Chapter 868: The Tide

The old woman knew them.

That was the first thing they learned the next morning. Hessa sat in the great hall with her hand over her eyes and described what she saw coming south through the grass. The old woman sat beside her and listened. After a while, she named them.

"That one’s a Wearer," she said. "He told me about those. They lie by water. You get tired."

Hessa described another. It was round and low, and the grass went gray around it.

"A Blight," said the old woman. "He was proud of the Blights."

"We’ve killed a Blight," said Ainen.

The old woman looked at him with her pale blue eyes.

"Have you?" she said. "He never told me anyone had."

They went on like that all morning. Hessa looked, and the old woman named. Big D wrote each one down in the back of the book, in a new list, with what it ended.

Kael stood over his shoulder and matched each name against the parts on the long table and the orbs in people’s pockets.

"Husher," Big D said. "Lily has Hush. The Pyreking’s fire broke one at Greywatch."

"The Pyreking’s at Emberfall’s line," said Kael.

"Then Lily."

"Strayer. Rudra."

"Fine."

"Dimmer." Big D looked up. "Who’s got light?"

Nobody answered. Big D wrote a small mark beside the word and moved on.

Near noon, Hessa stopped describing.

She sat still. The old woman leaned toward her.

"What is it, dear?"

"There’s one at the front," Hessa said. "Bigger than anything else. It’s long. It’s gray and it’s furry, and it’s moving slowly, but it’s at the very front, and everything else is keeping behind it."

She did not need to say any more. Almond saw it on every face in the hall.

He had seen that shape once before. It had lain wrapped around Brightwater’s ring like a sleeping cat, and every person inside the stones had lain down and never woken up. Sixty thousand of them. Big D had read their names for a whole night.

"A Lull," said Big D.

"A bigger one," said the old woman quietly. "He told me he had two. He said the first one went to sleep in a town by a river, a long time ago, and never came back to him."

"It didn’t," said Almond. "We killed it."

The old woman looked at him for a long moment.

"He’ll know that now," she said.

They spent the afternoon getting ready for the Lull.

Silvester went through the town with his orb in his hand. He walked from house to house, from street to street. He put his hand on every door frame.

"When I get up," he told everyone he met, "you get up. That’s all. You don’t have to do anything else. When you see me stand, you stand."

"And if you go down?" someone asked.

"Then I get back up," said Silvester. "I’ve done it twelve times in one night. I can do thirteen."

Almond spent the afternoon in the square with Lily.

Kayla had made them both sit under the tree. She had put her hands on Lily’s back and frowned, and said, "Fine. Both of you. Sit there and don’t move." Then she had gone off to check on Noah’s arm.

So they sat.

"Unclosed," Lily said. "You made it from that Lull’s eye."

"Yes."

"Will it work on a bigger one?"

"It’ll work on me. With Carry, it’ll work on whoever I’m holding." Almond looked at the young tree over them, at the thick leaves. "I can’t hold forty thousand people."

"No," said Lily. "But Silvester can wake them. If you can keep him awake."

Almond nodded.

"I’ll be on the wall," he said. "North side. Holding Silvester."

"I’ll be beside you."

"Lily..."

"I’ll be beside you," Lily said. "I’m not drawing any lines. Kayla’s already told me. I’m standing beside you, and you’re keeping my eyes open. That’s all." She put his hand on her stomach. "Both of us."

Almond did not argue. He sat there under the tree with his hand where she had put it, and felt nothing move, and kept his hand there anyway.

That night, John sat on the north wall alone.

Almond found him there near midnight. He was sitting on the top of the wall with his legs hanging over the outside, the way the old woman had sat on the edge of the nothing. He was looking north, at the dark.

"Can’t sleep?" Almond asked.

"Haven’t tried."

Almond sat down beside him. Out in the dark, beyond the white stones, beyond the fields, there was nothing to see. Hessa said the tide was a day away. It was quiet.

"You said you thought you knew who he is," Almond said.

"I did say that."

"Big D told me."

"Big D tells you everything." John smiled a little. "That’s why I told him."

Almond waited.

"Not yet," John said. "Not till I see him. If I’m wrong, I don’t want to have said it out loud."

"And if you’re right?"

John did not answer that. He sat on the wall and looked at the dark until the stars faded.

The tide came at dawn.

Hessa saw it first, from the hall. Then the people on the wall saw it, and then everyone did.

The north fields were moving. They moved from the edge of the woods all the way across, as far as Almond could see in the gray light. It was not one thing.

It was thousands of things, coming out of the trees together, low and high, fast and slow. Some ran. Some crawled. Some walked on long legs over the heads of the others. The grass bent ahead of them like water ahead of a ship.

And at the front, coming out of the trees last, came the Lull.

It was bigger than the first one. It came out of the woods slowly, a long gray body, furred like a cat and as wide as a river.

Its head was the size of a house. Its eyes were half shut. It walked like something that had never been in a hurry in its life.

It walked to the edge of the north field, a mile from the white stones. Then it lay down.

It curled its long body around itself, and laid its great head down on its tail, and closed its eyes.

Almond felt it at once.

It was a heaviness behind his eyes. It felt like the warm, soft end of a long day. His eyelids dropped. His knees went loose. All along the north wall, he saw fighters lean against the stones and let their heads fall.

Unclosed.

His eyes came open. They stayed open.

Lily’s hand was in his. He felt her start to go, felt her fingers loosen.

Carry.

He gave it to her. Her eyes opened.

Beside them on the wall, Silvester was swaying on his feet. His orb was in his hand. His eyes were closing.

Almond grabbed his arm.

Carry.

Silvester’s eyes snapped open. He looked at Almond. He looked down into the town.

The town was lying down.

Almond saw it from the top of the wall. In the streets and the doorways, in the square under the tree, people were lying down where they stood. A man with a bucket set it down and lay beside it.

Two children sat down against a wall and leaned against each other. In the training ground, a hundred of Silvester’s students lay down in their rows, neat as a harvest.

Silvester stood up straight on the wall.

Second Wind.

"Up!" he shouted. "When I rise, you rise! Up!"

They rose.

It went out from him in a wave, down the wall and into the streets. People sat up. They stood.

The man with the bucket picked it up again and looked at it as if he had never seen it before. All through the north side of the town, people got to their feet and looked around, blinking.

Then the Lull breathed out.

It was one long breath, almost a minute long. Almond felt it come over the fields and over the stones, and the weight behind his eyes came again, much heavier.

Unclosed held. But it held the way a door holds when someone is leaning on it from the other side.

In the streets, the people lay down again.

"Up!" Silvester shouted.

They rose again. Fewer of them this time.

Silvester was sweating. His hand was shaking around the orb.

"It’s going to keep doing that," he said. "Every breath. I can do thirteen. Maybe fifteen. I can’t do it all day."

"You won’t have to," Almond said.

He looked out at the great gray shape lying at the edge of the field, a mile away, with the whole tide of Enders gathering behind it. Kael was already coming along the wall toward him at a run, with Rudra behind him and Big D behind Rudra.

Hessa was not with them.

She was standing at the top of the stairs with her hand over her eyes. She was not looking at the Lull. She was looking past it, deep into the tide.

"Almond," she said.

"What?"

"At the back. Behind everything." Her voice was strange. "There’s a man."

The wall went quiet around her.

"A man?" said Big D.

"He looks like a man. He’s walking at the very back, behind all of them. Slowly. He isn’t in any hurry." Hessa’s hand pressed harder against her eyes. "He’s got his hands in his pockets."

Almond turned his head.

John was standing a little way along the wall. He had been watching the Lull. Now he was not watching anything. He stood still with his hands in his own pockets, and then, slowly, he took them out.

Behind them, at the foot of the stairs, the old woman had come up from the hall. She had heard. She stood with one hand on the rail and looked at John’s back.

"Johnny used to walk like that," she said softly. "When he was small. He copied it." She looked north, toward the tide. "He copied it from him."