the words.

She asked to. The first week. She came to Ingrid in the kitchen with her hands folded, very formally, the way Ione asks for anything, and said she’d like to teach the new girl our words. Ingrid asked why.

”Because I know what it’s like,” said Ione, ”to be somewhere new with nobody. And not have any words for it.”

So every afternoon after that, Ione sat on the back step with Oona, the two of them, the girl who’d been a key in a box and the girl from the floating town, and pointed at things.

Cup. Step. Tea. Sky.

Oona said them back. Very carefully. With the Tallis click at the end of every one, which she still hasn’t lost and Ione says she shouldn’t.

Gran. Home. Stay.

Konrad sat on the step above them with the sheet across his knees and pretended to read it. He didn’t turn a page all afternoon. Ingrid says he did the same when Ione was learning to read numbers from him. She says he’s never once in his life been able to look at a sheet while a child was learning something next to him.

On the twentieth afternoon, Ione taught her family.

She didn’t tell anyone she had. Ingrid only found out afterward, from Dot, who’d been listening from the map room.

Halloway saw Oona on the long ward in the second week. Mother brought her. Oona held the coat hem the whole time.

”She’s fine,” said Halloway. ”Small for five. She’ll grow. Avalon will see to that.” She looked at Oona’s hair, standing up off her head. ”Her silver’s not finished. None of the Tallis are. The Sorn never touched them, so nobody ever started it, and it grew on its own, the way the queens’ does. Very slowly. Over generations.” She put the stethoscope away. ”It’s very strong. It’s very old. And it doesn’t want anything done to it.”

Mother looked at her.

”I’m not going to do anything to it,” said Mother.

”I know,” said Halloway. ”I’m telling Lucas.” She looked at me in the doorway. ”Don’t.”

I didn’t.

On the forty-first night, Oona asked.

I wasn’t meant to hear. I was in the kitchen. Everyone hears everything in that house.

It was after the names. Mother was still on the step. Oona was beside her, holding the coat. The porch was very quiet. The lamp was going down.

”Gran Dot,” said Oona.

That’s what she calls her. Everyone does, all the children. She’d heard them.

”Yes, love.”

Oona didn’t say anything for a while. She held the coat. She looked at her feet.

Then she said it. In our words. Very carefully. Ione had been teaching her. Ione had asked to, the first week, because she said she knew what it was like to be somewhere new with nobody, and Ingrid had said yes.

”Will you be my family?”

Mother didn’t answer straight away.

I want to write that. She didn’t answer straight away, because she never does, with the things that matter. She thought about it. Properly. The way she thought about it when Ione asked Ingrid and Konrad, and when Ithel came to Dinraal’s window. The way she’s thought about every child who’s ever come into that house.

Then she put her arm round Oona. And pulled her in. So her head was against Mother’s side.

”Yes,” said Mother.

That’s all.

That’s all she said. Yes. And Oona put her face against Mother’s coat and held on, and Mother held her, and the lamp went out, and they sat there in the dark on the step.

I stayed in the kitchen.

I didn’t go out.

It wasn’t mine.

Konrad wrote her on the front of the sheet the next morning.

Not the back. The front. Where Ione wrote her own name, the first person ever written there. Under Avalon. Home. All.

He didn’t write all of it. He held out the pen to Oona, and Ione came round the table and put her hand over Oona’s on the pen, the way Konrad once put his over hers, and between them they made a letter. Very badly. An O, nearly.

Then Konrad wrote the rest, in his best hand.

Oona Dask.

He looked at Mother across the long table before he wrote the second word, and Mother nodded.

Ingrid found Mother in the garden that morning, by the wall, with the queen’s head on the stones beside them and Oona asleep in Mother’s lap in the sun.

She sat down on the bench. They’ve sat on that bench together since Earth, the two of them, talking about the war and the northern front and the Kesh ford, and about Trevor and Konrad and everything that came after.

”Well,” said Ingrid. ”Look at us.”

Mother looked at her.

”Two old women from the northern front,” said Ingrid, ”with a key from a box and a girl from a floating town.” She looked at Oona. ”Nobody told me this was how it went, after.”

”Nobody told me anything,” said Mother. ”I was an orphan in a dome. I made it up as I went.”

”You did all right,” said Ingrid.

Mother didn’t say anything to that. She looked down at Oona, asleep, with her hand still curled round a fold of Mother’s coat even in her sleep.

”Ione taught her the word,” said Ingrid. ”Family. On the back step. She didn’t tell me. Dot did.”

”I know,” said Mother. ”Dot told me too.”

They sat there for a while. In the sun. With the queen’s head on the stones, very still, listening, the way she listens to everything that happens in that garden.

”When Konrad knelt on the red glass and asked Ione,” said Ingrid, in the end. Quietly. ”I was standing behind him.” She looked at her hands. ”I’ve never been so frightened in my life. Not at the ford. Not in the ward. I didn’t know if I’d be enough.”

”And?”

”She wrote her own name on the front of the sheet,” said Ingrid. ”Very badly. And he wrote Friese after it, and his hand was shaking so much it’s barely Friese.” She was smiling. ”Best thing he ever signed.”

Genny cried. Garnet drew her. Dory checked her, at breakfast, with everyone else, and said there you are the way she does, and Oona looked at her very seriously and said it back.

Kesh frowned at her and made it rain on her. Oona lifted the rain. Every drop. A finger’s width off her head, all round her, hanging in the air.

Kesh stopped frowning.

They’ve been inseparable since. It’s very wet.

I asked Mother that night. On the porch. After the names.

”A sister,” I said. ”At my age.”

Mother laughed.

”You’ve got two already,” she said. ”And thirteen children. And a billion people who think you’re a king.” She looked at the step beside her, where Oona was asleep with her head in Mother’s lap and her hand on the coat hem. ”You can manage one more sister.”

”I can.”

”Good,” said Mother.

She put her hand on Oona’s hair. It stood up under her palm, very slightly, silver-grey, like a storm coming.

”Your father would have liked her,” said Mother. ”He always wanted another one.”

At dusk the next evening, at the turn, Mother lifted the porch. A finger’s width. The whole of it.

And Oona, beside her, with her hand out flat, lifted the step.

Together.

Down on the north field, the line for the Standing turned round to look. It does every evening now. Two hundred people, maybe more, stopping what they’re doing at the turn to watch an old woman and a small girl hold up a porch a finger’s width off the hill. Varra watches too. She doesn’t say anything.

Kesh rains on them both, very gently, from her basket by the door.

Oona holds the rain up too. Every drop. Just above Mother’s hair.

Days 5669–5781. Lift.

Two hundred and six thousand names, and nobody near enough to call. Dory heard a world holding its towns up; Mother took her hand and said: they lift, like me. The Tallis: small, pale gold, hair that stands up like a storm coming, a whole world of floating towns over a shallow sea and the Hungry underneath waiting for them to get tired. Mother was holding the street up before she knew it. Fell, the lowest and oldest, going down; we were late. Mother stood in the middle of the ring and Fell came up. A girl of five at the edge of the ring, beside two people who’d stopped lifting, walked across the square and took hold of Mother’s coat and lifted a pebble. Three hours. Thirty-one towns; the Tallis threw them on the Hungry. 1,904,000. Oona came back on the evening train, three times. The teapot and the cup together. The lift at the turn. Genny and Garnet lifted beside them: it only took you both your whole lives. Ione taught her the words; on the twentieth afternoon, family. Three names added to the end. Will you be my family? Yes. Ione put her hand over Oona’s on the pen for the O; Konrad wrote the rest: Oona Dask. Kesh rained on her; she lifted the rain. Your father would have liked her.