Chapter 176 Terms

Sera caught me looking at the drawing before breakfast.

“I said not today.”

“I know.”

“You're measuring the wall with your eyes.”

“I do that with most walls.”

She came up beside me, still fastening her sleeve, and looked at the house we hadn't built.

Then she took the pencil out of my hand.

I hadn't noticed picking it up.

“There,” she said.

She put it on the table and kissed me.

That was a better use of the morning.

Day 489 began with rain against the window and Risa accusing Luna of stealing her blanket.

“It was on the floor,” Luna said.

“Because you pushed it there.”

“I was asleep.”

“A carefully prepared defence.”

Sera leaned against me while we listened.

I rested my chin lightly against her hair.

For a moment, nobody wanted anything from me that I didn't already know how to give.

Then my leg cramped.

I made a noise.

Sera stepped back at once, Risa stopped arguing, and Luna sat up.

“Leg,” I said. “Only the leg.”

Risa looked at the way I was standing.

“You've locked your knee again.”

I sat down.

The morning continued.

That seemed worth remembering. Not every interruption was the beginning of losing something.

Sometimes I needed a chair.

After Sera's treatment, she stayed beside me while I put the notes away.

The little changes were becoming familiar. The ease returning to her fingers. The tiredness that didn't disappear simply because we'd dealt with one cause of it.

I watched her close the fastening on her other sleeve.

She watched me watching.

“You can ask.”

“How do you feel?”

“Better than before. Hungry. A little annoyed that you're already wondering whether better means I can do more.”

“I was wondering whether you were pretending.”

Her expression softened, but she didn't smile it away.

“I know.”

We sat with that for a moment.

Then she put her hand over mine.

“I don't want to spend every good hour proving it isn't a bad one.”

I looked down at our hands.

“What would help?”

“Believe me when I tell you. Keep doing the checks we agreed on. Let the rest of the day belong to me.”

“All right.”

“And if I change my mind about what I can do, let me change it without looking as though I've fallen off something.”

I laughed quietly.

“That may take practice.”

“I expect to be here while you learn.”

We carried breakfast back to the room because the rain had driven too many people beneath the cooking roof.

Luna made space on the table. Risa rescued the house drawing before I put a wet bowl on it.

“First term,” she said. “No soup on the future.”

“That seems fair.”

“Second term. You don't turn the future into a building schedule before we've finished breakfast.”

“I haven't.”

Three faces turned toward the pencil.

I ate instead.

After a while, Sera said, “We did talk about something besides rooms yesterday.”

I put down my spoon.

“Nothing bad,” she added.

“You know that makes people wait for the bad part.”

Risa reached across the table and touched my wrist.

“We talked about how easy it is to put everything off here.”

Outside, someone called for a bucket. A foot slipped on the path, followed by a curse and another voice asking whether anything was broken.

We all listened for the answer.

Nothing was.

Risa looked at me.

“Like that.”

Luna folded her hands around her cup.

“There will always be work.”

“Yes.”

“And sometimes it will matter more than whatever we planned. Yesterday, it did.”

I thought of the little shape beside the lamp.

“But if we wait until nobody needs anything,” she continued, “we won't have a life. We'll have a list.”

Sera nudged her foot against mine beneath the table.

“We're already together. We're not asking you to decide that again.”

“I know.”

“We want to keep choosing what that means while we're actually living it.”

I looked between them.

“What did you decide?”

“That nobody has to pretend,” Sera said. “Not about being tired. Or frightened. Or wanting something that isn't useful to the camp.”

Risa nodded.

“And wanting something doesn't make it a deadline.”

Luna looked at the drawing.

“We can want that for a long time before it's ready. That doesn't make what we have now temporary.”

I let the words settle.

The room was warm. Our wet coats hung beside the door. Someone had left a book open on the window seat with a clean scrap of cloth marking the page.

It hadn't felt temporary last night.

I didn't want to treat it that way in daylight.

“What about when one of us is unhappy?” I asked.

“Then she says so,” Risa said.

“Or he does,” Luna added.

Sera gave me a pointed look.

I raised both hands.

“Understood.”

“I'm not sure it is,” she said. “You can tell us something hurts before you've worked out how to fix it.”

I thought about the things I'd nearly said in this room and then carried away because everyone was tired.

Not great secrets.

Small fears, left alone until they got bigger.

“I don't always know how to start.”

“Start badly,” Risa said.

I looked at her.

“We'll still be here for the second sentence.”

Luna smiled into her cup.

Sera squeezed my hand.

There wasn't anything clever I could say to that.

So I told them something true.

“Sometimes I'm frightened you'll only remember me worried.”

Risa was quiet first.

Then she moved her chair closer and took my face between her hands.

“I remember you in the gym.”

“That was fairly worrying.”

“I remember you trying not to smile when you thought you ought to be serious. I remember you laughing yesterday while Liam tried to cut three vegetables at once.”

“He said it saved time.”

“It didn't.”

“No.”

She kissed me.

Luna's hand settled against the back of my neck.

“I remember the ice leaves.”

Sera looked at the drawing on the wall.

“I have evidence that you sleep.”

I laughed.

“There,” she said softly. “We know that part too.”

I sat with them until the rain eased.

Nothing had been repaired or promised away.

I felt better anyway.

The repaired lamp handle went below with Corr that morning.

Sera had shaped the replacement at her table from a small piece of ordinary metal I'd prepared. No forge fire. Just tools and careful hands, with the work stopped once for tea.

She made the grip broader than the old one.

Corr turned it over.

“For gloves?”

“For anything that needs to hold it.”

He looked at her, then nodded.

I wanted to go with him.

Luna saw it.

“Ilse is going. Dot has the relay. They know what they're checking.”

“I know.”

“If the support has moved, they'll call.”

I looked toward the lower path.

Then back at Sera, who was wiping the tools before putting them away.

“All right.”

Corr waited just long enough to make certain I meant it.

Then he left.

I stayed.

It shouldn't have felt like learning a new skill.

It did.

The rain stopped before midday.

Priya emerged from beneath the cooking roof carrying a pot and announced that anyone who had asked whether there was more bread could now help make some.

Liam attempted to move behind Anja.

She stepped aside.

“Coward,” he told her.

“Hungry coward. Go on.”

She joined him at the table a moment later, bringing a stool so she could rest her ankle when she needed to.

Risa caught my sleeve.

“We could help.”

“I thought we were practising not working.”

“We're practising having a life. It can contain bread.”

That was difficult to argue with.

We washed our hands and found room.

Sera took the stool beside Anja. Luna rolled up her sleeves with the expression she used before difficult negotiations.

Priya gave her a bowl.

“It's dough,” she said. “You don't have to win.”

Luna looked at the sticky mixture.

“We'll see.”

There were more hands than good places to put them.

That was usually a problem. For once it meant people could stop without everything stopping with them.

Bram carried water. Merrin sat at the end of the table cutting portions with a blunt wooden edge, his injured leg stretched safely out of the walking space.

Dov had made the tool.

Priya inspected it and said it was better than the old one.

Dov pretended to be occupied with the grain sack.

I saw the corner of his mouth move.

Risa saw me seeing it and nudged my arm.

“Leave him alone.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You were preparing.”

Across the table, Liam put too much flour on his hands and clapped them together.

Anja closed her eyes inside the small white cloud.

Nobody spoke.

Then she reached out and left a clean handprint down the front of his shirt.

“That helps,” she said.

Liam looked at himself.

“I was going to wear this later.”

“You still can.”

Pella came out while the first bread was cooking.

Iona pushed her chair along the broad path. Neri walked beside them with her support, slowly enough that nobody had to pretend the distance was short.

Pella asked what smelled burnt.

Liam pointed at me.

I pointed at the empty place where Priya had been.

Priya's voice came from behind us.

“It isn't burnt.”

We both lowered our hands.

Pella laughed.

The sound was brief and tired. She had to rest afterward.

But she stayed, with a folded cloth beneath her bowl and the chair turned so she could see the table.

Nobody asked her to demonstrate how much better she was.

When she wanted to go to the shaded place later, Iona took her. There was still food beside her when she left, and she carried it with her instead of having it cleared away as though the meal had ended without her agreement.

I watched until they reached the bend.

Then Risa put a piece of bread in my hand.

“You're allowed to eat it while it's warm.”

Toby arrived late.

Wren saved him the place beside her, then put a bowl down before he could claim he wasn't hungry.

He sat.

For a little while, he simply ate.

I could hear the quiet edge of his wall when someone scraped a chair too close. A soft change in the sound, there and gone.

Wren asked him something I didn't catch.

He glanced toward the medical shelter.

Then at the food.

“Yes,” he said.

She smiled.

After they finished, they walked toward the upper bend together.

Not far. Only to the place where the path widened and the wet canyon caught a little sun.

Toby stopped to look back once.

Wren kept hold of his hand.

He turned toward her again.

I was still watching when Luna sat beside me.

“It's difficult,” I said.

“What is?”

“Believing things can keep going when you're not standing over them.”

She looked toward Toby and Wren.

“Yes.”

Then she leaned against my shoulder.

We let them go.

Holt took the seat opposite us with a sigh that suggested the chair had personally disappointed him.

It was the chair he'd asked me to lower three days earlier.

“Wrong height?” I asked.

“Ground's wrong.”

“Of course.”

He accepted bread from Sera and watched Liam try to get flour out of his cuff without putting it on Anja again.

“Young people,” he said.

Luna looked at me.

I kept my face straight.

Holt noticed anyway.

“You're included.”

“I assumed.”

He ate for a while, then asked about Pella.

I told him what we'd seen. What she said had changed. What hadn't.

He listened without offering a cure he hadn't got.

“When Iona has her dates together,” he said, “bring them over. I've still got weather notes from the old places. Might help separate a dry season from simply living higher.”

“That would help.”

“Might,” he repeated.

“All right. Might.”

He nodded, satisfied that he hadn't accidentally promised anything sensible.

Sera rested her hand on my knee beneath the table.

Holt noticed that too.

His eyes moved between us, then toward Risa arguing with Liam about who had used the last clean cloth.

He looked at Luna beside me.

“Complicated household,” he said.

I waited.

“Need more hooks.”

Sera laughed.

“We already have hooks.”

“Never enough.”

He broke another piece of bread.

“Your father couldn't keep a coat off the floor either.”

I looked up.

The name wasn't spoken. It didn't need to be.

“At Ormebridge?”

“Whenever there was somewhere inconvenient to leave it.”

I tried to picture it. My father younger than Holt was now, putting a coat down, being told to move it, ordinary enough to be annoying.

“Did he listen?”

“No.”

Sera looked at me with fresh interest.

“That explains a great deal.”

Holt smiled into his cup.

I wanted to ask another question.

This time, instead of saving it for a day that might never be empty, I did.

“Was he happy?”

Holt didn't answer quickly.

I was glad he didn't.

“Sometimes,” he said. “I didn't know every part of his life.”

I nodded.

“He could laugh. Even then. Had a terrible habit of doing it just when you were trying to stay angry with him.”

“That also explains a great deal,” Luna said.

I looked at her.

She didn't look sorry.

Holt leaned back, easing his knee.

“You don't owe anyone a miserable life because they didn't get a long one, lad.”

The table had grown quieter around us.

He seemed to dislike that, because he immediately pointed at Liam.

“But you do owe the cook something better than that performance.”

Liam looked down at his flour-covered shirt.

“It's a technique.”

“Then abandon it.”

The conversation moved again.

Sera's hand stayed on my knee.

I turned mine over hers.

Corr returned after the meal.

The supports hadn't moved. The water was lower than yesterday. Ilse had checked the outer seam from a safe place and marked a fresh trickle for the next inspection.

The guide had taken the lamp.

“By the new handle?” Sera asked.

Corr nodded.

She looked pleased in a way that had nothing to do with fire.

He set down the inspection page and accepted the bread we'd kept for him.

That was all.

No rush down the slope. No worse news held back until he'd eaten. No need to go and verify everything with my own eyes before trusting his.

I folded the page into the work notebook.

Then put the notebook away.

Risa watched me do it.

Didn't congratulate me.

I appreciated that more than I could have explained.

Sera found me washing the last cup.

“Come and sit with me.”

I dried my hands and followed her.

She'd put two chairs near the window, with a sheet of paper on the table between them. I looked at it, then at her.

“Am I being drawn?”

“Other way round.”

She offered me the pencil.

“You haven't seen me draw people.”

“I've seen your diagrams.”

“Those people are usually there to show where not to stand.”

“I'll risk it.”

She settled into the other chair and folded her hands in her lap.

I sat opposite her.

For a moment, I only looked.

The light caught the little hairs that had escaped beside her ear. There was a faint mark on one finger from the tool she'd used on the handle. Her mouth kept threatening to smile.

“You have to move the pencil eventually,” she said.

“I'm considering the problem.”

“That's romantic.”

I started with the shape of her face.

It went badly.

She waited while I tried to correct it, then began laughing when I held the page farther away as though distance might improve what I'd done.

“Let me see.”

“Not yet.”

“Lucas.”

I turned it toward her.

She studied it with an expression I couldn't read.

“You gave me two different ears.”

“You have two different ears.”

“That different?”

I looked at the page again.

“Perhaps not.”

She reached across and guided my hand through one small correction, then let go before I made the next line.

We spent a little while like that.

I didn't become good at it.

But the second attempt looked more like someone I'd met, and she asked to keep both.

“Why the first one?”

“Because you made it for me.”

I looked at her.

She took the pages and set them beside her own things, well away from the work notebook.

Then she came back and kissed me until I stopped wanting to explain everything wrong with them.

When Risa called through the door asking whether we wanted tea, Sera answered yes without moving very far away.

“Again sometime?” she asked me.

“If you'll sit for me.”

“I will.”

Later, the four of us took our cups outside our room.

There wasn't a sheltered porch yet. We sat on the dry side of the wall, where the rain had missed the narrow strip of stone.

Sera tucked her feet beneath her. Risa leaned against my good side. Luna opened the book she'd brought, then closed it again when the wind tried to turn several pages at once.

“Future porch,” Risa said.

“Future,” I agreed.

Sera smiled.

We watched people carry the afternoon into evening.

Anja and Liam returned the washed bowls. Wren came back with Toby, their shoulders touching. At the cooking shelf, Dov said something to Priya that made her stop and look at him properly before she answered.

I couldn't hear what either of them said.

I didn't need to.

Above us, the sky cleared by degrees.

Luna rested the closed book on her knees.

“Would your mother hate me?” she asked.

I turned toward her.

“For what?”

“For making her son's life more complicated.”

Risa sat up a little. Sera went still.

It wasn't only Luna asking.

I thought about the letter folded on my shelf.

“I think she'd want to meet you before deciding what to worry about.”

“That isn't an answer,” Risa said.

“It's the answer I have.”

Luna nodded slowly.

I reached for her hand.

“She'd want to know whether I'm happy. Whether you look after me.”

“We do,” Sera said.

“I'd tell her that. I'd tell her I love you.”

“All three in one breath?” Risa asked.

“If I could manage it.”

She smiled, but her eyes stayed serious.

I squeezed Luna's fingers.

“I won't introduce any of you as something smaller because it makes the explanation easier.”

The wind lifted Sera's hair across her cheek.

She pushed it away.

“Good,” she said.

I could imagine the dome finding plenty to disapprove of.

It had found enough before any of this.

My work. My family. The amount of room we occupied. The cost of keeping Mother alive.

I didn't know whether we'd ever get the chance to stand there together and explain ourselves.

Sitting outside our room, I discovered I wasn't rehearsing an apology.

Risa leaned back against me.

“I'd like to get to know your sisters better.”

“They'll ask questions.”

“So do I.”

“They wouldn't stop.”

“Neither do I.”

Luna laughed.

Sera rested her head against my shoulder from the other side.

“Then they'll get along.”

For a little while, we talked about people we missed without turning the conversation into a plan to rescue them before nightfall.

It hurt.

It was good too.

I was beginning to understand that those things didn't always have to take turns.

Inside, before the light failed, I unfolded the letter to Mother.

There was space left at the bottom.

I asked the others whether they minded me adding what we'd talked about.

Sera shook her head. Luna touched my shoulder. Risa brought the lamp closer.

I wrote slowly.

We have a room together now. Yesterday we drew a house we might build someday. I don't know when. I wanted you to know we're talking about years, not only getting through tomorrow.

I stopped.

Then added another line.

I hope you get to meet them. I think you'd like the way they make me laugh.

Risa read over my shoulder.

“Leave out the vegetables.”

“I hadn't mentioned them.”

“Good.”

Sera kissed the top of my head.

The letter still couldn't go anywhere.

I folded it carefully anyway.

We went to bed with the window open a little.

Someone outside was trying to remember the second verse of Pella's song. Someone else kept supplying the first one with confidence.

Luna listened for a while.

“They've started again.”

“They might get it this time,” Sera said.

They didn't.

Risa laughed against my shoulder.

I reached across the space between us and found Sera's hand. Luna shifted closer, bringing the blanket she'd been accused of stealing.

We made room without discussing it.

Before the lamp went out, Sera looked at me.

“Tomorrow can be busy.”

“It probably will be.”

“That doesn't undo today.”

“No.”

She smiled.

Outside, the song faltered, recovered, and became several people laughing.

I listened until the room was dark.

Day 489. Terms.

No pretending. No turning everything we want into something that has to happen immediately. Say when it hurts, even without an answer ready.

Support below holding. New handle accepted. Corr and Ilse checked. I stayed here.

Bread with everyone. Pella came out. Toby and Wren took a walk. Liam covered himself in flour. Anja appears willing to keep him.

Holt has old weather records we can compare with Iona's dates. Asked him about Father. He remembered a coat on the floor.

Added to Mother's letter.

Still forty-five people here.

A whole day among them.