Chapter 233: Remembered

Logan woke under the white trees and lay still, looking for the hole.

He went back through the Sump first. He could see the cave and the dry shelf and the black door. He saw the Silver draining back up the shaft and leaving the floor wet and dark.

Then he reached past it, for the part he had not told.

He knew he had waited on that shelf, because he had said so to Alice. But when he tried to remember the waiting, there was nothing under the words. He could not find what he had thought about, or whether he had been afraid, or what he had done with his hands.

It was like a story about somebody else.

Alice was awake beside him. She was watching his face.

"Do you remember it?" she asked.

"I remember telling you." Logan sat up. "I remember the cave. The door. The shelf. Everything I said."

"And the rest?"

He shook his head.

Alice took his hand and held it hard. "Then I will keep the rest," she said. "I can still see the door. You told it twice."

Across the camp, Garen was sitting up with his hair standing on end. Isolde was watching him with a careful face.

"Well?" she said.

"I remember it," said Garen slowly. "The mouth. The white. Its jaws. But I remember it the way I told it to you, dear." He scratched his head. "It is a much better story now. I sound braver in it than I was."

Isolde stared at him. Then she laughed.

It was the first time she had laughed since the Whiteout, and Garen looked so pleased that she laughed again.

Bram looked troubled.

He sat on a root with his hammer across his knees, frowning at the earth. Edda crouched in front of him.

"Papa?"

"The white," he said. "I told you about the white. I can remember everything I told you." He rubbed his face with both hands. "But I was in there a long way, girl. Longer than the telling. Whatever I did not say is gone. I cannot find it."

"Was it bad?"

"I do not know." Bram looked up at her. "I suppose I will never know now. Maybe that is not the worst thing."

Edda put her arms round his neck. Over her head, Logan saw the dwarf’s face crease, and then smooth out again.

Helen had lost nothing she could find. Neither had Daniel.

"We were together," Helen said. "Every layer. I do not think either of us was ever out of the other’s sight long enough to lose anything."

"You were," said Daniel. "On the stair in the Third Layer. You went down before me."

"Then I told you about it, and you remember it." Helen smiled at him. "So do I."

Vina had lost nothing at all. She went round the camp asking everyone what they had lost and whether they wanted her to remember it for them.

Then she came to Rishin.

The old man was sitting against a white trunk with his fist on his knee. Link stood beside him, and his flame burned low and steady.

"Grandpa," said Vina. "What did you lose?"

"Nothing."

Daniel looked up from his pack. "Nothing at all, Senior? Everyone else has lost a piece of the road."

"I told you," said Rishin. "Nothing I would lose."

He got up, and Link’s hand was under his elbow before he needed it.

Logan watched him.

He thought about what the panel had said, and what the old man had told them at the line. ’You lose what only you remember,’ he thought. ’So he does not remember anything alone.’

He looked at the closed fist, and the two stones inside it.

’Somebody remembers it all with him. Somebody who loves him.’ Logan looked into the trees, where the silver light went away and away between the trunks. He did not let himself think about where.

He did not say it. He picked up his pack.

They walked into the forest after they had eaten.

The white trees stood far apart, and the ground between them was soft and dark and covered in fallen leaves. Even fallen, each leaf kept a little of its light, and the forest floor glowed wherever they had drifted together.

Billy rolled ahead through the leaves, and they lit up as he passed. He looked back every few paces to see whether Logan was watching.

Sonic went up into the canopy. He came back down with leaves caught in his feathers.

"It goes on, Boss," he said. "Trees as far as I can see. There is open ground a long way ahead, and there is water past it. I could not tell how much."

The first carving was on a tree beside the path.

Logan would have walked past it if he had not seen the letters, cut deep into the white bark at the height of his chest. He stopped.

"Tomas," he read aloud. "Brown hair. Laughs with his mouth shut. Hates the cold. My husband."

Underneath, smaller and newer, someone had cut a second line.

"I do not remember him. I keep reading it."

Alice came up beside him. She read it twice, and her hand went to her mouth.

After that they saw carvings on every tree.

Most of them were names, with a few lines under each. There were the colors of hair and eyes, and the way somebody walked. On one tree, somebody had written the words to a song. Another said, "She was kind to me. I know because I wrote it down."

Vina stopped to read every one she could reach.

"They are writing down the people they love," she said. "So they do not forget them."

"They forget anyway," said Rishin behind her. "If the one they carved is gone, and nobody else remembers. The carving does not keep it. It only tells you it was there."

Vina looked at the carving in front of her. Then she took the old man’s hand and walked on, faster than before.

The man was standing in front of a tree a little way off the path.

He was young, with untidy dark hair and a patched brown coat. He was reading the bark with one finger, moving it along the letters like a child learning to read. His lips moved as he went.

He heard them and turned. He looked at the family and the units and Hob without any fear at all.

"Hello," he said. "I do not know you. Do I know you?"

"No," said Daniel. "We have only now come down."

"Ah. That is good. I do not like it when I am supposed to know people." The young man turned back to the tree. "I am reading who I am. Do you want to hear?"

He read it to them.

"This is Aldo. He is my brother. He likes his tea too hot and burns his mouth every time. He came down with me from the rim. He is good." Aldo traced the last line. "I am going on to the bottom. I will come back for you. Wait here. Ilse."

He took his finger off the bark.

"That is me," he said. "Aldo. And Ilse is my sister. I do not remember her. But she wrote it, so it must be true."

"How long have you waited?" asked Helen.

"There is no way to tell. I read it every time I wake up." He smiled at them. "She came back twice, I think. There are two more lines under it. The last one says she is going down again."

Vina let go of Rishin’s hand. She went and stood in front of Aldo and looked up at him.

"I like you," she said. "I will remember you. Does that count?"

Aldo looked down at her. He looked surprised, and then pleased.

"It might," he said. "In time."