Chapter 877: The Little Door

Almond did not move.

The small hand stayed pressed against the light on the other side of the arch. It was brown and dusty, and the nails were broken short. Almond could see the lines on the palm.

John had stopped breathing beside him.

"John," Almond said quietly. "Wake Ainen."

John got up without a word. He crossed the hall and knelt by the bench where Ainen lay asleep with his coat over him, and shook his shoulder.

Ainen came awake the way cooks do, all at once.

"Is it burning?"

"No," said John. "Come and look."

By the time Ainen reached the table, Lily was awake too. Then Kayla, and Big D, who had not been asleep at all. They crowded around the clay dish in the gray light before dawn and looked down at the tiny arch.

The hand was still there.

Then it moved. It slid down the light and away, and a face took its place.

It was a girl. She was perhaps eight years old, with a sunburned face and short black hair cut badly, as if someone had done it with a knife. Her lips were cracked. She was looking straight at them through the little arch with wide dark eyes.

Her mouth moved.

They could not hear her. The arch was too small. But Almond saw the shape of the words, and so did everyone else.

Are you there?

Ainen bent down until his face was close to the arch.

"We’re here," he said. "Can you hear me?"

The girl’s eyes went wider. She nodded hard.

Her mouth moved again. This time, faintly, Almond heard it. It was like a voice at the far end of a long hall.

"Water," she said. "Please. Do you have water?"

Ainen did not ask anything. He was already reaching for the jug on the table. He poured a little water into a cup, and then he stopped, and looked at the arch. It was no wider than two of his fingers.

"Can it go through?" asked Lily.

"Only one way to know."

Ainen tipped the cup. A thin stream of water ran down into the arch.

It did not spill on the table. It went into the light and through it, and was gone.

On the other side, the girl cried out. She cupped her hands under the arch, and Almond saw the water fall into them out of the air. She drank it. She drank it so fast that she choked, and then she held her hands up again.

Ainen poured again. And again. He poured slowly, a little at a time, the whole jug.

When it was empty, the girl sat back. Her face was wet. She wiped it with her dusty hand and looked at them through the arch.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you. Gran said if you ask long enough at the little door, someone comes."

"Who’s Gran?" Ainen asked gently.

The girl looked down.

"She died," she said. "Yesterday. She gave me her water."

Nobody at the table spoke.

"What’s your name?" asked Lily.

"Wren."

"Wren. Where are you?"

Wren looked around her, as if she was not sure how to answer.

"Sunfield," she said. "It’s our line. There’s three hundred of us. There were." "The well’s dry. The river’s gone. It hasn’t rained for forty days. And there’s a thing on the hill that drinks."

"A thing," said Big D.

"Gran said it’s a lord. It came and sat down on the hill, and the water went away. All of it. Even in the ground." Wren’s voice was shaking. "People are dying. The little ones first."

Ainen’s hand had gone flat on his chest.

"Hessa," he said, without turning around.

Hessa was already at the end of the bench with her hand over her eyes. She had been awake since the first word.

"I’m looking," she said.

They waited.

"I can’t find it," Hessa said at last. Her voice was strange. "I’ve looked north, south, east and west. I’ve looked past the mountain, as far as I can go. There’s no gold grass. There’s no Sunfield." She lowered her hand. "It isn’t anywhere I can see."

"Then where is it?" said Kayla.

Nobody knew.

John was looking at the arch. He had not said a word since he woke Ainen.

"Wren," he said. "This little door. On your side. What does it look like?"

Wren turned her head and looked at something beside her.

"It’s in the shrine," she said. "It’s old. It’s stone. It’s always been here. Nobody knows who made it." She looked back at them. "Gran says it’s a door for asking. You come and ask for what you need. Most people stopped. Nothing ever came."

"But you kept asking," said Lily.

"Every day," said Wren. "Since the water went. And this morning it lit up."

John sat down on the bench slowly. He put his elbows on his knees.

"Ainen," he said. "Can you make it bigger?"

Ainen looked at the little gray arch for a long time.

"It’s my guest," he said. "It ate at my table, when it was something else. And it’s been growing ever since I fed it." He picked up the clay dish carefully. "I think if I keep feeding it, it keeps growing."

"Then feed it," said Big D.

Ainen cooked all day.

He did not leave the hall. Saffa brought him wood and water, and Fraisea brought him everything that grew in Brightwater’s gardens. Clovelle sat by the hearth and stirred the pots when he could not.

Hearth. Long Harvest.

He set the clay dish on the warm stones in front of the fire, with the arch standing in it. And every time a pot was done, he filled a small bowl and set it down in the dish, right under the arch.

The first bowl went into the light the way the water had.

Wren caught it on the other side. Almond saw her face when she understood what it was. She held the little bowl of stew against her chest with both hands, and did not eat it. Then she turned away from the arch and ran off, out of sight.

She came back a few minutes later with a smaller boy. She gave the bowl to him.

"Her brother, I think," said Lily.

And the arch grew.

It was not quick. But by midmorning it had pushed up out of the clay dish, and the dish cracked, and Ainen moved it onto the hearthstones.

By noon it was as tall as a cat. By the middle of the afternoon, it was as tall as Ainen’s knee, and its two gray sides had grown thick and strong as young branches.

Through it, they could see more of Sunfield now.

It was a small line. Its white stones ran around a low hill covered in dry gold grass, with a few dozen houses of yellow mud brick on top.

There was a dry riverbed at the bottom of the hill, cracked and pale. There was a well in the middle of the houses, with a rope hanging into it and no bucket.

And there were people. They had come out of their houses one by one through the afternoon. They were thin and slow and silent, and they stood around the shrine where Wren sat and stared at the light.

Ainen passed water through the arch all afternoon. Bowl after bowl. Cup after cup. Every barrel in Brightwater’s kitchens went into it, and Rudra organized a line of people carrying water from the river to the hall in buckets.

The people of Sunfield drank. Then they ate.

By dusk, the arch was as tall as a man.

Ainen sat down on the hearth beside it. His hands were shaking from a whole day at the pots. His face was red from the fire.

"That’s enough for one day," he said. "I think. I can’t cook any more."

Almond stood in front of the arch and looked through it.

It was a doorway now. A real one, tall and narrow and gray. Inside it hung a sheet of the Door’s unnamed light, and through the light he could see Sunfield in the evening.

The sky over it was orange. Wren was standing on the other side, close enough to touch, holding her brother’s hand.

"Can we walk through?" Kael asked.

"I don’t know," said Ainen. "I didn’t want to try until it was big enough."

"I’ll try," said John.

He stood up. Almond had never seen him look the way he looked then. He looked young.

Wren was not looking at them anymore.

She had turned around. She was looking away from the door, across her own line, at the dry hill on the far side of Sunfield. Her brother was pulling at her hand.

"Wren?" said Lily. "Wren, what is it?"

Wren did not answer. She was staring at the hill.

Almond looked past her.

On top of the far hill, beyond Sunfield’s white stones, the ground was moving. It was a long, low ridge of cracked brown earth, and it had been lying there so still that Almond had taken it for part of the hill. Now it was lifting.

It lifted a head. The head was long and flat and cracked, like a dry riverbed stood on end. In the middle of it, a mouth opened.

The mouth was dry. The cracks around it were deep and dark.

It turned slowly toward Sunfield. Toward the shrine. Toward the tall gray door, full of light, where all the water had been coming from all day.

"It felt it," Wren whispered. "It felt the water."

The thing on the hill stood up.