Chapter 175 What We Meant by Home

The guide came aboveground carrying our lamp.

Not the whole lamp. The handle.

It had broken away from the housing, and one end still held the little piece of cord Corr had tied there so a hand could find it in the dark.

Teo saw it first.

He called for Luna, who was outside our room with a cup in one hand and a route page in the other.

I followed her down the path.

The guide set the handle beside the water trough.

Touched it.

Then turned toward the lower passage and came back again.

Same movement twice.

Luna put down her cup.

“All right,” she said.

The morning of Day 488 stopped being the morning we'd expected.

Sera's treatment was finished.

That was the first thing I checked in my own head, although I'd done it less than an hour earlier.

She came out behind Risa, saw the broken handle, and went back for the small tool roll without asking whether we were going below.

“Take this,” she said when she returned.

I took it.

She looked at my face.

“Tell me when you know.”

“I will.”

Luna asked Corr to come. Risa had the receiver. Dot sent a hand ahead with a working lamp while another stayed at the entrance to keep the link.

We didn't follow the guide at a run.

It waited when we slowed on the wet steps.

That patience frightened me more than urgency would have.

It seemed to know we were coming.

The damage was beyond the shelf with the models.

Water had found a new way through a narrow seam above the passage. A slab had broken free and fallen across the dry ledge the carriers used.

The lamp lay beneath one edge.

Its light still worked.

I could see it shining into a space nobody could reach.

Three Teeming stood on the far side. One held a small pale shape beneath its body, keeping it clear of the water gathering around its feet.

Risa stopped beside me.

“I can hear them.”

“How many?”

“Several. Don't make that a count.”

I nodded.

Luna looked at the water, then the stone above us.

“We need to know what moves if he lifts that.”

The guide went low against the floor and touched the near edge of the slab.

Then raised its limb across our approach.

Stop.

We stopped.

A little movement passed beneath the stone beside the trapped lamp.

There was a young one in the gap.

Not crushed, as far as I could see.

Caught between the fallen slab and the edge of the passage, with less dry space around it every time the water rose.

I knelt where the guide had left room.

Ordinary rock at the top. A fracture running back toward the wall. Loose material beneath the near corner.

Enough visible to understand part of the load.

Not enough to simply pull.

I showed Luna the piece that might shift.

She moved Corr back from beneath it. Risa brought the lamp lower so I could see the whole exposed edge.

I made a support first.

Then another, wider than the first, resting on the sound stone of the passage rather than the loose floor.

The guide watched without moving into the space I'd opened.

When I stopped, it put one limb against the support.

Then withdrew.

I looked at Luna.

“Now I can raise the corner.”

“Slowly.”

The slab moved no more than the width of two fingers.

That was enough for the trapped lamp to slide.

Not enough for the young one.

I held the visible corner while Corr set the ordinary wedge where I'd shown him. The support took the weight. I let go and looked again before making anything else move.

Water ran through the gap.

The small shape shifted away from it.

The guide lowered its front limbs and reached beneath the slab.

Stopped.

Looked toward me.

I raised the corner a little more.

The young one came free against its limb.

For one moment, it hung between the water and the stone.

Then the guide drew it close beneath its body and moved away.

I let the slab settle onto the support.

Nobody cheered.

We listened to the stone until it stopped making sounds.

The others crossed one at a time.

Not beneath the suspended part. Along the dry strip we'd opened beside it, while Luna kept us back and Corr held the lamp where the footing could be seen.

The last carrier stopped near Risa.

She went still.

It lowered one limb close to her boot, then turned and followed the others.

I didn't know what that meant.

I knew she let out a breath afterward.

The queen's strand came along the wall behind them.

Slowly, picking its way around the new support.

It touched the dry stone where the young one had been.

Then the wedge.

Then the broad foot I'd made beneath the load.

I watched the light move along it.

The strand rested against the support for a while.

When it drew away, the guide put our rescued lamp on the shelf beside us.

The handle was still broken.

The light was still on.

We didn't leave the passage with the water still rising.

There was a shallow route it could take along the opposite wall without crossing the nursery ledge. I could see enough of the stone to open that little channel, not enough to start remaking the passage beyond it.

We showed the guide where the water would go with a cup before changing anything.

It moved along the proposed line, then stepped back.

The queen's strand remained near the dry crossing.

I opened the shallow channel.

Water began moving away from the trapped space.

We watched until the level beside the ledge stopped climbing.

Then longer.

Luna marked the support and the place above it that still needed checking. Corr copied the marks onto the drawing so the next person wouldn't have to guess why the wedge was there.

The guide stayed beside us until we packed the tools.

Before turning away, it touched the lamp once more.

I put the broken handle in my bag.

Sera could make a better one when she was ready.

We sent word from the upper shelf.

All four humans safe. Young one freed. Crossing open. Water diverted only along the visible wall. Support left in place.

Sera's voice came back through Dot's relay.

“Good. Come and eat something.”

I looked at the lamp in Corr's hand.

Then at Luna and Risa, wet to the knees and looking as though they were only now remembering how cold the passage had been.

“Yes,” I said.

Risa caught my sleeve on the first steps.

“Look where you're going.”

“I am.”

“You're thinking about the queen.”

“I can do both.”

She looked at my boot, which was about to miss the edge.

I moved it.

She smiled without saying anything.

That was worse.

Sera met us with dry cloth and a face she had made calm on purpose.

Luna went straight to her.

They held each other briefly, then Sera turned and took my hand.

I kissed her before attempting the explanation.

She touched my wet sleeve.

“Was it frightened?”

“The young one?”

She nodded.

“I don't know what frightened looks like for it. It kept moving away from the water.”

Sera looked down for a moment.

“I'm glad you got it out.”

“So am I.”

I gave her the handle.

She turned it over in her hand, found the break, and set it beside the tools.

“Later,” she said. “Food first.”

After we ate, the three of them asked for the room.

Not in a worried way.

Not with the silence people use when they're about to tell you that something has been wrong for weeks and you should have noticed.

Sera put down her cup and said, “We'd like to talk for a little while.”

I nodded.

Then waited.

Risa raised an eyebrow.

“Just us, Lucas.”

“Oh.”

Luna smiled.

“You haven't done anything.”

“That you know of,” Sera said.

I looked between them.

They were all smiling now.

That should have reassured me.

It did, mostly.

I took my coat, forgot why I'd taken it, put it back, and went outside.

Liam was waiting near the cooking shelf.

He held out a cup.

I looked inside.

“What's in it?”

“Something drinkable.”

“That isn't the same as saying what it is.”

“Tea. Anja has opinions about some of my other efforts.”

I accepted it.

He sat on the bench and made room beside him.

“Been dismissed?”

“Asked to leave for a bit.”

“Terrible. We'll put it in the memorial records. Lucas Dask. Briefly unsupervised.”

I laughed despite myself.

Then looked toward the room.

Liam followed my glance.

“They're allowed to talk without you.”

“I know.”

“You look as though you're revising the last month for errors.”

“That seems like a sensible use of time.”

He shook his head and took my cup long enough to add more tea.

“Stay here. Help me ruin these vegetables.”

We didn't ruin them.

Liam had become better at cooking than he admitted, mostly because Priya had stopped accepting charm as a substitute for following instructions.

He gave me a board and a knife.

I began cutting.

For a while, we worked without saying much.

Then he asked how the passage had looked.

I told him about the slab and the small shape moving away from the rising water.

He listened with the knife still in his hand.

“Same lot that helped Ari?”

“We don't know whether they're the same individuals.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes. The ones we've been learning to work with.”

He looked at the vegetables.

“I'm glad you went.”

“So am I.”

Then he added, “I'm also glad you came back. Both things, apparently.”

I looked at him.

He gave me a crooked smile.

“Living with Anja is improving my range of possible thoughts.”

“You're living together?”

“Not yet. I meant—”

He stopped when he saw my face.

“That was deliberate.”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Enjoy your brief victory.”

I cut another piece.

After a while, he said, more quietly, “We've talked about it.”

I looked up.

“She likes her own space. I like being asked to come into it. We're working out what happens after that.”

“That sounds good.”

“It is.”

He smiled down at the board.

Then glanced at our room again.

“You happy?”

“Yes.”

The answer came so quickly that both of us paused.

I hadn't needed to assemble it from evidence.

Liam nodded.

“Good.”

He went back to cutting.

For once, neither of us covered the important thing with a joke immediately afterward.

We finished the vegetables.

Washed the boards.

Took a portion to Pella, who had spent part of the afternoon in the new shaded place and was tired without being as emptied as she'd been on arrival.

She told Liam the food smelled good.

He looked so pleased that I nearly ruined it for him.

Nearly.

Toby was checking the notes beside her bed. Wren sat nearby repairing the edge of a signal cloth, her knee touching his chair.

Pella asked whether the creature we'd helped had got home.

Iona must have told her the little we'd explained outside.

“I think so,” I said. “The others took it through the passage.”

She nodded.

“Good.”

Then she reached for her bowl with steadier hands than she'd used that morning.

Toby noticed.

Wrote it down.

Didn't make her stop eating to prove it again.

When we returned to the cooking shelf, Sera was waiting.

Risa and Luna stood a little behind her.

Liam looked from them to me and became offensively interested.

“Well?” he asked.

Sera folded her arms.

“We've agreed on terms.”

I nearly dropped the empty bowl.

Liam laughed so hard that he had to put one hand on the bench to keep himself upright.

Risa looked delighted.

Luna tried not to smile and failed.

“What terms?” I asked.

“Come inside,” Sera said.

“That sounds worse.”

“It isn't.”

Liam made an unhelpful noise behind me.

I followed them anyway.

The first thing I saw was paper on the table.

My stomach tightened before I could tell it that we didn't conduct trade negotiations in our bedroom.

Then I recognized Sera's drawing.

Our room.

Beside it, three small additions in different hands.

A quiet work space with a door.

A sheltered place outside to sit when the rain came.

A proper area for washing that didn't involve carrying a bowl past someone's supper.

I looked at them.

“You've been designing a house?”

“Thinking about one,” Luna said.

Risa touched the edge of the page.

“Not telling you to build it tonight.”

“Or tomorrow,” Sera added quickly.

That told me how well they knew me.

I sat down.

“We've all been saying someday,” Sera said.

“About different things,” Luna added. “Rooms. Books. Somewhere to be alone without having to leave home.”

Risa sat beside me.

“We wanted to know whether we meant the same someday.”

I looked at the drawing again.

“And do you?”

“We think so,” Sera said. “But there are four people in this.”

She put the pencil in front of me.

Not in my hand.

In front of me, where I could choose to pick it up.

“We want to know what you want.”

For a moment, all I could see were the things I could make.

Walls. Water. Windows. A roof pitched correctly for the rain.

Then I looked at their faces and understood that those weren't the question.

“I want to stay with you,” I said.

Risa's hand moved into mine.

“All of you. Not only while we're trying to get through this part.”

Luna's eyes stayed on me.

“What does that look like?”

I looked down at the page.

“I don't know all of it yet.”

“Neither do we,” Sera said.

I took a breath.

“I want a place where you can close a door because you want quiet, and nobody thinks it means you've gone away from us.”

Risa nodded.

“I want to know where you keep things. I want to keep learning the things I don't know about you. I want ordinary mornings.”

My voice had become less steady.

“I want to get older with you.”

Nobody spoke for a little while.

Then Luna reached across the table and took my other hand.

“Yes,” she said.

Sera moved her chair closer.

When she kissed me, it was gentle enough that I almost couldn't bear it.

Risa leaned against my shoulder.

Luna kept my hand.

We stayed like that until I could speak without sounding as though I'd been running.

“I thought you were going to tell me something needed changing.”

“Some things do,” Risa said.

I looked at her.

“Your notebook's relationship with the bed remains troubling.”

I laughed, and the tightness in the room loosened.

Sera smiled.

“We'll keep telling each other the things that need changing. This wasn't a hearing.”

“It felt a little like one when you said terms.”

“That was mostly for Liam,” Luna admitted.

Risa looked pleased with herself.

“And a little for your face.”

I asked about Earth.

It had been waiting beneath the conversation from the moment I saw the drawing.

Mother. Genny. Garnet. The lives we'd left behind and the people still living them.

Sera leaned back, considering.

“I want my family safe.”

“So do I.”

“That doesn't tell me where I have to make my home forever.”

Luna nodded slowly.

“I don't want to go back to being what my father expected just because the journey happens in the other direction.”

Risa looked toward the window.

“I'd like to be able to choose.”

That seemed the most honest answer any of us had.

I thought about Mother sitting beneath a dome, trying to make the little room warm for my sisters.

“I'd want to ask them,” I said. “If we ever had a way. Whether they'd want to come here.”

Sera squeezed my hand.

“Then we keep trying to make that question possible.”

For a while, we talked about rooms.

Actual rooms this time.

Risa wanted somewhere to keep delicate work where a falling medical book wouldn't make an electrical problem more interesting.

Sera wanted a drawing table near morning light and no assumption that everything she drew was a plan I ought to execute.

Luna wanted shelves for books we didn't need for survival.

Then she added a little bench outside and crossed it out because she said Holt would claim it.

“Build him his own,” Risa said.

“He has three.”

“That has never stopped him.”

I drew a place where I could sit with my bad leg stretched out and still reach the table.

Then stopped.

Sera watched me.

“What?”

“I've done this before. In the room.”

“Yes,” she said. “You still need it.”

I left the line on the page.

“And a spare chair,” I said.

Risa glanced at me.

“For visitors?”

“Unless you want Liam sitting on the table.”

Sera took the pencil and drew one beside the window.

“He'll sit on the table anyway.”

Luna reached past her and made the chair wider.

“For whoever comes.”

I thought of Mother again, then of Nessa arriving with a question she expected a proper answer to. Holt pretending he'd only stopped because of his knee.

There would be a door we could close.

There would also be people we wanted to open it for.

“There,” I said.

Sera left the chair where Luna had put it.

The house wasn't a job for the next morning.

We had people to care for, a crossing below to inspect, paths that still needed work, and questions we couldn't solve by building something around them.

But we didn't put the drawing away as though wanting it had been indulgent.

Luna wrote our names along the bottom.

Lucas. Seraphina. Risa. Luna.

She passed the page to each of us.

Sera added the date.

Risa drew a small, entirely unnecessary curl beside her name.

I held the pencil for a moment.

Then wrote home above the drawing.

Sera looked at the word and smiled.

Not because we'd made an agreement about every room or every future year.

Because we'd finally said what the plans were for.

We went outside before the light disappeared.

The four of us, with no destination farther than the field.

The water ran past the scarecrow. Teo was putting away his tools. A few of the younger survivors sat near the jars arguing about the song Pella had remembered.

Liam and Anja stood beside the cooking shelf with their hands joined.

He saw us and opened his mouth.

Sera pointed at him.

“Don't.”

He closed it, then began laughing again.

Anja looked at him, looked at us, and smiled as though she knew enough without needing the whole explanation.

We kept walking.

Risa took one of my hands. Luna took the other. Sera walked close enough that her shoulder brushed mine.

Then I needed my stick for the slope, and Luna shifted her hand to my arm.

We found a way to walk like that.

At the bend, we stopped to look down toward the watercourse.

A lamp moved near the lower opening.

Corr, returning from the inspection with Dot's hand beside him.

He called up that the support held and the water was still taking the new channel. The guide had stayed until he finished checking it.

Luna thanked him.

Sera leaned against my arm.

“They knew where to come,” she said.

“For the lamp?”

“For help.”

I looked at the small light below us.

“Yes.”

That mattered in a way I didn't yet know how to put in a report.

We had been creatures to fear. Then creatures to watch. Now, at least once, we had been the ones someone came to when there was trouble.

I stood with the people I loved and watched the light climb toward home.

That night, Sera put the house drawing beneath the picture of our room.

The room we had.

The place we wanted to make.

Risa sat beside me on the bed and touched the word I'd written.

“You meant it?”

“Every part I knew how to say.”

She kissed me, then rested her forehead against mine.

“I did too.”

Luna came close enough to put her arms around us both for a moment before settling on my other side.

Sera lowered the lamp.

When she lay down beside us, she took my hand and put it against her heart.

It was an ordinary heartbeat.

I let it be ordinary.

No counting. No examination. No trying to turn loving her into another way to watch for everything that might go wrong.

I kissed her hand.

The room grew quiet.

Day 488. What we meant by home.

Guide brought the broken lamp handle. Slab across the carrier passage. Young one trapped beside rising water.

Supports first. Lifted the corner in stages. Guide took the young one clear. Others crossed. Queen examined the new support.

Water moved along the visible opposite wall. Follow-up inspection: holding. Keep checking after rain.

Pella's hands steadier at supper. Recorded, not tested again while she ate.

The three of them talked. Liam gave me tea and vegetables to cut.

Terms were mostly a joke. The drawing wasn't.

Said I want to get older with them.

They said yes.

Home, written at the top.