Chapter 155 Reception

Luna changed the crew before I finished eating.

“Liam comes. Risa stays with Toby. Wren keeps the map.”

I looked at the skiff.

“Two places free?”

“Yes.”

“And Sera?”

“Going east with Corr and Ilse. Two pods came down beyond the outer water path. They can reach those on foot.”

Sera was already fastening a blanket to her pack.

She caught me looking.

“Dot has eyes on the route. We turn back if the ground changes.”

I nodded.

There was no sensible reason to argue.

That didn't make it easy to watch her walk toward the edge of the camp while I prepared to fly somewhere else.

She came over before leaving and pressed her forehead briefly against mine.

“I'll be here,” she said.

“Or on the east path.”

“Then you can find me on the east path.”

I smiled despite myself.

She kissed me once and went to join the others.

Dot's map had twelve confirmed landing marks.

Not twelve survivors. Not even twelve pods we'd seen whole on the ground. Twelve places where a wing had found enough evidence of a landing to stop calling it a line in the sky.

There were two other tracks with no landing place yet.

Wren marked those differently.

Nell's mark had a name beside it now.

The nearest pair lay north of the stream where we'd found her, on opposite sides of a narrow fold in the land.

“The wing saw someone moving beside the lower one,” Luna said. “The upper one is caught in trees.”

I finished the bread.

Liam put the last vessel aboard and climbed in behind the bag.

Three of us out.

Room for five coming back.

I held on to that number as we lifted.

The girl at the lower pod had taken her helmet off.

It lay in the mud beside her feet. She stood with one hand braced against the torn hatch and the other raised toward the trees.

Not waving.

Pointing.

I landed where she could see us, and Luna called before getting out.

The girl looked over.

“Up there,” she said.

“We know.”

“He's still in it.”

“What's your name?”

She stared at Luna as though the question belonged to another day.

“Tessa.”

“All right, Tessa. Are you hurt?”

“I can stand.”

“That isn't the same thing.”

The girl's mouth trembled.

Then she nodded toward the trees again.

“He was talking. He stopped.”

Luna stayed with her while Liam and I went to look.

The second pod hung above the slope, caught between a thick trunk and the fork of another. A branch had driven into the outer shell without reaching the seat inside.

The whole thing moved a little in the wind.

I could see a boy strapped into it.

His eyes were open.

His hands were burning.

Not badly yet. Small flames running over the palms, disappearing, returning. Each time he tried to reach the fastening, the light brightened and he pulled back.

He'd stopped talking because he was trying not to breathe too quickly.

Liam looked up.

“Oh,” he said, very softly.

Then he stepped where the boy could see him.

“I'm Liam.”

The boy turned his head.

“Don't move yet. I can see the straps.”

“My hands—”

“I know. Mine do that.”

Liam lifted one hand. A little flame stood above his palm, steady and small.

The boy stared at it.

Then at his own.

“You're not going to burn us by being frightened,” Liam said. “We'll keep clear. Just listen to me.”

I looked at the trees while he talked.

The pod wasn't going to stay where it was if we cut the straps and shifted the weight carelessly. The branch through the shell held part of it. The fork beneath held the rest.

I needed another thing under it before any of that changed.

There was sound rock at the foot of the slope.

I brought the skiff closer and set it beside that rock, low enough that the rim would be below the pod when we lowered it. Then I changed loose stone into two broad supports reaching toward the underside of the shell.

Not to lift it.

To keep it from falling the last distance if my grip slipped.

Luna came up behind us after leaving Tessa seated with water.

“Can you bring it down?”

“If I can see the back latch where the branch is holding.”

She looked at Liam.

He was still talking to the boy.

“Mirror,” she said.

I opened the small one from the bag and gave it to her.

She moved along the higher part of the slope until I could see the branch reflected clearly.

There.

Not the whole tree. Not everything behind it.

Enough.

I changed the torn part of the outer shell so it no longer gripped the branch.

The pod shifted.

The boy made a sound that caught in his throat.

“Still here,” Liam said immediately.

I took the weight through the visible shell.

It was heavier than the skiff. Awkward, with part of it hidden behind the trunk and the weight pulling away from me.

I didn't try to carry it across the slope.

Just down.

A little.

Then onto the first support, where it could rest while I changed my view.

Luna kept the mirror steady.

Liam kept talking.

We did the next little piece.

When the hatch was close enough, Liam reached inside.

The boy jerked his hands away.

“Don't. I'll burn—”

“I've been burned before. Keep them where you can see them. I'm touching the strap, not you.”

Luna came around the lower side and helped with the second fastening.

I held the pod still.

The boy's feet found the support. His hands were still lit, but the flames had become smaller.

Liam wrapped a loose cloth around the damaged fastening so it wouldn't scrape his arm, then guided him out by the shoulder.

The boy stood on the rock beside the skiff.

For a moment, he looked surprised that standing was possible.

Then his knees folded.

Liam caught him before his palms touched the ground.

Tessa had come halfway up the slope.

Luna met her there.

“Sit. He's out.”

“Is he—”

“He's out. He's breathing. Sit where I can see you.”

She sat.

I let the pod settle onto the stone supports and released it.

My hands shook.

I put them on my knees until the shaking became something I could use around a cup.

Liam looked at the boy beside him.

“Name?”

“Kellan.”

“All right, Kellan. That's a better thing for us to call you than the boy in the tree.”

The boy made a small, startled sound.

It might have been a laugh.

Liam kept his own little flame burning until Kellan's had gone out.

Tessa's full name was Tessa Rook.

Sixteen. The same squad as Kellan Reed, who was fifteen and kept apologizing whenever anyone looked at his hands.

They didn't know Nell.

They didn't know how many pods had been launched.

They knew a morning room, a line, names called in an order neither could remember properly, and instructions to report to a reception unit after landing.

“What reception unit?” Luna asked.

Tessa pointed to a small panel on the inside of her wrist.

“It was meant to tell us.”

The screen showed a light moving in a circle.

No direction.

No name.

I watched it make one full turn before looking away.

We had to leave the pods.

That frightened Tessa more than I'd expected.

“Our equipment's inside.”

“We'll come back for what we can,” Luna said. “You're coming first.”

“What if they mark us absent?”

Liam looked at her.

For once, he found nothing to say.

Luna crouched beside Tessa.

“I'm recording where we found you. I'm recording where we're taking you. Nobody here will lose your name.”

Tessa looked at the slate in her hand.

“Could you write Kellan's first?”

Luna did.

He watched from the skiff with a blanket over his shoulders and his hands open on his knees.

Then Tessa gave Luna the spelling of hers.

We came home with five aboard.

I kept the flight lower than the first one and took the longer turn through the valley. My nose had bled while we were moving the pod. It had stopped, but Sera wasn't there to tell me that stopped wasn't the same as recovered.

I could hear what she would have said anyway.

So I didn't push the turn.

Kellan watched Liam for most of the flight.

“How did you make it stop?” he asked.

“The fire?”

The boy nodded.

“Practice. Rest. Food. Knowing you aren't about to be punished for taking a moment.”

Kellan looked down at his hands.

Liam leaned back against the rim.

“We'll begin with food.”

The east team had returned before us.

Sera stood beside the shelters with mud up to her knees. Corr was carrying an empty frame toward the stores. Ilse had the map.

Two more young people sat near Nell, wrapped in blankets.

One was holding a cup with both hands. The other watched every movement around the camp as though trying to remember where all the exits were.

Dot gave Luna their names.

Mara Keene. Sixteen. Found beside her pod, unable to put weight on one ankle.

Oren Pike. Fifteen. Cut hand, bruised ribs, walking.

Two pods east of the water path. Both passengers brought in.

I counted while the skiff settled.

Five of the new wave here.

Twenty-seven humans in the camp.

The numbers were beginning to change faster than the boards beside the scarecrow.

Risa came to the rim before I got out.

She looked at my face.

“Your nose.”

“Stopped.”

“I can see that.”

She waited while I tried to stand.

My leg nearly folded.

Risa put her arm under mine without saying the thing I'd earned.

That made it harder to pretend I hadn't earned it.

“Sit,” she said.

I sat.

She knelt in front of me and took my hand, turning it so she could see the tremor.

“I want you to come back from the next one too.”

“I know.”

“Then let us make sure there can be a next one.”

I looked at her.

The fear in her face was controlled. It was still there.

“All right,” I said.

Luna changed the board again.

No immediate flight.

The nearest remaining confirmed landing was within a few kilometers of the upper opening. Difficult ground, but passable along the high shelf. Dot had a wing over it and a hand coming toward it by the lower route.

Liam would go with Corr and Wren. Take the carrying frame, water, and a lamp. Sera would stay at camp for Kellan, who was watching his own hands as if they belonged to somebody else.

Ilse would keep the watch on the eastern approaches.

I could rest or I could argue, but either way the party would leave without me.

I chose rest.

It didn't feel noble.

It felt like watching three people walk away with a job I wanted to be doing.

Risa stayed beside me until my breathing slowed.

Then she went to help Toby.

She had work too.

Nell came over while I was drinking.

She stopped a little way from the bench.

“Are they my squad?”

I looked toward the new arrivals.

“I don't know. Did you recognize any of them?”

She shook her head.

“Then not those four. We're still looking.”

Her mouth tightened.

“You said nearest first.”

“Yes.”

“Not who we know.”

“Yes.”

She looked at the map, where Wren had left the next marks clear.

After a while, she asked whether she could help write down names as people came in.

I looked at Toby.

He had heard.

He brought her a slate.

“Sit with me,” he said. “Ask once. If they can't answer, we leave room.”

Nell took the pencil.

Her hands were steadier when she had something to do with them.

The guide came out of the upper opening near evening.

Dot saw it first.

The wing's picture showed it standing at the familiar threshold with the clean cup held close. Another creature waited behind it with a curved piece of plate.

A water question, perhaps.

A visit at the usual time.

We couldn't tell it that a different kind of day had happened above the ground.

Luna looked from the picture to the shelters full of frightened children.

“We don't bring it through camp.”

“No,” I said.

“I'll meet it at the field turn.”

I started to get up.

She looked at me.

I sat back down.

Anja, from the next shelter, made a quiet approving sound.

I watched through Dot's camera.

Luna carried the soil-marked cup. Teo went with her as far as the trough, staying on the path. They checked the marks and showed the guide the water running.

The creature touched the wet line.

Then lifted its limb toward the camp.

Luna put her arm across the way.

It stopped.

She did not push it back. Did not raise ice between them. She waited while it looked past her at the shelters.

A voice carried from the fire. One of the newcomers, crying out in a dream or waking frightened.

The guide turned toward the sound.

Stayed where it was.

Luna lowered the cup beside the trough.

The guide put down its own.

They ran water through the little waiting bowl and let that be the conversation for now.

Tessa saw the picture.

She had come to find Nell and stopped behind my shoulder.

“There's one here.”

“Yes.”

“Outside?”

“At the field path. Not in the camp.”

She looked toward the shelters, then back at the screen.

“Why aren't you killing it?”

Her voice shook on the question.

I kept mine quiet.

“It came carrying a cup. We've been working on the water together.”

She stared at me.

“That doesn't make sense.”

“It didn't to us at first either.”

On the screen, the guide stepped back when Luna moved the bowl.

Tessa watched.

I didn't tell her to stop being frightened.

I moved the bench so she could sit where the camera was visible and the path itself wasn't.

She sat.

Sera came to me when the guide had gone back below.

She crouched beside the bench and rested her hands on her knees.

“Kellan can put a flame out deliberately now. Small one. Twice.”

“Good.”

“He's more frightened of hurting somebody than of being hurt.”

I looked toward the fire.

Liam had left his place empty beside it. Kellan sat near that place, with Tessa close enough to speak to him without raising her voice.

“Does that improve?” I asked.

Sera followed my eyes.

“You learn what you can do. People stop treating every mistake as proof of what you are.”

She looked back at me.

“And somebody stays while you practice.”

I put my hand over hers.

She leaned against the bench for a moment, letting herself rest there.

Then Toby called her, and she went.

The walking party returned after dark.

We saw the lamps first.

One above the path. Another lower down, moving slowly enough that I knew someone was being carried before I could see the frame.

I stood this time.

Not to take over. Just to meet them where the path widened.

A boy lay on the frame with his eyes open and his jaw set so hard the muscles stood out beside it.

Wren walked near his head, talking.

Corr and Liam carried.

Dot's hand came behind them with the lamp held low.

“Dev Sen,” Wren told Nell. “Sixteen. Left leg. Awake the whole way.”

Nell wrote it down.

The boy looked at her.

“Don't put dead.”

Her pencil stopped.

“I wasn't going to.”

He looked at the board beside the scarecrow.

Then at the warm light under the shelters.

His face crumpled before he could stop it.

We took him to Toby.

I looked at the injury with permission and told him what I saw. A break we could work on. Swelling. No reason to make him listen to every difficult part while he was still cold from the path.

Toby kept him talking while I helped make a support that held the leg where it needed to stay until we could do more.

Liam sat on the ground outside afterward.

For a long time, he didn't move.

I sat beside him.

“Bad path?”

“Bad instructions.”

I waited.

“He stayed in the pod because the screen said reception personnel were coming.”

“They were.”

Liam looked at me.

“Us,” I said.

He rubbed both hands over his face.

“That's not funny.”

“I know.”

We sat until Wren brought water.

Nell showed us the arrival instructions before she went to sleep.

She had them folded inside her suit, in a pocket she hadn't opened since landing. The paper was dry and clean in a way that looked wrong among the muddy blankets.

Report to reception. Remain with assigned equipment. Await local orientation. Do not leave the landing area without authorization.

I read the last line twice.

“Was there anything about the beacon failing?” Luna asked.

Nell shook her head.

“About the pod landing somewhere unsafe?”

“They said the sites had been surveyed.”

Luna laid the page flat on the table.

I thought of Kellan suspended between the trees, his hands burning every time he tried to reach his straps.

Nell touched the edge of the paper.

“Did I do the wrong thing getting out?”

“No,” Luna said immediately.

“But it says—”

“It doesn't describe the place you landed.”

Nell looked down at the lines.

Luna waited until she looked up again.

“You're allowed to tell us when an instruction doesn't fit what you can see.”

“Even yours?”

“Yes.”

That answer seemed to frighten her almost as much as the question had.

We let her keep the paper. Luna asked permission for Dot to copy it, and Nell said yes, but held one corner until the recording was finished.

After she left, Luna turned to me.

“Tomorrow, the ones who can stand get shown the camp. Water. Food. Where to ask for help. Where not to walk.”

“Training?”

“Finding the latrine shouldn't require training.”

Liam made a tired sound that might have been a laugh.

“Then the rest,” she said. “How to stop someone before they step onto bad ground. How to say they're hurt. Who can help when their power does something they didn't mean.”

“Okafor,” I said.

Luna nodded.

“The parts that kept us alive.”

She put a new line beneath the morning route.

Orientation.

This time there would be people there to do it.

There were six new names by the time we stopped moving people for the night.

Nell Armitage. Tessa Rook. Kellan Reed. Mara Keene. Oren Pike. Dev Sen.

Twenty-eight humans at Scarecrow.

Two kits, whose names were still on HERE and who had spent the day helping us make room beneath it.

Six confirmed landing places still needed reaching. Two tracks still hadn't been matched to a place on the ground. Beyond those, we didn't know how wide the fall had spread.

Dot had sent wings to the nearest remaining sites. They would keep watch, show light, and bring back whatever they could see.

We couldn't turn every mark into a rescue before dark.

I hated that.

I wrote it anyway.

Luna sat beside the map while we ate late.

She had made tomorrow's first route before taking a bowl for herself. I put the bowl in her hand.

She looked up.

“You too,” I said.

Her expression almost became an argument.

Then she took a mouthful.

Risa sat on my other side with her shoulder against mine. Sera lowered herself across from us, tired enough that she didn't bother finding a graceful way to do it.

For a little while, none of us spoke.

Then Luna said, “I was frightened when you tried to stand after the flight.”

“I know.”

“I wanted to say it when you weren't also deciding whether to listen.”

I looked at her.

“Thank you.”

Risa's hand closed around mine beneath the table.

We ate while the food was still warm.

Later, I walked past the new shelter on the way to my bedding.

Nell was asleep with the slate beside her. Tessa lay facing Kellan, close enough that either could see whether the other had gone anywhere. Mara had finally let Toby put her injured ankle on the folded blanket. Oren was awake, looking at the doorway.

He saw me.

“Are we supposed to report in the morning?”

“Yes.”

His shoulders tightened.

“To breakfast,” I said. “Then we'll work out the rest.”

He stared at me.

From the other side of the shelter, Kellan said very quietly, “He means it.”

Oren looked toward him.

Then back at me.

“All right.”

I left the doorway clear and went to bed.

Day 440. Reception.

Second flight. Luna, Liam, me. Two places free.

Tessa Rook, sixteen. Kellan Reed, fifteen. Pod in the trees. Supports before moving it. Liam stayed with the fire until Kellan could let it go.

East team: Sera, Corr, Ilse. Mara Keene, sixteen. Oren Pike, fifteen.

Walking team: Liam, Corr, Wren. Dev Sen, sixteen. Carried him home after dark.

Six new arrivals including Nell. Twenty-eight humans. Two kits.

Six confirmed landing sites still to reach. Two tracks without ground positions. More may be beyond what we saw.

The guide came with the cup. Luna met it at the field turn. It stopped when she asked. No newcomers brought close without choosing.

Their screens said reception was coming.

We came where we could.

Breakfast first. Names kept. Route ready for dawn.