Scarecrow

We felt her on the forty-first night.

Both of us. Dory and me. At the same moment. On the porch, after the names, with Mother on her step and Oona asleep against her and Sefa on the bench by the kitchen door, twisting nothing at her side.

Something very far off asked a world to let go of itself.

No. Told.

Dory stood up so fast her cup went over.

I didn’t stand up. I couldn’t. I sat on the porch step with my hand flat on the boards, the way I’d been sitting, and felt it go through me like weather. Not a moon this time. Not anything small. A whole world. Its crust. Its seas. Its stone, all the way down, and something at the heart of it, very hot, very heavy, very old, being told to stop holding on.

And the child at the centre of the telling.

”Lio,” said Dory.

Sefa stopped twisting.

”Where?” said Mother.

Dory had her eyes shut. The net was out. Further than I’ve ever seen it. Past the Watch. Past Root. Past where the body of the Hungry went after Caddoc, and past where the four hundred calls stopped, and further.

”A world,” she said. ”Covered. All over. Every bit of it.” She swallowed. ”It’s the Hungry. It’s where they come from. Not the body, the place the body comes out of. Millions of them, in the ground, in the sea, in the air, all of them growing. All the time.”

She opened her eyes.

”They sent her to break it,” said Dory. ”The whole world. To kill them where they’re born.” Her voice didn’t shake. ”And she’s doing it. And it’s killing her.”

I could feel that too.

I’d felt it on Tiel’s moon. The telling, and under it, very far down, somebody screaming. On Tiel it was a moon, and she’d stopped when they said return.

This was a world.

And nobody had said return.

Okafor was in the doorway. She’d felt us feel it, the way she does.

”How long?” she said.

”Not long,” said Dory. ”She’s nearly through. The heart’s starting to go.” She looked at Okafor. ”When it goes, the whole world goes. Everything on it. Everything near it.”

”Her ship?”

Dory shut her eyes again.

Then she made a sound I’ve never heard her make.

”It’s gone,” said Dory. ”There was a ship waiting for her. On the ground. To take her back in when she’d finished. Something ate it.”

”Something?”

”I don’t know what it is,” said Dory. ”It’s Hungry. But it’s not like the others.” She swallowed. ”It’s very big. It’s bigger than anything. It came up out of the ground and it ate the ship and then it went back down.” She opened her eyes. ”There are more of them. In the ground. Under her. Waiting.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then Okafor said: ”Everyone.”

And Dory said: ”No. Not everyone. There isn’t time for everyone.”

She looked at me.

”There’s time for us,” said Dory.

I’ll write who went, because Andraste says the children should know, and because it was very fast, and I want them all down.

My wives. All five. Luna and Sera and Risa and Hana and Andraste with Holdfast.

Dinraal and Isolde, because when I reached for them through the silver they were already standing in their courtyard in New Hearth, in their armour, with Bahamut in Tiamat’s arms and Ithel holding Tiamat’s sleeve.

Mother and Ingrid. At Dory’s back. Because Risa was going to be cutting, and somebody had to be at Dory’s back, and Mother said she’d held a girl up off a moon through a window and she could hold her up off a world. And Ingrid said if Dot was going, the Hush was going.

Halloway, counting.

And me.

Kyria cut the arch on the red glass in the time it takes to say a name.

To Dory’s net. Which was stretched further than any net has ever been stretched, through the whole dark, to a world with a child on it telling it to die.

Sefa came down the hill while Kyria was cutting.

She didn’t say anything. She came across the red glass in the dark, very small, very bent, with her hair loose, and stopped in front of Dory. And put her hand up to the side of her own head. And twisted a knot into it. Quickly. Very tight.

Then she put Corin’s comb in Dory’s hand.

And closed Dory’s fingers over it.

Holt came down the hill as Kyria finished cutting.

At a run. In his coat, with no cap. Crane behind him, white, with the board under his arm, because he’d seen the marker for the arch go up before anyone told him.

Holt stopped at the edge of the red glass. He looked at us at the arch. Twelve of us. And at the arch.

”I’m first,” said Holt. ”I’m always first.”

”Not tonight, Ezra,” said Okafor.

Holt looked at her.

”It’s a world coming apart,” said Okafor. Very quietly. ”Full of things we’ve never seen. You’d be first and you’d be dead and they’d have to carry you, and there isn’t time to carry anyone.” She put her hand on his arm. ”Tonight you’re last. You stand here and you’re the one they come back to.”

Holt didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then he took his coat off and put it round Sefa’s shoulders. And stood at the foot of the arch with his hands behind his back, the way he stood on the wall at Scarecrow, a long time ago.

Crane put the board down on the red glass and moved twelve markers out.

We went through.

I’ve seen the Hungry. I’ve written them. The arm past Hearth, bigger than a sun. The body over Caddoc. The sealed arch on Hyrran, a long time ago, when I saw for the first time what they do to a world and turned it into light.

I had never seen where they come from.

It was alive. All of it.

That’s the only way I can put it. We came through the arch onto ground that moved. Not shook. Moved. Breathed. Brown and black and wet and warm, with things in it, all of it, every inch, growing. The sky was full. Not dark; full. Fliers, millions, so thick the light came through them brown. And under the ground, under our feet, I could feel them, everywhere, all the way down, in the stone, in the seas that weren’t seas any more, in the heat.

Waiting to be born.

And under all of it, the world screaming.

Not the Hungry. The world.

I could feel it. Every atom. It had been a world once, with rock and water and sky, and something had covered it, and eaten into it, and turned every part of it into somewhere to grow. And now a child was telling all of it to let go.

And it was. Slowly. From the heart outward.

I could feel the heart going. Very deep. Very hot. Something that had held together since before there were Hungry, since before there were Sorn, being told to stop. And starting to.

”There,” said Dory.

She pointed.

Not far. A mile. Across ground that breathed. On a rise. A small shape. Silver-grey. Standing on the living ground with both hands out, flat.

Lio.

And round her, coming up out of the ground—

I don’t have a word for what they were. Nobody does. We’ve called them the new ones since, because nobody can think of anything else, and Halvane’s people are still arguing about it.

They were Hungry. You could see that. The same brown and black, the same wings, the same mouths. But they were big. The size of the walking engines on Hyrran. Bigger. Some of them the size of a Hand. They came up out of the ground round the rise where Lio was standing, slowly, the way something very heavy comes up out of water, and they had plates on them like armour, and more mouths than anything should have, and some of them were already turning toward us.

And one of them was turning toward Lio.

”They’re losing,” said Isolde. Very fast. Beside me. In her armour, with her leaves already up round her, ten thousand of them. ”That’s why. The grey ones and the stations and us. They’ve been losing.” Her voice was very level. ”So they made bigger ones.”

”Dinraal,” I said.

Dinraal didn’t answer. He was already moving.

Dory didn’t go to Lio.

That’s what I want written first. She could have. She could have scattered across that mile in a breath and been beside her.

She didn’t.

She knelt down. On the breathing ground. With Mother and Ingrid on either side of her. And put both hands flat on it.

And asked the world to hold on.

I felt her do it.

Everyone did. Every one of us, through the silver, all at once. Not like the net. Not like the arches. Bigger than either. Down through the ground, through the brown and the black and the growing, through the stone under that, through the seas and the heat, to the heart of the world. Where Lio was telling it to let go.

And Dory said: Wait.

Not stop. She couldn’t make it stop. Lio was still telling it, and Lio’s collar was very deep, and whatever was on the other end of it was very strong. Dory couldn’t undo the telling.

She could ask the world to wait.

Not yet. Hold on. Just a little longer. Someone’s coming.

The world held.

Halloway’s hand was on her wrist. Counting. Out loud. Already.

Mother had her hands flat on the air beside her, not lifting Dory, lifting the ground under Dory, so nothing could be told to swallow her. Ingrid stood at her back with her hands up and the hush already in them, waiting for anything that came.

And Dory knelt on the breathing ground with her hands flat and her eyes shut, holding a world together.

The fliers came for her first. Of course they did. Thousands, out of the brown sky, all at once, toward the girl on her knees who was keeping their world from ending.

Ingrid hushed them.

All of them. The whole sky over Dory. Everything gone still. Wings stopped, mouths stopped, the brown light itself stopped. And then the lightning, small and white and exact, one for every one of them, all at once, in the silence.

They fell round Dory like leaves.

Ingrid didn’t lower her hands. She stood at Dory’s back with the silver-grey ribbon on her wrist and her hands up and the Hush in them, for the whole of it, and nothing that came down out of that sky reached her granddaughter. Not one.

”Go,” said Dory. Very quietly. ”Dad. Go.”

We went.

I’ll write it the way it was. Fast. All together. The way we fought on Isca, when we learned how.

Luna’s ice first. Under all of us. A road. Straight across the mile of breathing ground, white and hard and so cold the ground under it stopped moving where she laid it. We ran on it. All eight of us.

Sera above us. Burning. Not fire; she was the fire, the whole of her, the way she goes when she stops being careful. So hot that the fliers coming down on us from the brown sky turned to light before they reached her.

Risa over Sera. Lightning. Not bolts. Rain. Lightning coming down out of the brown sky all round us like rain, everywhere, every flier it touched gone white and then gone.

Hana at the back. Taking the air. Out of in front of anything that came at us on the ground, so it couldn’t breathe, so it fell. And putting it into us. So we could keep running.

Then the new ones.

The first one came up out of the ground in front of us. Across Luna’s road. The size of a walking engine, plated, with its mouths open. Luna’s ice went into its mouths and didn’t stop it. Sera’s fire went over its plates and didn’t stop it. Risa’s lightning hit it and it shook and kept coming.

Dinraal’s armour opened.

I’ve seen him do it on Isca. Guns. Every gun he can think of, out of the silver, all at once. On Isca it was enough for anything.

It wasn’t enough for this.

It kept coming.

Andraste went past him.

Holdfast in both hands. The white ribbon on her wrist. She went up the side of the new one the way she went up the side of the Ashen ship over Hyrran, up its plates, very fast, and at the top she put Holdfast down through the middle of it.

Holdfast went through.

Holdfast goes through anything. There’s a door in the middle of it that doesn’t shut, and anything that hits it hard enough to break it goes through the door. The new one’s plates hit it very hard.

They went through the door.

The new one came apart.

”One,” said Andraste. At the top of it. Breathing hard. ”Lucas. They take one of these each.”

There were eight more coming up out of the ground.

Luna took the fourth.

She doesn’t go to the front. She never has. She lays the road and holds the cold and keeps everyone’s feet under them. But the fourth came up out of the ground beside her road, right beside her, and turned its mouths toward the rest of us running past, and Luna stopped.

And put her hands on it.

Her armour came up round her, ice, the way the queens gave it to her. And then the ice went out of her hands into the new one. Not over its plates. Into it. Through every gap Isolde had shown us, into the inside of it, where it was warm and wet and growing.

And froze it.

All the way through. Solid. A thing the size of a walking engine, standing on the breathing ground with its mouths open, white with frost from the inside out.

Sera touched it on her way past. Just touched it. With one hand, the way you’d touch someone’s shoulder.

It went from frozen to fire so fast it cracked into a thousand pieces.

”Four,” said Luna. Very calm. And ran on.

Risa took the fifth and sixth together. She doesn’t do anything one at a time. She brought her rain of lightning down into one place, all of it, the whole storm she’d been spreading over us, into the two of them coming up out of the ground side by side. Andraste says it was the brightest thing she’s ever seen. Brighter than the stations’ guns.

When it stopped, the two of them were standing very still. Black. Smoking.

Then they fell over.

Risa didn’t look at them. She was already looking at the rise. At the small shape on it.

”Faster,” said Risa.

Isolde’s leaves went into the second.

Ten thousand of them, Hearth silver, every one a blade, turning. She didn’t send them at its plates. She sent them at the places between. All ten thousand. At once. Into every gap in its armour.

It stopped.

Dinraal put every gun he had into the gaps after them.

It came down.

”Two,” said Isolde. Very calmly. Then she looked at Dinraal. ”Bahamut’s going to ask what we did tonight.”

”Tell him,” said Dinraal.

I took the third.

I’m not going to write how. I asked. It was very big and very old and it didn’t want to be anything else, and I didn’t give it a choice.

Salt.

The seventh and eighth came up together, very close, behind us, between us and the road back. Dinraal turned round to face them. He didn’t say anything. His armour opened again, the way it does, and this time it wasn’t guns. Isolde told me afterward she’d never seen him make it before. One thing. Very long. Silver. Out of every piece of Hearth’s silver on him at once, so that for a moment he stood on the breathing ground in nothing but his clothes.

A blade. Like Holdfast. Longer.

”My father’s,” said Dinraal. Very quietly. ”Mother showed me. Once. The shape of it.”

He cut the seventh in half with it. Then the eighth. Then the silver came back round him as armour as if it had never left.

Isolde looked at him.

”You never told me you could do that,” she said.

”I never needed to,” said Dinraal.

Hana took the ninth.

She doesn’t fight. Not like the rest of us. She keeps people breathing. But the ninth came up out of the ground right in front of Lio’s rise, between us and the child, and opened every one of its mouths at once.

Hana took the air out of it.

Not out of in front of it. Out of it. All of it. Every breath it had, every bit of air in every part of it, all at once. She just asked the air to come out.

It did.

The ninth stood there on the breathing ground with its mouths open and nothing in it. And then it went down, very slowly, like a sail when the wind stops.

Hana walked past it without looking.

Then we were through.

At the top of the rise. On the living ground. With the new ones behind us, and the brown sky over us, and Risa’s lightning and Sera’s fire and Isolde’s leaves and Dinraal’s guns all round us in a ring, holding.

And Lio in the middle of it.

She was standing with her hands out flat.

Her eyes were open and there was still nothing in them. And her nose was bleeding. Both sides. Down her face, very dark, onto the collar at her throat. And her ears.

Both ears.

She was very small. She was smaller than Kesh. And she was standing on a world that was trying to come apart under her hands, telling it to, because something on the other end of a collar was telling her to, and every atom she told was tearing something inside her.

I could feel it. Every one.

I picked her up.

She didn’t fight. She didn’t do anything. Her hands stayed out, flat, still telling. I held her against my chest with her hands still out and her face against my coat and the blood going into it.

She was so light.

”The collar,” said Hana. Behind me. Very fast. ”Lucas. If she’s still telling, Dory can’t hold it forever.”

I put my hand on the collar.

It was Sorn. Black. Very thin. Very close. I’ve turned more collars to sand than anyone alive. I’ve done it for Ingrid. For Crane. For a hundred thousand people on One.

This one didn’t want to go.

It was very deep. Halvane was right. It wasn’t round her throat; it was in her. All the way down. In every atom of her silver, finished, told what to do. If I took it the way I take collars, all at once, it would take her with it.

So I asked.

Slowly. One atom at a time. The way Dory asks. You’re not hers. Let go of her. You were never meant to be part of her. Let go.

It let go.

Not all of it. Not all at once. The outside first. The black at her throat going grey, then pale, then sand, running down my coat. And under it, deeper, the rest, still in her silver, still telling.

But the telling stopped.

Her hands came down.

Dory felt it. Through the ground. A mile away. I felt her feel it.

The world stopped being told.

And it heaved.

Because it had been going for a long time. Long before we came. The heart had started to let go before Dory ever touched it, and Dory had only been holding, not undoing. And now nobody was telling it to let go, and nobody was telling it to hold, and it didn’t know which it was.

I felt the heart of the world turn over.

Very deep. Very hot. Very heavy. All the way down.

And start to go anyway.

”Dad,” said Dory. Through the silver. Very quiet. ”Get out. Now. I can’t hold it much longer.”

That’s when I saw them.

The Sorn ships.

They were there. All along. Very high, over the brown sky, at the edge of the world’s air, where Dory’s net hadn’t been looking because Dory’s net was looking at Lio. Grey ships. Nine of them. Sitting very still. Watching.

Waiting to see if the child finished the world before the world finished the child.

Not one of them had come down for her. When the new one ate her ship. Not one.

They’d been going to let her die there. With the world. After she’d done what she was made for.

I’m going to write this. I’m not proud of it. I’m writing it because Mother says you write the things you’re not proud of, or you’re lying.

I gave Lio to Hana.

And I went up.

I don’t remember all of it. Andraste does. She’s told me. I’ve asked her not to tell the children.

I went up through the brown sky. Not flying; scattering. All of me, all at once, up past the fliers and the brown and the lightning, to the edge of the world’s air, where the nine grey ships were.

And I didn’t ask.

The first ship I touched went to sand.

All of it. Not the hull. All of it. Everything in it that was Sorn, every grey one, every wall, every engine, every atom, all at once. Sand. In the dark over a dying world. Drifting.

The second I didn’t bother with sand.

I’ve made small suns before. On Caddoc. On the sealed world, the first time, when Andraste and the Mom Squad and I saw what the Hungry do. I know how. You take the smallest atoms and ask them to be one instead of two. And they let go of everything they’ve been holding, all at once, and it’s light.

I didn’t ask.

The second ship was light.

The other seven turned to run.

Andraste says I didn’t let them.

And then the Hungry.

The new ones, coming up out of the ground round the rise where my wives and Dinraal and Isolde were standing in a ring with Lio in Hana’s arms. I looked down at them from the edge of the air, and something in me that I’ve kept very quiet my whole life, since the rim of the canyon and the sixty-one, since the first dawn, stood up.

I put my hand out.

Andraste says the whole of the ground round the rise went white.

Not salt. Not light. White. Every one of the new ones, every flier in the brown sky over the rise, everything that was Hungry for a mile in every direction, all at once. She says it didn’t go to salt or to light; it just stopped being anything at all. She says it was as if I’d asked every atom of it to forget it had ever been put together.

Except I didn’t ask.

Hana stopped me.

She didn’t come up. She couldn’t; she can’t fly the way the others can, not that high. She stood on the white ground with Lio in her arms and looked up at me at the edge of the world’s air.

And breathed.

Not for herself. For me. The way she does. Through the silver. All the way up. Into my chest. The air I’d stopped noticing I wasn’t taking.

Lucas.

That’s all. My name. With the breath.

I came down.

I don’t remember coming down. Hana says I came down very slowly, the way Mother puts things down, and stood on the white ground beside her, and looked at Lio in her arms, and didn’t say anything for a long time.

Lio’s eyes were closed. Her nose had stopped bleeding. Her ears had stopped.

She was breathing.

”Dad,” said Dory.

Through the silver. Very small.

”Please.”

We ran.

All of us. Back down Luna’s road, which was still there, white and hard, across a mile of ground that wasn’t breathing any more, because there wasn’t anything in it left to breathe. Toward the arch. Toward Dory, kneeling with her hands flat and her eyes shut, with Mother lifting the ground under her and Ingrid at her back with the Hush in her hands and Halloway counting very loudly now. Very loudly.

I could feel the heart of the world coming apart. All the way down. Faster.

And Dory holding it. Just. With everything she had.

Halloway was shouting.

I’d never heard Halloway shout. She doesn’t. She was shouting a number, over and over, and the number was Dory’s heart, and it was wrong.

We got to the arch.

Hana went through first with Lio. Then Sera, then Luna, then Andraste, then Dinraal and Isolde. Then Risa, who didn’t want to, who turned at the arch and looked at her daughter kneeling on the ground with her hands flat, and I said go, and Risa went.

Then Halloway. Then Ingrid. Then Mother.

Mother let go of the ground under Dory last of all. On the red glass side. Through the arch.

And then it was me and Dory.

”Dory,” I said. ”Let go. Now.”

She didn’t.

”Not yet,” said Dory. Very quietly. Her eyes still shut. ”There’s something on the other side.”

”What?”

”The world,” said Dory. ”It’s going to go. When it goes, it’ll go everywhere. Hundreds of miles. More.” Her hands didn’t move. ”There’s a grey ship. One. On the far side. The one that ran. It’s got people in it. Stock. Just under. Like the ones on the north field.” She swallowed. ”If I let go now, it’s in the way.”

I looked at her.

She’d felt them. A whole world screaming, and Lio, and the heart, and us running, and the new ones, and me at the edge of the air doing what I did. And under all of it she’d felt one grey ship running for the dark with people in it who were somebody, before.

”How long?” I said.

”Not long,” said Dory. ”It’s almost out.”

I knelt down beside her. On the ground that wasn’t breathing. And put my hands flat. Next to hers.

And held with her.

It was the heaviest thing I’ve ever held. I want that written. Heavier than the ship over Tiel. Heavier than the top terrace, which Mother held. Heavier than Hearth. A whole world’s heart, deciding to come apart, and the two of us on our knees asking it to wait.

Just a little longer.

Someone’s still on their way out.

”There,” said Dory.

And let go.

I had her before she fell. I don’t know how. I had her up off the ground and through the arch in the same moment, and the arch closed behind us, Kyria’s cutters slamming it from the red glass side the moment we were through, and behind it, very far away, through the silver, I felt the world go.

All of it.

Everything on it. Everything that was being born there. Everything that would ever have come out of it.

Gone.

We were on the red glass.

In the dark. Everyone. My wives, Dinraal and Isolde, Mother and Ingrid and Halloway, Okafor, Kyria and her cutters with their blades still up. The whole house had come down the hill. Sefa, very small, at the front, with her hair still knotted tight at the side.

Hana on her knees with Lio in her arms.

And me, with Dory.

Sefa went to Lio first.

Before anyone. Past Halloway, past Okafor, past Holt, in his coat, too big for her. She went straight across the red glass to where Hana was kneeling with Lio in her arms, and knelt down beside them, very slowly, the way the old do.

Lio’s eyes were closed. Her face was all dried blood. The collar was gone from her throat; there was a pale mark where it had been. She was grey all over, silver-grey, and very small, and breathing.

Sefa didn’t say anything.

She put her hand on Lio’s head. On the side. Where the hair would have been.

And twisted. Gently. Nothing. Into a knot.

And Lio’s hand, at her side, against Hana’s coat, moved.

Very small. The fingers. Against each other. Twisting.

Sefa made a sound I’m not going to write.

She stayed there. With her hand on Lio’s head. Twisting. Over and over. Very slowly. While Hana held them both.

Lio didn’t open her eyes. Not then. But her fingers didn’t stop.

Her nose was bleeding.

Both sides. Heavily. Down her face, onto her coat. Halloway was there before I’d got her down, with her hand on Dory’s wrist and the other on her neck.

Dory opened her eyes.

They were black.

Not dark. Black. All of them. The whites. The rings of silver that every one of my children has round their eyes. All of it. Black. Like the sky between stars.

I knew them.

Mine went on the cadet field. A long time ago. A faulty valve, and gas coming out of the ground across the whole field, a football field of it, flammable, with the cadets standing in it. Luna looked at me across the field and said two words. All of it. And I turned all of it into something that couldn’t hurt anyone, and fell down.

When I woke up, my eyes were black.

Okafor gave me Dusk that week. Glasses. Father made them, out of another pair of glasses and soot, dark, so the light stays out. I’ve worn them most of my life. Kyria saw me without them, on the salt of Caddoc. Crane saw Father’s go, when Crane was nineteen and holding a clipboard, the day Father’s eyes went black and he could see all the way down into anything.

Father’s eyes. Mine. Now hers.

Once they go, they don’t go back. You can see down into the atoms of anything you look at, all the way, every one, the way other people see a room. And you can change more of them, faster, than you ever could before. I know. It happened to me, and nobody told me what it was, because the only person who could have was gone. All I had was the glasses he left.

She looked up at me with them.

And I could see her seeing. Down into me. Into my coat, and the blood on it, and the atoms of the red glass under us, all the way down. The way I see.

Her hand was still closed. Tight. Round something. I opened it, very gently.

Corin’s comb. The rough wooden one he made for Sefa. Dory had held it the whole time. On her knees on the breathing ground, holding a world together, with a child’s comb in her fist.

”Did they get out?” said Dory. ”The ship. The people.”

I couldn’t say anything.

Mother knelt down on her other side. On the red glass. And looked at Dory’s eyes for a long time. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t look away.

She’s seen them before. Twice. On the man she married, and on the boy she raised.

She put her hand on Dory’s face. Very gently.

”There you are,” said Mother. Very quietly. ”Your grandfather’s eyes.”

”Yes, love,” said Mother. ”They got out.”

She doesn’t know that. Nobody did. She said it anyway.

Dory closed her black eyes.

”Good,” she said.

I took Dusk out of my coat pocket. I always have them. Father’s glasses, dark, with the soot in the lenses.

I didn’t put them on her. Not yet. I folded them, and put them in her hand. Next to Corin’s comb.

Days 6703–6704. Black.

Lio told a world to let go: where the Hungry are born, all of it alive, every inch. Her ship was eaten by something new. Dory: there’s time for us. Holt: I’m first. Okafor: tonight you’re last; you’re the one they come back to. Sefa knotted her hair and put Corin’s comb in Dory’s hand. Dory knelt and asked the world to wait. Luna’s road, Sera burning, Risa’s rain of lightning, Hana’s air. The new ones: Hungry the size of walking engines, plated, because they’ve been losing. Holdfast through the first; Isolde’s leaves into the gaps of the second; I took the third; Luna froze the fourth from the inside and Sera shattered it; Risa put the whole storm into the fifth and sixth; Dinraal made his father’s blade and cut the seventh and eighth; Hana took the air out of the ninth. Lio’s nose and ears bleeding, hands still out. I asked the collar off one atom at a time and she stopped. Nine grey ships had watched and not come down. I gave her to Hana and went up and didn’t ask. Sand. Light. The rest. Then everything Hungry for a mile went white. Hana breathed my name up to me. Halloway shouting. Dory: not yet, there’s one ship on the far side with people in it. I knelt and held with her. There. The world went. Sefa twisted nothing on Lio’s head and Lio’s fingers moved. Dory’s nose was bleeding; Corin’s comb in her fist. Her eyes were black: Father’s eyes, mine, which went on the cadet field when Luna said all of it; now she can see all the way down. I put Dusk in her hand next to Corin’s comb. Mother: there you are, your grandfather’s eyes. Yes, love, they got out. Good.