Chapter 146 Letters Home

Anja had three things to pack.

The mirror. A bundle of clothing wrapped in a piece of rain cloth. And a flat metal box she'd kept beneath the stone where she sat.

Liam asked whether there was anything else.

She looked around the shelter.

For a long time, she didn't answer.

There were useful things there. A knife with a handle worn smooth. A pot. The little troughs she'd arranged to catch water. Strips of cord hanging from a hook she'd driven into the rock.

Then she pointed at the pot.

“That too.”

Liam picked it up.

I thought of all the times we'd counted people from a distance and written one beside a number. As though one person would be a simple thing to collect. As though there wouldn't be a whole life fastened to the rock around them.

We didn't move her immediately.

Sera spread a blanket where Anja could reach it, and Wren sat beside her while Liam opened Toby's bag.

He unfolded the list first.

I was grateful for that. For the small, careful handwriting that let him stop looking as though he had to remember everything before he was allowed to help.

Anja watched us.

“Are you going to fix it?” she asked me.

“Your leg?”

She nodded.

“I need to look before I can tell you what I can do.”

“Here?”

“Only enough to make the journey easier. If you'll let me.”

She studied my face.

Then she moved the blanket.

Her left ankle had healed crooked.

I could see the old break. More than one, and other damage around it that wasn't as simple as putting the bones where they ought to have been. Her foot turned inward. The skin over one part was thin and angry where a binding had rubbed it.

I sat down so I wouldn't look at it from above her.

“How long?”

She shrugged.

“Before the last cold.”

“What happened?”

“Coming up from the water.”

I looked toward the edge of the ridge. The slope fell away steeply beneath it, with a dark line of vegetation far below.

She followed my eyes.

“I got back.”

“Yes,” I said.

It was the least of what she meant.

“Can you mend it?”

“I think there's work I can do. But not all at once, and not while we're trying to leave.”

She looked down at the foot.

I waited for disappointment. For her to tell me she'd heard I could change anything I looked at, or that she'd waited long enough for a proper answer.

Instead, she nodded.

“All right.”

Liam brought the clean cloth. Sera warmed a little water. I shaped a loose piece of wood from beside the shelter into a broad support, with room where the injured part couldn't bear pressure.

Anja watched my hands, though they weren't what did it.

When it was ready, I held it where she could see.

“For the journey. We stop if it hurts more.”

She touched the smooth edge.

“All right,” she said again.

Wren told her before each movement.

Arm here. Blanket underneath. Liam would take the other side. I would keep the skiff still.

Anja nodded to all of it, then gripped the edge of her stone when they began.

Everyone stopped.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No hurry,” Wren answered.

We waited until she opened her fingers herself.

The second try worked.

She sat in the empty place with the mirror on her lap and the metal box tucked beside her hip. Liam adjusted the blanket beneath her leg. Sera put the cup within reach.

Only then did Anja look back at the shelter.

“Leave some water,” she said.

“We can take all of it with you.”

“Somebody else might come.”

I left a covered vessel in the shade.

Food beside it. Not all we had, but enough to matter to someone who reached the ridge hungry.

Wren scratched the day and our direction into a flat stone by the entrance. Under that, she wrote that twenty-two had left alive.

Anja read it from the skiff.

“Put the name.”

Wren glanced back.

“Mine. Please.”

She added it.

ANJA BELL. GONE TO SCARECROW.

When I climbed aboard, Anja had stopped looking at the empty water vessels.

She was looking at the stone.

We took the way home slowly.

There was less water aboard and one more person. The hull answered differently again. I kept it level and let Wren choose the wider route around a ridge instead of the shorter one through unsettled air.

Anja didn't speak for the first part of the journey.

She watched the ground.

Once, she pointed to a dark cleft beneath us.

“I stayed there.”

Wren looked down.

“Before the ridge?”

“For a while.”

“How long?”

Anja shook her head.

We passed a stream with silver-green growing thick along both sides. She leaned forward enough that Sera put a hand near her shoulder.

Anja sat back.

“So much,” she said.

I looked at the water below us and kept the skiff steady.

At our rest stop, she opened the metal box.

Not far. Just enough to check its contents with two fingers. Then she closed it again and worked the bent catch into place.

Wren handed her more water.

“Something break?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Anja drank, looking toward the skiff.

“Does the radio work there?”

I felt Sera go still beside me.

“Not the way it used to,” I said.

Anja lowered the cup.

I told her enough. The ordinary channel gone. The brief window at dawn. Names and small patterns, not conversations. I didn't tell her about every argument we'd had with Crane. She was tired, and none of those arguments would make the answer easier.

“So no letters,” she said.

“Not yet.”

She put her hand over the box.

Then nodded once.

I wanted to add something.

A promise about tomorrow. About finding a way. About how much more we'd learned in the last few weeks than in all the time before it.

Sera touched the back of my hand.

I looked at Anja's box and said nothing.

After a while, Wren asked whether she wanted help getting back aboard.

“Yes,” Anja said.

It was a smaller word than all the promises I'd nearly made.

We could do that one.

The tower appeared in the late afternoon.

Anja saw it before I pointed it out.

She leaned forward, mirror clutched against her chest.

“That's real?”

“Yes.”

Wren smiled a little.

“I told you it was tall.”

“You said tower.”

“It is.”

Anja looked at her.

Wren's smile widened.

“I didn't have enough morning to send very tall.”

For the first time since we'd landed on her ridge, Anja made a sound that might have become a laugh if she'd trusted it to keep going.

I brought us down beside the north camp.

People came toward us and slowed when Luna lifted her hand. I was grateful to her. From Anja's seat, nineteen people would have looked like a crowd even if none of them meant to be one.

Not nineteen coming toward her, of course. Four of us were in the skiff. But I could see her trying to count those outside it and losing track.

Luna stopped a few paces away.

“I'm Luna.”

“Anja.”

“We have somewhere for you to sit. Would you like to stay there a little first?”

Anja looked at the shelters. The cookfire. Dot standing beyond the people, rivers bright beneath her shell.

“That's a kit.”

“Yes,” I said. “That's Dot.”

Dot lowered herself slightly.

“This unit is pleased you have arrived.”

Anja stared at her.

Then at Wren.

“There's a great deal,” Wren said, “that doesn't fit in a dawn message.”

Holt came forward only when Anja saw him.

Her eyes widened.

“Ezra?”

He stopped.

“Aye.”

She put the mirror down very carefully.

“I thought—”

“So did I.”

For a moment, neither moved.

Then Holt reached out, and Anja took his hand with both of hers.

I looked away while they held on.

There were reunions that didn't need an audience, even when you were standing in the middle of one.

We put her beside Matthias, with enough space between the beds that she could reach her things without asking somebody to move.

Toby came over with clean water.

He asked Liam what we'd done before asking Anja to show him anything. Liam read the notes he'd made beneath Toby's list, stumbling over one word and then pointing to it instead.

Toby nodded.

“Good.”

Liam looked almost as pleased as he had about the strap.

I sat at the foot of Anja's bedding and told her what I thought I could begin tomorrow. No whole ankle made new in a moment. We would look again when she had eaten and slept. Work out which part could change safely. Give the rest time.

Matthias listened from his pillow.

“He says that,” he told her, “and then makes you rest when you're quite certain you're ready.”

“Are you?” she asked.

“Apparently not.”

She glanced toward me.

I shook my head.

Something in her shoulders eased.

Lena introduced herself by reaching out a hand and waiting for Anja to take it.

Juno told her where the water would be. Where the path sloped. Where to call if she woke and didn't know which shelter she was in.

Small things.

Things that would be difficult in the dark.

Anja listened to each one with the attention she'd given the skiff lifting beneath her.

When they had finished, she touched the metal box.

“Can that stay here?”

“Of course,” Juno said.

“Beside me.”

“Yes.”

Anja slid it beneath the folded edge of her blanket.

Nobody asked what was in it.

Luna waited until I'd eaten before giving me the contact slate.

“They came first today,” she said.

“The light?”

She nodded.

Dot had brought her hand down at the same time as before. Before she moved the lamp, the strand had brightened against the arch. Dot had answered. Then one of the Teeming had come up the track and waited below the shelf.

“Same one?” I asked.

“We don't know.”

I looked at the careful marks on the slate.

“What did it want?”

“To go down again, we think. Dot followed as far as the pool.”

“And?”

“The water's still running.”

She let me sit with that for a moment.

They had met again. Nothing had broken. Nobody had been hurt.

It was more than we'd managed with some people who spoke the same language.

There was something new in the recording.

Dot showed me after supper, with the screen propped where I could watch without leaning forward.

The little pool appeared. The channel. A Teeming standing near the larger passage beyond it.

Dot's hand moved toward the passage.

The creature extended one limb across the way.

The hand stopped.

It backed away.

The limb lowered.

A moment later, a carrier emerged from the passage with a pale bundle held close. It crossed to the pool. Only after it had passed did the first creature move aside.

Dot's hand stayed where it was.

“Again,” I said.

She played it again.

“Wait?” I asked.

“Possibly,” said Luna. “Or stay away. Or that's too close.”

“All useful.”

“Yes.”

Dot froze the picture with the limb still across the passage.

“This unit stopped without contact.”

“And it let you move back.”

“Yes.”

I looked at the small space between the outstretched limb and Dot's hand.

There had been room for a different kind of answer there. A strike. A rush. The little machine dragged down before anybody could ask what had gone wrong.

Instead, someone had put an arm out, and someone else had waited.

I wrote that much on the slate.

Nothing about obedience. Nothing about a queen giving orders.

Just the space left between them.

Later, Anja asked about the sound from the screen.

I hadn't realized she could hear it from her bedding.

“Water,” I said. “We've been looking at some of the tunnels.”

“Under here?”

“Under the canyon. We're on the higher ground because part of it broke.”

She looked toward the dark beyond the shelters.

“Are they in there?”

“Yes.”

Her hands moved toward the metal box.

I sat down a little farther away than I had before.

“We're trying to talk to them.”

For a while, she said nothing.

Then she looked at my eyes.

“Talk.”

“Yes.”

“They took my kit.”

I nodded slowly.

“Was it still moving?”

“No. It fell at the stream. I couldn't bring it back.”

She looked down at her blanket.

“I went later. The core was gone.”

I thought of the cores carried through our canyon. Of Old Son's garden. Of all the things we'd begun to understand just late enough that understanding couldn't change what had happened.

“We've learned something about that,” I said. “I can tell you when you want.”

She held the blanket between her fingers.

“Not tonight.”

“All right.”

“Do I have to see them?” she asked.

“No.”

“Everyone else is?”

“No. Most of us haven't been close to them since we began trying. Dot's hand goes. We watch what happens.”

Anja looked toward the screen, now dark beside the fire.

“You trust them with it?”

“I'm learning what I can trust them with.”

She considered that answer.

Then nodded toward Dot.

“And her?”

“Yes.”

It was the easiest thing I'd said all evening.

I went back to the fire and found Toby sitting with Dot.

He had his letter in his lap.

Not open. Folded and refolded until the edges had become soft. Dot must have returned it while we were away.

“How was it?” he asked.

“The journey?”

He nodded.

I told him about the ridge. The water. Liam reading the list. Anja asking us to leave supplies for whoever came after her.

Toby listened without interrupting.

When I finished, he looked down at the paper.

“I changed it.”

“The letter?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He gave me a small, puzzled look.

“I mean you can. As often as you want.”

“I know.”

He ran a finger along the folded edge.

“I kept writing that I was all right.”

I watched the fire.

“Are you?”

“More than I was.”

I nodded.

“But it sounded like nothing happened.”

He stopped, searching for the words.

“I don't want her to think I wasn't frightened. I don't want her to think I'm frightened all the time either.”

“You don't have to make it do both in one sentence.”

He looked at me.

I shrugged.

“I use a lot of pages.”

That made him smile.

“Would you read a bit?” he asked.

“If you want.”

“Just the bit I show you.”

I nodded.

He unfolded it, keeping most of the page covered with his hand. There were crossings-out. Words squeezed into spaces above other words. One patch where the paper had been rubbed thin.

He uncovered two lines.

I was afraid when the roof fell. The others came back to help me, and I came out with them.

I read them twice.

“That's true,” I said.

“I know.”

“I think it's good.”

He looked at the lines for a while, then folded the page again.

It was all he wanted to show me.

I didn't ask for more.

Across the fire, Anja had lifted her box onto her lap.

Wren was beside her. Neither of them looked toward us.

The catch clicked. The lid opened.

Inside were folded sheets, tied in little bundles with different lengths of cord. Some had browned at the edges. Others were written on the backs of labels and torn pieces of packing paper.

Anja took one out and handed it to Wren.

Wren looked at the outside, then up at her.

I couldn't hear what Anja said.

I didn't try.

Toby watched them for a moment.

“She's got letters too.”

“Yes.”

He held his own a little less tightly.

Dot turned her grille toward me.

“This unit can preserve more correspondence.”

“How much?”

“More than has been offered.”

I thought about all the places paper could get wet in a camp above broken ground. All the things people had carried in boxes because there was nowhere else they trusted to put them.

“Ask them,” I said.

“This unit will.”

“Not everyone will want it copied.”

“This unit will ask that separately.”

Toby glanced up.

“Can there be a place for the paper too?”

“Yes,” I said.

That was a thing I could make without promising to reach Earth by morning.

We found a dry chest among the supplies.

Nothing grand. The lid fitted properly, and the inside smelled of cloth instead of damp. Liam carried it over while Sera checked that the corner nearest the fire wouldn't become too warm.

I smoothed a rough edge inside it. That was all the changing it needed.

Lena felt along the rim and found a splinter I'd missed near the hinge.

I removed that too.

Then we put it on a raised stone in the sheltered part of the camp, where rain wouldn't run beneath it.

Dot would keep the copies people asked her to keep. The paper could stay with its writer or go in the chest. A name on the outside if they wanted. No opening a folded sheet to find out whose it was.

Luna listened to the arrangements and found a piece of cloth to cover the chest.

No speech. No ceremony.

Just somewhere dry for words that hadn't arrived yet.

Anja didn't put her box in it.

She watched us, thanked Dot when she asked, and kept the box beside her bed.

Toby put his letter inside.

Then took it out again before he went to sleep.

Nobody commented.

Liam spent half an hour staring at an empty sheet and finally wrote something so quickly that I wondered whether he'd been afraid the words would leave if he gave them time to reconsider.

Sera sat beside him with her own paper.

I went to my bedding and opened the notebook.

For a while, I didn't write the day.

I wrote Mum.

Then stopped.

There were so many things she didn't know.

The names of the people sleeping around me. The height of the tower. Dot's colors. Sera's hand finding mine when I didn't know where to put it. The fact that Toby had come out of the tunnel and was sleeping a few paces away.

The thing under our feet, with its great pale body and its patient light.

I could have filled every page trying to reach the beginning.

Instead, I wrote about Anja's pot.

How we'd nearly left it because we'd counted the things she needed before she'd finished looking. How Liam had put it beside the water in the skiff without asking why she wanted an old pot when there were others at home.

Mother would understand a pot.

It was somewhere to start.

On Day 430, Wren took Anja's mirror to the high path.

Anja asked to watch from the shelter, where she could see the flashes without being carried uphill. Holt sat with her. Old Son stood farther along the ridge, waiting for its own light.

Wren sent the message twice.

F-22 SAFE AT SCARECROW. ANJA BELL. TWENTY PEOPLE HERE.

Then she sent to twenty and eight. Still coming. Next plans to follow. We hadn't forgotten them because one empty seat had been filled.

Anja listened while Holt read the flashes aloud.

When he reached her name, she closed her eyes.

Only for a moment.

Then she asked him to read the rest.

After the dawn window, Dot showed me the next contact record.

Luna had gone to the upper opening with her, staying in daylight while the hand went down. The strand had brightened at the arch. Dot had answered.

At the little pool, a Teeming had extended a limb across the narrow path again.

The hand stopped.

Waited.

When the limb lowered, Dot moved one step and stopped once more.

No rush. No touch. No frightened movement filling the space between them.

We had begun to recognize a pause.

I watched the short recording beside Anja, who had asked to see only the first part with the glass.

When the picture turned toward the pool, I stopped it as she'd asked.

“That light,” she said.

“What about it?”

“It waited for yours.”

“Yes.”

She looked at the still image.

After a while, she asked to see that part again.

Day 429–430. Letters home.

Anja brought her mirror, clothes, a box, and a pot.

Left water on the ridge. Food. Her name and where she'd gone.

Old damage in the ankle. Supported it for the journey. Begin with looking again after rest.

Twenty people at Scarecrow. Two kits.

Holt knew her. They held hands for a long time.

The ordinary channel still doesn't work. Told her plainly.

Toby showed me two lines. He was afraid. We came back to help him. He came out with us.

A dry chest. Dot will keep what people ask her to keep. Ask before copying. Ask before reading.

Anja kept her box. That's all right.

Wrote to Mother about the pot.

Day 430. Wren sent Anja's name. Twenty and eight still waiting.

At the pool, a limb across the path. The hand stopped. The limb lowered. One step, then another pause.

We haven't made peace yet.

We're learning how to give each other time.