The Greykeep Chronicles

Thor came through the Concordia gate at five in the morning with her hammer over her shoulder and a loaf of Concordian black bread under her arm, half eaten.

”Where is it?” she said, in the lower hall.

”I don’t know yet,” I said.

”Then why are we standing here?”

”Because I don’t know yet.”

Thor looked at me. Then she tore off a piece of the loaf and handed it to me and sat down on the bottom step of the east stair to wait, with her hammer across her knees, and didn’t say anything else at all. Which, for Thor, is the kindest thing she knows how to do.

* * *

I’d been on the east wall since three, trying.

The thread was there. I could feel it, faintly, the way I’d felt it in the chapel. Salt and cold iron and that sour, hungry singing, going away from Greykeep. But it was so thin. Every time I reached for it, it slid off, like trying to pick up a hair from a stone floor with your fingertips.

West, I thought. Or south. Or both. It wasn’t enough.

I’d folded to my father across a mountain range. I could feel Pim’s lamp from this wall. And I couldn’t follow one torn scrap of a goddess I’d known my whole life.

* * *

Elenos came down at half past five.

He’s the youngest of us. Thirteen this winter. He looks like my mother, all dark eyes and careful hands, and he’s the quietest person in the house, quieter than Ansel, and for most of my life I didn’t pay enough attention to him. I’m trying to do better. He doesn’t make it easy; he never asks for anything.

He sat down on the step beside Thor without a word. Thor gave him a piece of bread too.

”You can’t find it,” said Elenos.

”No.”

”I heard you trying. All night. From my room.” He chewed his bread. ”You sound like a door that won’t shut.”

* * *

I should explain something about my father’s children. Not just Carol and me. All of us.

People forget it, because the twins are what everybody talks about. But my father is a god, and he has seven children by two mothers, and every one of us is at least half of what he is. Every one. Not one of us is only mortal. It comes out differently in each of us, the way the same river comes out differently in a mill-race and a still pool.

Roderic’s comes out in the weather; his temper brings clouds up over the east wall, and always has, and he’s spent his whole life apologizing to the laundry. Caitlin counts things that can’t be counted and is never once wrong. Faelan’s ledger always balances, even when the numbers shouldn’t, and he collects gods the way other boys collect beetles, and the gods let him. Little Mirelle lights lamps without a taper and thinks everyone can.

And Elenos hears.

Not the way you and I hear. He hears what things are. Every person, every god, every place, has a sound underneath it, he says, the way a bell has a note even when nobody’s ringing it. Helena is a kettle just before it whistles. My father is the wind before snow. Carol is ice ticking on a window. I’m a door opening in another room.

Since he was nine, he’s sat with the dying in the long ward of the Havenreach infirmary, two or three days a week, and says their names at the end. He hears the Keeper of Roads coming long before anybody else.

I hadn’t thought to ask him. That’s the truth of it. I’d been up on the east wall for three hours trying to do it myself, and I hadn’t once thought to go and knock on my little brother’s door.

* * *

”Elenos,” I said. ”Would you listen for it? For me? You can say no.”

He looked at me for a long time with his dark careful eyes.

”I’d have to listen to her first,” he said. ”Meriel. To know what’s missing. I’d have to hear the hole.” He looked down at his bread. ”I’d have to ask her.”

”Then ask her.”

”I already did,” said Elenos. ”At four. She wrote yes on Mary’s slate.” He stood up and brushed the crumbs off. ”I was just waiting for you to ask me.”

* * *

Meriel was in the chapel. She hadn’t left it. She was sitting on the front bench with Soren beside her and Ilyra on her stool, and the one candle in the chipped blue holder burning in front of her, and she’d relit perhaps twenty others in the night. Not all of them. Just twenty. As if she were going one row at a time.

Elenos knelt down in front of her. He didn’t touch her. He just shut his eyes and tilted his head, the way he does, the way a dog does when it hears its name from very far away.

He was quiet for a long time.

”She sounds like a chapel,” he said at last, very softly. ”When everybody’s gone home. And the candles are still lit.” He swallowed. ”That’s always been her sound. Ever since I was small.”

”And now?” I said.

”It’s still that,” said Elenos. ”But there should be something else. Underneath.” He frowned. ”There should be two people, saying the same name, at the same time. Very quietly. Over and over. That’s the part that’s gone.” He opened his eyes and looked at Meriel. ”I’m sorry. I can hear where it was. It’s very quiet where it was.”

Meriel put her hand on his head.

* * *

Then he stood up and went to the chapel door and stood on the step, looking out at the gray dawn over the inner court. And shut his eyes again. And listened.

For a long time. Longer than I’d have thought anyone could stand still. Thor came and leaned on the doorframe with her hammer and didn’t fidget once.

”There,” said Elenos.

He pointed. Not west. South. Southwest.

”It’s crying,” he said. ”Two people saying the same name. But wrong. All in one voice. Like someone saying their own name to themselves in the dark, so they won’t forget it.” He opened his eyes. ”It’s by the sea. Somewhere south. I can’t tell how far. It’s very far.”

And as soon as he’d said it, I could feel it too. Not much. But the thread that had been sliding off my fingers all night was suddenly a little thicker, a little warmer, because now I knew which way to reach.

”Thank you,” I said.

”You should have asked me at three,” said Elenos. And went off to find his breakfast.

* * *

South by the sea was a long coastline. A hundred harbors, at least, between Westmere and the southern capes. We’d need days to search it.

That was when Selvane came down the east stair in Tamar’s wife’s jersey, with Tessaly in its cup, and Benjamin a step behind her with his boots in his hand, and said:

”Something sang in one of my harbors. Three nights ago.”

We all turned.

”I felt it,” said Selvane. ”I didn’t know what it was. Every harbor in the Accord is mine now. Since the vote. I can feel them all, the way you’d feel your fingers.” She held up her free hand and spread it. ”I’ve been learning them. One a night. Like Helena said. One row.” She pointed, with one finger, south and west. ”This one. Far down. At the very end of the southern capes, past Skellow, past the marshes. A tiny cove. One pier. Nine boats. They call it Ternhollow.” She hesitated. ”Three nights ago, at the moment Meriel stopped speaking, something walked up out of the sea in Ternhollow and sang.”

* * *

My father had come down by then, with my mother and Aurelia and Seraphina behind him.

”Can you get there?” he said to me.

”Not by fold,” I said. ”I’ve never stood there. I’d be guessing.” I thought about it. ”I could fold to Westmere. Then it’s two days by sea, down the coast.”

”A day and a half,” said Benjamin. ”In the right boat. With the wind where it’s been all week.”

Everybody looked at him.

He looked very slightly embarrassed. He’s a big man, Benjamin, sun-browned and gray-bearded, in an old salt-white sailor’s coat and very old good boots. He looks about forty and is a great deal older. He’d spent most of his life on a small island in the north, alone, singing the soldiers’ song to the sea every night, and he still stands like a man on a deck.

”I can sail,” he said. ”Tamar’s got the Tern at Westmere. Little two-master. She’s quick. I’ve had her out twice this month.” He glanced sideways at Selvane, then away. ”I know that coast. I sailed it, a long time ago.”

”And I’m coming,” said Selvane.

* * *

Benjamin turned and looked at her.

”No,” he said.

It was the first time I’d ever heard him say no to her. In all those months of singing at the washtub. Every night, will you carry this, you can say no, and she’d hummed yes, and he’d thanked her. He’d never once told her no.

Selvane looked at him.

”It’s my harbor,” she said.

”It’s two days at sea,” said Benjamin. ”Down a coast where something from the Choir walked ashore three nights ago. You were see-through a fortnight ago. You couldn’t get down the tower stairs.” His voice had gone rough. ”I sang to you every night for four months, Selvane. I didn’t know what you looked like. I didn’t know if you’d ever answer. And then you came ashore on a spar, face down, and I sat by that cot for three days and you didn’t know I was there.” He stopped. ”I’m not taking you back out to sea.”

* * *

Nobody said anything.

Selvane looked at him for a long time. Then she did something I didn’t expect. She stepped up close to him, very close, and looked up at him, because he’s a great deal taller than she is.

”I knew you were there,” she said.

Benjamin didn’t say anything.

”On the cot,” said Selvane. ”All three days. I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t speak. But I knew. I could hear you breathing. You sang the soldiers’ song under your breath at four in the morning, when you thought nobody was listening. You sang it wrong in the third verse. You always do.” She paused. ”I knew you were there.”

Benjamin’s face had gone very red under the brown.

”It’s my harbor,” said Selvane again, more gently. ”It’s my sea. I’m a harbor goddess. Nobody should know that coast better than me, and nobody does. If you want to find a thing that walked out of the sea, you want somebody who can feel every pier between here and the end of the capes.” She held up the cup with Tessaly in it. ”And I’ve got nine boats’ worth of Ternhollow in my head, and a little girl at Westmere who lights my lamp every night. I’m not going to fade, Benjamin. Ilyra checked.”

She waited.

”You can say no,” she said. ”I’d still like to come.”

* * *

Benjamin looked at her for a very long time.

Then he looked at me, helplessly, the way a man looks at you when he’s lost an argument he didn’t want to win.

”She comes,” I said. ”If you’ll sail.”

”I’ll sail,” said Benjamin. And then, to Selvane, much more quietly, as if nobody else were in the hall: ”I sing it wrong on purpose. The third verse. The right words were my mother’s.”

Selvane smiled. It was the first time I’d seen her smile like that. Not grateful. Not relieved. Just smiling, at him, because of something he’d said.

”I know,” she said. ”I worked that out in the first month.”

Behind me, very softly, my mother said, ”Oh,” in the voice she uses when she’s just watched something she’s going to tell Adriana about later.

* * *

So that’s how it was. Thor and me, Selvane and Benjamin. I folded us to Westmere at seven, all four, which I’d never done before, carrying four at once. It was easier than I expected. That frightened me a little, afterward, how easy it was.

The Tern was a little two-masted coaster, gray-hulled, with red sails, and Benjamin sailed her the way Halemar must sail a ferry: without seeming to do anything, with his hand loose on the tiller and his eyes on the water and the wind doing what he wanted because it had decided to. We went out past the north pier at half past eight, past Pim’s lamp, unlit, on its bollard. Pim was on the end of the pier in her too-big cap, waving with both arms. Selvane waved back until the pier was gone.

Then she went and sat in the bow.

* * *

I won’t write all of the day and a half. Most of it was sea, and wind, and Thor being sick over the side twice and denying it both times. I sat in the stern with my eyes shut most of the day, holding the thread that Elenos had given me, feeling it get warmer as we went south.

But I’ll write some of it, because it’s true, and because I want it written down before I forget.

I’ll write that Selvane sat in the bow all day with her face to the wind and one hand trailing in the water. And that every harbor we passed, she named. Quietly, to herself, the way Carol says names in the chapel. Saltreach. Orme Cove. The Dunlin Steps. Kestle. And at every one of them, though we were a mile offshore, a little lamp somewhere on a pier flickered, as if someone had just remembered it was there.

I’ll write that Benjamin watched her do it. From the tiller. All day. When he thought nobody was looking.

I’ll write that at about four in the afternoon, Selvane started humming the soldiers’ song. Very quietly, in the bow, with her back to him. And when she got to the third verse, she sang it his way. The wrong way. And Benjamin, at the tiller, went so still that the Tern lost her wind for a moment and the sails went slack, and Thor, who was lying on the deck with her arm over her eyes, said, ”Somebody’s distracted,” without opening them.

* * *

We put in for the night in a little cove with no name, south of the marshes, where there was a beach and fresh water and nobody else. Benjamin built a fire on the sand. Thor caught three fish with her hands, standing up to her knees in the surf, out of sheer bad temper at the sea, and cooked them on her hammer, which I’m told you should never do and which tasted wonderful.

After supper, Thor and I sat on one side of the fire and Benjamin and Selvane sat on the other. Not close. Not at first.

It got cold. It does, on that coast, at night, even in early autumn. Selvane was in Tamar’s wife’s jersey, which isn’t very warm, and I saw her pull her hands up into the sleeves.

Benjamin took his coat off. The old salt-white sailor’s coat. He held it out to her across the space between them, without saying anything.

Selvane looked at the coat. Then at him.

”Won’t you be cold?” she said.

”I lived on an island in the north for twenty years,” said Benjamin. ”I’ve forgotten how to be cold.”

She took it. She put it around her shoulders. It came down past her knees.

Then, after a long moment, she said, very quietly, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear it across the fire:

”May I?”

And Benjamin, who I think had no idea what she was asking, said, ”Yes.”

And she moved over on the sand and leaned her head on his shoulder.

* * *

Thor, beside me, made a small noise in her throat.

I looked at her. She was staring at the fire, very hard, with her jaw set.

”Don’t,” I said, under my breath.

”I’m not doing anything,” said Thor, under hers.

”You were going to say something.”

”I was going to say it’s about time,” said Thor. ”He sang to her for four months. I heard about it. All of Concordia heard about it. Mary wrote it in her book every single night. Benjamin sang. Selvane hummed. Every night. For four months.” She poked the fire with a stick, rather violently. ”If somebody sang to me for four months I’d have married him by the second week.”

”Nobody’s marrying anyone.”

”Not yet,” said Thor darkly.

* * *

Across the fire, Benjamin had gone completely still, the way a man does when a bird has landed on his hand and he doesn’t want to frighten it off. Selvane had her eyes closed. The coat was around both of them now, somehow. I hadn’t seen how that happened.

”Will you sing it?” said Selvane, very softly. ”The right way? Your mother’s way?”

Benjamin didn’t say anything for a long time.

Then he sang it. Under his breath. The soldiers’ song, the old one from the war, that he’d sung to the sea every night on his island for twenty years. All the verses. And when he got to the third, he sang it the right way. His mother’s way. The words were different from the ones everybody knows. Softer. About a lamp in a window, and someone on the road.

I knew whose they were, then. Aurelia’s. They’d always been Aurelia’s.

Selvane didn’t open her eyes. But she hummed along. And her humming was so close to his singing that I couldn’t tell where one stopped and the other started.

* * *

At midnight I stood up and walked down to the edge of the water, because I didn’t think I should be listening anymore, and because the thread had pulled.

It was much stronger here. Much warmer. I could feel it now without Elenos. A long thin line of salt and iron and that wrong, lonely singing, going away south down the coast, to a place maybe a day’s sail from here. Ternhollow.

And at the end of it, very faintly, something was singing a name.

Not one name. All of them. Over and over. In one voice, where there should have been two.

Heard.

Heard.

Heard.

In Meriel’s voice.

* * *

We came into Ternhollow the next afternoon.

It’s a very small place. Selvane was right. One stone pier, nine boats drawn up on the shingle, a dozen houses under a headland, and a chapel the size of a cow-shed. The people came down to the pier to watch us come in, because nobody ever comes to Ternhollow. They were frightened. I could feel it before we’d tied up. The whole village was frightened, the way a dog is frightened of a noise it can’t see.

An old woman met us at the end of the pier. She looked at Thor’s hammer, and at me, and then at Selvane, in Benjamin’s coat, with Tessaly in her hands.

And her face changed.

”You’re the lamp lady,” she said. ”Aren’t you. The one my granny used to tell about. Who lit the pier when the boats were out late.”

Selvane went very still.

”Yes,” she said.

The old woman burst into tears.

”Something’s in the cave,” she said. ”Under the headland. For three nights. Singing. The children went to look and came back saying it’s full of candles.” She caught Selvane’s hand. ”We’ve been lighting the pier lamp every night since. Like Granny said. In case you’d come.”

* * *

The cave was under the headland, at the end of the shingle, only open at low tide. Benjamin and I and Thor went down at dusk, when the water had gone out. Selvane came too. Nobody tried to stop her this time.

It was a long, low sea cave, wet-walled, smelling of weed and salt. And about thirty yards in, where it opened out into a sort of chamber, there were candles.

Dozens of them. Stuck on every ledge, in every crack of the rock. Burning low and steady with almost no flicker at all. The way Meriel’s candles burn.

And in the middle of them, sitting on a rock with its back to us, something was singing.

It was thin. Thin the way Selvane had been thin, the first day; I could see the candles through it. It had no face that I could see. It was wearing a rotted sailor’s coat that wasn’t its own and boots that didn’t fit. And it was hunched over something in its lap, cradling it, the way you’d cradle a hurt animal.

And it was singing, very softly, over and over, in Meriel’s voice:

”Heard. Heard. Heard.”

* * *

Thor’s hand closed on her hammer.

”Wait,” said Selvane.

She stepped past all three of us. Into the candlelight. Toward the thing on the rock.

”Selvane,” said Benjamin. His voice cracked.

She looked back at him, just once.

”It’s all right,” she said. ”I know what it is. I know what they are.” Her voice was very steady. ”It’s one of the ones who said no twice.”

And she went and knelt down in front of it.

* * *

Mary wrote it four days later, from what I told her, and from what Thor told her, which was louder.

Elenos heard the hole. He said: she sounds like a chapel when everyone’s gone home. He heard where the missing part was crying. South, by the sea. Garrick should have asked him at three.

Every child of Uriah’s is at least half a god. Everybody forgets that. They shouldn’t.

Selvane felt it in one of her harbors. Ternhollow. Nine boats.

Benjamin said no to her. The first time ever. She said: I knew you were there. She said: you can say no. I’d still like to come.

He sings the third verse wrong on purpose. The right words were Aurelia’s. About a lamp in a window.

She asked: may I? He said yes. He didn’t know what she was asking.

Thor: about time.

In Ternhollow, the old woman knew her. The lamp lady. Her granny told about her.

In the cave: candles, and one of the Hollow Choir, singing heard in Meriel’s voice.

Selvane went and knelt down in front of it.

And under that, pinned into the book with one of Mary’s dressmaking pins, a torn-out corner from the Tern’s log, in Benjamin’s square sailor’s hand, where he’d written wind and weather for a day and a half and then one line more:

Wind SW, light. Sea calm. She sang the third verse my way.